Author's Note: This one is inspired by fellow GF fan retro mania, who wanted a story of time travel through different decades. It also ties in with my first GF fanfic, "Baby, Baby." Let's hope it goes well! Updates may take more time than usual—I have research to do….
Decades Dance
(April 7, 2016-July 4, 1883-September 1, 2012-April 7, 2016. Yes, it's one of THOSE.)
1: A Future Old Enemy
The week leading up to spring break left Dipper in knots of anguish. He'd agreed to be Wendy's date to her Senior Prom—Mom had come around at last, after lots of persuading from him, Mabel, Dad, Grunkle Stan, and Grunkle Ford. "But she's so much older than you!" Mom had said.
Dad, lifting a crafty eyebrow and glancing at her with a squint that made him look like Mabel planning some mischief, said, "Two years and a bit, that's not much. And I know a couple—"
"Oh, I suppose it will be all right," Mom said. Dipper had a hard time keeping his grin to himself. Though Mom didn't know that he knew, he knew that she was two years and a bit older than Dad, who knew and told Dipper so he'd know. You know?
Anyway, Mrs. Pines had warmed toward Wendy since the fall, when for a while it looked as if the twins were never going to Gravity Falls again—well, until they were eighteen and more or less on their own, anyhow. Dipper didn't know how it had happened, but somehow Mom had got over her initial fury at seeing a revealing photo—him lying in bed, apparently passed out, a few beer bottles around the pillow, and four, count 'em, four girls in nighties cuddled close to him, and one of them was Wendy.
It had been a Mabel trick, but for a bit there it was touch and go, and it even caused friction between Mabel and Dipper—mainly because she said he was too nice, willing to forgive and forget when she was miserable and really wanted to be yelled at. Anyhow, it had blown over enough for the twins to have some time in Gravity Falls after Christmas. Now they were on the downslope toward June and summer vacation, and Mom and Dad had already said they could spend the summer up in Oregon again.
Dipper felt pretty good when school ended that Thursday. He was antsy about the dancing part—being Wendy's date meant they had to dance at the prom—but he and Wendy didn't make a bad pair on the dance floor these days, not when he was very close to her in height and she always wore flats to the dances. Though he wouldn't kid himself about being the best dancer, or even a good one, Mabel had loosened him up to the point where he didn't care if people laughed—he had fun out on the floor with his Lumberjack Girl.
Mabel was hyper (what else is new?) because she was going to see Teek. And Mom and Dad were even going along—though talking Dad into taking a couple of days off work was about as hard as Dipper's last sprint had been (he won, by an eyelash. He was having a good year on the Varsity track team. But that had been a hard-run race).
"We gonna do it? Mabel asked, falling into step with him as they left the school.
"I don't know," Dipper said. "This could get us in big trouble."
Mabel blew a raspberry—Phbbbbt! "Come on, Dip—it's, what, two miles! And when have we ever seen a traffic patrol on the way home? Gotta be a first time. And anyhow, we're not breaking the law in Oregon!"
"But you're driving in California!" Dipper said.
"But if I was driving in Oregon, I'd be street-legal," Mabel said with that unerring logic that drove Dipper crazy. "Up there, you just gotta be sixteen and a half before you can drive with someone under twenty in the car, with no adult present!"
"But we live in California," Dipper pointed out. "I don't know. I'd better catch the bus."
"Too late!" Mabel crowed. "There it goes!"
"Then I can walk home."
"Dipper," Mabel wheedled. "C'mon. What would Wendy say? This is what makes it fun, dork!"
"If we get busted, it's your butt," Dipper grumbled. They had reached the vibrantly chartreuse Helen Wheels, the car that—in theory—belonged to both of them, though Mabel drove it far more often. "OK, get in the car and hunker down until we're on the way. Lower! Take off the trapper's hat, they'll think I'm chauffeuring a beaver! Lower, Dipper! Here we go. Nice and easy—"
"You don't have to hide," said someone from the back seat.
"Yikes!" Mabel yelled. "It's not my fault, Officer! My twin told me he was 21!"
"I'm not an officer," the voice said. "Not a police officer. Don't you know me?"
Mabel hadn't put the car in gear. Both she and Dipper swiveled to look into the back seat. An adult sat there, a pale man with a square jaw and a strange haircut, like Moe in the old Three Stooges films. Except his hair was in color, not black and white—a dark blond. He did look familiar—
"Who are you?" Mabel asked.
"You should know me—Gam-gam!"
"Oh, my God, Lolph!" Dipper said. "Look, we haven't done anything—"
"Yes, you have," the Time Paradox Avoidance Enforcement Squadron agent said. "In 2012, just after the Time Baby's encounter with Bill Cipher."
"Oh, that," Mabel said. "It ended good! You guys didn't get all dustified and junk!"
"Yes, but it has come to our attention that Blendin Blandin, who was instrumental in getting you involved in that, is missing! He's off on a different time line, and we must bring him back, so he will have already done what he did in 2012 but he hasn't done yet!"
"I hate this stuff," Dipper complained. "Look I can give you a clue. Blendin's hiding out in the Old West in the year 1883. He's scared of you guys—I know 'cause he wrote a letter to us in code. I pasted it in Journal Three after I finally managed to break the cipher—"
"We know that," Lolph said. "But we can't get to him."
"Why not?" Mabel asked. "You got your tape-time-measurey things—"
"Blendin cluttered the time-path," Lolph said. "He deliberately introduced anachronisms between now and then. They have to be located, collected, and taken with you so the time-lock on the year 1883 can be unlocked and you can persuade Blendin to go back to 2012. That done, you can return to this very moment. I'll even ride home with you so that terrible police chase and fiery crash won't will have happened, and you'll both survive."
"Sounds reasonable," Mabel said.
"Wait, what?" Dipper squeaked. "And also, uh—why us?"
"Because Blendin won't trust us yet. Once you return him to 2012, and explain to him that he must will to be is locating you two—your younger selves—on the bus homeward and persuade you to have help him keep Cipher from disintegrating the squad and Time Baby, then the time-track will be on the right time-track this time."
"Verbs," Dipper groaned. "Verbs and the word 'time.' That's why I hate—what fiery crash?"
"Averted," Lolph said. "Since I am here, Mabel will not have to try to outrun six police cruisers."
"That's a relief," Mabel said. "I could lose my license!"
"But if Blendin won't come—"
"He will because he did already once in the future past," Lolph said. "Anyway, you can take him a message from the TPAES: All is forgiven. We need your help."
"Our help?" Mabel asked.
"Blendin's help," Lolph said.
"God help you," Mabel said.
"That, too," Lolph said. "I am going to take us out of the time-stream so we won't have to discuss this while sitting in a parked car in a high-school lot. Prepare yourselves!"
Dipper grabbed the armrest. "For—
"—what?" he asked. "What just happened? And where are we? And why do I feel like throwing up?"
"And when are we?" Mabel added, patting out a minor fire in Dipper's hair. "I don't think we're in Kansas."
"Actually," Lolph said, "we are. Kansas in approximately 10,000 BC. This is, in fact, the site where one day Blendin Blandin will have been blending into the Old West, except it's the not-yet West. There aren't any people here yet."
But there were bison, who went past in an unending parade. "Cows!" Mabel said. "Yay!"
Dipper rubbed his eyes. "OK," he said. "Tell us what you want us to do. Let's consider it."
"Then listen."
Time paradox avoidance isn't just a matter of picking up the odd calculator or shoe with blinky lights and returning it to the proper era. That's part of it, but not all. A larger part is to pick up the item, whatever it might be, not after, but before someone really notices it. That fine-tuning is difficult. Sometimes the agents misjudge, and when they do, someone's in for a memory-wiping, a tricky business. A small misstep and a subject of memory-wiping could wind up living in a junkyard and married to a raccoon.
"Blendin cleverly concealed anomalies in thirteen places," Lolph said. "Each one is like a non-time time bomb. If discovered, it derails the entire future! And only someone who can both collect all thirteen anomalies and also deliver them to Blendin in 1883 can follow the trail and not get sidetimed on a completely different time-line. That's where you two come in. We know you're smart and resourceful."
"Thank you!" Mabel said. "Dipper helps, too."
"Uh—yes—and we'll give you better than state-of-the-art equipment. It may take you weeks—"
"We don't have weeks!" Dipper objected. "I've got to take Wendy to her senior prom on Saturday night!"
"The weeks will be subjective," Lolph said. "Once you retrieve Blendin and set him on the correct 2012 time-line, I will return you to the exact moment in the school parking lot when Mabel was about to ignite the starter for the hydrocarbon-fueled transport—what is it called?"
"Helen Wheels," Mabel said. "I thought that up myself."
"Car," Dipper said more prosaically.
"Car, yes! I can't promise a time-wish for you two, but I will say this: If the time-line unravels for lack of Blendin's work in 2012, then Bill Cipher will have conquered the world in the past and you will be displaced in time. And Time Baby will be has been already to have been killed! For realsies!"
"Sounds . . . hilarious but serious," Dipper said. "Mabel?"
"What, are you asking should we go for it? Of course, we go for it!" Mabel said. "Mystery Twins!"
They did the fist-bump. Lolph sighed and smiled. He looked different without his TPAES uniform and equipment—no range-finding multi-dimensional scope over his left eye, and he was dressed in what appeared to be a zoot suit and ice skates—and he definitely looked friendlier than the twins had ever seen him before. "That's my gam-gam and my favorite ancient uncle!" he said.
"For true?" Mabel asked. "I was just conning you, you know."
"I had a genetic test run," Lolph said. "You're in there somewhere."
"Huh. Go figure," Mabel said. "I wonder who the lucky great-fourteen-times grandpop is going to have will have been?"
"Please," Dipper pleaded. "Just stop."
They pulled on coveralls over their street clothes. "These are holoprojectors," Lolph said. "About five generations advanced over the ones we wear. They automatically detect the era and place and project an image of a suitable costume for you. That way you can truly blend in with the populace. The eyeglasses are detectors that will help you locate anomalies. We don't know what they are, except they all must be small, because Blendin carried them all with him. You'll each have a carrying pouch—a briefcase for Dipper, a large purse for Mabel—"
"Sexist," Mabel grumbled.
"It's a Hermes in burgundy," Lolph said.
"Mabel like!"
The time tapes had been upgraded, too—now they were more like small calculators. No, more like small mp3 players from approximately 2005—each had a round dial and two buttons, nothing marked. "How do we know what does what?" Dipper asked.
"Press the large round button once, and the eyeglasses give you a display. The other two zero in on an exact date and a location. Then you're on your own—the anomaly, whatever it is, will be within ten meters of you—"
"Thirty-five feet," Mabel explained.
"Thirty-two and a bit," Dipper corrected.
"Thirty-two and a bit IS within thirty-five, Brobro!"
"And the first one is in Gravity Falls," Lolph said. "We think Blendin left about one per decade. We're depending on you two. Are you ready to go?"
"No!" Dipper said.
"Too late," Lolph said. The air turned blue, and everything, the car, the endless plain, the herd of bison, and a whole lot of bison droppings, all just went away.