Gravitational Phantoms: After the Storm

Chapter Seventeen: Ectofire (Part Five)

I have joined a new fandom... Oops. It was an accident, I swear!

On my FF.net account (my username is the same by the way), I have a fic called "Burning Brands and Rose Thorns." Pretty soon it's going to be relevant, but you don't really have to read it to understand.

But it will help.

Most of the facts about Mabel and Dipper's birth are canon as of Legend of the Gnome Gemulets.

Detailed descriptions of wounds in this chapter. Poor Danny.

Should we play the "how many times can I imply Fiddauthor without actually saying it" game?

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Mabel leaned back against the white wall as she waited for Danny to return. The thirteen year old girl had long since picked the lock (being related to a conman had it's advantages, including learning how to cheat at cards and escape from a holding cell), and was now hoping against all hope that her friend would return safe and unharmed.

When the door opened, Mabel immediately shoved her hand back into the cuff to give the illusion that she was still bound.

A random agent was standing in the doorway, one hand wrapped around Danny's throat. Mabel let out a small sob at the sight of him.

The agent threw him forward with a heavy shove that sent the ghost boy sprawling onto the floor. Mabel waited in her corner for as long as she dared before throwing herself towards him to assess the damage.

A severe burn ringed his wrist, and there were matching ones on his ankles. There were three jagged bloody slash marks engraved deeply into his flesh, the area around them scorched and irritated.

But the worst injury was the one on his lower ribs, just above his stomach.

There was a small, neat cut that was slowly dripping with red and green blood. The edges of it were sprinkled with tiny bright red and dark purple flakes. Whatever they were, they were making the skin bubble up and blister-obviously making Danny feel immense amounts of pain.

Mabel leaned over him and whispered in his ear, "What's the red-purple stuff on your stomach? How do I get rid off it?"

Danny's entire body spasmed briefly before he answered.

"Blood... Blossoms." He rasped. "You have to... Get them away. Hurts..."

Mabel winced. She had no other option, did she?

With a small sound of regret, the girl began to brush the flecks off of his skin. They stuck to her fingers along with the blood-as well as probably hurting like hell, but once they were all off Danny breathed a small sigh of relief.

"I'm glad... That they didn't dissect me... Again."

"Me too," Mabel murmured, patting Danny's jet black hair.

Please hurry, Dipper.

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McGucket jumped back. "Now how do you know my name? And what do you think you're doing down here? This is my hiding spot for the apocalypse."

Wendy crouched down to his level to make herself less threatening.

"Whoa, buddy. The apocalypse has been over for, like, months. The crisis was averted."

"Then how come you're down here?" The old man asked suspiciously.

"Something... Happened," Dipper said. "We have to hide down here."

McGucket looked at him with narrowed eyes. "How do I know you aren't the shapeshifter?"

Dipper smiled at him, mildly pleased that he remembered the shapeshifter.

"Um, here." He picked up a piece of glass and carefully pricked his finger, showing McGucket the color of the blood. "See? Red, not green. I'm a human."

"So you are." McGucket scuttled backwards into the rest of the bunker before anything else could be said.

Ford stared after him. His old friend was... Gone. He knew about The Society of the Blind Eye, knew that Fiddleford had been the one to start it, knew that he had forgotten. But Ford himself hadn't.

He wouldn't forget the day that he drove his best friend to insanity.

Never.

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Danny curled up into himself, eyes blue squeezed shut. His powers were still unreachable-the agents must have modified the Plasmius Maximus somehow.

It had been much longer than it had ever been before.

Mabel had ripped up her sweater for use as a makeshift bandage. Usually she would be mourning the time and craftsmanship that had been poured into the garment, but now was not the time to grieve over a sweater. She had to take care of her friend.

The thirteen year old girl had started to regale the ghost boy with some of the stories that he hadn't heard yet-like how she had punched the doctor when she was only a few seconds old. Or how Dipper had had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck.

Mabel told him about the time that they fell into the bottomless pit (actually a wormhole into what was most likely the fourth dimension, at least according to Dipper), the day that she and Pacifica waged war on each other and fought golf people, and when she got lost in the woods with only her yarn and knitting needles for company.

Anything to distract him from where they were and what was going on.

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Unbeknownst to them, something (or more accurately three someones) was wreaking havoc on the agents.

Every single weapon in the place that even partially relied on electricity collapsed and fell apart. The plants in the building went haywire, attacking the agents and tying them to the walls. Agents J and E both started acting strangely-nobody seemed to notice that they were the only ones not wearing Specter Deflectors.

Blue balls of fire would chase interns down the hallway. A grey shape would often be seen following the Fentons. Whenever they turned around, it was gone.

The ones who saw it swore that it was the shape of a man.

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In the town of Gravity Falls, a rich girl with blond hair talked on the phone with a teenager who was raised by lumberjacks. A boy who was desperate for his sister carefully climbed out from a hidden door at the base of a fake metal tree. He was followed by a fallen genius, half of a dynamic duo, and his older friend who ran the only truly efficient police force in town.

Across the forest, a creature that might have been a bear clambered out of his cave in response to a call to action from the scarlet-scaled dragon that was perched outside of it.

In the town itself, two girls whispered plans to each other in Korean and English.

Beside a bramble thicket, a trio of pixies discussed their next move.

Because they knew where their friends had been taken, and they knew how to get them back.

It was time to raise brimstone and rain destruction upon those who had robbed them.

It was time to fight back.

It was time for the Guys in White to fall.