Chapter 1

Regardless of the Shack being closed for renovations, Sundays were still Stan's favorite days for the reasons that they were his off days. Back when he was still figuring out the portal, Sundays were the days where he could catch up on all the sleep he missed being down in the basement for most of the night, or catch up on some of the shows he took to watching just for a sense of letting his mind rest for a while.

Granted, he could do that ANY day, now that his thirty-year mission was complete and the Shack was closed for the unforeseeable future, but Sundays were still ingrained as his lazy days. He slept in an extra hour and a half, let Ford wrangle the kids up for breakfast, and enjoyed the Sunday paper with some coffee, having been told the twins were out with Wendy doing some exploring.

He smirked over his paper when he heard an exhausted sigh from Ford. All that dimension-hopping and monster-wrangling was no match for a pair of kids hyped up on Weekend Fever, not even close. "Tired, Ford?" he asked, not even bothering to hide the amusement in his voice.

Oh, he could practically FEEL the look Ford was giving him and was only half-surprised his newspaper didn't catch on fire in his hands. He heard no reply from his twin, and sipped his coffee to muffle his snickering.

The humor and tranquility was interrupted when he heard a ruckus going on outside, putting his paper down and looking out the window. He could see Wendy running up to the Shack with a twin each under her arms, shouting his name at the top of her lungs. He tipped a chair over getting to the door running out.

"What happened!?" he demanded, meeting her halfway and taking the twins from her. She was heaving and panting, her face white and tears brimming at her eyes. As she caught her breath, Stan looked at Dipper and Mabel.

Both just looked like they were sleeping. Stan quickly checked them over and almost cried with belief when he found that they were breathing. By that time Ford was outside and looking over the twins too, looking more composed than Stan felt.

"What happened?" he asked. "I need to know every detail! ANYTHING could be of importance!"

Wendy managed to catch her breath and rein in her panic. "W-we were just walking through the woods," she said, taking another couple gulps of breath. "Mabel saw a bunch of weird-looking flowers and went to go look, and Dipper went with her…then one of the flowers just seemed to EXPLODE into dust—"

"Wendy, take that shirt off now!" Ford said, backing up quickly. "Stanley, don't move!" Ford ran over to the side of the house and grabbed the hose, running back over. "Hold your breath," he instructed before hosing down everyone, dousing his hands for extra measure.

Stan took the dousing in stride, knowing by this point that Ford never did weird stuff like this without reason. After everyone was thoroughly soaked, Ford threw the hose away and paced around for a moment, mumbling under his breath quickly before looking up. "Wendy, take Mabel to the bathroom and shower her off and throw her clothes away. Throw your clothes away too, I'll find you something else to wear. Stanley, you do the same for Dipper!"

As Ford hurried inside and for the vending machine, Stan pointed Wendy to the direction of the bathroom, taking Dipper into the bathroom in the spare room, putting the clothes in a bag and showering the boy off as best he could, hoping it was good enough for Ford's reasoning. He bundled Dipper up in a blanket and carried him out, setting him on the couch before heading upstairs to get some spare clothing for Dipper, and for Wendy, picking out something for her to wear from the lost-and-found closet.

After everyone was showered, redressed, and the clothing put into a garbage bag, Ford finally came back up with his journals and a small blank notebook.

"It's something I encountered a while ago, just before I began work on the portal," he said, flipping through Journal 2 and pointing to an odd assortment of flowers. "I didn't have time to study them in-depth, but from what I gathered from observation, the ones you saw have a defense mechanism, a neurotoxin that puts anything that disturbs them to sleep." Pause. "…Indefinitely."

Stan scowled, flexing his hands. "What the holy hell does that MEAN?" he demanded, not bothered with keeping his language under control by this point.

"It MEANS that I have no idea how long it'll last!" Ford retorted. "I tried examining a fox that got to close and fell asleep…"

"…But?"

"…I found crows picking at it three days later, so I never found out."

"STANFORD!"

"Calm down, Stanley! If there's one thing I know about this place, it's that there's a way to reverse or defeat anything. This was a neurotoxin, so what we need is a purifying agent to counter it. There are several remedies we can use, but I'd rather find more than one, just in case." Ford flipped through Journal 2. "…let's see…spring water from a crystal cavern, that's doable…snowflakes from the first snowfall—no, it's summer—phoenix tears…ugh, no, they're migrating north for the fall this time of year—"

He was interrupted by Stan stomping upstairs, scowling after his twin. "Stanley, where are you going?!" He got no reply, and instead began jotting down whatever means he could find in the blank notebook. By the time he was finished, he heard Stan coming back downstairs. "Stanley, I'm going to go out for—" Stan shoved past him, grabbing miscellaneous items and stuffing them into a bag. Ford saw that Stan had changed into what looked like camo hunting gear, hiking boots and all. "What are you DOING?"

"I'm comin' with you," Stan replied, shooing Wendy away from a cupboard, grabbing a few bottles of things and throwing them into the bag too. Ford made a sound between a scoff and a snort.

"No, it's too dangerous. You need to stay here with the children—"

"Stuff it up your ass, Ford, I'm comin', and that's that. Wendy, I'll pay you double your weekly salary if you stay here and make sure nothing happens to the kids." He opened a closet door, taking a sawed-off shotgun from a top shelf and stuffing it into his bag, then brought out a normal rifle, handing it to her. "And I mean NOTHING."

Ford stared at Stan like he was crazy. "Stanley, you keep GUNS in the house!?" he all but shouted. "There are CHILDREN here!"

"I know, and they know where all ten of my guns are," Stan replied. "They also know they'll be tasting a leather belt across the backside if they touch them for any reason outside another zombie epidemic." He closed the bag and slung it over his shoulder. "You got this, Wendy?"

Wendy sat down on a chair, cocking the gun. "No problem, Stan," she replied. Stan gave her a nod and headed out the door, Ford following.

"Just what the hell have you been DOING since I've been gone!?" was the last thing Wendy heard them say before the door shut behind them.