The Portal

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Grunkle Stan checks his surroundings and realizes that Soos, Mable, and Dipper came to the deactivation area. Images flood within Stan's head, when he thinks about his brother, Stanford Pines, his research, and the fight that made him lose his brother forever. Looking low, Stan looks at the group from a distance, then at the machine. He remembers the screams that his brother let out as he pleaded for help.

"Stanly, Stanly, help me!" As Ford's words of desperation had echoed throughout his brain.

Stanly recalled how angry he was at his brother and when he told him, "Some brother you'd turned out to be! You'd care more about your dumb mysteries than your family. Then you can have them!" How Grunkle Stan saw things, that portal was his one chance at redemption. He desperately ran to catch up with the group.

"This all ends now!" Dipper exclaims as he furrows his brows. Dipper, determined to finish this, gradually hovers his hand over the deactivation button but is interrupted by Grunkle Stan running into the room.

"Don't touch that button!" he yells. Out of breath, it felt like Stan ran a whole marathon. Dipper then pauses and turns to look at Grunkle Stan; with the others following suit. Mable, Soos, and Dipper quietly look at him. Dipper still has his hand hovering over the button, ready to press it at a moment's notice.

For a moment, it felt like they were in the lab looking at each other for an eternity, but rest assured, they were finally going to get answers. Grunkle Stan, still gasping for air, slowly approaches the group. He raises his hands towards them in an attempt to plead his case.

"Dipper, just back away!" Stan pleaded. Dipper doesn't move, but he looks back to the button and then back at Stan. Stan approaches them carefully, "Please don't press that shutdown button; you gotta trust me," he says.

Dipper rolls his eyes in annoyance, "And I should trust you why? After you stole radioactive waste. After you lied to us all summer? I don't even know who you are!" he says in a frustrated tone. Dipper looks intensely at Grunkle Stan as he waits for an answer.

Stan frowns but understands where the boy is coming from, "Look, I know this all seems nuts, but I need that machine to stay on. If you just let me explain," he is interrupted by the room shaking, and his watch beeping quickly. He briefly glanced at his watch and faced them again, "Brace yourselves!" he shouts.

The machine jerked violently as the portal increased in size, which caused the surrounding area to lose gravity. Everyone in the lab was floating towards the ceiling. It seemed that deep space had emerged through the rainbow outline of the portal. Cool air began to flow, at a calm pace, towards the area; the room occasionally shook. Tables, machines, and the house itself started to lift, and a goat 'baaing' could be heard outside the house as it too ascended skywards. Some nearby townsfolk were heard screaming for their lives as gravity refused to function.

The screams were somewhat audible but were drowned out by the announcement voice in the lab. "T minus 35 seconds," the voice echoed through the chaos.

Grunkle Stan is shocked by the whole experience and isn't an expert on this. He let out a scared yell, "Woah Woah Woah!" As the low gravity caused him to flip multiple times in the air with minimum effort, disorienting himself.

Dipper, having flipped in the air as well, landed in a pile of floating wooden pillars. He holds on tight to readjust himself to this new low gravity phenomenon.

While Dipper, adjusting to this, heard Mable yell, "Dipper!" across the room. Confused, he turned to look at her voice. There was a wire holding on to her foot, connected to the deactivation button, that held her in place as she floated. Mable looked at Dipper with desperate and confused eyes; what should she do?

"Mable, hurry, shut it down!" Dipper demanded as he pointed toward the deactivation button. Mable listens and begins to use the wire to climb her way down.

Grunkle Stan, hearing Dipper, yells, "No!" as he used his legs to push himself off the ceiling, in a straight shot to Mable and the button. He swims towards her in low gravity, and in a panic, he begins to plead with Mable, "Mable, Mabel wait!" Mable then leaps and clings to the button. She looks at Grunkle Stan while hovering her hand over the button. Grunkle Stan yells out to her, "Stop!" he swims closer through the air.

Then out of nowhere, Soos tackles Stan and sends him off course. The courageous hero, Soos, his iconic hat being knocked off some time in the fray, wasn't having it any longer.

"Soos, what are you doing!" Stan hollers at him while furiously bonking Soos' head with his fist, "I gave you an order!"

"Sorry, Mr. Pines, if that is your real name, but I have a new mission now... Protecting these kids!" Soos says proudly. He begins to bear-hug Stan, stopping him from breaking free.

"Soos, you idiot, let me go!" Stan angrily demands his employee as he tries desperately to break free from his grasp.

Dipper, seeing Soos struggle to keep Stan away, decides to help out by tackling them both. Facing Mable, Dipper pushes Stan's face away with his hand. "Mable, press the red button! Shut it down!" Dipper cries out to her.

Stan pushes Dipper away, "No, you can't, you gotta trust me!"

Dipper, regaining his strength, grapples with him again and tries to push him away from his sister. Grunkle Stan headbutts Soos hard enough to knock him unconscious, freeing himself. Desperate, Dipper tries to stop Stan but is grabbed by him and thrown across the room.

Dipper flies without control of his movement and begins hurling toward Mable. Mable attempts to catch Dipper, but as he collides with her they both lose their balance and fly towards the portal, which quickly enveloped both of the twins into its depths.

Grunkle Stan, realizing what he had done, tries to swim towards Mable and Dipper in a desperate attempt to save them from the same fate as his lost brother. "Wait, Dipper, Mable, no!" Stan tries to scream out for them and tries to reach out to them, but it's already too late. The portal had consumed them both, just like what occurred that fateful night with his brother, Stanford Pines the portal consumed more of his family. He was left helpless to do anything but watch them fall into its infinite expanse.

The portal began to shine a bright light, and a shock wave of energy blasted Stan against the cement wall, knocking him out cold.

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Dipper and Mable flew through the infinite as their senses continued to fail them. Dipper barely regains his senses, and he looks everywhere for Mable.

"Mable, where are you!" Dipper shouted for her.

"Dipper!" a voice yelled back in response. It seemed to come from all around him and nowhere, all at once.

Dipper looks around to see Mable flying uncontrollably in the void of space. He tries to swim over to her, but space itself wants to keep them apart. Both had alien concepts and ideas forced into their minds from the surrounding unknowable. This flood of other-dimensional ideas made it hard for Dipper to reach her. Hard for him to even focus on where she was. Things the human mind could not comprehend were flooding his senses. Despite this, he persists and manages to grab her.

For a moment, they thought they saw a man in a dark coat that looked like their Grunkle Stan with six fingers instead of the usual five. They continued to be flung throughout the multiverse as they desperately clung to each other, terrified that by letting go of each other, they would lose each other to the endless sea of nightmarish images and concepts of realities incomprehensible to their human minds. For a moment, they felt as though they were one, feeling the fear of the other as if it was their own. As the concept of time and space slipped from their mind, they were launched back by an unknown power. Before everything went dark, they saw a triangular shape made out of the darkness itself. A cat-like eye opened to stare down at them. As if it were observing them, a demonic laugh echoed out, and everything faded away into darkness.

"Even in this infinite multiverse, twins remain an anomaly," an unknown voice explained, "Their bond, powerful enough to bring them together even across the infinite worlds." The giant pink creature contemplated for a moment in its timeless space. It goes on to say, "Will their bond be strong enough to fight against what is to come? One can only hope, for the sake of their universe might depend on it."

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