Dipper knew something was up, and he was really starting to like it. “This house is almost like the Mystery Shack! The dimensions inside don’t measure up to the exterior at all, it has extra-dimensional volume!”

The hallway he and Mabel walked down had to be over a hundred yards in length, lit by white-curtain windows to their right and decorated with creepy old watercolor paintings to their left. Looking out the window only provided the same view out of the house, like it was the first window they passed.

“Even if there weren’t monsters in the house, this is an amazing place! There’s clearly some kind of supernatural forces in effect here, it might even be magical.”

He looked at Mabel, and started bouncing with every step. “This is only our first day, it took over a week for us to find the gnomes back at the Falls!”

Mabel looked ahead. “Yep.”

“Gosh, I wish I didn’t leave my Journal in Shermie’s truck! There’s so much to write down!”

Mabel flicked Dipper’s ear. “Lives are at stake.”

Dipper snapped from his weirdness-induced euphoria. “Ah, right!”

She pointed ahead. “Also, there’s another monster.”

Dipper looked forward, there stood Frankenbeans, marching straight towards them with his arms stretched forward.

“Oi, 'oo do ya fin' ya brats 're? comin' into me gaff?” Frankenbeans demanded.

Mabel gasped, with stars sparkling in her eyes. “A Cockney monster!”

Dipper wished he had a weapon of some kind… but he did have a lighter. “Mabel, do you have any hairspray?”

Mabel looked at her brother. “Do I look like I keep beauty products on me to maintain my radiance at all times?”

“Yes and you look fabulous.”

Smiling at the compliment, Mabel handed her brother a small can of hairspray. “Deliver unto them flame, brometheus!”

Dipper pulled out a butane lighter, popped the lid and lit the wick, before taking aim with it and the hairspray to unleash a tongue of flame that caused Frankenbeans to stagger back.

“Wot the chuffin’ ‘ell?!” Frankenbeans retreated from the ad hoc flamethrower’s next salvo of flame. “Ge’ ‘ha’ away!”

“Where are the kids who came into this house?!” Dipper demanded.

“I’d loike ter kna ‘ha’ m’self!” Frankenbeans demanded before another flame forced him back further.

“I got an idea! Why don’t we torture you and see if they come running to help when they hear your screaming?!”

Dipper and Mabel looked back at Mums and Fangula standing at the end of the hallway they had come down, the latter holding in his arms all the pennies Dipper had scattered.

“Uh oh,” Dipper muttered, as he and his sister realized they were caught in the hallway between both.

Mums chuckled darkly. “Got you now, punks.”

“Finally, some real freaking food,” Fangula all but purred as he bared his large teeth and turned his eyes crimson again.

@@@@@

In the lounge room, Drew, Roland, and Jo walked up to the organ, marveling not only at its size but its flawlessness. Like everything else in the undisturbed room, it was like it was brand new and ready to be played. The sheer size of the instrument was staggering, With its pipes it had to be the size of a small building itself, and the pipes themselves seemed to go off into the walls, probably to different parts of the house.

Roland looked at the keys of the instrument. Two rows of them, but anyone playing them would have to be eight feet tall to reach them all. “I bet you could hear it in the whole house.”

Jo looked at the keys and placed her right hand’s fingers over three of them. “What does something this big sound like…?”

Drew saw her hand. “Jo, wait!”

She pressed down the keys, three notes that blared from the pipes with such force they shook the room.

Upstairs, Dipper, Mabel, and the three monstrous residents all jumped when they heard the blare of the organ. The entire house was shaking just from the bellowing sound.

“What is that?!” Dipper yelled.

Mabel looked around. “An organ! A big one!”

“UH OH!” Frankenbeans shouted out loud.

Mums was likewise concerned. “Oh come on, how’d they get into the Organ Room?!”

Fangula turned to Mums, the red in his eyes completely gone and his complexion paler than ever. “Please don’t let it be what I think it means!”

The blast of the organ was loud enough for Misao to hear, bringing her up to her feet. “Ah?!”

The sky darkening drew her attention upward, and her gray eyes grew wide. “Ach du lieber himmel!”

Just over the hill, Star, Marco, and Janna stared up at the sky. Thick, dark clouds were gathering, and swirling over Hillhurst, a strong wind roared towards the house.

“What the heck?!” Marco yelled, the wind kicking up the daisy petals around them.

“That is some nasty energy,” Janna said, before she picked up her phone and took a picture of the sky. “Neat.”

Star ran towards the house. “Marco! Let’s go!”

Without hesitating, Marco followed, and Janna brought up the rear.

Inside the lounge room, the blast of the sound from the organ was enough to make Drew, Jo, and Roland retreat with their hands over their ears. The burst of power that followed those three notes slammed into and threw them to the floor. The entire organ was alight, playing a haunting dirge that shook the room and flickered the lights.

Drew was the first up, shaking as the colors drained all around him. The warm colors of the lounge and its furniture bled out to grayscale, while the shaking grew until it felt like a constant vibration.

Upstairs, the colors vanished around Dipper and Mabel too, and both froze.

“No…” Dipper gasped and looked around. Sure enough, the three monsters slowed down to a halt, frozen in time. “Nonononono…!”

The bellow of the organ was affected too, slowing down until it became a low, distorted monotone. Roland and Jo got up to join Drew, and they stared at the black and white instrument, now sitting in silence.

“What’s happening?!” Jo asked.

Drew gave her a sharp look. “How am I supposed to know?!”

“Guys?” Roland pointed at the top of the organ. “Look.”

Three lights colored red, blue, and green suddenly appeared at the top of the second highest row of pipes. As the air trembled and warped around the organ, bolts of energy shot from them until three small women in dresses and hair color matching their respective lights, emerged from a pipe each.

“Huh?” Drew asked aloud.

The three pixie sized women struck presenting poses and spoke in unison. “We’re the Pipettes, and we proudly present!”

The red woman, on the leftmost pipe, broke unison and held her hand out. “Back by popular demand!”

The green woman on the right did the same. “After 40 years in the hole!”

The blue woman swooned. “The Flab-tastic!”

“The Flab-nominal~” Red cheered.

“The Phasm with the chin who can only win!” Green said.

Together, all three threw their hands up. “Give it up for… FLABBER!”

The organ warped again, before a shower of light erupted from its front and pyrotechnics burst from the unoccupied pipes, bringing color and the passage of time back into the world. A great plume of steam billowed out, pushing all three youths backward.

Slowly, the steam cloud began to clear, the lights from the Pipettes and the organ itself casting the silhouette of a man standing on the keys with his arms outstretched. Drew, Jo, and Roland exchanged quick looks as the steam seemed to pull away like curtains and reveal a man with alabaster skin dressed in a suit consisting of colorful diamond and floral print, an orange blouse and a jewel-studded purple pinstripe jacket and cape.

“HAPPY FLABBER DAY!” Flabber shouted, his face looking like a wildly exaggerated caricature of Elvis Presley, complete with a large pompadour.

Roland stared at the bizarre creature and began to nod. “Hm. Yeah. Hm. Hm. Hm.”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

He looked at Drew and Jo and turned to find an exit. “Aight, I’mma head out.”

Flabber rested his hands on his shoulders in reassurance. “Oh come on, son. You just got here!”

Roland looked back at Flabber, then at the organ. Flabber was still there, leaning on one knee with one hand while pointing a finger gun at them with the other. “Kachow!”

Drew and Jo jumped back from him, but Flabber was gone from behind Roland. When they looked at the organ again, he was gone from there too. Searching the room, they found him sitting on one of the lounge seats, relaxing.

“Chill brah, I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he said in a surfer’s drawl. “It’s all love, man. All love.”

“What do you want?!” Drew asked, unable to find any chill.

Jo’s head moved on a swivel, searching for any further instances of Flabber before they snuck up on her.

“What do I want?” Flabber asked. “I got everything I’ve ever wanted, guys!”

He leaped to his feet, and with dramatic excitement shouted to the heavens. “I am FREE! Back to make beautiful, sweet magic and music in this rockin’ world!”

That could mean anything, especially to something that could do what it was doing.

“What does all of that entail?” Jo asked.

“Yeah, I don’t wanna be responsible for releasing some demon or whatever,” Roland added.

Flabber stopped and made a relatively plain gesture. “Come on, guys, I’m not a bad Phasm. I’m a good one, really good!”

“The best!” The Pipettes sang together.

Flabber pointed at the Pipettes with two finger guns. “Thank you, thank you very much!”

All three swooned like 50s teens at an Elvis concert.

“Usually when things are sealed away for years, it’s because they’re evil!” Drew argued.

“Evil?!” The Pipettes shouted.

“We’ll have you know!” Blue said.

“That as far as Evil goes!” Green said.

“Flabber is a phasm, that makes them all spasm!” Red said.

Together they sang. “In fear, in dread, Flabber’s who they look for under their bed!”

Drew, Jo, and Roland all still had doubts.

“You see, kids!” Flabber explained. “I was sealed in that organ by the monsters that live here! You may have met them, Frankie? Mums? Fangula?”

“Yeah, they definitely creeped on us,” Roland admitted.

“They’re not bad guys, the taste for flesh, blood, and destruction aside.” He stopped. “Okay they are bad guys, but that’s why it’s my job to keep them in line.”

Jo weighed on that. “So, hold on. If they sealed you up because you kept them in line, then why haven’t they gone off on rampages?”

Flabber hopped over next to her. “That’s easy, lil’ mama!”

He jumped back in front of the organ and struck several bodybuilder poses in quick succession. “As long as I’m in this house, sealed or not.”

He struck several more poses. “None of the monsters can get out of the vineyard. They’re trapped…”

He disappeared in a puff of smoke, appearing on Drew’s shoulder in the shape of a well-coiffed rat. “Like rats!”

Drew brushed Flabber off his shoulder with a yelp.

Hitting the floor in his original form, Flabber rested his head on his raised hand as he slid on his side to the foot of the organ.

“And I’m stuck here too, ensuring there’s no danger to the world from even my power.”

He reached down and pulled a blanket over himself in the king sized bed he was tucked into now. “So, you can sleep easy at night.”

Flabber yawned and turned his back to them. “Night, night.”

The three teens shared the same thought.

This guy’s creepy and insane.

Rising and shining, literally, Flabber joined the kids. “Thanks to you, I’m out of that organ and back to make sure that the monsters behave, and I’m so grateful for my freedom that I’ll grant you a wish.”

All three stopped.

“Hold up,” Drew said.

“A wish, really?” Jo asked.

“A wish wish?” Roland wanted to clarify. “Like… anything we wanted?”

Flabber nodded. “Anything you desire, whatever you want! If my powers can create it, it’s yours.”

Drew, Jo, and Roland once again looked among each other, before they pulled away from Flabber and went into a huddle.

“Is he serious?!” Jo whispered.

“Man, I don’t know, I think this might be a dream or something.” Roland was unwilling to pinch himself to be sure.

“Anything we want, as long as it’s in his power…” Drew murmured. “He can probably do anything…”

“We could wish to rule the world,” Jo said.

Roland nodded. “Or wish to be richer than the Vanderhoffs.”

Drew looked at the sealed Beetleborgs comic, and he reached out to take it from him. “Or… we could wish for this.”

Roland and Jo both looked at the book, the latter speaking, “But we’ve already got the comic…”

“No,” Drew said with eyes alight, “We could wish to be the Beetleborgs, the real Beetleborgs!”

With widening eyes, Roland stared at the comic, not having considered that. “Hol’ up, like with their powers and everything?”

The idea mesmerized Jo. “And their weapons, and their vehicles–would it be possible? Could we wish for all of that?”

Drew nodded. “Just imagine how amazing it would be to become actual superheroes!”

“All of that power…” Fire flickered in Jo’s eyes. “Yeah, let’s do that!”

Roland shrugged his shoulders. “Shoot, as long as this is a dream, why not? Let’s do this thing and then when I wake up I’ll tell you about it.”

Over by the organ, Flabber conversed with the Pipettes and chewed on a candy cigarette. “They seem like nice kids, you don’t think they’ll wish for anything bad, do you?”

Red was touching up her makeup. “Flabby baby, I don’t care.”

Green was working all the kinks in her back and shoulders out. “It’ll be fine, I feel good energy from them.”

Blue, making sure her hair was nice, pointed past the phasm. “You’re on, Flabby baby.”

Flabber spun back around, pointing at the three with double finger guns. “Kachow! What’s it gonna be, kids?”

Drew nodded and held up the comic. “We wish to become these guys.”

Flabber looked at the comic and lit up in recognition. “Oh, those guys…!”

A moment passed.

“… Who are those guys?”

“The Big Bad Beetleborgs, the greatest heroes the multiverse has ever seen,” Drew introduced.

Flabber was wary. “Big and bad, but they’re heroes?”

Jo wasn’t tolerating even the slightest insinuation otherwise. “Of course, they’re heroes!”

Drew pulled back the comic and, despite its historic value, pulled it from the seal and opened it. “They’re the best, fighting to protect innocents and defeat the evil Magnavores wherever or whenever they might be!”

He held up the comic to Flabber, showing a page with a blue-haired young man his age holding a Beetle Bonder and preparing to transform as he faced off against a shadowy beast.

“This is Blue Beet, the leader. He was just a normal high schooler from Earth until the Magnavores attacked his home. Against the mechanical forces of the Baron Noxic, Earth was helpless until Blue Beet found the Beetle Bonder and became…”

He flipped the page, showing the Blue Stingerborg surrounded by a bright flash and striking a heroic pose.

“The Blue Stingerborg! With his powerful Stinger Blade and Assault Vehicle, he was able to fend off the Magnavores. To make sure they didn’t come back, he followed Baron Noxic through the portal he came from, and so began his adventure as the multiversal warrior!”

“Flab out!” The story already had Flabber in its grip. “But wait, what if he can’t find his way back?”

Drew nodded. “That’s what makes him a hero. He knows that he might not be able to, but even if he can’t return to his world, he’ll make sure that the Magnavores won’t bring ruin to it or any others.”

Jo took the comic and flipped a few more pages. Stopping on a fiery red-haired girl in red tights with gold-plated armor. “The Warrior Princess Reddle is the same, except she wasn’t able to save her world. When the Mean Mercenary Queen Jara attacked her kingdom on the day of her coronation to the Throne of Redalia, the Magnavores destroyed her entire world! So, she swore revenge, to stop them from doing such evil again.”

She turned the page. Showing the Red Strikerborg, a red-armored warrior modeled after a female Rhinoceros Beetle with eerie yellow glowing eyes in its helmet. “Using the Red Striker Plasmar, she can blow any Magnavore creep to smithereens! She fights to bring Jara to justice.”

Flabber rubbed his comically large chin. “Hmm… so she’s like an avenger, very Red Sonja.”

“Who?” Jo asked.

Flabber scoffed. “And you say you read comics.”

Jo handed the comic to Roland. “Seriously, who’s Red Sonja?”

“You can look it up later,” Roland said as he flipped through the book and brought it to a bearded young man in his 20s compared to the teenage Blue Beet and Reddle, with a piercing, patient gaze and hair shaved into a wild mohawk. “This is G Stag-”

“G for Green, right?” Flabber interjected.

“Nah, how’d you guess?” Roland asked with a bit of a smirk.

“I’m noticing a theme, but please…” Flabber batted his eyelashes. “… Go on.”

“Anyway, he was just a simple loc living in his village. Then Biolord Typhus pulled up and started experimenting on his kinfolk to create monsters for the Magnavore Army. So, he took his boomerang, his kit, and he went crazy on him. Typhus was too strong though, and when he finally caught him, all seemed lost–until he found his Beetle Bonder and transformed into the Green Hunter Beetleborg.”

Roland turned the pages to show the Green armored hero, designed after a Stag Beetle–gripping a Scab in his signature scissor-like weapon. “His weapon is the Hunter Claw; it can crush enemies and detach to become a boomerang. He was able to save his people with the help of Saint Papilia, and at her request went into the multiverse to pursue the Magnavores and their leader, Dimension King Vexor G.”

Flabber shivered, the sound of teeth chattering surrounding him. “That name sounds so evil I don’t even wanna say it! It’s giving me the chills!!”

He froze up, his white skin turning blue and his colorful suit and pants frosting over. Through his grit teeth, he spoke. “Ice cold, baby!”

Drew took the comic from Roland and held it up. “So would you be able to make us into the Beetleborgs?”

Flabber thawed out. “Oh, that’s easy for me, but are you sure you want to become entirely different people?”

Quickly Drew shook his head. “Whoa, no! We don’t want to become them literally! We only want their powers and equipment. That stuff.”

“Yeah, don’t change us into the actual people themselves,” Jo clarified.

Flabber sighed in relief. “Okay, now THAT is even easier. I’d be all day trying to make the other thing happen… if I can even make it happen. Could I?”

He hummed in thought, then shrugged his shoulders. “I’ll save that question for a rainy day!”

Clapping his hands, Flabber teleported atop his organ. Soon as his feet hit the keys, smoke and steam poured from the pipes and a dramatic, rising tune began to play. With the Pipettes joining in, their voices in a haunting yet beautiful chorus, swirling stars and planets appeared around the ends of Flabber’s hands.

“Whoa…” The children said together as they stepped back. They could feel it again, that incredible power that came from the organ when they first saw it.

“Flib!” Flabber shouted, pointing his hands to the right, Jo jumped and hid a little behind her brother.

Jerking to the left, Flabber pointed at the other wall. “Flab!”

Roland swallowed nervously. Suddenly he had his doubts about this being a dream.

Flabber thrust his hands to the ceiling, a light forming between his palms. “FLABBER!”

Drew braced himself.

He pointed his hands down at them. “You’re Superheroes! Fighting for what’s right! PHASM FORCE!”

Everything went white.

@@@@@

Somehow, today had gone from zero to one hundred to “too fast to live.” Standing in a silent, grayscale world, time stopped around them, Dipper felt like his heart was going to beat out of his chest if it wasn’t ripped out in the next few seconds. He looked over to Mabel–herself on the verge of hyperventilating and looking around the hallway for any eyes or triangles that could be embedded as a decoration in the house.

“Dipper…” She murmured. “… This is like when-”

“Don’t say it, I know.” He cut her off. It was so hard to stay calm, he needed to be calm. “We can still move, but the monsters can’t, we need to get out of here.”

He took her hand, and she tightly gripped it back. Together they pushed past Mums and Fangula and headed back towards the stairs.

“What are we going to do?” She asked. “If it’s him-”

“Then we call Grunkle Ford and hope he has a plan. I was not ready for the end of the world to start today.”

Mabel squeezed his hand. “I’m glad you’re calm because I’m freaking out.”

Dipper looked back at her. “I’ve got bad news; if you weren’t, I would be.”

They made it back to the part of the house that made sense, when the colors abruptly returned to the world and the dark skies out the windows cleared up.

Dipper stumbled to a halt, Mabel bumping into his back. They were at the top of the stairs and could see daylight pouring in through the open doorway and covered windows.

“Wait, it stopped? Is it over?” Mabel asked.

“The only thing that’s over is the beginning, if he was summoned then we gotta figure out who did it, and for what.”

“Hey, where’d they go?!” They both looked in the direction of Mums’ voice.

“They vanished, but how?” Fangula asked.

Further down the hall, they saw Mums and Fangula step back around the corner. Spotting them, the mummy pointed. “There they are! Get ‘em!”

“Out the house!” Dipper warned as the three monsters came running down the hall.

“But what about-?” Mabel started, before Dipper pulled her after him.

“Now!”

As he led his sister to safety, one thought ran through his head.

Whatever's going on, Drew, Jo, and Roland are probably at the center of it. I hope they're okay.