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I should have just listened to my gut feeling.
These were the thoughts that raced through Fiddleford McGucket's head, as he watched helplessly, while the sky turned blood red, unimaginable, nightmarish creatures descended down to earth and a yellow triangle-like demon floated high up in the air, laughing.
He knew that portal was bad news. He had known it for a while now and had even tried to - unsuccessfully - convince Stanford to drop the project. But his partner had been nothing, if not stubborn.
He remembered the meeting in the diner well, the day before the first activation test. How he had compiled all of Ford's research into a thesis paper and had urged the scientist to publish this and drop the portal project altogether.
Of course Stanford hadn't listened.
To him that portal was everything. It was his ticket to knowledge, to fame and to recognition. He had always seen himself as bigger than everyone else and this project was sure to elevate him to the same level as people like Einstein or Newton. Maybe even higher. And so Stanford had insisted that he would do the test run one way or the other, whether McGucket would join him or not.
And so Fiddleford - damn his weak, sentimental heart - had reluctantly joined him on that test run. After all, he had to make sure that nothing went terribly wrong and to keep an eye on his partner. As much as Stanford's stubbornness frustrated him sometimes, he didn't want anything bad to happen to the guy.
The night before the test run, he had even played with the thought of just breaking into Ford's house, blocking the other out of the underground lab and dismantling the portal himself. But the thought of Stanford being hurt and angry at him and the slight possibility that Fiddleford might be wrong with his worries and that the portal really was just harmless had kept him from doing it.
He had been pleasantly surprised, when the test went well. No explosion, no power outage, no weird phenomena... nothing. Stanford had been so happy and proud of himself, once it was over, and even McGucket had relaxed a little bit, thinking that maybe he had just overreacted.
Sure, he still had an uneasy feeling around the thing, but with everything going right he couldn't think of a good reason to stop the project and even if he had one, Ford wouldn't have listened anyway. And so they kept going.
His anxiety and paranoia returned tenfold, when one day Stanford confided to him about his inspiration behind the portal. About how the scientist had been visited each night in his dreams by a “muse” that had shown him all the plans for the machine and had made deals with him...
He was convinced that Stanford had officially lost it. Or that he had been under the clutches of some nefarious ghost or demon trying to destroy him. Stanford had not taken it kindly when Fiddleford made his thoughts known and the two had fought.
After that their relationship had been heavily strained. But still, the work on the portal had to go on. Fiddleford, for his part, had made a few more weak attempts to convince the other to drop or at least pause the project, until they had figured out what exactly that thing did and what Stanford's “muse” was planning with it. But Stanford was having none of it and so McGucket just dropped the issue.
Again the idea to break in and destroy that cursed machine entered his mind, but like before he didn't act on it. He did however spend his free time to work on his own device, the memory gun, fine-tuning it and using it more and more. He sometimes thought about turning the device on himself and Stanford, to make them both forget about the portal, but, just like with his other ideas, he was too cowardly to act on it.
Now he wished he had gone through with it.
The triangle-demon's maniacal laughter was deafening now, as he towered over the terrified citizens of Gravity Falls. Demonic eyeballs with wings were flying around, turning humans to stone and carrying them away, while the other monsters were having their own fun tormenting the populace.
It was everyone for themselves, as the humans all ran for their lives and buildings and animals turned into hellish nightmares that gave chase after them. Fiddleford stared after them, frozen to the spot in shock and fear, but the sight of a boy being turned to stone and his horrified mother crying over him finally shook him out of his stupor. He had to get away!
He turned and ran, away from the carnage and the screams, but stopped when he saw Ford standing there in the middle of the street. Just like his partner before, Stanford seemed to be frozen in shock, staring up at the sky - at his former friend and muse - with a pale face. McGucket wasted no time and grabbed his partner by the arm, dragging the dazed man with him. They ran for several minutes through alleyways and buildings, dodging many monsters on the way, until they finally found shelter inside a warehouse, positive that no one had followed them.
Stanford immediately collapsed to his knees and buried his face in his hands, as the realization fully hit him. He had been betrayed. He had been betrayed by his muse. By his friend. Fiddleford had been right all along. Bill had just been using him. The portal had been dangerous. He had been betrayed and he had not even realized it. Didn't want to realize it. He had been disregarding his partner's warnings and now everyone was paying the prize. By god, he had doomed the earth! This was all his fault. All his fault! All his fault! All his-
He only noticed that he had been voicing all his inner thoughts out loud, when Fiddleford started shaking his shoulders, forcing Ford to look into his eyes: “Stanford, snap out of it! There's no time for self-blame. We need to keep going!”
But Fiddleford was also blaming himself for the current nightmare; for all the times he didn't follow up on his idea of sabotaging the damn portal and all the times he backed down from the argument, instead of shaking some sense into Ford.
But like he said, there was no time for that right now. The monsters were still roaming outside, looking for new victims, and it was only a matter of time, until the two would be discovered. They had to find a better hiding place and think of something, anything, that could stop this madness. Stop Bill.
“What for?”, asked Ford weakly, when McGucket relayed his plan to him. “Bill already won. It's over. I doomed the earth...”
He looked so defeated, sitting there on the ground, pure resignation on his face, and for a moment, Fiddleford considered lying down there with him. To just... give up. He still had the memory gun with him, hidden away in his coat. He could just... zap Ford and himself with it. Make them forget everything and... wait. Wait for oblivion.
After all, what chance did two humans have against an army of monsters? Against Bill himself? Against the giant rift in the sky?
But before he could sink deeper into these self-defeating thoughts, his thoughts drifted back to the construction of the portal. To all the moments he had doubts about the machine and how he failed every time to stop it. How he had refused to sabotage it and how he had always backed out of his and Ford's arguments.
And look where that had gotten him.
He shook his head. No. He couldn't repeat that same mistake again. So he knelt down, until he was at eye level with his partner, and spoke with conviction: “Look, Stanford, we can't just sit here and do nothing. Yes, your muse might have won for now, but we still have the portal. We still have the blueprints and your journals. There has to be some way to reverse all of this.”
“How?”, asked Stanford incredulously. “It already took so long to build the damn portal and I still needed Bill's help to do it. Even if there is a way to reverse engineer it, it might take months or years for us to finish it.”
“Then we will take months or years. Come on, Stanford, at least let us try it!”, spoke Fiddleford, desperate to fix this horrible situation they both found themselves in and that they had caused.
The other was deep in thought, mulling over the idea. At least he wasn't outright rejecting the plan, which gave Fiddleford a little bit of hope. Maybe, if the two of them worked together and listened to each others suggestions for once, they could fix this.
After a tense moment of silence, Ford finally spoke slowly: “I do have some information and prophecies about Bill written down in my journals. Maybe we can find something of interest in there. But we do need to get back to my house to get the journals and the blueprints and the whole town is crawling with monsters. We need to device a plan first and see if we can find a weapon, before going outside.”
Relieve flooded him at these words. Glad to have his partner onboard for this, the two began their search for anything useful in this warehouse. Fiddleford was in the process of checking out some iron rods and debating with himself if those could be turned into some kind of weapon, when Ford spoke up, quiet and unsure.
“What if we fail... or don't find a way to fix this?”
The memory gun weighed heavily in McGucket's coat.
“Well, then we'll just have to wait for the end, I fear.”
An uncomfortable silence settled between them, after these words. But still the two man kept going, determined to find something and fix this mess. They were the only two capable people left that stood a chance against Bill. They had to at least try.
It was the only thing left to do.