IMPORTANT A.N READ OR BE VERY CONFUSED! I know I should be working on pretty much anything but a new story, but I couldn't help it. This should be a long one-shot but knowing me it might go horribly wrong. So, some things are going to be different. Bill's reign of terror was a little bit more… terrible. Nothing over or even at "T", just a bit more violence. Also, everyone's a little more traumatized. Another difference, to prevent Bill from ever coming back Ford found a way to trap Bill's demonic signature into magic seals that he put on everyone represented in the wheel. Like Raven's gem from the Teen Titans. It also gave them the power to telepathically talk to each other and feel each other's emotions. The telepathy is like talking so not everything they feel, or think is broadcasted to the others but if they're in really deep thought or feeling a really strong emotion the others might read it. This takes place during season 2 of Criminal Minds anywhere between episodes 19 and 23 and almost a year after Gravity Falls ended. This story starts on the last day of school.
Dipper's P.O.V
"Woooho!" Mabel yells running to the car. "Summer Break!" She screams out of the window. Mabel had changed a lot in a year. She was pretty much a younger, more energetic, colorful, nicer, more acrobatic Stan. With their Grunkle's skills in Mabel's hands, she could lie, cheat, steal, talk, or fight her way out of anything.
I smile as Mabel pulls back her hair showing off the ear piercings that went all the way up her ears. Most of them homemade or magic in some way and the others were covered in glitter. She still wore her signature sweaters with the adjustment of some of them having shorter sleeves, this one being part of California in the summer category had a sun with sunglasses on, shimmering with what had to be glitter overkill.
Instead of a skirt, she wore leggings with pockets she sowed on because "how I survived weirdmageddon in a short skirt I have no idea." Mabel's pockets were filled with arts and craft supplies, attack glitter, and homemade brass knuckles (Pitt cola tabs melted together into a dangerous but harmless looking weapon because grappling hooks were against school policy.)
I, however, hadn't changed at all, sure, I was a little taller and could use very minor magic spells but that was about it. I still wore the same clothing I had worn all summer. And Mabel's concealer covering my arms trying to cover the scars from weirdmageddon and magic seal to keep its creator away. Out of nowhere, I hear Wendy giggle.
"Your sister's having a ball. And you're stuck monologuing?" Her voice was a little raspy and a little sad, but he had gotten used to that.
"How was your last day of school?" I ask.
"Fine. Everyone respects me because of you know what even though we're not allowed to talk about it. I won an axe throwing competition last week. You know when you're coming back?" Wendy asked.
"Soon. We convinced our parents to let us go for most of the summer so hopefully in a week or two." I respond.
"Cool dude, Stan and Ford are staying in town for as long as your there."
"Yes!" I exclaim mentally.
"You miss us already kid?" Grunkle Stan joins are conversation along with Ford and Mabel.
"Your parents got you little gremlins tickets for a bus to Gravity Falls in 2 weeks." Stan says smiling.
"Grunkle Stan, calling us gremlins is offensive to actual gremlins! We're way more evil than those glorified gnomes!" Mabel says offended, getting eye rolls from the rest of us. Then before we could react Stan leaves the mental group chat.
"We're fighting a yeti in Alaska." Grunkle Ford explains vanishing from the conversation. Mental conversating was super helpful but also super distracting.
"See you in 2 weeks." Wendy says before disappearing.
"Welp we're sitting next to each other in the car, so we don't need to keep mental chating." Mabel said before vanishing as well. I frown before I'm brought out of my thoughts by Mabel punching my shoulder.
"Don't worry dum-dum. Cousin Jason coming with BAU friends for dinner." She says before pausing and slapping her forehead.
"Mabel you know what BAU stands for right?" I put my hand on her shoulder. She freezes for a second before answering.
"I know, this going to be the longest night of our lives. We have so many got damn problems. You haven't slept in a week and still cringe at forks!" She whispers.
"Like it's me we have to worry about, remember the lab incident."
"Please, for the last time, I couldn't see his eyes and he was doing the shake my hand thing. That goes against everything we learned in Gravity Falls. Never shake someone's hand! Especially if you can't see their eyes!" Mabel exclaims.
"It didn't mean you had to punch him with your improv brass knuckles!"
"Hey, the science teacher was almost impressed until you had to go and throw a beaker at the guy's head 3 weeks later!" Mabel expressed indigently.
I sigh, this conversation was going nowhere fast and at this point, we were almost home.
"How about we do what we always do. We cover each other's backs and stick by the easiest and most common excuses. These people are smart, we just have to be smarter. We can't trust them. We can't afford to trust them." I state. More confidently than I really feel.
Mabel didn't say anything. She didn't have to. She worked through what I had said faster then I had. The words that have haunted me for what feels like forever were on the tip of my tongue. Trust no one, the journal's warning, the words had once been applied to everyone. My parents, Ford, Stan, Wendy, and everyone else I'd met. But against Mabel? The words had lasted less than a day. Being chased by an army of gnomes will do that. Another sigh, what was their life?
I look over to see Mabel laughing. Something about Soos and Pacifica sending her mental pictures of them making a cannon that launched rodents at people invading Northwest now Mcgucket mansion. For the honor of covering the man in paint? He didn't know, the people of Gravity Falls were weird and the fact that he and Mabel have official city id's and passports might make them even weirder. And despite the fact that being an official citizen to a city wasn't really a thing, they had appreciated the thought.
I looked out the side window as we pulled up to the house. I got out, dragging my backpack along the ground behind me. We could fool a family member and some friends. We've been doing it since we've got back from Gravity Falls. I mean what could we say? that we just went through the weirdest hell ever? The apocalypse? Gravity Fall's own personal Armageddon. Weirdmageddon. Named by the thing who started it all, the demon himself, Bill Cypher.
On good days Dipper could get the laughter out of his head. On bad days, all he could see was the yellow eyes and hear the static sounding voice.
Now I'm going on about myself in the third person, great.
Once we make it inside the house, I make the executive decision to drag Mabel to my room and start working on our parents assigned "summer homework" After finishing it with Mabel. Mabel helping me with art while I helped her with history. Mabel had taken a shine to science when it involved anything that could explode, and art had always been a breeze. While every other part of science and history had been his thing. And while I was better at math than Mabel, she was no pushover and was amazing at geometry while we both were top in our class for algebra*.
"We should probably get ready for dinner." I said after finishing the last problem. Mabel smiled before leaving my room through the small trapdoor on our adjacent wall. Because Mabel may or may not make explosives and they may or may not have made a hole in our wall and we may or may not have taken full advantage of that incident that may or may not have happened.
I put on my hat, nice pants, and the sweater Mabel had made me for Christmas. It was light blue with a green pine tree sown onto it in Mabel's excellent stitch work. She had made similar gifts for everyone else in the wheel. A token to remember, she had said. After attempting to tame my hair (a feat I have yet to do successfully) I walk out at the same time as Mabel and just in time to hear my parents yell the standard. 'They're going to be here any minute' call. Mabel was wearing a knitted pink sweater dress with her symbol on it and big wooden earrings that had the cipher complete with Bill burned into the middle. We went down the stairs to see my frazzled parents look us over.
"No suit?" Dad asked looking me over.
Mabel shivered "Two words: Puppet show." They looked at each other before shrugging, having gotten used to our weird phrases and statements without context months ago.
"At least it's not a V-neck." I say not sympathetic in the slightest. My twin nodded and punched my shoulder.
"Mabel I've been meaning to ask but where did you get those earrings?" Mom asked looking at them.
"I made them!" Mable says proudly as the doorbell rings.
Mable's P.O.V
Contrary to popular belief I'm not stupid. I was stupid, there's a difference. I made a series of bad decisions that affected an entire city worth of people because I wanted a little bit more summer.
I was tricked and never again will I let that happen. While I was playing fairy tales in that stupid bubble my brother and friends were suffering. So, after weirdmageddon I toughened up. Took Stan's advice and took martial arts classes, learned how to protect the people I care about, made my own dangerous form of combat with the use of my arts and crafts prowess. Wendy taught me ax throwing and I got good at it through hard work. I'm the best with a crossbow and I feel mercy for the next mantatour who thinks he can win in a fight against me. I took all the anger I had from weirdmageddon and at myself and got to work because history showed that nothing can stop a Pines twin from their goal, nothing, history has shown me, except perhaps another Pines twin.
Dipper stopped me and all my anger fueled determination because being angry was all I was doing. Because coping wasn't healing, it was managing; he said only to have those same words thrown in his face by me a month later when I found him on the floor crying after throwing a beaker at the science teachers head because all Dipper could see was Bill's eyes.
Nowadays I'm a lot more balanced. Shooting Star, despite the fact that if anyone calls me that they might get punched in the face. I was a mystery twin and I held up my brother while he held up me. We covered for the other when we couldn't do it for ourselves. And right now, all I needed to do was get through one dinner. Compared to everything I went through last summer you'd think it would be a piece of cake.
So why was this so hard!?
It had started ok. Introductions went well and no one had suspected anything from us. My favorite one had been Prentiss and Dipper had taken a liking to Reid. We managed to avoid shaking people's hands, but they had definitely noticed the avoidance.
"Hey Dipper, what are those marks on your hands?" Hotch questioned. Crap, Dipper rubbed those when he was nervous. How's my bro going to get out of this one?
"Bug bites, I scratched them too much, so they scared over." Dipper says, rubbing the back of his neck.
"The marks themselves aren't uniformed but the length between them are. Similar—no exactly to those of the tines of a fork." Spencer says destroying most of our excuses. Dipper rolls down the arms of his sweater. Why they were up I have no clue but it's also why we're in this mess.
"Silverware fencing with a bully, and late-night trips to the scrapyard. They were never rusty and he's fine. Dip'n'dot's may be the most idiotic self-sacrificing twin out there but that doesn't make him not clumsy." I mutter quietly but just loud enough that they hear.
My parent's gasp shocked by this new made-up discovery. Part of me for lying, another part of me feels bad for not feeling bad about lying. It's not like we can say Dipper got possessed and Bipper felt like stabbing himself with a fork.
"We didn't want you to worry." Dipper mutters giving me a grateful glance.
"Anytime bro bro, anytime." I whisper.
I don't doubt they didn't fall for that, not entirely at least. But my goal right now was protecting my brother. He was smart. Really smart. A Ford level genius even! But even grunkle Ford knew when to leave the excuses to Stan.
"I'm the smart twin though." Dipper mutters as I kick him from under the table.
"Well, I'm not the self-sacrificing one." I say looking down.
"Give it a couple dozen years and you'll save me from an interdimensional portal while trying to run a tourist trap before eventually saving the entire planet by lighting your memories on fire." Dipper says quiet enough that only I can hear it. He smiles at me like he didn't just call me a carbon copy of Stan and how the fact that I didn't immediately take that as an insult might be a sign of my decreasing sanity.
"At least I'm not going to have a prison record so long they can't even put all of it on the news without it taking forever." I say slightly annoyed at my brother's antics
Morgan gives me a look.
"Let's just say our Grunkle isn't always the most law-abiding citizen." Dipper says trying to dig himself out of the hole they just dug themselves into.
"Grunkle?" Cousin Jason asked.
"Grunkle, like great uncle." I explain. Everyone at the table nods in understanding
Then Prentiss saw my earrings and connected the signs to the ones on my dress and on Dipper's sweater and asked about it and this entire event is going to hell. Because I'm may be a smooth talker but how am I getting out of this?! I swear on the ghost of freaking time baby who the hell were these people?
Unfortunately, my brain supplied me with an answer. They were the FBI's BAU. Behavioral analyses is their game of choice. Just like magic and the supernatural were ours. We could only string them along and hope they didn't find anything too interesting.
I sigh and say that our grunkle's found the cipher circle on one of their adventures and that we and our friends had picked the symbols that most related to us. It was a lot of watered and sugared down truth which against people who could tell when you lied and were already suspicious might be the best idea.
I listen in Morgan talking about how Reid and Dipper are the biggest nerds on the planet, and I can't help but nod and snort.
"Them plus our Grunkle Ford would be a disaster." I tell Morgan as the blond woman, JJ I think speaks up.
"You speak a lot about your great uncles, do you know them well?" She asked. JJ had spent most of her time talking to Garcia who I had like for the shared appreciation of glitter even if she had been taken off guard for my dislike of unicorns.
My parents who had mostly been talking amongst themselves had answered this one for us.
"They met last summer. We thought that they could use some fresh air and connection to other family. They fought us on it, but it turns out that they really liked it there. Bonded with their great uncle and are leaving for Gravity Falls in 2 weeks." My mother said smiling at us.
Then they asked about last summer.
Crap.
"We just worked in their shop for most of the summer." I supply as they ask what type of shop he owned.
I was running myself thin. It was a great dinner and besides the cover stories this was pretty fun, but they just kept pushing. I normally could keep cover stories going for hours but I was running low on sleep and I could feel the Mabel Juice leaving me. Dipper, luckily, saw the stress building in my face and came up with an excuse to send me out of the room for a minute.
"Hey Mabel, don't you have something you wanted to give them?" He questions.
My face lights up as I nod my head up and down very enthusiastically. Before scrambling from the table.
Dipper's P.O.V
"Hey Doctor Reid, do you play dungeons, dungeons, and dungeons?" I ask trying to get them off of wondering where Mabel went.
"You can call me Spencer and yes I do actually my mother would play it with me because I didn't have many friends. She was more of a literary arts person, but she enjoyed it just the same. I've been trying to get someone on the team to play a game, but no one ever wants to." Spencer rambles smiling.
"Sorry to burst you bubble but I'm pretty sure no one will ever want to play your nerd little game Spence." Morgan jokes patting him on the back as Spencer pouts.
"I'm back!" Mabel sings with a large cardboard box in hand.
"That's why you asked for everyone's size. "Cousin Jason exclaimed.
"Yep!" She chimed smiling.
They were long-sleeved navy-blue sweaters with FBI written on the front and their names written on the back in white. BAU in a pale purple color on the back under their names. Each one was a touch bit big and very well made.
They took them and Prentiss promised to send them a picture of the team waring the sweaters because their office back at Quantico was ice cold.
Mabel smiled showing off her braces and poured herself a cup of coffee. Before passing it to me.
"Should you be drinking coffee this late?" JJ asked pouring herself a cup.
"Should you be drinking it at all." Morgan mutters while he hypocritically I might add pours himself a cup.
"Your drinking it." Mabel says pointing at the steaming cup.
"Yeah, but we're adults who need to stay up late tonight." Morgan says with a critical eye.
I snort "Like coffee can keep us up, we've drank so much Mabel Juice it would take so much coffee to keep us up." I said sipping on my cup.
"Mabel Juice?" Hotch asked amused.
"In the words of our great uncle Stan, it's like if coffee and nightmares and a baby." I say shaking my head.
"It has more caffeine than coffee and more of a choking hazard." I say muttering the last bit even though I know Mabel will hear me.
"Hey take that back! Mabel Juice has had way fewer people choke after we took the plastic dinosaurs out! Now Pitt Cola, that's a real choking hazard." Mabel says defending her drink.
"Pitt Cola?" JJ asks.
"It's Gravity Fall's signature soda, most other places tend not to have it. Each can come with an actual pit inside. We warn tourists every single time and they never seem to listen." Mabel says shrugging and obviously amused before taking another sip from her cup.
"So, does that mean you don't consider yourselves tourists?" Jason asks Pouring himself a glass of coffee.
"Excuse me?" I ask shocked.
"The way you said that you warn tourists every single time and they never seem to listen. Normally the manner of which you said that is reserved for locals who've lived in a city most of their lives. Not people who were there for 2 months." Jason inquires.
"Not only that but you talk about the place you worked at during that time more like you're talking about a family home and less like a place of work. I understand that it was also your home for those months, but you've glanced around this room multiple times without as much as a fond smile." Spencer says bring up the matter as if it was the most obvious thing anyone had ever seen.
"It stood." Mabel says.
"What stood?" Morgan asked.
"The shack, during the earthquakes everything was destroyed, on fire, in ruin, but the shack refused to fall. It became a safe haven for those days. During those earthquakes it felt like we were being attacked by an enemy we couldn't fight, that wouldn't budge no matter what we did, but with all of us in the shack, it felt like something finally made sense again." Mabel said quietly.
Earthquakes had been the towns cover story for the destruction. Dame Mabel was good. Even while stressed out to high heavens she could still make a unicorn hair protected house in the middle of weirdageddon sound like a house that people hid in during an earthquake.
"Earthquakes?" JJ asked putting her had on Mabel's.
"During the summer Gravity Falls was hit by a massive wave of earthquakes lasting more than 3 days." Jason said staring into my eyes.
"But that's not all that happened, was it? Something big happened, bigger than any earthquake because I've seen pictures of you guys before that summer and I can't figure out what gave you two such sad eyes in such a short amount of time." Jason admits.
"The only person who died in Gravity Falls during your time there was the mayor and I can't see that affecting you that much. I saw the article about the giant robot, but you were still holding up in those pictures, not entirely but not to the point you are now." Jason pushed.
"Eno on tsurt, Trust no one." I say quietly.
"You speak backward English?" Prentiss asked
"That's pretty hard to pick up without reason."
"Well, let's just say we had a reason." A specific demon seal works by taking a bit of the demon's energy, and that demon energy has an effect on the wearer kind of reason. We were all affected by wearing the seal on our arm and sometimes I wondered sickeningly and quickly if it was worth it. We could always talk to each other from any distance sure. But we also aged slower, sparks could fly off of use when angry, we could go into people's mindscape and trick them and sometimes all I wanted to do was speak cryptically.
"Reality is an illusion, the universe is a hologram buy gold." I mutter.
"Dipper!" Mabel says indignantly.
"What?!" I ask flailing my arms around.
"Calm down idiot before you say something you regret." She says getting me to sit back down. I blush and she pours me another glass of coffee.
"What would you sacrifice for your brother?" Morgan asks out of the blue.
"Morgan." Hotch said the tone said stand down.
"No Hotch I want to see how dedicated they are to each other." He responds.
"Would you jump in front of a bullet to save your brother." He asked Mabel. I froze and Mabel's eyes hardened.
"Yes." She says without hesitation, stone cold determination locked in her eyes.
"Really, now a lot of siblings say that but would you really? When time is ticking and you have to make that choice you would do it?" He asked again.
"Yes." Mabel says sharply staring into Morgan's eyes.
"Why?"
"Dipper would. He would jump in front of me to take the hit. To save me just like the self-sacrificing idiot has been doing all my life and if I had to take a bullet for him I would because he's been doing it for me all my life." She says. I'm close to tears because I would, wouldn't I?
"That true Dipper?" Morgan asked.
"We'd do anything for each other. It's what Pine's twins do." I say looking him in the eye.
"Good, everyone needs someone to back them up." Morgan says before dropping the subject. He did that to test our loyalty to each other?
"You can't just do that! You can't just ask my sister whether or not she'd take a bullet for me. That's not fair to her. That's not fair with all the crap she's been through and all she's done for me! Ruining a week of her hard work and falling 10 feet for me, rescuing me from a plummet off a cliff and saving me from a violent flash mob!" I yell getting in his face. I've saved my sister from Bill, Lil' Gideon, gnomes, ghosts, and a bunch of other crazy things! This guy, this guy will be no problem. And only right now does everything become a mess.
Mabel takes the throwing knife from under the kitchen table and throws it. Mabel wouldn't use that unless it was an emergency. I look to see what she threw it at and on time baby's ghost this night has gone to hell if wasn't there already.
Bill Cypher had been one of the big guns. Dream demons we're already powerful as hell and Bill had been one on the top of the food chain. So, when we destroyed him every demon was very pissed off. And they came after us. Most didn't know we'd killed Bill and were just drawn in by the demonic power Ford's anti Bill seals produced. That was rather funny, they expect some people who have been talking to Bill maybe even made a deal. They meet two of the people who could have destroyed him if their great uncle's had gotten over themselves faster before those demons that targeted them proceed to get their buts kicked by little kids.
This was not one of those moments. This was a demon who knew what we had done and wanted revenge. Probably a demon who profited off of Bill's craziness in Gravity Falls and suffered because of Bill's downfall. Mabel's aim was good, almost as good as Wendy and the gash that knife made would hold it off for another 45 seconds or so.
"What the hell?" Prentiss muttered I could see her mind working overtime, but we didn't have that time. I grabbed Morgan's hand and tugged him up the stairs the rest following us. I lead them to Mabel's room to gather supplies and to lead them to the yard because if we're going to deal with a demon, we might not want to do it inside the house.
"What was that!" Mom yelled.
"Ok, so we can't explain this right now without endangering everyone so Mabel you have everything we need?" I question as Mabel assembles the crossbow Ford gave her.
"Dipper you get the baseball bat and I need someone to grab the string." She says taking a large ball of fishing wire from her backpack.
"Fishing wire? Who, what was that thing?" Garcia asked nervously rubbing her hands.
"He's a demon who is after us because we killed a high-profile demon named Bill Cipher. So, we need to get outside and end this before he finds us." I say pushing them out of the window and down the ladder into the yard.
"Hello, children." He found us faster than expected. Mabel fired a shot, one, two, three, another shot, one, I go in with the bat while she reloads her crossbow for the second time. I pull out right as she finishes reloading. Prentiss and JJ are in position behind the demon and all we have to do is push him into the trap. The demon backs up and trips over the fishing wire, perfect.
"Mabel, you ready?" I yell as she nods "kcab morf erehw ouy miac. kcab morf erehw ouy miac. kcab morf erehw ouy miac." (back from where you came.) We holler as the demon dissipates. "I will end you." It screams as it's sent back to where ever it's from.
"Get in line." I mutter kicking the grass.
"Is that why you can speak fluent backwards?" Spencer asks.
"If only it was that simple." I answer.
"I don't know what this is, but I can tell you one thing it is not simple." Hotch says pointing to the general area.
"About a year ago, we were chased by an army of gnomes that formed a giant monster we defeated with a leaf blower, that was simple. Finding out who the author to a mysterious journal with clues that bring up more questions then answers before finding out that the journal writer was in an alternate universe and is also your great uncle is complicated. Figuring out how you keep getting caught in these messes is also complicated. Trying to explain the supernatural to people who just helped kill a demon? Now that's just Monday on the weirdness scale." Mabel says as we walk inside.
"So, the truth of what happened to you guys last summer. Where does that fall on the weirdness scale?" Mom asked.
"It's a long story." I responded blushing.
"Well, then we might as well break out the Mabel Juice." Morgan says giving me a sorry for that screaming match look.
I nodded. "Might as well."
So, this is the longest oneshot I've ever made. Yes, this is a oneshot and a strange one at that. Ok so hear me out on this, math smart Mabel. No way you grow up with Dipper and pick nothing up. Also, the flash mob thing was reference to the zombies, the falling 10 feet thing was reference to sock opera and saving Dipper from falling into the cliff was the grappling hook save Mabel made while fighting the robot. Morgan went off on Dipper and Mabel because he wanted to know that even if they didn't tell the team about what happened during the summer, they always had each other. Another point, I LIKE MABEL but I could see her taking weirdageddon out on herself after everything sets in and I tried to write her as real as I could but it annoys me that in some fanfics we forget that Mabel went through weirdmageddon to. Not for as long as some characters being trapped in the bubble but she still went through it. Anyways, have a nice day.