Night Visit to the Bunker

Note: contains some spoilers for "Not What He Seems" and "A Tale of Two Stans."

The Mystery Shack was going to be closed for extensive repairs for a couple of days after the zombie attack. Dipper went over to Wendy's house to watch a marathon of bad movies. Mabel visited Grenda at her home, along with Candy, to shudder and giggle together over their narrow escape.

"Soos, today we do internal repairs," said Stan. "Tomorrow I've scheduled a big work crew to clean up the outside."

"Yes sir, Mr. Pines," said Soos.

"You need to put the electrical system back in order first," said Stan. "You helped the zombies break it while you were one of them."

"Oh yeah, I remember that," said Soos. "Sorry about that. It was weird being a zombie."

"Don't remind me of last night," said Stan. "That was disgusting. Though it was enjoyable making their heads explode by singing."

"All we wanted to do was eat your brains," said Soos. "We weren't unreasonable. Nobody was going to eat your eyes."

That night, after the kids were asleep, Stan got out the pages he had copied from Journal 3. Now that he knew about the secret of the black light writing, he wanted to know more. Ordinary copies wouldn't have reproduced the invisible ink effects. But this was no ordinary copier: it was actually a duplicator. Copied three-dimensional objects became solid, and copied flat objects had all the properties of the original.

On the page marked "Hiding Spot?" he found the message: "DANGER! LAST RESORT. PREPARE FOR THE END." There was a diagram of a stairway leading down below a tree.

Tonight, now that the twins were asleep, it was time to check out this secret that his brother had hidden even from him

Stan felt a twinge of guilt that he had promised Dipper there were no more secrets, when in fact he had kept back several things in the simplified story he told. He said that Manly Dan was the Author, not his brother Stanford.

Manly Dan had once been an assistant to his brother, as had a one-eyed man named Ivan. They were replacements after Fiddleford McGucket saw something beyond the Portal that he wanted to forget, and quit the project. That was all recorded in Journal 1, but the reason that they, too, had left the project.

There was something shameful about the story that Stanley didn't want to reveal until he had a chance to set it right, the fact that Stanford had been alone on the night when Stanley visited, and that it was a struggle with Stanley himself that had resulted in his brother going into the Portal.

Once he recovered his brother (if he was alive), then Stan would have to own up to the truth. Dipper and Mabel would be angry about the lies, but he had to keep things going as they were for a while, and not risk the kid's rejection just yet.

Now Stan knew that Stanford had written in Journal 3 with invisible ink, and in his paranoia he had told Stanley nothing about it. The "bunker" was his secret hiding place. Stan just had to see what was there.

The secret writing in Journal 3 showed the hiding place could be found in fake tree with a panel in it. Stan had worked out when and where Dipper had found the journal. It had to be the day the boy went out to put up signs in a spooky part of the woods. Looking back, the kid had acted guilty when he was caught reading something later that day, and it wasn't the "Gold Chains for Old Men" magazine as Dipper had pretended.

Taking a flashlight, Stan walked out into the woods and soon found the tree with a panel in the side. But how to open the secret stairway?

"Stan, use your cat burglar skills. Stanford meant to keep everyone, including me, out of here. He knows my weaknesses... I used to be afraid of heights until Mabel helped me get over it. So, look up."

He shined his flashlight up the trunk of the tree and found a fake branch that looked like a lever. Good, but how to work it? He tried climbing the tree, but the trunk was too smooth. Stanford must have used Daniel's strong woodsman-skilled body to get up there.

Stan ran back to the Shack for his spare grappling hook (Mabel hadn't take the only one). He fired at the branch and knocked the lever upward. With a rumble of gears the tree slid down into the ground and spiral stairs popped out of the side, leading down.

"Bingo! You've still got it, Stan!" he said to himself.

There was a good chance of traps, but knowing his brother there would be a simple key to disarm them. Stan flipped through the pages he had copied and found page labeled "Security Room" with cryptic symbols in hexagons. The portable black light he had with him revealed a set of four symbols, numbered in sequence. That might come in handy.

At the bottom he found a fallout shelter, stocked with a supply of canned beans for years to come.

"Heh, time for a midnight snack," said Stan.

Stan opened a can of Baron Num Num's High Flyin' Beans and ate it.

"Pretty good," he said to himself. "I could bring my Brown Meat down here too, and the kids and me will have a good chance of riding out the Apocalypse."

The Apocalypse was another little detail he hadn't told Dipper and Mabel about. They would have to know, but later.

He stuck another can of Baron Num Num's into his pocket for later and kept searching around. A cabinet of weapons, that was good. He left the outdated SMEZ dispenser alone.

Then he saw an old map of Gravity Falls taped to the wall. It was bulging out from the wall slightly, like there was something concealed behind it. He pulled it down and found a hatch leading to a cylindrical passage.

"All right, now for the real secrets," Stan told himself.

He crawled down the passage and found a room with symbols all over the walls. All right, this was the Security Room, no doubt. He refreshed his memory about the sequence of symbols, and went in. He easily avoided the pressure sensor square on the floor, but when he tried to open the door on the far side of the room the trap went off anyway. The other door slammed shut and locked, and the wall cubes began to close in. Stan pressed the right buttons to open the door, and got out easily before the walls could crush him.

"You'll have to do better than that, Stanford," said Stan to his absent brother.

The new room had control panels and a view screen into another room with a set of tubes. Something was frozen inside one of them. Notes on the table said it was a shape-shifter that could look like anyone.

He toggled the switch back and forth, leaving it in the thaw position so he could get a better look at the frozen specimen.

Stan was familiar with the sort of labs his brother set up, and he knew the only way into the next room would be through a decontamination lock. He found it and worked the shower easily.

There was a person inside the tube, and it looked like Stanford, but as he was thirty years ago.

"Let me out!" the person said. "I'm Stan Pines, and I got stuck in here accidentally."

"Nice try, shape-shifter," said Stan. "But Stanford doesn't look like that any more. My brother hasn't been himself in thirty years."

The Shape-Shifter morphed into its true form. "Let me out, or I'll break out and kill you!"

"I think not, ugly," said Stan.

"It is you who are ugly to me, single-formed one," said the monster.

The creature tried several forms, including a flaming one, but nothing seemed to be getting it out of the cylinder.

"I will read your future," said the Shape-Shifter. "You think you are on the verge of success, but it will be the biggest mistake of your life, and the final shape you take will be..."

"I don't want to see it!" said Stan, backing away.

As he did, his extra can of Baron Num Num's High Flyin' Beans came loose from his pocket and rolled on the floor. Stan ran back to the exit portal without bothering to pick it up.

He got back through the lock and activated the tube's freezing control again. The monster froze in place looking like Stan with a horrified expression, but Stan kept his eyes turned away.

Stan got out as quickly as he could. He didn't anyone else know of this place, but just in case he taped the map back over the entrance to the secret tunnel. However, he failed to pick up the empty can of beans.

"Well, now I know what's down here," Stan said to himself. "It doesn't hurt to have an extra hiding place up my sleeve."

The Shape-Shifter laughed to itself. The damage it had done to the tube during the few minutes of free motion had been effective. There was a tiny crack at the bottom of the tube and the freezing solution had leaked out. Now it could work on breaking out completely.

The next person to come down here would be in for a surprise. But the human forms he had memorized were no good. Stanford and his brother were known, no good for an ambush. What else was available to lure a victim close? The Shape-Shifter's eyes fell on the mascot picture on the can of beans. That would do very nicely...