Property of -

"Aww, man!" Dipper groaned as the bus jolted again, ruining his signature for the third time. He reached for the eraser, but it wasn't where he remembered placing it. Writing utensils seemed to have the same properties of the unseen Hide-behind: they were always THERE, but they could never be found. "Mabel, have you seen the eraser?"

She hadn't. It took around half a minute, but the two of them found it halfway under Dipper's seat.

"Huh. I guess it dropped somehow. Thanks, Mabel."

Dipper started to erase the jagged mistake. He would rather be using his pens, but the Oregon roads guaranteed disaster, and he was borrowing both the pencil and the hideously bright neon eraser from Mabel. Ink could wait until the bus arrived at Piedmont. He hadn't even decided how to start his new journal yet: Great Uncle Ford's first page on all three of his journals had included a title page with his name, though of course the latter half of the page of Journal 3 had been torn. Dipper intended to do the same, but...

"I still can't decide," Dipper said, staring at the nearly-blank page. "How should I introduce myself, Mabel? I mean, Dipper's the name I think of myself by, but then there's my official name, but I kinda like the ring of naming myself Pine Tree. Sounds all code-namey and symbolic and stuff. But everything seems… wrong, somehow. Any ideas?"

"I don't know," Mabel responded quietly, almost in a sigh. "Dipper, I guess?"

Dipper looked up at Mabel. It wasn't like his usually upbeat twin to answer so lacklusterly, and now that he thought about it, Mabel hadn't given her customary 'You're welcome' for him thanking her. She hadn't even made fun of him for losing her eraser in the first place, and that should definitely have set off some red flags. Mabel was gazing out the window, absentmindedly scratching behind Waddle's ears, ignoring her beloved pig as Waddles squealed happily. Normally, she'd be all giggly and pretending he was D.J. Hogg or something equally suited to drive him crazy. Something was definitely wrong.

"Hey, you OK?" Dipper ventured, shutting the journal. "You seem kinda, I don't know, down."

Silence for a few seconds except for the low growl of the engine and the grunts of a pig. Dipper opened his mouth to ask again when Mabel replied.

"I'm fine, I think. I guess I just miss everyone already. The Grunkles, Wendy, Soos, Candy, Greta… I even miss Grompers. Is it weird that I'm missing a goat?"

"Hey, as long as it's not Bill, you can miss whoever you want," Dipper quipped, eliciting a small smile from Mabel. "I'll even say that I miss Pacifica, even though she's still the worst."

"Dipper..." Mabel interjected in a warning tone that Dipper had heard many times before. Dipper raised his hand quickly and resumed speaking before Mabel could defend Pacifica, and he suppressed a shudder. Power of Mabel indeed.

"I'm kidding, I'm kidding! But yeah, I miss them already too. All the crazy adventures we had together, like fighting an army of living wax figurines, or busting up the Society of the Blind Eye..."

"Or doing a certain dance to escape a pair of teenager-hating ghosts?"

"We do NOT talk about that night, and we DEFINITELY don't talk about that dance!" Dipper exclaimed vehemently, as Mabel unsuccessfully tried not to snicker. Making jokes (even at his expense) was still a step up from moping, so hey, improvement. "Anyways, what I was going to say was that through all the mystery and mayhem, there was nothing we couldn't do when we did it together. And we're gonna miss Gravity Falls, and all our friends we made there, and getting used to boring Piedmont's going to be difficult, but you know what? We'll be doing it all together, missing them and all.

"Thanks, Dipper," Mabel replied after a pause. "Though you really need to work on your motivational speaking skills. I mean, 'We'll suffer together' is kind of blah."

Dipper rolled his eyes, though he was inwardly satisfied. Mabel was back to normal, or at least back to Mabel-normal which by most definitions, come to think of it, wasn't actually normal.

"You can be the people-twin, I'll be the - "

"Geeky, bookworm, know-it-all twin?"

"... Sure, whatever. Though I would've preferred something… nicer?"

"Mystery Twins, 2.0!" Mabel whooped before pinching Waddle's cheeks and grinning.

Dipper gasped. "Mabel, that's it!" He reopened the journal, eying the incomplete title page.

"Boop! Mabel does it again. What'd I do?"

Dipper didn't answer as he started to write, thinking back to the journal that he had carried for almost the entire summer. It was Ford's first, obviously, but Dipper had written a few entries himself while Ford was still stuck beyond the portal. But Dipper hadn't been the only one to record the weirdness that existed near Gravity Falls: Mabel and Soos had both made their marks in the Journal, recording important information that he didn't know.

That's why every name for himself as the author of the new journal seemed wrong. It wouldn't be right to declare that he was going to be the sole master of weirdness back at Piedmont - he didn't hold the monopoly on insight in Gravity Falls, and he probably wouldn't have it back at home.

Dipper grinned as he looked at the writing on the title page. He'd ink it later, and figure out how to add the Shooting Star symbol to the cover with his own Pine Tree. But until they arrived back in California, this would do.

Property of the Mystery Twins, 2.0.