Tourist Trapped

First summer away from home and they had to spend it at some eccentric uncle's house. They've already been there for a few days, and the brothers already expected something to be off. They figured the sister knew as well, however she was less… worried, about it.

The triplets were two boys and a girl, who all shared a startling physical likeness to one another. Bip (the youngest of the three by about fifteen minutes) had a rather free-spirited hairstyle that focused the majority of his hair to a wild entanglement on the left side of his face. On his right cheek, he had three moles located in a slightly triangular formation. His choice of clothing also left much to be discussed. The basic outfit composed of a windbreaker placed over tank tops of various colors and styles on top of black shorts (placed over his khakis) and bathroom slippers which also varied in colors and styles. At the first glance, you expect the youngest to have the most in common with the most-commonly-associated-with-quirks of the oldest sibling (by about 5 minutes), Mabel. And although the two certainly share traits and interests, there was plenty to draw similarities to the other brother, Dipper.

The weirdness officially began one day in the Shack's gift shop, where their Great Uncle (or Grunkle) Stan decided he needed some signs placed randomly in the woods in order to get some more potential customers to his tourist trap. Wendy the cashier had bluntly stated no while Soos the handyman had come up with a bizarre reason to avoid it. So it was up to one of the triplets to partake in the rather irrelevant task.

The three of them were lined up, looking up at Stan with varied expressions. Mabel's was mainly of curiosity, Dipper's of a subtle plea to not be chosen for the job, and Bip's mainly of annoyance.

"Let's see…" The elderly man mumbled, eyeing the children. "Eenie, Meenie, Minie-" he pointed to each of the siblings as he moved on to each new word, but spontaneously back peddled and pointed to Dipper. "You."

"What?" Dipper exclaimed "Grunkle Stan, shouldn't you have pointed to Mabel next?"

"I should've but I didn't." Stan grinned, spinning his cane. He shoved an armful of signs into the boy's noticeably smaller noodle arms. "Here, go put these up."

"Woo!" Mabel cheered "Not me!"

"Sucks to be you, DipDop." Bip chuckled under his breath.

"Bip, go with him." Stan said bluntly, starting to leaf through the day's profits.

"What? Why?" Bip muttered.

"Because I said so, that's why! Go on!" Stan grumbled, pointing out the door. Dipper bestowed a smug smirk to his brother which was retaliated with a (rather comedic) pout of rage. Bip took about half of the signs (and the hammer. Dipper carried the nails) and then the two went along their way.

After the short-lived tension between them withered away, Dipper muttered:

"Hey, Bip? You've noticed how weird this town is, haven't you?"

Bip rolled his eyes "You'd have to be flippin' blind not to. I mean, your bug bites spell 'Bewarb'."

Dipper flushed "Bewarb? I thought it said beware-" he checked his arm quickly and muttered under his breath at the confirmation of his brother's statement. "Well- it's still weird."

"Yeah. Obviously the bugs either don't know how to spell or have horrible team coordination." Bip muttered.

"Come on, Bip! Take this seriously!" Dipper snapped.

"Alright, alright. No more joking for the next five or so minutes. Yeah, I've noticed this town is flippin' weird." He absent-mindedly nailed a sign to a random tree "There's an oddly-shaped hole in the cliff-side and everyone is suspiciously dumb."

"I know, right!?" Dipper said, adjusting a sign to tack onto another tree. "and Grunkle Stan doesn't seem to even notice all this?"

"Well maybe he's dumb too." Bip shrugged. He handed Dipper the hammer.

"I guess." Dipper muttered, taking said hammer as his brother picked up the remaining signs "But I guess it'd be hard to be a con-man when you're stupid though."

He lightly tapped the nail to tree and at the odd metallic sound, cast Bip a glance. The two exchanged glances for a brief moment, and then Bip slowly placed his ear onto the tree and gave it a light knock. He backed up, staring at the trunk with a rather confused expression. Dipper went ahead and hit the strange tree with the hammer a few more times when suddenly a panel slid open.

Bip eyed the strange lever that was in the tree, a troubling suspicion bubbling up from the bottom of his stomach. Dipper pulled the level down, clearly troubled but still curious. A low creak was heard as another panel crept open. The brothers quickly found the in-ground hatch to which Dipper was completely fascinated by. He reached down and picked up the dust-covered book hidden within.

With theatrical preciseness, he wiped off the dust on the cover. The two boys saw their reflection on the gleaming six-fingered hand pasted to the front. A sprawling number three engraved it.

"A journal?" Dipper's eyes were huge as he flipped through the pages. "Bip, look at this! This is-" He was cut off by a sentence written in frantic scrawl.

Trust No One!

Bip's eyes narrowed. "What do you think that means?"

Dipper shrugged, his eyes scanning the page. "Apparently something was after the author and had to hide." He clicked a pen a few times "But who IS the author?"

"Who is the author of what?" The spontaneous question of the sister caused both of the high-strung boys to jump. "Woah, calm down. Hey what are you looking at?" Mabel peered between her brothers.

The two boys exchanged glances. Bip gave a slight, indifferent shrug and Dipper sighed, looking around. "Let's go somewhere else to talk." He said.

The three went back to their room in the shack, each on their respective beds. Bip's was a hammock hastily tied to the main beam on the ceiling, as it is apparently their great uncle hadn't put much thought into the room until a day or two before they arrived and therefore had no time to put in a third bed. Bip was content enough with the hammock though, being accustomed to the top bunk and more often than not falling out of bed.

He swung lazily on it as he listened to Dipper explain to Mabel about how they found the strange journal in the woods. For some reason he couldn't explain, he felt and odd sense of dread at the book. Maybe it was just that is was an unnerving mysterious thing he found in the woods- Yeah. He dismissed it as that. Near the end of Dipper's spiel, Mabel got particularly restless, clearly trying her best to listen to Dipper but incredibly excited to share her own news.

"So what's up with you?" Bip asked, peering over to his sister from the edge of his hammock.

"Okay!" Mabel grinned "Time to spill the beans!" she lightly knocked over an empty can that was on the floor for some reason, adding her own sound effect of 'boop'! "This girl's got a date!"

"Wait, you got a boyfriend in the half hour Bip and I were gone?" Dipper snorted.

"Yep!" Mabel grinned.

"You go, girl!" Bip said, high-fiving his sister. He batted his lashes "Who's the lucky gentleman?"

Mabel opened her mouth to respond when she was interrupted by the doorbell ringing. She giggled hysterically "Oh, that's probably him! Come on guys, come meet him!" she twirled to the door "Race you down the stairs!"

Bip rolled his eyes at Dipper's rather unenthusiastic retort. As ungracefully as possible, he then flopped out of his bed, did a face-plant onto the floor, quickly recovered, and dragged his brother out the door and after their sister.

At the door with Mabel was a rather… unique, looking teenager with a rather large hoodie named 'Norman'. Dipper clearly regarded him with disgust, Mabel with awe and Bip with, well, annoyance. When the two left, Dipper decided to follow them around with a camera to collect evidence on Norman's oddness. Bip decided to not care and rocked a bit on his hammock, staring at the ceiling.

He could feel it coming on again, that stinging pain in his skull. It started the same way they all did, near the center of his brain and then exploding outwards like glass shards. Bip grinded his teeth, curling over and clutching at his head. Shaking, he breathed in broken and wavering breaths. As always, everything became so crisp, so clear. He could hear everything, see everything... and damn did it hurt. Bip's fingers dug deep into his hair, clawing at his scalp. He could feel the skin break and small pools blood pool around his fingers, and as he came in contact with it he could feel the cells and the little bacteria, the elements, the atoms, the electrons. They all swirled on his fingertips and his mind felt as if it were about to burst just from that. But as it is, his mind's eye raced back in time, reading the story of everything in contact with him and in contact with the things he was in contact with and so on.

Open the Portal.

It was too much. There were too many faces, too many noises, too many… senses. A sharp intake of breath renewed the pain, like slamming a sledge hammer onto a stake. Once again, he gritted his teeth and curled himself into a tighter wad on his hammock. It was… a bit worse than he was used to. A bit harder to think- No, no that wasn't it.

Open the Portal, Open the Portal.

It was too easy to think.

OpenthePortal OpenthePortal OpenthePortal

He was suddenly able to make inferences he didn't knew possible. What was an atom made of? Simple to say now. Envision another color? Sure thing, his favorite was ultraviolet. Will humans ever make space colonies? Yeah, the one on Mars won't last long, the water is bad.

Bip tried to tear himself away from thinking like that. He knew the deeper her got into it, the harder it was to get out. One time he was out for a few days, and what he knew as 'the hangover' was torture on its own. With a great amount of will, he focused his attention on his immediate surroundings. He could hear Grunkle Stan conning people in the Shack, he could hear the pages of Wendy's magazine turning. Somewhere outside, he could hear Dipper-

No, that was too far away. Reel it back. Pay attention.

There was blood on his hands. He pried an eye open to study his fingertips. In the back of his mind, he knew Mabel would be worried.

That conscious thought set off a chain reaction. Mabel would be worried, she'd ask him what's wrong and would probably pester him. Dipper would jump to some wild conclusion and start pursuing it relentlessly, and probably will get himself hurt in the process. Then Mabel would be even MORE worried and might cry and then Dipper would be upset and then they'll both be depressed and then and thenandthenandthen-

Bip fell out of his hammock.

With a moan, he rubbed his head. Well, that one was worse than usual, but at least he got out of it. He took a moment to make sure he was well-grounded to reality, feeling along the floor boards and tracing their origins back as far as he could.

Nothing.

He sighed in relief, slouching as he simply thought 'it's wood'. Slowly he got up and stretched upward and stretched his arms out, his fingers interlacing. His head hurt. Not because he was seeing too much anymore, now it was just a normal migraine. He took a deep breath. It was alright, it was alright. He was himself again.

Open The Portal.

Bip walked over to the mirror in the room and put his hands on his hips, practicing a grin.

Open The Portal.

He stretched his legs out and ran shaking fingers through his hair.

Open the Portal.

"Bip!" Dipper's voice was downstairs, and the sound of his footsteps rang against his brother's aching skull. Bip allowed himself only a moment to cringe. Moving quickly yet silently, he rolled onto Mabel's bed and kept his feet busy by kicking the wall. He made show of looking surprised when Dipper showed up, as if he had been tuning the world out. When ironically, it was the exact opposite.

Dipper had hastily explained his suspicion of Norman being a zombie, sitting on his bed and rewinding over and over through his evidence. A tone of resentment in his voice as he told of explaining his theory and how Mabel had in turn, turned on him, and how Soos had not believed him either. Bip didn't go out of his way to tell him he saw all of that. It hurt too much to think about, it was much easier to just accept what his brother told him as truth.

"I'm telling you, Bip. There's just something not right with Norman." Dipper said.

"That name bugs me." Bip mumbled "It's like a conjunction of 'normal' and 'human'."

"Exactly!" Dipper exclaimed, his eyes darted back to his camera "It's suspicious."

Bip rolled his eyes, "You think EVERYTHING is suspicious-" his sentence was cut off by Dipper's yelp of exclamation. "Hey, don't scream at me." Bip muttered, "It's true."

"No, Bip!" Dipper yelled, shoving the camera's screen in his face "Look!" On the screen the two boys observed a rather happy looking Mabel standing next to Norman who had put his arm around her. Suddenly the odd teen's hand fell off and he nonchalantly leaned over and put it back in his sleeve.

"Do you know what this means?" Dipper gasped. Bip nodded, making a small noise to indicate he did.

"NORMAN IS-"

"-A zombie!" "-A group of gnomes!" Dipper and Bip exclaimed at the same time. Dipper quickly gave Bip a rather annoyed glare. The triangle-faced brother thought a moment, tilting his head to the side. He shook his head and gave an awkward smile.

"Actually, zombie makes more sense."

Dipper rolled his eyes. Then suddenly his eyes widened and he suddenly dragged Bip toward him by his collar. "THAT THING IS OUT THERE WITH OUR SISTER!"

The two boys immediately took action. They sprinted down from the attic and after receiving a shovel, bat, and golf cart from Soos and Wendy they were speeding on their way to save their sister. Bip armed himself with the baseball bat and jumped out of the cart before it came to a full stop as he and Dipper took a turn to answer Mabel's distressed yell. The two quickly sprinted down the path, Dipper grabbing the shovel as they did so. They broke through the clearing and found Mabel surrounded by….gnomes.

"Gnomes?" Dipper blinked, confused. Bip shot him a smug look. Dipper's face flushed and he quickly stammered "W-we'll save you Mabel!"

And they did. It took some severe beating with blunt instruments, a golf cart and a leaf blower, but the brothers managed to save their sister and she managed to save them. The triplets, tired and messy, went into the gift shop of their uncle's shack. Stan, in a rare act of kindness, allowed the children to take one item from the shop. Dipper chose a hat to replace the one he had lost, and was quite content with it, admiring himself in the mirror. Mabel confused everyone again and claimed a grappling hook for her own. Bip tilted his head to the side and scanned the assorted items, scrunching up his face as he thought. Nothing in the room really interested him, but Stan was being kind for once, so he wanted to take advantage of it…

He shrugged and picked up one of the small 'Mystery Boxes' on the shelf. "This thing." He grinned.

"That's a huge rip-off, kid." Stan rolled his eyes.

"Yeah but maybe it's not." Bip and Mabel said almost simultaneously. They grinned at each other. Dipper rolled his eyes and muttered:

"Seriously Bip, it's probably something horrible."

"You don't know that!" Bip and Mabel's voices echoed each other. The two shared a giggle.

Stan sighed in annoyance "No point in it, Dipper. The two made up their minds." Dipper sighed in defeat.

That night, after Dipper was finish scribbling something down in the journal and Mabel was finished breaking stuff with the grappling hook, Bip stared at the ceiling in the dark. He was always an insomniac, always found it so hard to sleep. He huffed and rolled off his hammock but landed lightly onto the floor as to not wake his siblings. Silently he left the room, passing the tiny red box on the shelf on his way out. In the dark, he stared at it a little bit and then rolled his eyes.

Yeah, Dipper was probably right and it was probably nothing interesting, but he took the box with him downstairs. In his pajamas he sat on the recliner with only the standing lamp illuminating the darkness. Uncaringly, he pried apart the cardboard to find the object hidden inside. He tilted his head. It wasn't…horrible, but it certainly wasn't something too interesting. It was just a cheap little snow globe made of plastic with glitter flickering around. The plastic it was made of was dark and in a way, if you reached for threads and had a very active imagination, it looked like the night sky.

Bip shrugged and put the snow globe on the dinosaur skull next to the couch and decided to spend the night watching TV.

Is Bip an OC? I don't think he is technically, and I'm sure you all get what's going on. I'm just really afraid people are gonna dismiss this story as a lame OC insert.

Post- AN Short:

Stan yawned and walked into the living room not-really-early in the morning, holding a cup of coffee and scratching himself. He walked over to his recliner and took a sip of his coffee, glaring at Bip, who had curled up on the couch like a kitten. The TV was still on, blaring a marathon of Ducktective. Stan, in all his curiosity, sat on the T-rex skull and watched it for a bit, and then watched the next episode, and the next, and the next, and the next…

And he was still watching it when Soos and Wendy had come in for work that day. Needless to say, The Mystery Shack was closed for the day due to technical success.