Chapter Two: The Burning Pines
Wendy stood there, amazed by not only the dragon that was right in front of her, but also the fact that this very dragon maybe be her friend. She leaned closer to the fire-breather's forehead to get a better look at the makings. Sure enough it looked identical to Dipper's birthmark, but the teen still was in denial that the boy and the beast where one in the same and if they where, how could it be even possible that Dipper could transform himself into this monster in the first place? Sure, there were quite a few strange things in this town, but was there really a way that a person could turn themselves into a dragon? Wendy just had to find out.
"Dipper, is that really you?" she curiously asked the behemoth
The dragon's whole body jerked backwards, as if shocked that it had been called by that name. The giant beast then hung its head low, almost as if it was ashamed and turned its gaze away from the teenager. Even though the monster could not speak, just by those actions alone; Wendy knew in an instant that this creature was indeed her young friend.
"Oh my god…" she gasped "how did this happen to you?"
Dipper of course was unable to say anything to the girl and did not make eye contact with her again. He instead spread his wings and prepared to take off into the air, which was something Wendy did not wish for him to do. Even if he was now a fire-breathing monstrosity, he was still someone the red-head cared deeply about and she refused to leave his side in his obvious time of need.
"Wait, please don't go!" she pleaded to the dragon "I want to help you!"
The beast gave one last sorrowful look back at her before launching itself into the sky, leaving the girl alone and confused in the forest. Wendy had no clue as to what to do next, she obviously needed help in order to figure out how Dipper become a monster as well as help find a way to change him back; fortunately for her, she knew a certain group of people who have dealt with these types of things before and she had a sneaking suspicion that they might have already have an idea as to what really happened to Dipper.
"Tomorrow, I'm getting some answers" she thought to herself before heading back home
The following day, Wendy entered the Mystery Shack to start her work shift. Truth be told, she didn't really need to come in at all, due to the fact that tourists stopped coming to the shop because of the wildfires, but there was the matter of finding out how exactly Dipper became a giant fire-breathing killing machine she wanted to attend to. Ever since the fires started, Stan, Soos and Mabel had had been acting strangely. Mabel would always look out the from Wendy's rooftop stop and kept a close eye on the sky with a pair of binoculars, she always told the teen that she had taken up bird watching, but after yesterday's encounter the red-head had a feeling that she was dragon watching instead.
Soos meanwhile, worked tirelessly on fixing the mysterious hole in the roof that Stan claimed to had been caused by termites, now this wasn't out of the ordinary for the Shack's handy man, however the way he was going about working is what was strange, normally he'd be very talkative as he worked, but for the past few days he worked in silence and asked to be left alone as he repaired the roof.
Then finally was Stan himself, who recently all he would do is sit in front of TV and watched the local news of all things, he became so fixated of the reports on the wildfires that it was all consuming, which Wendy found to be odd; considering her boss despised the local news station ever since they ran some rather less then flattering reports on the last time he was arrested.
After going up the ladder that led to the roof, the teenager found Mabel and her pet pig sitting in some lawn chairs and keeping their eyes on the sky as always this was the perfect chance to get an explanation.
"Hey Mabel, is your brother around?" she asked the younger girl
"uh, nope not at all" the sweater wearing girl answered, in a slightly nervous tone "he must've left earlier today to go exploring, you know how he is" "Is that so?" Wendy replied with a raised eyebrow "you know I saw Dipper yesterday"
"You Did!" the boy's sister shouted in surprise, before instantly calming down "eh-I mean, you did?"
"Yeah and he looked a lot different too" the teen continued in a sarcastic tone
"How so?" Mabel nervously inquired "Well he's bigger and he was a quite a messy eater…" the red-head explained casually "and there was something else-oh yeah, he's a freaking dragon!"
The hyperactive girl hung head down low, knowing that her friend knew the truth.
"How could you not tell me this Mabel?" Wendy said sharply
"Would you have believed me if I did?" the younger girl retorted
"Mabel, I was attacked by the ghosts; I'm willing to believe anything"the teen replied "now tell me, how did it happen?"
The dragon's sibling nodded in response, she then looked up to Shack's second level and called out to Soos, who was currently hammering nails into the new roof.
"Soos, Wendy knows about Dipper!" she called out to him "Get Grunkle Stan and meets us in the living room!"
Mcgucket laugh madly to himself as he rummaged through his old blue prints for machines he drew up in the past, but never got around to working on within the confines of his secret lab in his cellar, but now he finally had a reason to build one of his earliest machines and that reason could fly and breathe fire.
"Ah-ha! Here it is!" he said triumphantly when he found the blue prints he was searching for
He took the plans out of their container and looked over them as if they pages of nude girls magazine, all the while laughing at fun he would have when put his machine into action.
"At last I can finally fulfill one of my life long dreams!" he proclaimed "I'm gonna slay me a dragon!"
With that, the crazy inventor went right to work on the plan that would allow him to achieve his goal and at last kill this mythic beast for the pure sake of killing it, besides he always did want a dragon's head mounted on his outhouse door and with the help of these blue prints, his insane dream might come true.
Once Soos had retrieved Stan, the group gathered round in the living room in order to share what they knew about Dipper's transformation into the monster that was now setting the forest ablaze.
"Alright so spill it, how did Dipper become that thing?" Wendy demanded to boss T
he owner of the Mystery Shack reached said nothing; instead he reached into his suit and tossed his employee a sphere shaped glass bottle to her. Upon a closer at the bottle she saw a dark green liquid within it and small wooden cork in the shape of a dragon holding the liquid inside the bottle.
"Four days ago, an old traveling salesman stopped by here" Stan began to explain "he claimed he had mystical potion that would give anyone the strength of a dragon, naturally I kicked the old coot off my property and thought that that was the end of it"
"But Dipper got curious about the potion and caught up with the salesman" Mabel added "he bought one of bottles and took it back home where he showed it to me"
"And then what happened?" the teen asked
"I started to tease Dipper, I said that he was too chicken to try and drink the potion" the sweater wearing girl continued, trying to hold back tears "then he got upset and then he…he-oh god!"
The monster's sister began to weep uncontrollably, making her unable to finish her sentence; however the older girl didn't need to hear the rest of Mabel's words to know what came next. She did begin to feel sad for the hyperactive child though, she had no idea what kind of sadness the child was going through since her brother had transformed into a beast.
"It's my fault Dipper's became that monster!" she cried as Soos hugged her in a caring embrace "if I didn't make fun of him, he wouldn't have drank that potion!"
"It'll be ok Mabel, we'll find a way to change him back" the handyman reassured
"So how exactly did you find about Dipper in the first place Wendy?" Stan questioned
"He saved me from a mountain lion" she replied "well actuality he ate the mountain lion and I thought he was going to eat me as well, but when he saw me, all he did was look at me; as if he knew me, that's when I saw his birthmark and knew right then and there I knew who he was"
Upon hearing Wendy's explanation of her encounter with her now monstrous sibling, a glimmer of hope sparked in Mabel's eyes.
"He remembered you?" she asked "that's great!"
"How's that?" Soos inquired
"It means Dipper might still have most of his memoires" she added on, with her spirit lifting "he has a little bit of his humanity left in him!"
This brightened up everyone's spirits rise as well, if Dipper remembered who they were, then that could mean there might be a chance that his mind wasn't completely taken over by his new dragon form.
"Ok so what do we do now?" Stan wondered
"Isn't it obvious Grunkle Stan?" his grand-niece said "We need to find him and try to talk to him"
"Talk to him? Mabel, you do realize that your brothers a giant flying flamethrower now right?" Mr. Mystery reasoned "talking isn't one of his strong suites anymore"
"And even if could talk to him, how do we even find him?" Wendy added on "it's not like he'll come out when we call him"
"I think I might have an idea dudes" the over-weight man-child spoke up
After the handyman explained his plan to the rest of the group, they then piled into Soos's truck and drove out into the forest in the direction of the newest wildfire had been put out, thinking that it would be a good place to start their search. As they drove deeper into the woods they began to pass by parts of the woodland area that were already burned to ashes by Dipper's fire.
"Why is he doing this?" Wendy asked in confused tone as she looked out the truck's window "is he mad about something?"
"Actuality he's marking his territory, you know like how some animals pee on stuff to make it theirs" Soos said "dragons burn certain areas as way of telling other dragons or anything else that this is their turf"
"Well it least it's better than him pissing on everything" Stan mentioned
"How do you know that's what he's doing Soos?" Mabel questioned
"Dude I'm a Dungeon-Master, you gotta know these kinds of things when you play D&D" Soos replied in a serious tone
"Right…" was all the younger girl could say
The teenager stayed silent as she went back to looking out the window, all the while thinking about what her heavy-set friend just told her and also what could possibly be big enough (or crazy enough) to take on Dipper in Gravity Falls?
It took him awhile to break free of his tree sap prison and climb out of that accused hole, but at last the old king had reemerged to the surface world. However, after smashing through the wooded structure around him he saw that his Kingdome had drastically changed since his imprisonment. There were trees in the place that was once grass and rocks where mountains once stood, even the air that was now filling his lungs was quite different than before.
He walked through the now alien forest that surrounded him, noticing all the changes both big and small as he did. Then he came across something that caught his reptilian eye; a row of trees that had been burned to ashes.
Fire was not an unknown element to the old king, he had seen plenty of it in his time, but something about these scorched plants made him feel uneasy. He sniffed the air around the burnt trees and caught a scent of a creature that he had never smelled before. It did not smell like the horn-heads or the winged ones or anything else that once lived his domain, but this he was absolutely sure of: it was attempting to make the old king's home its own.
The tyrant lizard let out a snarl in disgust at this newcomer's actions, despite the changes, this was still his Kingdome and he was not going to allow this usurper take it away from him. With bloodshed on his mind, the T-Rex made his way deeper into the forest; hoping to find something to eat, after all, he couldn't take back his home on an empty stomach now could he?
"I still don't think this is going to work" Stan said
After driving several miles out into the now burnt wilderness, the group began to set Soos's plan in motion. The plan was simple really, just place a small piece of gold out into an open patch of ground and wait for Dipper to come and get it because according to the man-child, dragons can find smallest trace of gold in any environment and can't resist the urge to take it and add it to their collection.
"Do we even have any gold?" Wendy questioned
"Oh course we do" Soos answered matter-of-factly
The 'Dudgeon-Master' suddenly reached into his boss's suit and yanked off his gold chain and hung it around a brunt branch. He then ushered his friends to hide behind some burnt plants a few feet away and wait for Dipper's arrival.
"And now we play the waiting game" he informed them
"The waiting game sucks!" Mabel exclaimed "we should be out their looking for my brother instead wasting time here!"
"Trust me Mabel, he'll come" the handyman reassured "it's only a matter of time before-"
Soos's sentence was cut off when a massive shadow darker the sky over then for several seconds with the sound of an ear-splitting roar was heard, the shadow soared over the group and turn around and disappeared when the shadow's owner landed on the ground with a force that shook the earth, making the would be dragon hunters look at the beast in a mixture of wonder and horror. Even though Wendy had already seen Dipper's new form before, she was still awestruck by him and Stan, Soos and Mabel where in total shock. Dipper carefully inspected the necklace before gently taking off the branch with his jaws and began to walk away with his new prize in tow.
"Now what do we do?" Stan whispered
"I don't know Mr. Pines, I'm too scared to move" his employee before asking the dragon's sister "What do you think Mabel?"
The man-child didn't get an answer, instead the sweater wearing girl ran out of their hiding spot and straight toward the titanic reptile with Wendy at her side, much to the surprise of the two men.
"Dipper!" she called out to the beast "It's me Mabel, remember!"
The dragon swung its head around to look at where the voice had come from and saw his sibling standing before him with his love interest beside her. The fire-breathing behemoth eyes had a saddened expression in them as it tried to look away from the girls, but the teen ran in front of titan, attempting to block his path.
"Please…just let us try to help you" she begged
Dipper slightly tilted his head upon hearing those words, after a few seconds of possibly thinking it over, the dragon lowered himself further to the ground and motion with his head for Wendy to climb unto his back, however when Mabel tried to take up the offer, he let out a threatening hiss at her; making his sister jump back in fright. It was in that moment that the teenager had an epiphany.
"I think I get it now" the red-head figured "Dipper has some of his memories, but he doesn't remember everything"
"But why does he remember you over me?" the hyperactive girl mused "I'm his twin sister"
"I don't know Mabel, maybe I'm like his mind anchor or something" she continued"but look, I going to go with Dipper, I think he wants to take me to where he's been hiding all this time; maybe I could even try to get him to remember you and the others"
"But what if he's just eats you when you get there?" Stan said before ducking back behind the bush when Dipper growled at him
"He had a chance to eat me before and he didn't, so I doubt it" Wendy reasoned before hearing an impatient hiss from the dragon "I'll call you guys when at Dipper's home alright?"
"Just be careful Wendy" Soos warned "if you see any gold in his home, don't touch it or he'll kill you!"
"Where on earth could Dipper find any gold in Gravity Falls?" Stan commented
"You never know dude" his employee answered "dragons have like a sixth sense when it comes to looking for gold and they'll kill anyone who even pokes it"
With hearing Soos's advice, Wendy climbed onto the creatures back and wrapped around the base of his neck tightly; ready to take off. Once the teenager had secured herself, the dragon launched himself into the air with one flap of his wings, all the while making sure that his new and very precious cargo was safe.
