Being shipped cross-country to stay at your uncle's creepy cabin in the woods somewhere out in the dense mog of Oregon mountain forests wasn't any twelve-year-old's ideal way of spending their summer vacation. Gravity Falls was no New York City. In fact, some might go so far as to apt the two cities were complete opposites.
They would be right.
Donatello took two steps into the attic he was going to share with his three brothers for two and a half months and thought he was going to die.
"There's...there's no outlets!" he said, his hands pressed to the sides of his head as if to box in the rising panic. His duffel bag and suitcase clattered to the floor. The world became faint. "Oh. Oh boy. Where am I going to plug in my tablet? M-my phone? I don't-"
"It'll be all right, Don," Leo was quick to say. He hurried to his brother's side and laid a hand on his shoulder. "Maybe this'll be good for us."
"Yeah, this place is amazing, Dee!" Mikey crowed from atop his new bed, trying to tape his Wingnut and Screwloose poster to the wall alongside Silver Sentry. Having smoothed out the wrinkles to his satisfaction, the youngest of the quadruplets turned around on socked feet and proudly shoved out both of his hands. "Look! Ten minutes in and I've already got splinters!"
Between his youngest brother admiring the pinpricks of wood somehow fastly lodged in his skin and the humphing, bored groans from his third brother, who had literally and gracelessly tossed his clothes into the drawers of his nightstand and the chest at the foot of his bed before lying face-down on his mattress, Leonardo knew he would have his hands full.
All. Summer.
What he didn't expect was to find a bunkered-down scarlet book decorated with a golden flower-faced symbol and engraved with a large number '3' in the forest as he was hanging signs for his uncle's "Mystery Shack." Neither did he expect that-out of all of his brothers to get a crush just two days into their recent move-their own goofy-grinned Michelangelo had a girlfriend for all of three hours. Said girlfriend actually turned out to be a bunch of frogs in a trenchcoat begging for his hand in marriage-"You guys are butt-faces!"-from whom they had to flee on the back of their cousin Karai's battered golf-cart. But they got a few trinkets from their uncle's gift shop in the end. For his recent heartbreak, Michelangelo received a turtle-shell grappling hook that he dubbed the "turtle line."
But all of that was just the start.
They had no idea how much weirder their summer was yet going to get.
Uncle Yoshi was a quiet and secret man. From the moment he entered a room until the moment he exited it, the four brothers watched him with wide eyes so as not to miss any tells or hints about his mysterious person. They had learned early on in their stay that the man would never voluntarily tell them anything about himself-if he was inclined to talk at all. The most any of them had ever heard him say in one sitting had been a grumbling, "Dinner is ready."
Their cousin Karai confirmed this, and she was his daughter.
So the morning Uncle Yoshi told them over the breakfast table, as straight-faced and dry as ever, that he wanted to take them fishing, Raph had choked on his milk and Mikey had forgotten he was syrup racing with Don and squeezed a sticky glob on top of his head.
"Uh...what?" Leonardo asked, not sure how to remind his uncle they came from New York City. Their lives had been quite urban and quite lake-less. Prior to this impromptu transcontinental visit of theirs, they had never been outside even their own borough before. "Sorry, Uncle Yoshi, but we don't know how to fish."
"You will learn," was all the man had said before he turned and departed from the room.
"'You will learn,'" Mikey attempted to impersonate with a faux-gravelly undertone.
Raph reached over and smacked the top of his little brother's head. Sharply, he cried out, "AGH, what is this-syrup?!"
"Hahaha, what's that song? I'm stickin' with you! Cuz I'm made out of-OW OW OW OW-!"
They ended up on a pier out on Lake Gravity Falls armed with life-vests, crudely-stitched personalized hats, and neon green DNR wristbands, staring wide-eyed out at the expanse of pure lake before them.
"Dude. I've never seen so much blue," Mikey whispered. "Except maybe for your eyes, Leo."
"Uh, thanks?"
Their older cousin Karai, standing at their side, rapped her knuckles gently and playfully against the top of Leonardo's head. Leo raised a hand to rub at his afflicted crown underneath his fishing hat and all four brothers lifted their chins to her as she said, "Y'know, I can think of about a million better things to do than get saddled with awkward family fishing and 'bonding' time."
"You can?" Raph asked with a swelling sigh of relief.
Karai pulled out a folded magazine page from her jeans pocket. She flipped the face of it around and her four younger cousins huddled close to read.
"A monster photo contest?" Don scrunched up his nose. "But we didn't get any pictures of those talking frogs."
"Which I didn't even get a chance to see, so those don't count," Karai said. "No. I'm thinking we should snag a photo of something much bigger…"
"You mean there's other monsters here in Gravity Falls?" Mikey's eyes lit up.
Karai shrugged. "I don't know. But if what you said about those frogs is true, then I'm guessing something else has got to be out there."
"Yeah, well, whatever it is we snap can't be shin-high." Raph frowned. He crossed his arms over his life-vest. "One thousand dollars? I mean, those frogs were weird, but a monster worth that much is gonna have to be gigantic."
"You mean, something that makes people terrified when they see it," Leo said. He ticked off on his fingers. "Something that makes them yell-"
"-HELP! I SAW IT! I SAW IT AGAIN! YOU SIMPLY MUST BELIEVE ME!" An old, balding man with a wide and greying handlebar mustache whipped past the five children and down to the grassy beachside.
Leo grinned at Raph. He crooked a thumb over his shoulder. "Something like that?"
Raph's smirk widened back.
The five turned and ran down the wooden boards towards the shore. The balding, frantic man upended a table loaded with bait and grabbed a man to shake. Several other fisherfolk moved closer; a crowd began to thicken. A young woman in a navy blue tight-fitting suit dotted with teal orbs bent to pick up a calculator as the old man yelled, "The Gravity Falls Cthugga! You must come quick, or it will swim away once more!"
"Cthugga?" Don echoed. He lifted a hand to his chin. "I've never heard of that monster in any myth or legend…"
The stranger spun on his heels, eyes fixing on the tallest of the quadruplets. He released his current captive and leapt forward, latching on to Donnie by his shoulders. Raph and Leo stepped forward on either side, but the man gave no indication he saw them. He answered breathlessly with an accented and pitched voice, "That's because it's only a local legend! The creature of the Gravity Falls Lake. It's real, though! I promise! I've just seen it-look what it did to my boat!"
The graying-haired man tossed a hand towards a secondary pier, where the two jagged, split-apart pieces of what had once been a small fishing vessel were sinking.
The man rambled on, "It was quite terrifying! It had a long, U-shaped face, not dissimilar to a whale's snout, I suppose, and bright, speckled skin with a dozen tails! And right after it chewed through my boat, it scurried towards Scuttlebutt Island!"
"That's enough, Dad!" cried a new voice, stomping forward. A man donning the uniform of the park rangers, hat pulled so low as if to hide his face, grabbed the balding stranger by his arm. With a firm tug, he dragged the man away from Don and the gathering audience. "What have I told you about scaring our visitors? There's no such thing as this 'Cthugga'!"
"But-but my boy Sal, I-I've got proof this time!"
"Can it, Dad! You said that last time, too, and the time before that! By now, everyone just thinks you're a crazy old man. Is that what you want? You used to be a professor…!"
As the bickering pair departed, the crowd dwindled with the chuckles and murmurings of 'oh, that funny, old, mustachioed coot.' Uncle Yoshi marched past, having returned from the trunk of his car with his arms full of fishing poles and his toolbox full of bait. Karai grabbed Leo and Don's hands and led her four cousins after her father.
Shoulder-to-shoulder, hands clasped before them, the five explained to him the rumors of the Cthugga and pleaded with him to let them monster hunt instead of fish. But somewhere between, "Please, Uncle Yoshi?" and "We don't want to be bored all day," the man must have grown frustrated. With a deep-set frown, he cut off the conversation and dropped the boat's keys into his daughter's hand before she had even finished talking. Then, without saying another word, he walked back down the pier, his grey fishing toolbox tucked under one arm, leaving several rods of fishing poles behind. Karai pumped her fist with a cheer, but Leo and Mikey watched their uncle's receding back.
They glanced at each other with twin frowns and wondered if the promise of one thousand dollars was worth the weight sitting heavy at the base of their throats.
Before they set sail for Scuttlebutt Island, Leo made them all visit the lakeside store to purchase sunscreen. Donatello took the opportunity to stock up on something he assured them would be "just as important as protecting them from sunburn." As soon as they were back onboard their uncle's motorboat, he explained why.
"All right, guys," Donnie said with his 'lecture voice' coming on, "if we want to win this photo contest, we've got to do it right. What's the number one problem with most monster hunts?"
Kicking his legs while perched on top of a covered barrel of fish food, Mikey burst with fisted hands, "You're a side character and you die within the first five minutes of the movie!"
"N...no." Don turned to his other brothers and cousin standing nearby. "Any-anyone else? No?" He sighed, exaggeratedly long and drawn out. "C'mon guys, camera trouble!"
At their continued blank stares, the second-youngest lifted from behind the crate he stood beside five small bags he had brought out of the Gravity Falls Lake convenience shop. "So we wouldn't be caught with the Cthugga unawares-and by 'unawares' I mean 'without a camera'-I took the liberty of buying us twenty-five disposable cameras!"
Donnie handed a bag to each brother and one to Karai as he narrated, "There's four in those bags for each of you, one camera strapped to each of my ankles, three taped under my life-vest, three more stuffed away in my bag, and one hidden just under the fishing hat Uncle Yoshi gave me!" As if to prove his words, Don lifted the beige, brimmed hat from his brow and revealed the yellow disposable camera balanced on the top of his head. "Now there's no possible way we'll miss getting a picture of that Cthugga!"
"Great thinking, Donnie," Leo praised as Mikey ooh'ed and ahh'ed at one of the disposable cameras from his bag and accidentally took a blinding picture of his own eye. Mikey squawked and tossed the camera away from himself into the lakewater beside their boat, then fell off the barrel and crashed to his back on the deck.
"Mikey!" Raph was ready to scold.
Don threw out an arm and assured, "No, that's okay! That's okay. That's why I brought extras. We still have twenty-four left. Just...don't lose any more, Mikey, okay?"
"I can't see," Mikey moaned.
"Okay, so here's the plan." Karai set her bag of cameras by her feet. "Since I'm the only one that can actually drive the boat, I figure I'll man the wheel and be the captain-"
"-wait, why do you get to be the captain?" Leo frowned. "Why can't I be the captain?"
"Well, I'm the oldest..." Karai began. She pressed her thumb to her chest. "Besides, it just makes sense. What kind of twelve-year-old gets to be captain when you have a sixteen-year-old onboard?"
"Then, can I be co-captain?"
"There's no such thing as-"
"-Raph!" Don cried. "What did I just say? Don't lose your cameras!"
"A bird was going to attack me. What did you want me to do, just let it poke out my eyeballs?"
"Wait, Dee, did you say lose our cameras?"
"NO!"
"Dude, I just threw two away."
"ARGH, twenty-one!" Donnie threw his hands skyward as if pleading the heavens. "All right, at least we still have twenty-one cameras. Now just don't lose any more, guys. Is that so much to ask for?"
Karai sighed. "You can be co-captain." She crossed her arms over her chest.
"Yes!"
Mikey leaned close to the other two. "Can I be associate to the co-captain?"
Leo's grin was very wide and very fond. He put a hand against his hip and raised his other with his index finger lifted, modeling a pose he had seen his favorite character from Space Heroes do many-a-time before. "As co-captain, I authorize that request."
Mikey cheered.
Karai rolled her eyes. "Well, as first captain, need I remind you that our number one order of business here is to lure the Cthugga out with this." She gestured a hand to the barrel of food Mikey had earlier fallen from.
The youngest quadruplet gasped and hurried to the barrel's side, pressing his hands flat against the wooden bulge. He turned to the others with round blue eyes. "Permission to taste some?"
Karai and Leo exchanged glances.
Karai bit the inside of her cheek. "Okay," she said slowly. "Granted."
"Permission co-granted," Leo said through a stifled smile.
Mikey raised his hand and loudly declared, "Permission associate go-granted!" He slipped off the lid to the barrel and stuffed his hand inside. His fingers grabbed hold of a large chip of fish food. He tugged it free, admired the fragile green piece, and then licked it from top to bottom.
It took two seconds for Mikey to begin coughing and hacking as he furiously combed at his tongue with his fingers.
It took several more minutes for all of the rest of them to stop laughing.
"Dude, I can't believe you actually tasted it," Raph muttered. The trail up Scuttlbutt Island's hill was wide and easy to follow, even through the dense fog that blanketed the trees. Though he and Mikey brought up the rear of the travelling party, the second oldest wasn't worried about getting separated from Leo and Karai, who stood at their forefront and carried lanterns. "What were you thinking?"
"Bucket list, dude. Now I never have to wonder what fish food tastes like again," Mikey answered.
"...Mikey, do me a solid and answer me honestly: why?"
"Guys, check this out!"
Don, further ahead of the two, stood in front of a wooden sign at the trail's edge. Karai and Leo turned around from further ahead, lifting their lanterns eye-level. Mikey and Raph jogged to their brother's side and gazed up.
'SCUTTLEBUTT ISLAND' was painted in thin, black letters, easily readable, on a board nailed to the wide girth of a tree's trunk. Next to it, a smaller sign, painted in a similar scrawny and dark ink, read 'BEWARE!' Donnie put up his arm and covered the first seven letters of the larger plank. He snickered.
"Butt Island."
Mikey and Raph laughed.
Karai rolled her eyes, turned around, and resumed hiking. Leo's gaze followed his older cousin. "Guys, cut it out," he called and gestured with a curved arm for them to follow and keep up.
"Speaking of butts," Raph added behind a cupped hand. Mikey and Don laughed even more.
Their laughter sharply cut off the instant a deep, grumbling roar resounded through the forest.
All five travelers stopped, their eyes wide.
"Did you hear that?" Don asked the silence. Mikey idled to his side. Raph's eyes darted about through the trees and fog, but could see nothing.
Leo's grin widened. He looked to Karai and Karai looked down to him. Karai whispered, "This is it! This is it!" and pressed her fist excitedly to Leo's shoulder twice. Leo pushed his own fist against her side, enthusiastically hushing back, "This is so cool!"
More carefully, the two led the way onward through the mire and forest.
"H-hey guys! Wait up!" Mikey called and Raph huffed as the three followed close behind.
There was a moment, when the tree line broke out onto a small overlook near the middle of the lake, where they thought they had found the Cthugga sitting in the water. But what they had thought was the dome-like head of the beast turned out to be an overturned rowboat. And when the most thrilling creatures their eyes fell upon were several beavers that sunbathed on the underside of the capsized vessel, their shoulders sagged.
Mikey was perhaps the only one still in high spirits, taking pictures with his last disposable camera of the beavers and giving several exclamations of, "Oh, how cute!" and "Lookit the little guys!"
Leo left his lantern and bag of cameras by Donnie and hopped to a large rock below the low cliffside. He placed a hand over his eyes to peer over the water and spy any unnatural disturbances, but all the waves he could see were the low wakes of drifting fishing vessels. Discouraged, he sat and propped his elbow up on his knee, resting his cheek in the palm of his hand. He tossed loose pieces of gravel to the water and watched the tiny ripples distort his reflection. "Well, that's just great. We ended up ditching Uncle Yoshi over nothing," he sighed. "What are we going to tell him…?"
"He genuinely wanted to spend time with us, too. I guess...I guess we do the only thing we should: apologize," Donnie said, fiddling with one of his disposable cameras and wondering if it was worth it to take some pictures of the beavers like Mikey was.
Leo sighed and pressed his forehead to his knees.
The growling sound returned, accompanied by a low and booming thump. Leo jerked upright. The ripples in the water below his sneakers swelled; his reflection waxed into something unrecognizable.
"Leo…" Raphael called.
"Do you guys feel that?" Leo asked as another shaking thump slid him from the rock. "H-hey-!" he splashed to the water and immediately swam for the bank. Karai and Raph stood at the lip where grass met craggy earth and lifted him out by his arms.
Along and thin tail arched from the water.
Its skin was a teal blue and mottled with dark spots the color of a velvet, midnight sky.
The tail slipped back beneath the surface and Mikey screamed as the island quaked with another boom.
"Guys! There!" Donnie hissed, pointing a finger at the low rise of the creature's back breaking through the surface. What they could see of the Cthugga veered from the island's edge and out towards the center of the lake.
Leo bent for his bag and fumbled with wet hands for a disposable camera. He lifted one and powered it up. "This is our chance! C'mon!"
"Leo." Karai's voice was hesitant and wary.
When Leo looked up, he saw the Cthugga much closer than before. Its eyes on each side of its head seemed to glow. This close, he could see the lake monster had pale, paper-white lips curled around rows and rows of spike-like teeth that jutted out at every which angle.
He raised his camera and took a single snap.
The flash startled the creature as much as it startled each of them.
Loud, angry, the Cthugga roared and tossed its head left then right. It launched itself out of the water, straight for the five of them that stood slack-jawed on the overlook.
Its maw was open wide.
Leo felt his life-vest nearly choke him as Raphael grabbed the collar and yanked him behind. The disposable camera tumbled from his hands and into the dirt. Leo gasped in dismay, "The picture-!"
"Forget the picture! Just run, you idiot!" he heard his brother yell and when the creature roared again, shaking loose a number of birds from the treetops, Leo didn't need to be told twice.
Donatello would have suggested they stay at a high point on Scuttlebutt Island until the lake monster conveniently forgot about them, but that became unfeasible when the Cthugga flopped across the trail and gave them chase.
So they ran.
They ran back down the route they had taken up and all the way back down to their motorboat. Once they had all jumped aboard, Karai started the engine with an urgent and hissing, "C'mon, c'mon!"
The motor sputtered to life. Karai tossed the wheel hard. Their boat listed, careening portside, as it backed away from the island. All four of her cousins stumbled sideways with a loud, "Whoa!" But then with a loud whine of the motor, the boat righted itself. They sped off.
"W-where should we go? What should we do?!" Donnie yelled. He had one hand on the handrail that lined the perimeter of the motorboat and the other hand clutched to the back of his head, ttrapping his fishing hat tight to his skull.
"Uh-!" Leo, sitting closer to the bow, bent to open the dry-compartment right of his seat. He shoved aside blankets and water bottles and ziploc baggies of IDs and yanked out the red journal he had found in the woods. Immediately, he flipped through the yellowed pages.
Raph stood with a wide stance near the aft where Karai kept a hand on the wheel. He braced himself against every lobbing jolt their boat took from cresting low wakes. He, too, had a hand on the top of his head, holding onto his hat. "Leo…!"
"It's back in the water!" Mikey shouted, bending over another one of the seats to point. "And it's gaining on us!"
"That book of yours better have something to help us!" Raph growled.
"Book? What book?" Karai squinted.
They zoomed by other idling boats, creating waves that rocked innocent fishing folk to and fro. They passed by the dock they had pushed out from and the convenience store where they bought their disposable cameras and sunscreen. They zipped down to the far end of the lake where it narrowed down to the town's namesake waterfall.
Leo gasped, sharp and high. Thumb pressed hard to the page, he turned in his seat and pointed to the waterfall. "There! Go straight for the falls!"
"What?" Karai screeched. "Are you crazy, Leo?"
"Just trust me!" Leo shouted back over the growing roar of cascading water. "According to the book, there's a cave beyond it! We should be safe in there!"
Karai's amber eyes flitted between her cousin and the waterfall they were rapidly approaching. She glanced behind her to the curve of the Cthugga swimming after them, just barely breaking the surface of the lake. With a tight set to her jaw, Karai closed her eyes and screamed with her cousins as she pushed the boat to go as fast as it could.
The water fell hard over them the force of an oncoming semi-truck. The five sputtered and gasped for air, coughing up haggard mouthfuls. But they passed through and didn't collide with a cliff-face; instead they spun into a smaller pool in the center of a vast cavern. Their continued screams echoed off of rock walls and soon, Karai noticed they weren't the only ones crying out and shouting at the top of their lungs.
When she turned behind her, she brought the boat to a stop.
The Cthugga was caught, its wide head lodged in the cave's opening. It screamed as the water continued to pound against its back. With its frantic thrashing, it loosened pieces of rock and stalactites from the ceiling that crashed against its beak and the top of its head.
Karai sagged against the driver's seat.
"It...it's stuck! This is amazing!" Leo cried. He stood and reached for his bag of cameras, only to remember that he had left them behind on the island. In their haste to escape, he hadn't thought to grab it. "This is-oh-"
"-seventeen, Leo," Don hummed. He handed out one of the cameras taped to the inside of his life-vest, now unbuckled and lying loose around his chest. "We still have seventeen." He slid out another for himself.
Leo's grin widened. "Thanks, Don."
The beast kicked long enough for Donnie and Leo to snag several snapshots before a large stalactite crashed dead center on the Cthugga's head. With a spark, the brow of the creature dented and hissed. A sound not unlike that of a computer powering down wheezed from the monster as it fell still in the water. A small cloud of smoke puffed from the corner of the Cthugga's limp mouth.
Silence fell over the small motorboat.
Donatello frowned and was the first one to dive in and swim across.
The sun had just begun its descent across the sky as the four brothers and Karai sat at the end of the pier. Uncle Yoshi's motorboat floated a yard away, tied to a post.
Leonardo sighed. His shoulders sagged. "So all along it was Old Man Honeycutt, huh?"
Donatello, cheek propped up by his fist, nodded. He idly traced circles in the water with the stick he held. "Yep. Really, the man's an engineering genius. Apparently, this isn't the first robot he's created." He dropped his head against Leo's shoulder on his right. "But no, the Cthugga wasn't a real monster."
"The real monster was us," Karai sighed, kicking at the lakewater. "You were right, Don. My father just wanted to spend time with us. And we thought he wasn't worth it."
"Kinda like Old Man Honeycutt just wanted to spend time with his son," Mikey added.
Don set aside his stick and rubbed his arm with a tight frown.
"So much for the one thousand dollars," Raph mumbled, chin propped up in vee of both hands as he hunched over, looking at his shadowed reflection in the lakewater. He pressed his toes together and watched the front of his converse crease and uncrease, bend and unbend.
"Well, we still have all these disposable cameras left." Donnie sat upright and lifted his fishing hat. He pulled down the camera nestled in his dark hair and looked at the lens, still whole and unbroken, in spite of everything. "We haven't even begun to use fifteen of them. What should we do?"
Karai straightened and stretched out her back. She reached out her arms to the sky, then rotated from side to side, elbows angled outward. When she turned, she caught sight of a familiar car, patiently parked near the beachside. She blinked. A wide smile crossed her face.
"...well, you guys are here all summer, right?" She looked down to the four curious pairs of eyes that stared back up at her. "I think I've got just the idea."
Several silly and candid shots of fishing mishaps and improper knotting techniques were taken that day and a tired but patient Uncle Yoshi was present in all of them, with various members of his extended family accompanying him. And though he was stern, and his brows were always drawn forward, he looked happy, somehow. Or, as happy as they had seen him yet.
They took one final photo altogether just as the sun was setting at their backs: all six of them in Uncle Yoshi's motorboat, donning oversized life-vests, and cheesy, personalized, beige fishing hats.
And if it looked like Uncle Yoshi was actually smiling in that last one, no one said a word.
PIS NYWX AERXIH XS FI PMOI GETXEMR VCER, XLEX'W EPP.
