It's a total fluke that he happens to be walking Waddles in the rain along the perimeter of the helipad when Wendy Corduroy's helicopter touches down.
Dipper looks up as Grunkle Stan rushes out from inside the base, Soos chattering behind with an umbrella and clipboard. He stands practically under the copter as it lands, shouting that it's late and didn't they know the apocalypse had a schedule to keep?
"Calm down, old man," a girl's voice says. "This mosquito is hard enough to pilot in GOOD weather."
Dipper watches a flash of red hair emerge from the door and for a second, he thinks something has caught on fire despite the rain.
She steps off the copter, tall and bold and bored, and Stan says, "Soos, tell her where the trials are going to be held! We need her in a Jaeger with a partner by week's end."
Soos starts flipping through his clipboard and the girl glances around.
Waddles pulls on his leash, lightly, in their direction, and Dipper doesn't realize he's following until he's standing right next to Grunkle Stan and the girl looks at him.
"What happened to your face?" she asks, wincing sympathetically.
"It—uh—I mean, it's—" Dipper stammers, trying to make his Robbie-inflicted black eye look less terrible than it is. "You—you should see the, the uh...ther guy."
One of her eyebrows rises and Dipper prays for a Cat 5 Kaiju to rise up out of the ocean and swallow him.
But then she smiles. "Nice"
She offers him a palm in high five. Dipper stares at it. He stares at the tips of her hair which have gotten wet and clumped in the Hong Kong rain.
"Dude, don't leave me hanging."
Dipper laughs loudly, awkwardly, and smacks her palm.
Soos and Stan usher her away but she reaches down to scratch Waddles' behind the ears before Stan barks at him to get inside with the dang pig unless he was trying to bait a Kaiju on purpose. Dipper stands there, staring after them in the rain, before the realization slides into his gut.
Oh god. He waited too long to high five her.
"You didn't get the memo?" Mabel asks, aghast. "It was all over the PA!"
"No, who is she?"
"Wendy Corduroy," Mabel explains, painting Waddle's nails on the floor of their bedroom. "She comes from a family of Rangers. She took over piloting from her mom when she got sick, and now it's just her and her dad in that shiny new Mach Five. The K.O. Corduroys!" she proclaims, punching the air.
"But then where's her dad? I didn't see anyone else get off the copter." Dipper starts to pace. "If she's here to pilot, shouldn't her dad have come? And why did Grunkle Stan tell Soos she needed to have trials for a partner? It doesn't add up."
"Maybe she and her dad fell out of compatibility," Mabel suggests.
Or worse, Dipper thinks. Most pilots didn't live long enough to fall out of compatibility.
"Anyway, I just hope she doesn't get paired up with that jerk-face, Robbie," Mabel goes on.
"I know. The last thing I need is Robbie V in a Jaeger."
"How's your face, by the way?"
Dipper walks over to the mirror. His black eye looks like hell, but his split lip is starting to heal lopsidedly. His mind slips back to Wendy and he smiles.
"It's...nice."
"Yeah, OKAY, broseph," Mabel teases.
"I'm going to go see when her compatibility trials are," Dipper says, fixing his hat and heading out the door. "Don't wait up for me."
"See you for dinner, Jaeger co-pilot!" Mabel calls as she props Waddles up in her lap. "Waddles, can you say 'Jaeger'?"
Waddles oinks and Dipper can hear Mabel's squeal of joy all the way down the hall.
Wendy wipes the floor with her competition. They put nine different guys and girls in front of her and she has them all beaten in ten minutes.
"C'mon, Stan!" she challenges, lightly kicking the opponent at her feet. "What's with all these woobies you're throwing at me?"
"Who you calling a woobie?" Robbie says under his breath, smirking as he steps onto the mat behind Wendy, bo staff at the ready.
Dipper isn't at the trial, strictly speaking. He's just working out in the gym, doing his own exercises and fighting forms in a corner with his eyes glued on the action. As Robbie lurks behind an unsuspecting Wendy, Dipper feels the warning crawl up his throat.
Wendy hardly bats an eye. Without turning, she ducks under Robbie's wild swing and swipes his legs out from under him.
"One," she counts monotonously, tapping him on the head.
The shock passes Robbie's face in an instant. It's replaced immediately by embarrassment and then anger, in that order. He springs back to his feet and circles.
"...look...out." Dipper says feebly, the words escaping in a belated wheeze. He can't even pretend to exercise anymore.
Robbie goes to strike first again. The fight proceeds. Wendy beats him, five points to three, which is better than any of the other potentials, but not enough to guarantee drift compatibility. Dipper thinks his smile might split his face in half when he sees Robbie's reaction to the news.
The trainees disperse dejectedly and Grunkle Stan leaves grumbling to attend to other matters. Dipper resumes his exercises in the corner, feeling like his black eye isn't bothering him as much as it was nearly a minute ago.
"Hey how come you weren't at the trials?"
Wendy's leaning on her bo staff, smiling at him.
Dipper looks at her, then checks behind him to make sure it's him she's talking to. There's no one else in the gym.
"Oh, y'know, didn't want to embarrass the other trainees with my awesome skills," he says.
"Well there's no one left to embarrass," she chuckles and tosses the second bo staff in his direction.
He reaches up to catch it, fumbles, and drops it. Yeah, no one to embarrass except himself.
"C'mon, dude. It's not a trial. It's just some sparring." Wendy laughs at his flummoxed expression as he scoops up the staff and walks over to the mat. She whirls, braid snapping. "Give me your best shot. Show me what the other guy looked like."
"Okay," Dipper says. "But you asked for it."
Wendy goes for an easy tap to the head but he blocks. In the same motion, he knocks out one of her knees, getting her low enough to tap her head.
"One," he says with a grin.
He takes a step back for the next round but her bo staff shoots forward like a snake, stopping half an inch from his chin. Dipper flinches back.
There's a spark in her eyes when she says, "One."
She beats him, five to four, and even though he's sweating and gross and sore, she's smiling at him and it's enough to make him smile too.
Grunkle Stan calls him to his office over the PA system so everyone in the base can hear. Mabel reassures him that it's probably just to check up on how he's feeling today.
"Uh-oh!" Robbie jeers from the table over as a panic-stricken Dipper walks out of the cafeteria. "Looks like they're demoting you back to rock-em-sock-em robots, twerp!"
By the time Dipper opens Stan's office door, he's imagined every possible apocalypse.
But it's just Wendy in the room, standing near the desk, locked in a deadly glaring contest with Grunkle Stan. They only turn when Dipper clears his throat.
"You, ahem, wanted to see me?"
"He was the best by a long shot," Wendy says to Stan. "I want him."
Dipper is sure he is turning the brightest, most unmanliest shade of pink humanly possible.
"I don't care if he was the best Jaeger pilot north of Nantucket," Stan barks. "The fact of the matter is you're piloting with Robbie V and that's final."
Dipper's urge to smile evaporates.
"That guy didn't score nearly as high!"
"It doesn't matter, Corduroy. You can't pilot with Dipper because Dipper here already has a co—"
"Copious amounts of time!" Dipper cuts in frantically. "To, uh, learn how to pilot a Mach Five! With Wendy!"
Grunkle Stan looks at him oddly.
"See?" Wendy comes over to Dipper's side brightly. "Dipper's on board."
Stan's look morphs into a glare. It takes all of Dipper's willpower to try and look as innocent as possible. He hopes Wendy isn't close enough to feel him start to perspire.
"Stan. You know this is a good match," Wendy says more seriously when Stan is quiet. "The only three people to ever pilot a Jaeger single-handedly are standing in this room. Let us TRY."
Dipper glances at Wendy, fearless Wendy, but either her face betrays nothing or he doesn't have time to look properly before Stan holds up a finger.
"One drift. You have ONE drift to impress me. Now get out of my office and go suit up."
Wendy fives Dipper. "Nice!"
Dipper's in the bathroom struggling with the too big Mach Five circuitry wetsuit when Mabel skips into the room. He almost jumps out of his second skin.
"So! What did Grunkle Stan want to talk to you about?"
"He just wanted to see how I was doing! Yeah. Just like you said."
"That's good," she says. He hears the bed squeak with weight. "Hey! Wanna go see Titan Lumber's test run? We can make Wendy encouraging posters!"
"Uh, actually, Soos needs me to help him fix something so I'll be with him."
"Well Waddles and I are going to get front row seats!"
Dipper trips into his sweatpants and curses under his breath.
"Actually, I think Grenda and Candy said they were looking for you!"
He hears her pause as he quickly throws a hoodie over the under armor and stuffs the Mach Five helmet in a duffel bag.
"About what?"
"Science! And...things. Uh, something about Kaiju drifting."
"Mad scientist friends being science-y! Awesome!" she whoops. "Were they down in the labs?"
Dipper emerges with his baggy clothes and duffel bag under one arm. Wendy's probably already suited up and waiting for him.
"Yeah, down in the labs," he parrots, scuffling out the door. "See you after the test run."
"Hey Dipper."
He turns, fidgeting. Mabel is smiling at him.
"I know we didn't want Robbie and Wendy co-piloting together," she says understandingly, "but Grunkle Stan knows what he's doing. Don't be a grump, okay? They might fall out of compatibility before the end of the war and they'll put her with someone who isn't such a jerky-jerk."
A universe of guilt compacts in his stomach.
"...thanks, Mabel."
"Anytime," she says and heads out the door, Waddles trailing behind.
"Are you...nervous?"
Wendy sighs as she snaps into her cradle on the Jaeger's left side. "A little, I guess. No point lying now, right?" She shifts in place. "First time drifting with someone who isn't family."
Dipper stares at his feet clicking in. "I know the feeling."
The countdown starts for the Neural Handshake. Dipper can feel Grunkle Stan's criticizing eyes from the comm tower. "Fifteen seconds!"
"Look on the bright side," Dipper says, attempting Mabel's perpetual enthusiasm. "At least Stan gave us a shot. Some part of him must think this is a good idea."
"Yeah, or some part of him knows I could kick his butt inside or out of a Jaeger," she jokes.
"Five seconds!"
Her statement about single handedly piloting a Jaeger is haunting him, and it weighs down his banter. "Stan is wiser than he looks."
"Initiating..." says the man in the comm tower.
"See you in the Drift," says Wendy.
Dipper tries to relax even as he futilely attempts to ferret away as many memories of piloting with, and without, Mabel as he can before it all starts.
"See ya, wouldn't want to be—"
Then it's happening.
The Drift with Wendy is different.
Dipper watches a kaleidoscope movie whizz by in front of him, but it's one he's never seen before. There aren't any repeated memories. The feelings are fresh faced and new. The experiences bright and crippling.
He watches a five year old Wendy tell a boy on the playground she likes him. Then she's eight and learning how to swing a full sized ax for the first time. She's waving goodbye to her parents on their first Jaeger mission. She's getting medicine pills for her mother. She's drifting with her father.
She's piloting a Jaeger, on her own, all at once.
The intensity spikes. It hits him like a boulder on a windshield, it's so sudden. Dipper barely stops himself from snatching the R.A.B.I.T.
But he fights it, he goes with the flow, and feels the total sync a few seconds before he hears the comm tower confirm it.
In the shared mindscape, the neural handshake feels more like a neural high five.
"Not bad, kids," Grunkle Stan tells them, afterwards, in his office. "All in all, a successful test. You scored 79% compatibility. Full range of motion, complete weapons systems control... Could have done without the BMW hacky-sack game for coordination though."
Dipper beams when Wendy nudges him playfully.
"Wendy, you're excused. Go talk to Soos, he has some mods for you. Dipper, stay."
"See you at dinner, PARTNER," she says with a thumbs up.
Dipper waves as the door shuts. But when he turns to Grunkle Stan's critical stare, every atom of elation in his body vanishes.
"Do you know why I let you pilot with Wendy Corduroy?" he asks.
Dipper shakes his head expectedly. Stan has Dipper sit.
"I worked with her old man back when I was piloting myself," Stan says. "Dan Corduroy was a hell of a Ranger, and Wendy got all her dad's genes. She wanted you as co-pilot and I let you two ride together out of respect for her old man."
Dipper's memories of the Drift replay, glimpses of the father daughter team working together in Wendy's memories, taking down Kaiju with a strength and conviction no one else at the base came close to possessing. And all he can think about is that she picked him. Over all those other woobies. Over Robbie. She thought he had what it took to run with the K.O. Corduroys.
Dipper puffs out his chest and says, "Okay, so what's the problem? Let us kick some Kaiju butt together. You saw how compatible we were!"
"Have you learned how to pilot two Jaegers simultaneously?" Grunkle Stan asks with a straight face.
He waits for Dipper to shake his head.
"Then 96% neural alignment still takes the pot," Stan announces, holding up a computer printout from his desk, covered in glitter and pictures of kittens. "Face it Dipper, family always scores higher. Mabel's the best co-pilot you're ever going to get."
"Ugh, Grunkle Stan, I've been piloting with Mabel since we got into the Jaeger program," Dipper says. "I'm ready for the big leagues."
Stan eyes him. "It doesn't get any bigger than where you're at, kid."
"Yes it does!" Dipper insists. "Aoshima Rumble is a purple Mach Three with kitten fists and laser vision, held together with duct tape and FAITH that a Kaiju won't hit this particular spot or that one, or we're dead in the water! Titan Lumber can take on Cat 4s and bigger! It's a REAL Jaeger! Wendy's a REAL Jaeger co-pilot!"
Stan looks him over twice, then coughs, wetly, and pops a small pill. He comes around from behind his desk and leans on the arm of Dipper's chair.
"What's the real reason you don't want to pilot with yer sister?"
The moments are few and far between when Grunkle Stan emerges from the stiff suit of Program Commander Stanford Pines. Dipper rubs his arm and looks at the floor.
"It's not that I don't want to pilot with Mabel... It's just..."
He remembers Robbie's words. Before everything went red with his blistering anger. Before his face, his ribs, his knuckles went numb with the blows and the disgusting realization that Robbie wasn't entirely wrong.
"I don't want to be piloting an overgrown clown suit, Grunkle Stan," he says quietly. "I don't want to be a total joke anymore."
"Who says you are?"
"...I do," Dipper admits. "I hold back and play along with Mabel because I don't want her remembering the things I remember. I don't want her to be," he whispers the next part, embarrassed, "fucked up like me."
Dipper's staring at Grunkle Stan's boot, the gold buttons embellished with the Jaeger program logo. "But I don't have to hold back like that with Wendy. I want to be a great Ranger and a real hero and Mabel can't take anything seriously." There's a paperclip on the ground and Dipper kicks it under the desk. "Besides," he adds, trying to lighten the weight of his words, "if I don't pilot with Wendy, then Robbie will and that'd be more apocalyptic than the apocalypse."
The man and boy are quiet for a minute.
"That's understandable."
Dipper glances up. "Really?"
"No, not really," Grunkle Stan says, grunting as he gets back to his desk. "But if this whole Wendy business is going to screw up yer performance with Mabel anyway, I can spare you the break. You'll run next mission with Wendy until we can find her another pilot. I'll tell Mabel at dinner. You're dismissed."
Dipper feels the weight press off his chest as he pushes the door open to leave.
Mabel is standing on the other side with Waddles on a leash. A stack of Soos scrawled papers labeled for Stan rest slackly under one arm.
All the air is squeezed out of planet earth.
"Mabel..."
Hurt flashes bright in her eyes and she throws the stack of papers at Dipper, picks up Waddles and runs as fast as she can down the hall. The fluttering papers smokescreen most of her retreat.
Grunkle Stan peeks his head out the door and says, "Uh oh."
"Just let me explain!"
"Oh, sorry, is someone TALKING to me right now?"
"Look, Mabel," Dipper jiggles the bathroom doorknob, "open the door and we'll—"
"Mabel's not here! She's in Sweater Town."
"Can you stop being like this for five seconds so I can talk to you?"
"Like what?" The betrayal is acidic. "Like a baby? Like a little kid you have to play GAMES with because I'm too dumb to know what's really going on?"
"I didn't mean it like that..."
"How COULD you mean it? How could you SAY those things? Aoshima Rumble isn't stupid! She's saved our lives more times than you can count! I thought she was special to you!"
"That's not the point, Mabel! Don't you see?!" he shouts. "The Kaiju are getting smarter and more aggressive every day and we're waddling around in an outdated Jaeger design with customizations that makes NO sense! People are dying! You and I can't keep—!"
An alarm rings out, blaring and bright, lights spinning.
"KAIJU ALERT! TWO CAT 4S! ALL JAEGER PILOTS REPORT TO THE SHATTERDOME IMMEDIATELY!"
"Two?" Dipper repeats, blinking at the lights. "But...there's never been two Kaijus at once before..."
Dipper buries his frustration, grabs his Mach Three helmet reflexively. "C'mon Mabel. We can finish this after we stop some Kaijus."
"I'm not going," Mabel says, muffled.
Dipper bangs on the bathroom door. "They said ALL pilots, Mabel."
"So? You're going to go pilot your shiny new perfect Jaeger with Wendy. So go ahead!" she says, "Because I'm not getting in a Jaeger with you!"
"Well then maybe we shouldn't be co-pilots anymore!" Dipper snaps.
Mabel hesitates a second. "Well...maybe we SHOULDN'T!"
"Fine by me!"
"DOUBLE fine by me!"
"TRIPLE FINE BY ME!"
"FINE BY ME INFINITY!"
Dipper throws his Mach Three helmet at his bed and grabs his Mach Five helmet by the door. As he walks out, Dipper does his best to ignore the way guilt makes his stomach churn.
"Okay dudes, we've got two Kaijus. Both are Cat 4s which is, like, really bad," Soos says, standing next to a projected screen. "Designations are gonna be 'Gobblewonker' for the long fishy looking one and 'Gremoblin' for the one that looks like a gorilla lizard that got hit in the face with a frying pan." He glances around at the gathered pilots. "...Is that mean to say? Stan told me to say that."
"Geez, who comes up with these names?" Wendy mutters to Dipper.
"Stan pulls them out of an old book he has," Dipper sort-of answers.
Wendy notices. "You okay, dude?"
"Do I have a choice?"
Grunkle Stan arrives to deploy the teams. The Durland-Blubbs and Gleeful-Northwest Jaegers are on offensive, one Kaiju each. Corduroy-Pines is told to suit up but wait for orders to intervene only if necessary.
Dipper thought the words 'Corduroy-Pines' would stir something more in him. It feels like a hollow victory. Even Robbie's bitter glare from across the room doesn't make him as happy as it should.
Wendy's pumped. "Those Kaijus won't know what hit them!"
Dipper catches a splash of purple out of the corner of his eye and sees Mabel standing with junior Kaiju specialists Greta and Candy, her Jaeger circuitry wetsuit on. The scientists tell her something with worried expressions. Dipper looks away.
"Those Kaijus are gonna be sorry they picked Hong Kong to mess with," he says.
Wendy claps him on the back, grinning. "That's the spirit."
Those Kaijus are unlike anything he's ever seen.
Gobblewonker, slender and aquatic and faster than any Jaeger, disappears with Gleeful-Northwest underwater, shrieking. Stocky and brutish with arms thick as skyscrapers, Gremoblin beats the ever living crap out of Durland-Blubbs.
"We have to do something!" Wendy says.
Gremoblin grabs the Durland-Blubbs Jaeger by the shoulders with rocky hands. It's eyes begin to glow fluorescent blue and through their coms, they can hear the ex-police duo screaming.
"Okay, forget orders!" Dipper says. He and Wendy run at the Kaiju.
"Titan Lumber! Dudes! What are you doing?"
"Sorry, Soos," Wendy calls over coms, powering up her arm as they run. "Duty calls."
They blast Gremoblin in the back. It drops the Durland-Blubbs Jaeger, which sinks into the water like a toy. It turns its attention to Lumber, roars and lunges, but Titan Lumber dances out of its staggering grasp and uppercuts it in the ribs.
"On my count," Wendy says. "Three, two..."
They pitch the Kaiju across the bay.
"Yeah!" Wendy cheers. "That's how it's done!"
Dipper's grins too. This is really working. "Alright, let's—"
Soos shouts, "Sweet maple syrup on toast!" and then Gobblewonker shoots out of the water underneath them, coiling around their Jaeger like a snake. Lumber swipes at it, but it screeches like scraping metal and latches it's jaw around the the Jaeger's head.
"Get it off!" Wendy shouts, "It's gonna—!"
The sides of the head creak and cave a few feet.
"GET OFF!" Dipper shoots the canon, but Gobblewonker is underwater again before the blast hits, vanishing into the inky ocean.
Dipper scans all the radars and sonars, every blip and chime, but nothing Kaiju sized turns up underwater. The unease starts to set in.
Wendy yells into her coms, "Soos! Do you have a clear reading on Gobblewonker? We can't see ten feet in front of us out here!"
"Behind you!"
They turn, expecting Gobblewonker, but it's Gremoblin who grabs them in a metal crushing bear hug. Dipper and Wendy cry out in pain as Lumber's metal strains. The A.I. pleasantly informs them that the missile door is obstructed.
Gremoblin's eyes glow blue.
"Don't look at it!" Dipper warns, screwing his eyes shut, "Wendy, don't look!"
But Dipper hears her scream as the Kaiju pummels into her mind, fishing out her greatest fear. The shared mindscape drags him down with her.
There's a moment of blissful white calm, like the second before a neural handshake, and then Dipper finds himself standing in Titan Lumber, with Wendy at her post on the Jaeger's left side, her hair several inches shorter, and Manly Dan piloting where Dipper should be. The two grin as their Jaeger wrestles a spider-like Kaiju into the ocean.
"Wendy!" Dipper calls, running over to her. He's never had to fish anyone out of a R.A.B.I.T. before, but he remembered the basics from training. "This isn't real! It's just a memory!"
"We don't have enough arms for this," Manly Dan says into his coms. "Trickster is getting out of hand!"
Wendy chuckles. "Nice one, dad."
Dipper watches as Wendy watches as one of Trickster's limbs rears back and pierces through the eye shield, straight into her father.
He feels the terror she feels, the grief, the boiling fury that corrodes her heart when she grips the entire Jaeger with just her mind and proceeds to break every bone in Trickster's body.
"Wendy!" Dipper calls, trying to shake her. "It's not real, Wendy! We're in the middle of a fight, you need to snap out if it!"
She doesn't hear or see him. She keeps screaming with each blow, tears pouring down her face.
Dipper feels Wendy's anguish like it was his own, and suddenly it IS his own. Her R.A.B.I.T. triggers his and next he knows, he's piloting with Mabel in Aoshima, just off the coast of Oregon. He's fighting his first Kaiju despite his orders from the Gravity Falls base not to engage. It's a Cat 1, full of alien parasites that make it look like a giant Kaiju made of smaller gnome sized Kaijus. Stan called it Schmebulock but no one else wanted to pronounce that.
Dipper's arguing with Stan in his coms. "We can't let that thing get to shore, Grunkle Stan! Too many lives are at stake."
"I'm giving you a direct order to come back to base!"
"We can do it!" Dipper says, punching the Kaiju in the face. "We can stop it! You just need to trust us. Tell him, Mabel!"
As he's saying it, the Kaiju's claw grips him by the head and tears Mabel out, screaming.
The shock to his system, the titanium punch to his body when it's suddenly just him in control of the Jaeger is overwhelming, but this isn't the first time he's relived this moment.
"It's a memory," Dipper tells himself. "It's not happening, it's just a memory." He struggles to breathe evenly. "I'm in a Jaeger with Wendy Corduroy in Hong Kong. This isn't really happening. I'm not here, I'm not here..."
It's R.A.B.I.T. training and he's drilled it a thousand times. But something about this vision is too vivid. His phantom terror is too real in the light of Gremoblin's glowing eyes, and something's wrong with the memory, very very WRONG.
Because he remembers delivering a finishing blow, sending the Kaiju reeling, dropping Mabel. He remembers catching her just inches before she hits the ocean.
Now it's playing out differently.
Mabel's still falling. The Kaiju's still alive, still fighting him. He can't reach her. He can't grab her fast enough. He watches the ocean swallow her up and he feels a hot piercing through the half of the mindscape that is hers before total silence.
"Mabel!" he screams. There's no answer. "Mabel!" He struggles and thrashes but he can't move his arms.
He vaguely hears the A.I. pinging, informing them in English and Chinese that he is out of neural alignment. He hardly feels the crippling grip or the straining sound of Titan Lumber's metal outside the collapsing prison of his worst fear.
"MABEL!"
Then he hears her, far off in the distance, sounding like she's saying, "LEAVE MY BROTHER ALONE YOU BIG BUTT-FACE!"
Dipper feels the blow that knocks Gremoblin off of them. He feels his arms release and everything shakes when Titan Lumber falls to its knees. The glowing blue light slowly vanishes from in front of his eyes and with it gone, he and Wendy stumble back into reality.
"Dipper..." she breathes. "What was that?"
Dipper's blurred vision clears slowly, bringing the equipment and the lights back into focus. He sees Wendy to his left, blinking rapidly. And outside of the Jaeger...
Aoshima Rumble is repeatedly punching Gremoblin in the face with its kitten fists.
"Take that!" Mabel is shouting over coms. "And that! And THAT!"
"Mabel!" Dipper calls, wiping at his eyes. "Oh my god, are you okay? Are you in there by yourself?"
"Kinda busy now, Dipper!" she calls back at the same time Robbie's voice cries out in panic, "Are you crazy? Back up! It's going to cream us!" and Grunkle Stan's voice snaps, "If you keep backseat piloting, V, I'm gonna demote you to Kaiju bait!"
Gremoblin swings at Aoshima, knocking the Jaeger sideways into the water.
Dipper turns to Wendy. "We've got to get over there."
Wendy presses a pattern of unfamiliar buttons with one hand as Lumber picks itself up. She wipes the tears from her face with the other. "Already on it."
The mechanisms in Lumber's right arm click and whirr and a giant ax unfolds from the forearm. Titan Lumber grips it like a true lumberjack and they run at Gremoblin, swinging at it with full force. The slice doesn't go far into the thick muscles of its neck but fluorescent blood pours out, mixing colorfully with the ocean water. The Kaiju roars in pain and tries to stagger away.
"Mabel! Grunkle Stan! Are you okay in there?" Dipper calls as they take another swing with the ax.
"Their vitals are fluctuating rapidly," Candy tells them over comms from the base. "Stan has not been in a Jaeger for over thirty years and the strain to his system is taking a toll."
"Quit yer yammering, Candy," Stan barks. "I'm old, not d—!" Grunkle Stan is cut off by his own wet coughing.
"Who let them get in there together?" Dipper says angrily. Another chop at Gremoblin sends it retreating for the time being. Titan Lumber stays by Aoshima Rumble's side as the older Jaeger picks itself up. "And who on Earth let Robbie tag along?"
"You two needed backup and everyone else at base were being poop heads," Mabel says.
"And for your information, I'm a replacement pilot in case Grandpa here bites it," Robbie snarks.
Gobblewonker's fin slices through the water at them. They take a chop at it, missing, and its blip disappears from the sonar. Aoshima Rumble backs up against Titan Lumber and both robots scan the waters.
"What are we gonna do?" Dipper mutters to himself, his mind whirring as fast as Lumber's gears. "We got two Kaijus and two Jaegers, but Grunkle Stan's no good for piloting and Robbie and Mabel aren't even SLIGHTLY compatible. We're in the middle of a battlefield and miles from base, and—"
"Computer," Wendy says, "disengage pilot two."
Dipper gawks at her. "What are you—?"
Something flashes in Wendy's eyes. "You're right, Dipper. We've got two Kaiju and two Jaegers left. We need them both running on all cylinders." She starts pressing buttons. "Robbie and Mabel may not be compatible, but Robbie and I are. And I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you and your sister can probably kick major butt in the same Jaeger. You do the math."
There are a thousand questions on his mind but Grunkle Stan interrupts them all.
"Have you gone nuts?!" he shouts, spluttering through his cough. "You can't just switch partners across Jaeger suits in the middle of an active battlefield, Corduroy!"
"Actually," Soos's voice cuts in from the comm tower, miles away, "switching's easy! All you gotta do is swap gear. Redoing a neural handshake with no parameters is the tricky part."
"But it's not impossible?" Mabel asks.
"Not at all, Hambone. Anything's possible if you believe."
"We've got a pair of Cat 4 Kaiju out here and a city of innocent people to protect," Dipper shouts. "We can't power down our only two functioning Jaegers!"
The computer asks Wendy to reconfirm her request to disengage pilot two. She looks at Dipper with renewed determination. "Leave that to me. Disengage."
The entire Jaeger shudders as Dipper's feet click out of the cradle and he stumbles forward. Wendy grunts from the exertion, her eyes rolling back.
"Get out on the shoulder port..." she says through gritted teeth." Restart Aoshima with your sister...Send Robbie over to me..."
Watching her is painful even if Dipper can't feel the pain. Mabel, Soos, Stan and Robbie are all shouting in his comms but he can't tear his eyes off her, straining and bending like a reed. "Wendy—"
"GO!"
Dipper jogs to the port and, casting her one last look, blurts, "Wendy, you'rethemostincrediblepersonI'veevermetandifanythinghappenstomeIthinkI'm, like, in love with you."
He turns and scrambles out the shoulder port before he has a chance to properly regret his words.
Inside a powered down Aoshima, Robbie is swearing like a sailor as Soos directs him on how to manually restart the Jaeger. Grunkle Stan appears in his night shirt and boxers, a modified power drill in one hand and his stripped Mach Three gear in the other hand. Mabel is asking the comm tower for the precise location of the Kaijus. Dipper unlatches his helmet and grabs his old one from the floor as Grunkle Stan starts taking the modified drill to Dipper's outer armor.
"Kid, if we get out of this alive, remind me to never not take my own advice again," Stan says, wiping absentmindedly at the stream of blood coming from his nose.
"I'm sorry I got us into this mess," Dipper says and Stan pulls off his chest plate. "Are you okay?"
"I'll be fine," Stan assures him gruffly. "Worry about yourself."
"If you hadn't been totally jealous and let me pilot with Wendy to begin with," Robbie sneers, putting on the Mach Five pieces as soon as Dipper takes them off, "we wouldn't be in this clusterfuck!"
Dipper turns from Stan to fire back at Robbie but Mabel steps in between them.
"Boys! Do this later! Wendy is—!"
Gremoblin's roar rings out and the four of them turn to see it hunching over. A line of bone-white spikes rip out from it's spine and a pair of battered leather wings unfold from its back. It flies up out of the water and dives down at Titan Lumber.
Dipper hears Wendy's voice, strained and staticky over the comms.
"All right, fugly," she says. Lumber's other arm finishes producing a second ax just as Gremoblin reaches her. "Here's something you can't do."
Wendy uppercuts Gremoblin with one ax, whirls, and slices it across the glowing eyes with the second axe, blinding it. It screeches in pain and hits the water like a meteor. The resulting waves hit Aoshima at waist level.
"She is something else," Dipper whispers.
"You have no idea, kid," Grunkle Stan agrees.
"Mabel!" Grenda's gruff voice shouts over coms. "You gotta get Robbie over to Wendy NOW! Her vitals are going through the roof!"
"Robbie, get on the kitten fist!" Mabel says, clicking back into the cradle as he finishes getting in the Mach Five gear.
"Can't you just—"
"KITTEN FIST! NOW!"
Robbie sprints for the access panel, shouting over his shoulder, "If we live through this, this is FAR from over, Pines!"
Dipper is about to snap back but it's Mabel who barks again, "KITTEN FIST!"
"Done!" Grunkle Stan announces, drilling in the last piece of armor on Dipper. Dipper rushes over to click onto the cradle while Stan walks over to flip the power switch. Over coms, Soos confirms Aoshima is set for restart.
"Mabel," Dipper says, punching at his familiar controls, "listen...I'm sorry about everything earlier. If I hadn't lied—"
Mabel reaches across the space between them and puts a finger to his lips. "Dipper, shhh. Monsters now. I'll accept any and all apologies later, okay?" She smiles.
He smiles back. "Okay."
Grunkle Stan throws the switch and Dipper is jerked into the drift as it plays an old classic for him: He and Mabel trick-or-treating in Piedmont elementary school; summers with Grunkle Stan when he was still retired and still a showman, before the war dragged him back in; he and Mabel tossing rocks into the sea from the top of the California wall; his mother screaming at them to run as a Kaiju tore through it like paper mâché; he and Mabel training at Gravity Falls base; he and Mabel playing mini golf and hide and seek and heroes.
Dipper doesn't need the Shatterdome or any expert to confirm when the neural handshake is a success. He and Mabel glance at each other once, then they get to work.
Getting Robbie to Wendy is the easy part. Aoshima lifts a fist at the perfect height to get Robbie on Lumber's shoulder port.
"They're going to need time to reboot—" Soos starts but Grunkle Stan is already hollering, "COME GET SOME OF THIS, YOU CREEPS!"
Gobblewonker shoots out of the water in front of them, screeching, jaw unhinged. Aoshima fires a kitten fist, the flare from the rockets lighting up the Kaiju's glassy orbed eyes for just a second, and for the first time, it's not fast enough. It takes a direct hit and a pink feline fist to the face. It crashes back into the water and slithers back into the deep.
Dipper and Mabel reload a new kitten fist as Gremoblin, blind and stumbling about, starts to amble towards the noise. Sloshing through bay water and shouting the whole way, Aoshima Rumble slowly leads the brute away from a depowered Titan Lumber.
"We got a plan for taking these guys down?" Mabel asks.
"Wendy blinded Gremoblin, so without the terror glow eyes, we just need to worry about its brute strength," Dipper says. "Which, granted, is considerably more than ours. But it's not fast and it's not coordinated so keep it off balance."
"And the swimming one?" Mabel asks. "Gobbledygook?"
"Your kitten fist is the only thing that's hit it so far," Stan observes, a hand on each twin's shoulder as he watches.
"Because..." Dipper remembers the shape of its eyes, "...if its like deep sea dwelling fish, they're used to total darkness. Anything too bright will blind it!"
Stan grabs the radio. "Titan Lumber! Pull yourself together and finish chopping through Gremoblin."
"Aye aye, Mister Sir Captain Pines," Robbie snarks.
"Robbie, is Wendy okay?" Dipper asks fervently.
Someone coughs hard over the coms.
"Never better," Wendy croaks.
"Leave the big dumb fucker to us," Robbie says. "What's your brilliant plan for the other one?"
"We're going to light him up like the Fourth of July," Mabel says cheerfully, knocking the kitten fists together. "Ready, Dip?"
"Ready," Dipper says.
"Let's show these big ugly iguanas what happens when they mess with the Pines family," Grunkle Stan says, and for the first time all night, Dipper allows himself a smile.
Gobblewonker puts up a hell of a fight.
It refuses to stay above water for more than a couple minutes at a time. It learns quick and stays too close to the water for the kitten rockets to totally blind it. Twice, it tries to double team Titan Lumber as it wrestles with Gremoblin and Aoshima Rumble has to pull it off the other Jaeger.
"We're running low on power," Mabel says, recoiling as Aoshima fires its last kitten fist. "This isn't working, Dipper! It's gonna wear us out and then it's going to go for the city."
"Then let's finish this," Dipper says. "Channel all of Aoshima's core power into the head."
"Ooooh, the secret weapon!" Mabel begins punching buttons. "I like your thinking, Broseph."
"The watzit weapon?" Stan asks nervously.
Dipper starts flipping switches, rerouting power while keeping an eye glued to the radar for Gobblewonker's blip. "Titan Lumber, do you need an assist?"
"Worry about your own fucking Kaiju, Pines!"
"I'll take that as a no," Dipper mutters. He turns to Mabel. "We've only got one shot at this. If we miss, we're weaponless and Lumber's on its own."
Mabel narrows her eyes at the radar screen, razor focused. "We won't miss."
The screen blips, Gobblewonker's dot behind them. Aoshima turns in an instant, at the same moment the Kaiju breaches.
Dipper screams, "NOW!"
The radiators just below Aoshima's eyes ignite, twin lasers of molten hot light. Before it can make its telltale shriek, Mabel and Dipper jerk their heads to the side in synch and neatly decapitate the Kaiju. Gobblewonker's body crashes into the water by their feet as the head splashes down fifty yards away.
"Yeah!" Dipper cheers. "That's what you get when you mess with Pines and Pines!"
"Whoop whoop! Jaeger twins!"
Dipper and Mabel celebrate and fist bump as Stan grumbles, "Took you long enough."
"Shatterdome, we are clear on Gobblewonker," Dipper announces into the radio. "Titan Lumber, we're on our way to assist."
There's no response.
"Shatterdome? Do you copy? Titan Lumber?"
"We must have knocked out the radio when we detoured all the power," Mabel says, switching the radio on and off a few times.
Aoshima Rumble turns to the ocean behind it. There's only emptiness. No Gremoblin. No Titan Lumber.
Dipper feels his whole world vanish at the realization that Wendy's Jaeger isn't there. Aoshima sprints to the spot where Lumber was last but the trail of bioluminescent Kaiju blood pooling like an oil spill doesn't show a Jaeger or a Kaiju body.
"There," Stan shouts, pointing.
Two white pods are floating on the surface like tic tacs. Aoshima hurriedly scoops them up and makes sure they're undamaged.
But through the viewing glass, it's not Wendy and Robbie. It's Pacifica and Gideon.
They keep looking. They find the pods for Blubbs and Durland. By then, Stan has fixed the radio and the helicopters and boats have come to help the search.
"Where is she? Where is she?" Dipper mutters frantically, scanning the open water and every radar screen they have.
They search until dawn. They find Gremoblin's carcass, floating up to shore, its head messily hacked off. In the growing light, exhausted and sleep deprived and about to collapse, Dipper spots it. One last pod.
Aoshima scoops it up and rips the top off it without a thought.
It's Robbie V.
"Where is she?" Dipper demands. "Where is she, Robbie?"
"She pushed me out," Robbie says, shaking and shocked. "She pushed me out. She said I had to go first because a woobie like me couldn't take it and...she pushed...and..."
The nearby boats almost capsize as Aoshima drops to it's knees amidst them.
"I'm sure she just washed up somewhere else, Dipper," Mabel says quietly. "She's just somewhere else, Dipper."
But Dipper can't hear her because every strand of Wendy in his mind has suddenly become electrified and a thousand times more beautiful. And this is the worst thing to ever happen to him because it's one hundred percent his fault.
When the doctors check and confirm that everything is okay with him, physically at least, Dipper goes to his room and falls asleep for thirteen hours. When he wakes up, he remembers, and cries himself to sleep again. He dreams of red hair and rain.
When he wakes up again, Mabel is sitting beside his bunk, stroking Waddles.
"How are you feeling?" she asks.
"Terrible."
Waddles licks his hand.
Mabel says, "It's not your fault, Dipper."
"You don't have to baby me, Mabel. Of course it's my fault."
"Why do you always think I'm babying you?" Mabel says suddenly, sounding frustrated. "I don't say things like that just to make you feel better and I don't act silly and optimistic because I don't know any better! Terrible things have happened to us, Dipper," she says solemnly, hugging Waddles. "Losing Mom and Dad. Losing all our friends. But also good things. Like you and I getting into the Jaeger program together. Like getting to be heroes. Like living with Grunkle Stan and meeting Soos and Candy and Grenda. Like meeting Wendy."
Dipper cringes but Mabel softly goes on, "She was a good thing, Dipper. You have to learn to believe in the good things."
He rolls over, facing the wall. Waddles oinks and nudges his back.
"Do you want me to stay with you?" Mabel asks.
"I'm just gonna sleep, okay?" he says.
"Okay." Mabel picks up Waddles and starts to leave. He hears her stop at the door.
"Dipper, I would have let you pilot with Wendy if you really wanted to," she says. "Not without a lot of teasing, but I would have let you, if you asked."
"...Thanks, Mabel."
"Anytime."
She and Waddles leave as Dipper drifts back into a fitful sleep.
Dipper wakes to a knock on his door.
"You don't need to check on me every hour, Mabel."
"It's Stan. Open up."
Dipper pads to the door. But if he expected any sympathy from Grunkle Stan, the man's face shows none. Just a firm resolution.
"Get dressed," he says, his voice hollow.
"Why? What's the use?"
"They found her."
Dipper stares blankly until his eyes widen. "...What?"
"They found her. Washed up under the docks a few miles down the bay. She's in bad shape."
Dipper bolts for his clothes. "How bad a shape?"
"Single piloting wrecks yer system. Single piloting twice in a lifetime?" Stan tosses Dipper's shoes at him. "She's comatose and teetering. They need you down there."
"Me?" he says, scrambling for a shirt. "Why?"
"Grenda thinks a drift might snap her out of it," Stan says. "I'm inclined to agree. Let's go."
Wendy looks like a drowned Raggedy Ann on the hospital bed, her hair fanned around her like a starburst. She's hooked up to a dozen different blinking machines, including a drifting headset. At the side of the bed, Robbie holds her hand.
"What are YOU doing here?" Dipper says.
Robbie looks up, and a glare wipes the anguish clean from his face. He stands menacingly.
"Hey, asshole, she's my drift partner too!"
"Give us the room, V," Stan says. "Go get yourself a grande-venti coffee or whatever it is you kids drink these days."
Robbie looks between Stan and Dipper and Wendy. "But—"
"She's in good hands," Stan assures him.
Robbie glares between them but does as Stan says, shoving Dipper as he exits. Mabel comes over to Dipper, the other half of the drift headset in her hands.
"You want me to go in there with you?" she asks, fiddling with the wires. "If Wendy's caught in a R.A.B.I.T., you might get stuck in there too. Like a deep dark bottomless pit."
"Thanks, Mabel. I want to do this myself," Dipper says.
Mabel hands him the headset. "Okay. But don't be mad if I have to jump in there to save your butt again."
Dipper takes the headset from her, then hugs her. "You're the best, Mabel."
She pats him on the back and jokes, "I know."
Candy has him sit on a reclining chair as Grenda hooks up the helmet. Dipper grabs Wendy's hand on his right and Mabel's hand on his left. Stan looks on and Soos gives the okay.
The drift starts and Dipper holds his breath.
Mabel's right. Wendy is stuck in a R.A.B.I.T., but it's not the same one as before.
Dipper finds himself in the forests of Oregon, near the Gravity Falls base. Summer, he guesses, by the state of the trees. He follows the sound of splintering wood to a little house tucked away in the forest, where a pre-teen Wendy Corduroy is chopping a log twice as thick as she is wide. With a side-braid of red hair and a stubborn glare, she's just as pretty and amazing as she will be at fifteen.
Young Wendy wipes some sweat from her brow and looks right at him, annoyed. "You gonna stand there and gawk or are you gonna pick up an axe?"
Dipper jumps, and glances around him. There's no one else in the memory.
"Well?" she asks.
"Uh, you can see me?"
"Of course I can see you, you're standing right there." She reaches over to pick up a second axe and toss it at Dipper. "Here."
Dipper reaches to catch it. It phases through his fingers like a ghost. Wendy doesn't notice.
"Help me with this log," she says, swinging the axe back again. "I want to get it done before mom calls us in for dinner."
"Wendy…" Dipper's not sure how to tell her what he has to say other than directly. "This isn't real. You're stuck in a R.A.B.I.T."
She focuses on the log. Her next swing cuts through it another inch.
"I'm not stuck on anything right now but this stupid log," she says without looking up from prying the axe out of the wood.
"Wendy, we're not in Gravity Falls. We're in Hong Kong, in the Shatterdome. You've been hurt pretty bad by a Kaiju—"
She swings at the log again, except this time, the wood starts spouting hot blue Kaiju blood from the slice.
Wendy doesn't notice or doesn't care. "What's a Kaiju?"
"Wendy!" a woman's voice calls from inside the house.
Wendy tosses aside the ax and turns to Dipper.
"Sorry, dude. That's lunch." She wipes the sweat from her brow and smears blue Kaiju blood over her face so that it looks like she has a black eye. "Gotta go."
"Wait!" Dipper pleads, scrambling for an excuse. He reaches out to grab her but his hand ghosts through her wrist.
Wendy raises a brow. "What?"
"Please, you can't stay here," he says. "We need you. The world needs you."
"Dude, for what?" she asks honestly, hands on her hips. A woodpecker drills at a tree in the distance.
And all at once, Dipper realizes he can't take this from her.
Seeing Wendy like this, without a care in the world other than chopping wood and going in for lunch… This is what he'd lost years ago, when he lost his parents and his old life. He'd lost...this. He can't take it from Wendy too.
"I'm sorry," Dipper says slowly, lowering his arm.
Wendy stares at him oddly.
A woman with a long swath of red hair comes to the door. "Wendy? Dear?"
"I'm sorry, you can...you can go," Dipper mumbles. He shoves his hands in his pockets and starts walking into the forest.
"Where are you going?" Wendy asks.
"Back to the fight," Dipper says as he looks out into the woods. Through the trees, he visualizes a sliver of light, a way back to the medbay in the Shatterdome. He kicks a rock on the ground. "The world doesn't need kids like us fighting for it, but we're all it's got. I can't let them down."
"Hey."
Dipper turns and finds her looking...worried?
"Are you sure you can't stay for lunch?" Wendy gestures to the house, the woman at the door, the smell of cooking wafting to him. "My mom makes great burgers. You look like a burger kind of guy."
Dipper shrugs and says, "No thanks. You can have mine."
Wendy shifts in place, gangly and awkward. "Well, okay. I guess I'll see you around then."
Wendy holds her hand out for a shake. Dipper stares at it for a second too long, then reaches for it.
She pulls back chuckling. "Too slow."
She holds her hand out for a high five and Dipper reaches to smack it, the bitterness settling into salt at the back of his tongue.
He feels her palm slap against his, and next he knows, he's back from the drift, staring at the ceiling of the med bay, Wendy's limp fingers in his grasp.
"Well?" Stan asks.
Dipper lets Candy and Grenda disconnect him from the drifting headset and sits up, feeling the wetness in his eyes. "I tried."
Mabel takes him gently by the arm and helps him off the bench. They silently head for their room while Stan begins to discuss alternatives with Soos.
Something beeps in the medbay and then Wendy is coughing, first weakly, then with gusto, hard and wet. Dipper spins back to the room, frozen in place. Grenda jogs over with a pillow and helps prop her up as Candy and Soos check her scanners.
Mabel rushes to her side. "Wendy! You're all right!"
She nods feebly through her hacking coughs.
"You look like hell, kid," Stan says, as the tension uncoils from his shoulders.
Wendy turns to an elated Mabel, then to the doorway, to Dipper, who feels like staring and dancing and maybe laughing until his sides split. She grins.
"You should see the other guy."
There are three whole days until the next predicted Kaiju attack. Dipper uses them to perfect his wheelchair go-cart racing.
He and Wendy barrel down a corridor and laugh as Grunkle Stan shouts that he'd like to live to see the bottom of the stairs and shakes a fist at them for nearly knocking him over.
Wendy peels into the gym on her wheelchair, coming to a skidding stop on the mat.
"Aw yeah! Wheelchair Go-Cart Champion!" she whoops.
Dipper laughs as he comes to an easy stop, feigning soul crushing defeat.
"You only won because you've been getting all the extra practice in," he jokes, hopping up from the chair and stretching his sore arms.
"Yeah, duh." Wendy adjusts her leg casts. "Tell you what, because I'm feeling super generous, we'll do two out of three. And you better not throw this one."
She winks and Dipper pulls on his stretch harder.
"What? Ha ha, I didn't, I didn't throw—"
"Psst," Wendy says. She makes the gesture of reading his mind, complete with a spooky Halloween noise.
Dipper chuckles sheepishly and swaps arms. He stares at a stain on the mat and wonders if it's blood or sweat.
"Something up, Dipper?"
Dipper pulls on his arm hard enough to hurt. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about Mabel and Aoshima Rumble," he mumbles. "I should have been honest with you."
Wendy doesn't say anything right away. Dipper watches as she rolls over to him and lightly touches his shoulder with her fist, mocking a punch. "Dude, I kinda already knew."
Dipper's head jerks up. "Wait, you did?"
Wendy shrugs. "You two trained at the Gravity Falls base, right? You were practically in my backyard. Besides, no secrets in the Drift."
"Well." Dipper drops into a cross-legged position on the mat. "Now I feel dumb. And kinda itchy."
"Dude, don't feel itchy." Wendy rolls up beside him, leaning on the arm of her wheelchair to look at him. "I thought you knew I knew."
"Is that why you didn't bring it up?"
Wendy laughs and punches his arm again. A little more force, a little more normal. "I didn't bring it up because it was none of my beeswax. It was your personal biz and I was totally cool with it if you were."
She ruffles his hair. "You're a great ranger, Dipper Pines. Don't let something as pesky as the apocalypse keep you down."
Dipper blushes despite himself.
A throat clears loudly and Dipper jumps to his feet, turning to find a scowling Robbie V. in the doorway of the gym. When Wendy turns to him, though, he forces a smile.
"Ready for the doctor, partner?"
"Alas," Wendy says, slumping in her chair and feigning distress, "my time here has come to pass. I must return to the bouncy balls and stretch bands of yore."
Dipper laughs as Robbie squints in confusion.
"Hey, promise you won't tell Stan we were using the chairs?" she asks Dipper, winking.
Dipper makes the motion of zipping his lips and throwing away the key.
"Then away, my young nurse!" Wendy announces, pointing dramatically towards the door.
Robbie wheels her, muttering, "I'm not your nurse."
"Uh, Wendy?" Dipper adds hesitantly as Robbie keeps wheeling her away. "About what I said in Lumber, before we switched pilots and all that…"
"Uh, Dipper?" she parrots back in the same tone of voice, turning in the chair to look at him. Then, smiling in an understanding sort of way, she zips her lips and throws away the key.
Robbie turns her around the corner and Dipper stands there grinning from ear to ear. He feels something metal hit him in the back of the ankles.
"Boop!" Mabel announces, bumping him with the wheelchair he'd abandoned. Waddles oinks from her lap. "How about a real challenge, huh? I am a wheelchair go-cart pro!"
"You're on," Dipper says, jogging to the corner of the room and pulling out another collapsible wheelchair.
"It takes a lot more than a little alien lizard to get between the Mystery Twin," she jokes, and Dipper smiles because she hasn't called them that in ages. "But you know who's an even better team? MABELNATOR AND THE WONDER HOG!"
She tears off down the hall and Dipper has to race to catch up to her.
FIN
Author's Note: This was originally published on AO3 on 2/9/15. It was inspired by a tiny thing that my immensely talented friend Satellites on Parade wrote on Tumblr ages ago, and my mind just seemed to latch onto it and never let it go. This story follows brella's sequentially but can be read independent of the first (but I do recommend reading it if only because her writing is wonderful).
On another note, this is probably the longest I have ever spent working on a singular fanfic in my life: eighteen months. Sheesh.