Dipper
"Mr. Pines?" I sighed softly and looked towards the door of my office, not surprised to see my shy assistant Greg peering at me over his clipboard.
"Yes Greg?" I say, trying not to let my voice show my annoyance. I've been annoyed a lot lately. Maybe it's just me. My timid assistant stuttered out a message from my boss and scrambled out of the room. I swear, the man acts like I'm going to breathe fire any second. That was only once, it was his fault for switching up my Chinese food order.
Groaning softly, I stood, stretching as I looked out the window over the city streets of Manhattan. I had to admit: with all the pressure of my job, it was a pretty good place to be.
"PINES! IN HERE, NOW!" a gruff voice called suddenly, making me jump. I rolled my eyes, muttering, "I'm coming, sir."
Walking out into the rest of the building, I sneered at my coworkers, who were snickering and pointing at me like kindergarteners. "Ooooh, I got yelled at by the boss!" I said with mock worry, rolling my eyes. "Get back to work and quit acting like elementary schoolers," I commanded. They stopped teasing immediately and dove back into their work.
Pushing open the door to my editor's office, I poked my head in. "Sir? You wanted to see me?" He scowled at me, gesturing for me to come in.
I stepped the rest of the way into the dull, gray office, shutting the door behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the other workers leaning their heads nosily to see what was going on.
As I took a seat in the stiff chair in front of the desk, I absentmindedly wondered if my boss had ever thought about painting his office. The lifeless interior seemed to make everything look cloudy, despite the rare New York sunshine outside.
"Mr. Pines," he began, snapping my attention back to him. "As you know, there are not many stories circulating the city lately." I nodded; I hadn't had a big project in a month. It was starting to get boring. He plucked a pencil out of an old coffee mug that read I#1 Boss/I and began twirling it through his fingers.
My thoughts wandered to my sister, and her #2 Boss status when she tried to run the Mystery Shack. I snickered despite myself, thinking of her awful manager skills. Sure I was able to laugh now, but back then, the thought of my sister being in charge of anything besides her pig was absolutely terrifying.
"Do you find something funny about that, Pines?" my boss asked roughly, getting my attention again. Crap, what had he said?!
I coughed awkwardly and cleared my throat. "No sir, I'm sorry. My thoughts were elsewhere. Would you mind repeating that, please?" He narrowed his beady eyes at me and I felt like I was being cornered by a giant rat.
"I Ido/I mind, Mr. Pines, and for future reference, please try to keep your thoughts right here or you'll be going elsewhere with them." For a pudgy, balding guy in his late forties, the man was intimidating. I nodded quickly.
"Yes sir." He nodded grimly.
"Good. And what I had said was that a small, mediocre newspaper out west has offered us an investigation on a few recent happenings there." I raised my eyebrows, investigations being my field.
"Oh really? What's going on?" He shrugged, as if it were something as irrelevant as a Santa sighting.
"They're blabbing on about some sort of amnesia epidemic, you know, people suddenly losing their memories." I nodded, a little puzzled. Amnesia is usually caused by something, most of the time physical. Were people walking around getting hit by rocks? "So, how about it? Up for a trip to a rinky-dink little town in Oregon?" I raised an eyebrow.
"Which rinky-dink little town?" It couldn't be the one I was thinking of. Of all the places in Oregon, it couldn't be mine. That would just be too lucky, and I've never been lucky. My boss looked a little confused for a moment.
"Let's see…it had some weird space-like name, then there was a landform…Meteor Peaks?" My eyes widened.
"Gravity Falls?!" I said, dropping my professional façade. I couldn't believe it…I was going back! I hadn't been there since the summer before I started college! My boss looked amused.
"Yep, that was it! You seem rather excited, Pines," he said, noticing the grin spreading slowly across my face. "Maybe I shouldn't give you the assignment…"
"No!" I yelled suddenly, startling myself and him. I coughed weakly, embarrassed. "Sorry, I meant, I'll do it." He nodded, waving me out of the office. I stood and went towards the door.
"You leave on Saturday," he told me as I opened the door, revealing the nosy faces of my coworkers. "I'll have Greg fax you the tickets." I couldn't help but pity Greg; he nearly fainted when I spoke to him, my boss would probably kill the poor man.
"Yeah, okay," I muttered, my mind in Oregon. "Thank you sir." With that, I walked out, making a beeline for my office to have a staring contest with my fax machine until it printed my tickets.
-
Mabel
I slipped on my star-patterned sunglasses as I focused my camera on the setting sun in front of me. Warm Athens breezes ruffled my dark hair, warming me from the inside out. Snapping my last photo, I turned off my camera, intending to look over the shots later.
For now, I collapsed my camera stand and tucked it into it's case carefully, like tucking in a child. Closing the case, I sat on my beach towel and stared as the orange and pink glows left the ruins of the Parthenon and sank into the ocean, as if the sun had slipped and fell into the water. Sighing, I laid back on the towel as the sky darkened and the sounds of the waves drowned out the whir of little mopeds zooming up and down the Grecian streets. I smiled as I imagined each one being like a little bee, each with a place to go and not afraid to sting you if you got them stuck in traffic. It must hurt to rear-end a bee.
A sudden chime startled me out of my thoughts, and I dug through my camera bag, pulling out my cell phone and putting it on speaker.
"Hey Murphy," I said, greeting my agent.
"Mabel!" he said, sounding excited. That usually meant he was drunk. Sure enough, I soon heard the clatter of a glass being dropped nearby and the loud laughter of some people. I rolled my eyes.
"Murph, what did I tell you about calling me at bars? It just sounds disgusting."
"Fine, photo princess, would you rather me go outside?"
"No!" I yelled. "Bad things happen outside of bars!" He chuckled and I pouted, despite him not being able to see it. "Did you call me for a reason?"
"Oh yeah, of course!" The line went silent for a while, and I scowled at the phone.
"Well?"
"Well what?"
"WHAT IS IT?!" I screamed finally, startling some nearby birds into the air.
"Wha-oh! Right! I called to tell you that you got a request from someone in…er, what was the name of that city? Hold on, I have it right here…ah! Here it is! They want you to cover some big party they're holding down in this town called Gravity Falls, Oregon." My eyes widened as I dropped the phone, barely noticing it getting swept away by the Mediterranean surf. Murphy's voice gurgled beneath the sea foam, and I pressed my hands to my cheeks, squealing and wiggling in place in happiness. I laughed lightly to myself, remembering my brother's many reactions to me doing the same action as we grew up. Sometimes he'd jump, other times he'd look at me in horror, as if I were having a seizure, and most times he'd simply move whatever can of soda or object of his that was near closer to him and keep flipping through his book.
I sighed happily with a small giggle thinking of my brother. God, I hadn't seen him in…was it really three years? I suppose so…last I saw of him was when we came to each other's college graduations…wow. I mean, of course I'd kept in touch with him, how could I not? We're twins for Waddles' sake! But, now that I thought about it, we hadn't seen each other in person for a while. I know what you're thinking: we should've at least been together on holidays and junk, and believe me we tried! It's just our jobs…every Christmas or Easter or even on freaking Arbor Day we have work. We never have enough down time to plan out a trip to see each other. It's quite sad really; it's as if our respective other halves are across the world from each other, like a cookie split in half with a ton of the crumbs missing.
Anyway, somewhere in my thoughts, I'd let my phone glide all the way through the water to tumble in the waves. I was beginning to rely solely on the durability of my waterproof case when I realized that I hadn't even answered Murphy yet. I stood quickly, running to the edge of the water.
Cupping my hands around my mouth, I yelled out to my phone bobbing lazily in the waves, "Murphy! I'll do it! I'm gonna get on the next flight out of Athens, 'kay?" I was pretty sure he could hear me, and I could always get a new phone, but who cares about all that?! I was going to Gravity Falls! Even if my brother wouldn't be there, something about the town always draws me in, you know, despite almost dying a handful of times.