#blowing open this catbox with extreme prejudice

[nenoname]

my outline for my 999 au!

(because there’s no way i’m actually going to actually finish this rip)

tldr: it's a death game on a boat, and nothing convoluted happens whatsoever!

Basically everything I had planned with giant spoilers for the Zero Escape series below!!!

Protag!Ford POV

Teen!Ford gets kidnapped on his way to college, wakes up on a replica of the Titanic, gradually meets the other participants, Zero introduces themself + rules of the game

Preston (doesn’t get a codename cos lame rich asshole) gets blown up to establish stakes if participants don’t abide by the rules (aka bombs in stomach allegedly)

Snakeyes is way too similar to a certain estranged twin despite being an old man…

Puzzle time!

Guess who got murdered! Almost everyone!

Repeat 1-5, with a lil variation (not all bad ends are murders, some are merely Ford getting softlocked/unable to continue any further)

And again

And again

And again–

Ford gradually builds up subconscious memories that lead into a “true end”

Tri is the culprit of the murders to no one’s surprise

What do you mean this is 2013

What do you mean time travel is a thing

Everyone here is from different time periods

Oh god that old man really is Stanley

What do you mean quantum timeline divergence

What do you mean there’s alternative universes

What do you mean this is all to save his brother who is stuck in a similar game, ten years in Ford’s future but thirty years in the past

Ford is Zero??? Or rather his future self is

Tri is the Zero of that other game??? And he created the vlr!game to murder Stanley early before he ruins his plans?? Also the whole. Actually is a triangular demon that had been midway through tricking Zero!Ford before he suddenly switched to murdering Stan

The old Stanley in this game is a clone???? A robot clone of a Stan from another world????????? (partially why he’s way too chill about dying :(((( natural disposition when made aware that he’s a “fake” and knows he can’t go back to his world because he’s not the Stan who belongs there…), while he’s technically Zero’s accomplice, he’s working to try to contain the damage to only this dimension

This game exists to rewrite the reality of Bill's game, Tri/“Silas” hasn’t become vlr's Zero yet or even learnt of the Stan twins existence until this 999!game started (a paradox already formed and there’s no going back unless his memory is somehow erased), the answer Zero!Ford settled on to save his Stanley is a simple “have teen!Ford give mullet!Stan the answers” except he threw in “do it via a psychic connection that’s immune to the laws of space-time (aka morphogenetic field from the VNs) that they don’t have… yet!” (can’t ya like. Use phones or somethin…)

Have the chance to rewrite all of their fates from the get go at the risk of the sheer amount of unstable paradoxes collapsing literally everything, sea clone!Stan working to prevent that because despite his entire life, he knows that some form of him is happy in that world at last and will protect OG world + family at all costs

But Time Pirates CYA!Dipper was in the vlr game all along!!! (with an alt!Wendy as support) using the same trick aka the morphogenetic field connection to communicate between games with Mabel via Axolotl shenanigans!

Protag!Ford free to rescue mullet!Stan without fear of their plane of existence literally blowing up yippee!

Teen!Ford and mullet!Stan only having a moment to see each other before the connection is broken, and the exposition dump is finally over

Order of events

In origin 2012, the Stan twins beat Bill Cipher (in an offshoot of the OG verse, the CYA twins drive between time and space and meet the Axolotl)

In the Zero verse, midway through conning researcher!Ford, the Bill of this multiverse finds out that Stanley had managed to undo Weirdmageddon, doesn't know the details, but hey! Why don't we nip that problem in the bud?

Comes up with the most fucked up way, designed to crush both brothers mentally, vengeance now, wait for another sucker to build a portal in the future when all of the other Zodiac are firmly dead

In 1981 with the boat replica constructed by lingering Ciphertologist cultists, the game begins with mullet Stan and 7 random others, while researcher!Ford is stuck in isolated part of the boat as Bord takes over when he sleeps (ate so many sleeping pills)

Other participants all reach the end but at the last moment Stan gets tricked into entering a room (with the bait being his old photo of him and Ford) that reveals itself to be an incinerator

Only way to unlock the door is via an unsolvable puzzle/needs perpetual motion machine info, Bord uses this as a chance to mock Stan with the claim that Ford is behind this but Stan calls his bluff

At least 7 participants escape. maybe.

A day later, Ford wakes up in an escape room (the captain’s quarters of the boat), and after solving it, he then finds the tape recording what happened to his brother

Breakdown from guilt and grief, proceeds to come up with even more convoluted plan to save his brother, will refuse any other option and is focused on saving that specific Stan

Focuses obsessive research on space/time using some of his knowledge from partial construction of the portal, stealing from Time Cops and partially with Fiddleford's help (who has no idea of his true intentions)

Takes decades to prepare everything, resents the origin twins, but clone/duplicates instead of kidnapping OG!Stan to participate in the game cos didn’t truly want to harm him (you fool, your not-completely messed up intentions has left a Stan astray forever!!)

999!boat is a pocket dimension that's now a mess of time and space, a contradiction, simultaneous time periods at once, at risk of destroying the universe by merely existing

The timeline in the pocket dimension gets erased everytime teen!Ford “loses” and reset to the beginning where only he carries over subconscious memories (or so Zero!Ford believes)

The game is designed to force teen!Ford to interact with “Silas”, ensuring his younger self learns not to trust Bill the hard way (the entire game is basically a messed up form of self harm and endless grief)

The end goal is for teen!Ford to sync up with mullet!Stan’s mental state moments before death so he can access the morphogenetic field

But if teen!Ford does succeed then the giant paradox would mean it’s all for naught anyway!

????

Reveal that Dipper+Mabel got their own plan suckers!!! Offshoots of the origin verse twins who encountered a god (aka the choose your own adventure twins who got lost between time and space, and got enlisted by the Axolotl), possessing younger alt selves but will swap back + wake up in their original dimension without memories of these events aka original end when they met the Axolotl in the hidden page

Kids tricks Bord into thinking Mullet Stan died, got schrodinger cat-ed??? manages to stabilize multiple timelines at once (....don’t ask me the specifics), meaning in the end Zero!Ford failed as his Stan is still dead even though a new timeline was created

The end results in participants being sent home to individual timelines, time-space of this universe now looking more like a messed up amalgamation of 20 yarn balls knotted together

Clone!Stan stays with Zero!Ford + not letting him turn himself in to the Time Cops and now are on the run (he still gets occassional gifts for the Dipper+Mabel+Soos of that timeline even though they don’t know  him and never will…)

Back on vlr!boat, there’s an 80s bro reunion, with the threat of Bill still lingering

Teen!Ford chooses to delay college for a bit while searching for teen!Stan, in truth hasn’t quite forgiven his Stan but doesn’t want to lose him

Clone!Stan notes:

More of a scifi-magic duplicate than a clone really

"Existential crisis + having his happy end ripped away from" time

Ends up at peace with himself, even if he and memories were fabricated, still real to him + remembers those past few years of happiness and knows that the real Stan is still out there living his life

Still fucking stressed as hell tho

Will piss Zero!Ford off by sarcastically calling him dad, is honestly freaked out that he’s only like. A few weeks old. And like. A magic robot????

His acting chops being pushed to the limits when confronted with teen Ford, a younger Mabel, a much older Soos (who’s more quieter and a bit more bitter even if it’s still his kind self) and of course Bill possessing a dead con artist’s body

Sometimes Zero!Ford asks him how he handled his grief from losing his Ford to the portal, the simple answer is that he didn’t and he’s the worst person to ask about moving on

And that's mostly it!!!