"Oh my god."

Wirt didn't realize he said it out loud at first, but when Norman gave him a questioning look, he realized he'd have to explain.

"I-ow, god- my fingers... are really, really starting to hurt," Wirt explained, wincing. It had started as a tingling sensation, not completely awful, but not completely great, either. Wirt could handle that, but it ramped up in pain really quickly. It like in one second, there was the tingling, and the next, it felt like he'd stuck his hands in fire. Every nerve on his hands were burning in pain, and soon, it was all Wirt could think.

Wirt cried out in pain, and fell to the ground.

"Wirt?" Norman cried, but Wirt barely heard him. He could barely hear anything other than his own crying and the panic in his mind. It hurt so much.

"-Can you hear me?" Dipper was saying, and Wirt realized for the first time that everyone had gathered around him. "Wirt?"

"I...I-," Wirt could barely form a coherent thought, let alone a sentence.

"Looks like his shock caught up to him," Adam noted, worry in his voice. "Damn it!"

"How far away is the magic?" Dipper asked him, and Adam turned to the cave entrance.

"Not far..." he said, but then he sighed. "But I have no idea what to do with it once I have it! All I remember is it trying to kill me."

"You and Ash should go try and get some," Dipper told him, before he glanced at Wirt. "That... is a thing you can take and carry around, right?"

Ash nodded, slowly. He was staring at Wirt with wide eyes.

"Go, then," Dipper told them, but as a thought seemed to occur to him, he glanced at Wirt and then back to the two of them. "I'll go with you. Norman, you can stay with Wirt, right?"

Norman frowned, but he nodded anyway. "I will, if you want me to."

Dipper stood up quickly. "Good. We'll try to be quick."

Norman gave a Wirt a worried look. "You'd better."

When they climbed out of the caves and into the sunlight, Dipper had to squint, raising his arm to the light. It was dawn, and the sun was just barely peeking out from over the treetops that surrounded the plains, lighting up the long grass that came up to Dipper's waist. All around the plains, Dipper realized as he turned around. There were trees in the far distance in every direction. These plains could almost be called a clearing in a forest.

And there were people, too. A lot of people, all kinds of different people, with only one thing in common: they were all kids. There were none near them, they were all pretty far away, at the other end of the clearing. Were they all ghosts, like Norman said? Is this what he had meant?

Suddenly, Dipper realized he'd be staring in awe for far too long. He shook himself, turning to Adam. "So... where's the magic fog supposed to be?"

Adam waved to the forest. "It was literally just in the forest. We could probably go anywhere around here."

"Really?" Dipper asked, surprised. Well, that was pretty lucky. "Alright. Well, that looks like the closet, so we should go there, then."

"It's still pretty far away," Adam noted, before he sighed. "But I guess we don't have another choice, do we?"

"We should probably get started soon, then," Ash spoke up, the first thing he'd said in a while. His voice was steely with determination. "We have to hurry!"

"We know, Ash," Dipper told him. He squinted at the trees in the distance. "Well, they don't look that far away."

"They do look like that, don't they?" Adam grumbled, and Dipper glanced at him. He wasn't sure what that meant.

It was an hour later when Dipper finally realized what Adam had meant. The three had decided to run towards the forest, but soon enough, Dipper realized that the forest was father away than he'd bargained for. No matter how hard or far they ran, the trees they were running towards didn't seem to get any closer. In fact, all that happened was that they seemed to get taller, until they were towering over him, and even then, they didn't stop. They seemed taller than actually possible now.

"How-gasp-are the trees-huff- that tall?!" Dipper wheezed. He was running more now than he'd ever ran in his life, and he hated himself for it. All his limbs felt dead, his lungs were non-existent, and he was almost regretting his decision to come along.

Adam, however, looked amused. He looked like he was in good shape, anyway (despite being a gamer), but since he was also a ghost, he didn't have the human limitations Dipper had. And now he was laughing at Dipper for them.

"If you think this is big, well, they only get bigger," Adam told him.

"HOW?!"

If Adam was trying to hide his grin, he was failing.

"I don't remember the trees being this big." Ash suddenly spoke up. Like Adam, he wasn't out of breath either. "When I was alive, the trees were a lot smaller."

Adam suddenly looked interested. "Did you ever go into the forest?" he asked, and Ash nodded, a small smile appearing on his face.

"Yeah!" he answered. He looked like he was reminiscing. "Before everyone else came, me and Chihiro like going out and finding strange creatures, and trying to befriend them. It was all we really did for a while, and that was pretty fun."

"You and Chihiro..." Adam trailed off. "Is Chihiro-?"

"She's around here somewhere," Ash answered, glancing back to the other end of the field. "When I starting following you and Wirt and Kipo around, Adam, I asked Chihiro if she wanted to come, but she said no. I wonder if she's still here."

"Oh..." Adam said, before he seemed to realize what Ash said. "Wait, you followed us?"

"I wanted to help!" Ash defended himself quickly. "Although I wouldn't be able to do anything without Norman, so that was lucky."

"What would be your plan if that didn't happen?" Adam asked him, and Ash shrugged.

"I don't know... haunt Wirt, maybe?"

Adam sighed. "You probably would have given him a heart attack, but okay."

"No, no," Ash argued. "I'm sure he would have figured it out eventually."

"Hm..." Adam didn't bother replying to that, instead turning to Dipper, who had fallen behind in their conversation. "Hey, Dipper! Uh... if you want, you can wait here."

Dipper opened his mouth, sucked in a huge breath, tried to speak again, failed, and then nearly tripped onto his face. He didn't look like he would survive this, so Adam came to a merciful stop. Dipper collapsed onto the ground, and Adam sighed, crossing his arms.

"Is it just because you want to see the magic?" Adam asked him. "Because we're bringing it back, so you'll see it anyway."

Dipper waited until he didn't feel like throwing up before he answered. "We... We HAVE to be close now... It can't be THAT far away... right?"

Adam frowned, and turned to the trees. "Huh," he said in surprise. "You're in luck. They're only, like, ten minutes away now."

"Uh... can he handle ten minutes?" Ash wondered, staring down at Dipper. He wasn't moving now, and Adam was worried he'd passed out before Dipper let out an annoyed exhale, and shakily got to his feet.

"I can handle ten minutes," he told them, before collapsing again.

"Yeah, sure," Adam sighed, reaching down and holding out his hand. His intention was to grab Dipper's arm and haul him up, but his fingers seemed to go right through Dipper's arm. Adam flinched, and panicked for a moment until he finally managed to wrap his fingers around Dipper's wrist, pulling him up frantically, before almost immediately dropping him.

"What the-Adam!" Dipper cried, sitting up and rubbing at his arm. "Why'd you-?"

"Sorry," Adam said quickly. He didn't try to help Dipper again. "Just- Come on. Breaks over, we need to go."

Dipper sighed. "You're right. It looks like that storm has caught up to us. It isn't bad right now, but soon..."

"Storm?" Adam repeated, and he suddenly realized that rain was falling down onto them. Not heavy rain, like before in the town, just sprinkling, but Adam hadn't even noticed it until Dipper pointed it out. How long had it been raining? "Oh... right. We better hurry, then."

"Don't forget we have go back after this," Ash pointed out, and Dipper groaned.

It took them much longer to get to the forest edge than ten minutes, but now Adam knew that he couldn't leave Dipper behind. Not when he might need his help to actually do what they needed to do. But when they finally got there, Dipper once again collapsed.

"I... hate that," he groaned. "I hate it. So much."

"Yeah, yeah..." Adam said, barely paying attention. "Well, we're here, what do we do know, Ash?"

Ash frowned. "Well, when I was... alive, you could just... grab it."

Adam stared at him. "Grab it," he repeated. "I just... grab it."

"Pretty much," Ash replied, and Adam shook his head.

"I... okay," Adam said. "I guess I've never actually tried to 'grab it' before."

"It's easy!" Ash assured him. "Just grab it and it'll come away like a cloth, but if you let it go, it'll disappear."

Adam paused. He had been reaching out to grab at the fog, but when Ash said that, he stopped. They couldn't make this trip again; this was their only chance. They had to get this to Wirt, immediately.

"Dipper, come on, come get this for Wirt!" Dipper called again, who thankfully didn't ask why, instead sitting up and reaching out. As he reached out, the fog reached back until Dipper gripped it, and it stretched before it seemed to tear.

"What the...?" Dipper asked, but he didn't really get to question it before the fog was reaching out again, and Dipper forced himself back. "Woah!"

"Yeah, be careful," Adam told him. "It'll try to kill you. And make sure you don't let go of that cloth."

"This stuff is supposed to heal Wirt?" Dipper asked annoyed. "How...? Whatever. We should probably get back, right?"

"Probably," Ash agreed, he turned around, starting towards the cave entrance again. "We should get back now. Come on! Don't drop that cloth, Dipper."

"I know, Dipper sighed, but he tightened his grip on the cloth anyway.

Almost immediately, their walk back went wrong. They hadn't even crossed halfway back to the entrance when the ground suddenly started shaking beneath their feet. Dipper paused, unsure of himself, but Adam and Ash barely seemed to realize it.

"Dipper?" Adam asked, also pausing to turn around. "What's... wrong...?"

Adam trailed off as he seemed to realize what was going on as well.

"What the-?!" Dipper cried. He still had a death grip on the cloth, so when he fell down, he didn't have anything to catch himself with. "Ow! What's going on?!"

Finally, Ash turned around, too, and when he saw the shaking ground, his eyes widened.

"Oh no!" he cried. "Dipper, look out! The Burrow-"

Ash barely got the words out before the ground exploded underneath their feet, and Dipper was thrown back a couple paces. He hit the ground hard, and painfully, but he got up quickly.

'What was that?! Keep a hold of the cloth, keep a hold of the cloth... what just happened?!'

The rain was picking up harder now, and Dipper blinked, trying to look at what had forced itself out of the earth, but what he saw didn't make any sense. What was that?!

At first, Dipper saw a tiger, or what he thought was a tiger. He saw a glimpse of orange and black stripes, but the next thing he saw was a tail like a whale, one that propelled the creature smoothly through the soft earth like a knife through butter, or a whale through water.

Dipper blinked, trying to force the water from his eyes. Was this creature some sort of mere-tiger or something? Dipper rubbed at his eyes, and the next thing he saw when he opened them again was a gaping maw full of teeth coming straight for him. Dipper stared at it, suddenly dumbfounded. It was too close now, he couldn't get out of the way, there was no time-.

Suddenly, Adam jumped at him, forcing him out of the way just before the mouth closed down on the space where he just was.

"Thank god that worked," Adam muttered, getting off of him. Before Dipper could thank him, or ask him what he meant, Adam continued. "Do you still have that cloth, Dipper?"

Dipper showed him. "What's going on?" Dipper asked him. "What is that thing?"

"It's a Burrow-Swimmer," Ash told him helpfully, practically martializing beside him, and Dipper jumped.

"Ash!" Dipper shouted, startled. Ash was acting more and more like a typical ghost with every passing second; Dipper could hardly see him in the dark. "What-?"

Ash shook his head at him, or, at least, Dipper thought he did. "No, there's no time. This is actually a good thing, the Burrow-Swimmer can help us!"

"Help us?!" Dipper was skeptical. "How-?"

"Chihiro and I liked riding on those guys all the time!" Ash told him. "It was a rainy-day activity. Anyway, all you need to do is try and make it jump at you."

Dipper looked warily at the creature. "It doesn't look like that thing has legs."

"No, no, like it goes down and jumps up at you!" Ash explained, showing Dipper by gesturing wildly with his arm. "It's pretty easy, just run at it and then when it goes down, run the other way really, really quickly."

"That sounds really-," Dipper tried to say 'Bad', but suddenly Adam was shoving at him to move.

"Go, go!" he cried, and that kickstarted Dipper into ignoring all his survival instincts and running straight at the giant maw of teeth.

'There's no way this'll work, there's no way this'll work!' He repeated that like a mantra in his head, but against all odds: the Burrow-Swimmer did exactly what Ash said: it burrowed down into the ground.

"The other way! Run the other way now!" Adam and Ash were shouting at him, so Dipper did, running away just in time to avoid the Burrow-Swimmer exploding from the ground where he just was, and launching itself far into the air. Dipper didn't look at it, but he heard when it hit the ground, from the resounding BOOM that followed.

"Come on, come on!" Adam called to him, racing past him, and Dipper had to turn around once again, following Adam's lead as he grasped the fur (fur?) of the Burrow-Swimmer and hanging on for dear life.

And then he was riding the Burrower-Swimmer.