OH!
I WAS WONDERING WHAT WAS CAUSING THIS. THANKS DFHACK FOR THE ANSWER
The worst part is I read the backstory and it didn't click until I made it plot relevant.
So the story called VFD actually needed an end cipher to it, and since I forgot it, here it is:
Omht xdt fv jsh ytrm hojxhn, fqjykzw gjtu juhix.
So happy solving. Or if you’re lazy here’s the key:
VFD
Not cool dude, but I understand, it was a hard key.
I made my first mod for dwarf fortress, which adds asbestos that is weavable into cloth and i got this lovely comment
(View the other chapters here [Chapter 1][Chapter 2][Chapter 3])
Chapter 4:
Despite Prismo warning he couldn’t bring Ford home, he had done it. Fortunately Ford had done so without the use of the Dimensional Portal. It’d been a year and a half since he’d been stranded, but at last, he was back in Gravity Falls.
It was one of those rainy summer days in a part of the woods he recognized as fairly close to his house. He could get back and resume his life where he’d left off. The first thing he intended to do was to disassemble that damn machine that’d sent him on this trip in the first place! After that, he’d give Stanley a piece of his mind, probably using his fist, since that seemed to get through to Stan.
Ford reached the clearing where he’d built his house, but something seemed off. There were a bunch of signs pointing to his house labeled “Welcome to the Murder Hut!” and “Admission only $20.” Some of the signs advertised a “Madame Mystery.” Ford also noticed several other new decorations outside his house, such as the beginning of a totem pole around his antenna, and numerous satellite dishes of his had been taken down too. Over the Back door was a sign labeled “Tours” and over the side entrance was “Gift Shop.” Ford stormed up to the front door and knocked on it urgently. He was fairly cross at this point, but he heard footsteps approaching the door. The door was swung open grandly by a woman in quite the unique sense of style. To put it simply, she was dressed in what looked to be a cross of business woman and like how mom used to dress. She was probably the one called "Madame Mystery" since she seemed to be going for some kind of psychic look.
Her looks however, were not the thing that surprised Ford, that was her reaction. Her eyes immediately lit up and she swept him up in one of the biggest hugs he’d ever seen. She’d managed to physically lift Ford off the ground and was swinging him around with her eyes squeezed tight against the tears rolling from her face. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you Dipper,” she said.
The name filled Ford with instant dread for a simple reason. He wasn’t Dipper, and he didn’t even know who this Dipper person was. He didn’t know how to break it to her. As she opened her eyes and took another look at his face and it turned out he didn’t have to.
She instantly dropped him, and her bright and cheerful tone was suddenly icily cold when she spoke again. “You’re not Dipper. Who are you and where is my brother?”
Ford was struggling to put the pieces together and remained silent. The woman looked angrier than Ford had felt earlier. “WHAT AREN’T YOU TELLING ME? YOU HAVE TO KNOW WHERE HE IS!”
Ford looked so helpless as he just starred sadly at that woman who seemed to lose so much energy shouting at him. She was on the verge of tears.Her voice quavered as she asked him again. “Just give it to me straight, okay? I’m already lost without him.”
After a moments silence the woman’s emotions finally won over her. She leaned over a nearby counter and burst into tears. Ford could make out “I failed you again” and “I’m so sorry” from repetition alone. Whatever happened to her was obviously traumatic.
Ford was never good dealing with emotions, especially other people’s. He decided his best course of action would be to let her cry herself out, and then ask her what was wrong. After that perhaps he could see if she could help him out of this dimension.
It took a while for Madame Mystery to stop crying. After she finally stopped, she excused herself to the bathroom to wash off her face, and rejoined Ford in the kitchen. Her eyes where still red and puffy from crying. She did her best to smile as she sat at the table with him. It just wound up looking fake. “As long as you’re here, you’re my guest. You want anything to eat or drink maybe?”
“Just water would be fine. I think we have some more important things to talk about.”
Madame Mystery nodded her head and left the room. A moment later she returned with a glass of water for Ford, and what looked like a glass of apple juice for herself.
Ford begun, “So can you tell me your name, and who this ‘Dipper’ is?”
Madame Mystery nodded, “My name is Mabel Pines. Dipper’s my brother, my twin brother. ”
There were many things Ford expected to hear. but that was not one of them. From the look Mabel could see on his face, this was quite obviously not one of them.
“Sorry, it’s just that... my name is Stanford Pines, and I have a twin brother too.”
It had been an hour since he’d arrived. Ford and Mabel had reached some pretty similar conclusions about their universes. Some differences were irrelevant while other differences led to a few interesting revelations. The first Ford had was that judging by the shooting star design she had on Mabel seemed to be one of the symbols from Bill’s wheel. When Mabel handed him Dipper's journal the silver pine tree with the carefully painted '1' told a similar story. The similarities to him didn't end there as apparently Dipper had fallen through his own portal, which meant he'd most likely made his own deal with Bill. The portals themselves might even be the same design. At this point Mabel and Ford had moved down to Dipper's lab, the entrance cleverly hidden behind a vending machine by Mabel.
“So after your brother disappeared, what exactly did you do?” Ford asked.
“For the first couple of weeks I spent all my time down here as I tried to fix the portal. After a while I was forced to go out into town and they wound up noticing I looked similar to my brother. I put out the idea that he’d gone off into the woods to look for something and left the shack in my hands. A missing persons report went out, the case went cold about a year ago. They thought I might have been responsible for my brother's disappearance, which meant sitting through quite a bit of investigating. Their final conclusion was I got too shaken up by the whole ordeal. I think there's still reason to believe they'll come back and arrest me. If it comes to that I don't think Dipper will ever come back.”
She looked at Ford with tears in her eyes and continued, “I need to be there when he gets back! I need to tell him I’m sorry!”
Mabel had begun to cry again but she pulled herself together and asked Ford, “Can you fix the portal, please?”
Ford knew full well fixing the portal would be a bad idea, but she was so fragile he couldn't just say no. A functional portal might also get him home. Should the world take priority, or two world-weary souls?
After a long pause, Ford looked at Mabel and said, “I’ll try my best.”
After taking a look at the portal and Dipper's journal one large, terrible conclusion was clear. Dipper’s portal was very different from his own, and he’d have to have all of Dipper’s journals if he even wanted to have a hope of fixing it properly. Looking at the consoles there were circuits there that he had no idea why they’d be there in the first place! It was as if Dipper was given an entirely different set of schematics to build off of. Or maybe he just thought differently when it came to solving the problems that were inherent in Bill’s original design. The best he could do would be to jury-rig it and hope that it holds together for long enough to get Dipper here to fix it himself. Plus there was a significant risk of him creating an interdimensional rift if he did that.
Since Ford had moved out of the theoretical zone, Ford had learned a bit more about interdimensional physics in the past year and a half. Despite not being able to get it to full efficiency he could likely minimize the danger. He rewired as much of it as he understood and jury rigged a few new things. One component that might prevent a rift and another that would hopefully create a stable portal to Dipper through a link to his bio signature.
After three days he was ready to show his hard work to Mabel. He really hoped that this would work and bring back her brother. Then perhaps he could get home himself.
“So Ford, before we fire this thing up, I wanted to give you this.”
Mabel held in her hands a crimson red sweater.
“It's a gift for all you've done for me. I know it won't be enough, but thank you.”
Mabel gave Ford another hug as he wondered if these invasions of personal space were going to be a multidimensional trend. He flipped a few switches on the control panel as a steady hum emanated from the portal. Ford entered the portal room then called out, “Mabel, stay back and watch the controls for me, okay?”
“Okay Ford. WAIT THERE’S A WARNING LIGHT!”
The call came out too late though. The portal sent off a dangerous wave of energy, temporarily stopping gravity. Ford floated up and got a clear view of an electrical explosion from the control room along with the sickeningly familiar feeling of being dragged toward the portal. Ford screamed out in distress, “NO, NO, NO, NO!”
Gravity had seemingly recovered for Mabel, who was now running into the room with a rope. "I'm not letting this happen again!" she shouted while throwing an end of it to Ford.
He caught the rope and could feel Mabel trying to pull him back in. Sadly it was clear that if she kept at it she'd get pulled in herself. “Shut it down! Don’t worry about me! Stopping the portal from destroying the shack is more important!”
Mabel looked up at him with tears in her eyes. "No, I can still save you! The lever's just a few steps back, I'll shut it down, I can make it!"
Ford knew there wasn't a chance of that happening. She probably knew too and simply wouldn't admit it. “I’m going to let go, and you’re going to push that button, okay?”
“NO!”
“I’m letting go in 3!”
“PLEASE!”
“2!″
“DON’T!”
“1!″
“YOU CAN’T DO THIS!”
“0.″
With that Ford let go. Mabel fell far back and landed right next to the switch. He felt himself being sucked into the portal again. There was only one thing left for him to say. "I'm sorry."
A moment later he was gone. Then the room became completely silent as Mabel shut down the portal.
…
Disclaimer: This story is primarily designed as a story of Ford during his dimensional travels. It features him crossing over to other universes with those being the following (In no order whatsoever): Rick and Morty, Adventure Time, and Steven Universe. This list will probably expand, and might involve travel to AU’s.
Chapter 1:
Author’s notes:
This story takes place directly after Stanley and Stanford’s fight in 1982, where Ford is pushed through the portal. So as such, the story starts as Ford gets pulled through. Thank you for reading.
“STANLEY DO SOMETHING!”
These are going to be my last words, Ford thought as he was pulled into the portal. In his blind panic, he’d thrown Journal 1 at his brother in a vain attempt to get help. Stanford closed his eyes and braced for the horrors of the nightmare realm.
It was pitch black, and Ford couldn’t hear a thing. “Is this what death feels like?”
The only thing Ford heard was his own question. Then he realized his eyes were shut. As he opened them a rather non-nightmare realm looked back at him. He was standing in a lightly wooded forest more or less alone.
“Wait I thought the portal was linked to the nightmare realm. Unless…”
Ford’s brain immediately snapped back to the fight with his brother. When he and Stanley had been fighting they must have not only activated the portal, they must have also damaged it, changing the destination from the nightmare realm to … well wherever he was. He’d need to take a closer look at his surroundings to figure out where he was and if there was any immediate danger. The flora and fauna he saw was fairly familiar. This could possibly be earth, but these weren’t the pine trees and redwoods of Gravity Falls. Still, it was vaguely North American. In fact he wasn’t even sure if some of these plants were native to his dimension. Regardless of where he was now though, he wouldn’t last long unless he could find some shelter. Then maybe he could think up a way to get out of here. Or perhaps Stanley might reactivate the portal. Though if Stanley reactivated the Portal, he’d be even angrier at him than he already was for putting him in this mess.
It’d been three days already. Ford had created himself a decent shelter and managed to find some edible food nearby. He’d been fairly lucky in that this dimension he’d crashed into had been very similar to his own, and assuming the stars and climate here were similar enough too, he was somewhere on the eastern side of the North America in the early spring. Ford had been waiting to see if a portal opened up somewhere nearby in the event that his brother attempted to rescue him. His daily routine was to get up and explore the surrounding area for survival resources as well as a possible portal back home. He repeated this day after day, noting a mark in a new journal he’d started with. He’d made an estimate of the time of a day on this planet, and indeed, it seemed to be an earth, having a 24-hour cycle.
Ford had been waiting around his little shelter at this point for five weeks now. He’d come to the conclusion that if Stanley hadn’t tried to rescue him by now, that his brother would have just given up. So Ford grabbed the survival gear he’d made and headed east in the hope of finding some form of civilization. After all this is Earth, in a period in which very familiar life existed as well.
After two weeks of searching and walking, Ford stumbled into a small town in what he discovered was more-or-less Virginia. Of course the native inhabitants called their state a different name, but Ford just called it Virginia-1. The town was fairly similar in size to the Gravity Falls that Ford had left and seemed just like any other southeastern town he’d visited. He mainly kept to himself, as he attempted to integrate himself into the town life and possibly find a place to stay. After a few cultural disputes and such Ford just stuck to the junkyard. Ford had found that he’d actually preferred being an outcast here, since it gave him more time for writing. He’d also been searching through the different piles of junk for anything he could use to cobble together a device to track dimensional anomalies, which could help him to get home. Ford soon succeeded, having used some wiring, electronics, and some of his own parts and such that had come through the portal with him.
It’d been about four months since Ford had initially found himself stranded here, and now he had what he believed to be a way out. He was finally ready to leave Dimension 1 and come home. He set off, and after another two weeks of searching he found himself face to face with a dimensional rift. Well, there was only one thing to do now. Ford took a breath and stepped through.
[Chapter 2]
One of my dwarves died and I went to see what was going on and
dude you killed him???
A blog about colony management simulators apparently nowadays. Used to do some fan stuff back in the day, but haven't in a long time. Mostly about Dwarf Fortress right now. Might also feature Oxygen Not Included or Deep Rock Galactic
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