"What's this? Where am I?" Rose stood up gingerly, brushing pine needles and dirt from her dress. So far as she could tell, she had managed to land herself in the middle of the woods. The question now being, what woods were these?
"Watch out!" a boy shouted at the last second as he barreled into her, knocking her back to the ground. "Come on, we've gotta get out of here, fast." He held his hand out to help her back up, and kept hold of it as he led her through the woods, twisting and turning down a dozen different paths. If she wasn't lost before, she certainly was now.
"Wait, wait up! Where are you taking me? What's going on?" She started to wish she hadn't worn the long black dress, it was incredibly cumbersome to run in. Then again, she'd expected to transport a couple hundred yards on the meteor, not into some far-off forest. She'd have to double-check her calculations, if she ever got a chance to rest.
"No time to explain, we're almost there, but we've gotta hurry!" His hat got snagged on a tree branch, but she managed to barely grab it with the tip of her fingers as she trailed behind him. He took them past one last sharp bend, before ducking into a small cave and pulling her in with him. She opened her mouth to ask questions, and oh did she have questions, but he clamped a hand over her mouth and whispered, "Not yet. They'll hear you." She was tempted to bite his hand, but figured he probably knew more about the local fauna (or, perhaps, vicious flora) than she did.
After sitting like that for at least ten minutes, he took his hand away and leaned his head back against the stone wall, letting out a sigh of relief. "Well, that was terrifying."
"Seems it was." Rose held out the hat, which he gratefully took, pushing his unruly brown hair under its blue brim. "However I'd still like to know what, exactly, was so terrifying."
"Gremloblin. Part gremlin, part goblin, all nasty. I had a run in with that particular one a few summers ago. Well, I say run in…"
"But you mean…?" she prompted, lifting an eyebrow curiously.
"Eh. Kinda, maybe, perhaps...stuck him in a cage for a bit?" He shrugged sheepishly. "It's a long story. If you want, I can tell it to you back at the shack?"
"The shack?"
"The Mystery Shack. I figured that's where you got here from, not much of another reason to be up in this neck of the woods. If not, where'd you come from?"
"That...would be another, and probably longer, story, if my assumptions are at all correct. I don't suppose you could tell me the date?"
"Uhh, June 17th, 2016."
"Huh. Strange." She looked at him, concerned he'd think her absolutely bonkers by now, but he didn't seem to pay much mind to her comments. Maybe he was the crazy one. "Also, can we get out? As much as I love sharing cramped caves with boys I've never met after a sprint through the woods…"
"Oh! Right. Duh. Sorry." He crawled out, holding his hand out to help her up again. "My name's Dipper, by the way. Dipper Pines."
"Rose Lalonde, at your service. Did you say there was a place nearby we could go?"
"Oh, yeah, the Mystery Shack. Follow me. I promise not to drag you this time." He chuckled a bit, clearly feeling embarrassed about the sudden run. They walked for a few minutes in silence, not really sure what to say, until they got out of the woods and out to the shack. Luckily, no one was around to wonder why Dipper was bringing back a strange girl from the woods. They all knew what the woods were like, and he doubted any of them would trust someone found in there. But for some reason, he couldn't help but trust her, despite knowing nothing about her except her name and that she had suddenly appeared in his path. On second thought, he wasn't really sure he should trust her. But he shrugged it off. The journals had never mentioned anything about strange girls in dresses with pretty smiles. Well, it had, but they all had long black hair, and hers was short and blonde and much, much cleaner. "Well, uh, here's the shack. My room's up in the attic, you wanna head up there?"
"My mother always told me to stay away from strange boys who invited me into their attics. But then again, I rarely ever took her advice." She grinned at him, feeling oddly adventurous in this strange place. "Lead the way, Mister Pines."
"Nah, Mister Pines is what everyone calls Stan. Or my dad. But not me. Just Dipper, yeah?"
"Alright, Just Dipper. Lead the way." She followed him up to the attic, both of them staying quiet so as not to wake Soos, Mabel, and Stan, all of whom had fallen asleep watching a movie in the living room. When they got to the attic, Dipper sat at the head of his bed, gesturing for her to sit across from him.
"So, you wanna tell your story first, or do you want to hear mine?"
"Hm. I suppose you'll just keep wondering if I don't go first, so I'll start. And no questions until the end, it's a long story and most of your questions will be answered by the end. It all started with a video game, called Sburb. Three friends and I decided to play it, completely unaware of the consequences. As it happens, that game also gave way the end of the world, and we ended up meeting a group of alien beings called trolls, from a planet called Alternia. To cut down on the length of the story, I'll suffice to say that after a considerable amount of stress, fear, and some battle, myself and one of my aforementioned friends, Dave, are currently residing on a meteor hurtling through space towards a dimensional rift, guided by eldritch horror terrors and bends in spacetime, and a number of the trolls also happen to reside on the meteor. One of them, Kanaya, was granted powers based off the concept of space by the game, so I enlisted her help in devising a method of instantaneous transportation. However, my calculations were apparently a bit...off, and I ended up here, in what seems to be an alternate dimension." She took a deep breath as she finished her story, realizing she probably sounded like a babbling idiot. "So...I suppose that's the gist of it. I don't suppose you believed any of that?"
"Lady, you would not believe the summers I've had here. I mean, gnomes, murderous child psychics, time travel, a couple secret societies… Don't worry. I believe you." He smiled reassuringly at her. He knew, logically, that she sounded absolutely nuts, but she acted sane enough, and he'd gotten pretty good at telling when people were lying, and she definitely wasn't.
"Fair enough. After everything I've seen, I'm inclined to believe you, too. Maybe some worlds are more inclined towards aliens, and others more inclined towards the paranormal. I've always been a strong believer of both."
"Really?"
"Oh yes. I've actually got a book, back at home, about horror terrors and grimdarkness and sorcery...a little darker than your stories sound, but supernatural nonetheless. That's how I learned to track the movements of the horror terrors in the Furthest Ring, and plot the meteor's course. I love to research those types of things." Dipper felt like he could kiss her right then. Sure, Mabel and Soos and Wendy had always believed him, and Stan had his particular interest in the journals, but no one else seemed as interested in the research as he was, as intrigued by the phenomena and as dedicated to recording it. Maybe there was someone else out there who got it.
"That sounds incredible. I wish you had it here, so you could show me. Oh! Do you want to see the journals I've got?" He knew he sounded like an overexcited kid, but he couldn't help it. Ever since Stan had trusted him with the other two journals after the events three summers ago, he'd been dying to find someone else who really understood his love for them. Soos found them interesting, but never really fully got what they meant. Wendy was always more interested in the adventuring, the climbing and fighting and exploring, which he loved too, but it was different. And Mabel...well, Mabel had always been there with him, and would even now go on explorations with him when he asked, but she'd gotten spooked by an encounter with a particularly vicious ghost. He didn't blame her, he'd almost died in the fight, and he still felt sick to think about leaving her alone, really alone, like that. But he needed to finish the journals, catalogue everything the author had missed, make sure somebody out there knew the truth and how to deal with it. He shook himself from his reverie as Rose answered his question.
"Maybe in a bit. For now, I'm kind of hungry, and we may want to think of a story for my being here, to give to your family." She smiled sheepishly, realizing she didn't know how long she would be stuck here, nor how her time spent here would correlate to time on the meteor.
"Story? Nah. Like I said, crazy stuff happens around here all the time. No one will really care. Food, however, might be important. Who knows how interdimensional travel affects digestion rates." He grinned hopefully, but cringed internally at his awful joke. Why was he so bad at talking to girls? Then he realized she was laughing, and he smiled a little more.
"Who knows, indeed? All I know is I'm famished. Would you mind showing me to the kitchen?" She slid off the bed, moving to the door and looking over her shoulder to make sure he was coming too. He caught up behind her and opened the door, leading the way to the kitchen and opening the cupboards.
"Um...We've got stuff for sandwiches, kinda, and a lot of cans of...brown meat. Ugh. I don't know why Grunkle Stan likes this stuff."
"Grunkle?"
"Great Uncle. He's the one who owns the place, you'll probably meet him in a bit when they all wake up. There was some freaky hypnotic movie on TV last night, they got sucked into it until I came down and shut it off this morning, I think they're still sleeping it off. Sandwich okay with you?"
"Sure. PB&J alright?"
"Definitely," she said with a smile, sitting down in one of the old kitchen chairs and watching him curiously. Here was a boy who, despite the fact that she appeared out of nowhere and told him about her alien friends and apocalyptic video game, hadn't even batted an eyelash at her, much less seemed to think her crazy or want to throw her out. She kind of liked this particular dimension.
"Here you are, one peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made by yours truly." Dipper presented the sandwich with a little extra flourish, and Rose stifled a giggle.
"Why thank you, my good sir," she smirked. Dipper blushed a bit, realizing how much of a dork he really was.
"Dipper? 'S that you?" Mabel stood in the doorway, rubbing sleep from her eye with her sweater sleeve. "And...is that a girl?"
"What? Oh! Mabel! Hi, yes, this is...this is Rose. She kinda just appeared in the woods. Rose, this is my twin sister, Mabel."
"Pleasure to meet you, Mabel," Rose said with a warm smile.
"Nice to meet you too! Sooo…I see you've met my brother. What do you think of him?" She wiggled her eyebrows a bit, grinning ear to ear. "Do you think he's cu-" She was cut off by Dipper's hand clapping over her mouth as he pulled her aside.
"Ahaha, yeah Mabel and I will be back in just a second." He yanked her to the other side of the doorway, hissing through his teeth. "What do you think you're doing?!"
"Aww, c'mon Dipper, I was just trying to help. You're sixteen and you still haven't kissed anyone!" Much to Dipper's irritation, Mabel didn't seem as concerned with keeping her voice down. "And no, that one time you kissed Candy last year to uncurse her doesn't count!"
"I know, I know, but I've literally known her for like, maybe ten minutes, not including the sprint in the woods, and she's not from here, and sh-"
"Sprint in the woods?"
"Long story. There was a gremloblin, and then she just kinda appeared out of nowhere and I knocked her over, and then we had to run from it and get it lost, and then I took her back here."
"That wasn't a very long story. And anyway, she's pretty. You should kiss her!"
"I can't kiss a girl I just met!"
"Sure you can! You just go up to her and-"
"Mabel I wasn't debating the physical possibility of it, I just meant you can't do that! It's not what people do!"
"Alright, jeez, calm down. You don't have to get so mad about it."
"Look, I appreciate the help and all, but...I can handle it myself. No trying to wingman me, okay?"
"Fine, fine. Ruin all my fun." Mabel rolled her eyes and huffed dramatically, returning to the kitchen with Dipper following. "So, Rose, where ya from?"
"Rainbow Falls, New York. In another dimension, it would seem."
"Another dimension? That is so cool! What's it like there?"
"Much the same is it is here, I would think. Or at least, it was before the end of the world."
"You had an end of the world thing too, huh?"
"What do you mean? Your world seems rather intact to me."
"Yeah, a few summers ago Grunkle Stan brought his brother back from another dimension with a portal thingy. It worked, but then there was an interdimensional rift, a demon tricked me into giving it to him, and we ended up in a demon-infested weirdpocalypse. We ended up fixing it after about a week or so, but some things were just never the same." She shrugged, grabbing an apple from the counter and biting into it. "I mean, as far as apocalypses go, it was pretty reversible. I imagine yours was less so."
"You'd be correct in that, but there are more places out there than just our world. Or at least, there were in my dimension. The rift is probably how I ended up here, but the real question is how do I get back home?"
"The portal's still in the basement. Maybe we could fix it up, tweak your calculations, and get you back home" Dipper suggested. "Stan and Ford could help, Ford built it and Stan fixed it."
"I suppose that would work, yes. Although I'll probably need help on the calculations, I don't suppose either of you are good at math?"
"Ooh, Dipper's great at math! Like, sooo good. He's a genius! He can help."
"Is that so? Well, shall we get started?"
"Oh, uh, I was actually supposed to run some errands in town today. Now that I can drive and Wendy's off at college, Stan has me making errand runs."
"May I come with? It would be nice to see a town again. It's been some time since I have."
"Yeah, sure. I'll go grab the list and get a few things ready, it'll be just a sec."
"I'm in no rush. Also, Mabel, do you have something I could wear? This dress is a little...warm, especially in this weather. Maybe something in a purple?"
"Definitely! Ooh, follow me!" Mabel raced off to her room, leaving Rose to follow her, and began rifling through her closet. After they turned fourteen, the twins realized they'd probably need separate rooms soon, and had Stan convert one of the old unused rooms into a bedroom for Mabel. Sometimes she and Dipper still slept in each other's rooms, but it was nice to have her own space, especially since she'd gotten into painting, and there wasn't a lot of room in the attic for paints and easels. "Here, try this on!" She tossed Rose a lavender sundress that fell just a couple inches above her knee, and a purple headband to replace her normal black one. "Holy cow, that fits you perfectly!" She grinned, excited to have another friend to share her wardrobe with.
"I do quite like the color. Do you mind if I borrow it, at least for the day?" Rose blushed a bit, enjoying the swish of the looser skirt against her legs.
"My wardrobe is your wardrobe for as long as you're here."
"Thank you ever so much. Shall we be off?"
"Oh, I think I'll stay here. Get some cleaning done, maybe work on a painting. I'll let Dipper handle the tour of the town." It was the perfect plot, Mabel decided. Make them spend enough time alone together and they just had to fall in love! Or at least kiss.
"Alright. Well, I'll see you when we get back. Thanks again for the dress." She smiled as she headed back out towards the living room. "Dipper?"
"I'm out here!" he called from the driveway, kicking the front of the car right as Rose walked through the door. "Sorry, it's getting kinda old, has trouble starting sometimes. There we go," he said as it roared to life. He went around to open the passenger side door for her. "Ladies first."
"Why thank you," she grinned as she climbed into the car, clicking her seat buckle and looking over at Dipper. "So, where to first?"
"Grocery store, then the hardware store, then I've gotta drop off and pick up a few things from some people. Maybe afterwards we'll swing by the Greasy Spoon and grab a bite."
"Sounds good to me."
He turned to back the car out of the driveway and make towards the dirt road that led from the shack to the main street. "Cool, let's go."