This, readers, is where it starts to diverge from the script. Dipper is off for some reason, and no one can figure out quite why.

Enjoy!

~Arg

Mabel and Dipper were sitting around at the table during breakfast.

"Are you ready for the ultimate challenge?" Mabel grinned, flashing her braces at Dipper, holding up a bottle of maple syrup.

Dipper returned the grin, holding up another bottle of maple syrup of a different brand. "I'm always ready!" he shouted.

"Then you know what this means!" Mabel cheered.

Both of them thrust their individual bottles of syrup into the air. "Syrup race!" they shouted cheerfully in unison, before tilting the bottles in the air over their tongues.

Mabel shook the bottle slightly.

"Go, Sir Syrup!" she called.

"Go, Mountain Man! Go! Go!" Dipper shouted in reply.

"Almost…. almost…" Mabel hoped aloud. The drop of syrup reached her tongue first as she tapped the bottle. "Yes!" she cheered in victory before choking on the drop she had failed to properly swallow. "I won!"

Dipper smiled at her before resigning himself to his magazine. "Hoho…" he grinned suddenly, turning to his sister. "Hey, Mabel! Check this out."

Mabel turned to look at the ad. In the magazine was a picture and pricing of a giant hamster ball made for humans. "Human-sized hamster balls?" She then gasped. "I'm human-sized!"

"No, no, Mabel… This," Dipper corrected, pointing to the ad on the other page, which read about a monster-hunting contest, showing a picture of a monster. "We see weirder stuff than that every day. We didn't get any pictures of those gnomes, did we?"

"Nope!" Mabel chirped. "Just memories! And this beard hair."

She pulled out a bit of white hair.

"Why did you save that?"

Mabel hummed and shrugged.

Just then, Grunkle Stan entered the kitchen. "Good morning, Knuckleheads," he greeted. "You two know what day it is?" Stan asked the twins, using a more familial and friendly tone than usual.

"Um…" Dipper guessed. "Happy… anniversary?"

"Mazel tov!" Mabel shouted with excitement.

Stan bopped Dipper's head with a rolled up newspaper. It didn't hurt, though startled the boy a bit as it partially knocked his hat off. Dipper adjusted his hat to be on its usual spot again.

"It's Family Fun Day, genius!" Stan corrected. He walked over to the fridge to grab the milk and sniff it. "We're cuttin' off work and having one of those, you know, bonding type deals."

"Grunkle Stan," Dipper asked hesitantly, "is this gonna be anything like our last Family Fun Day?"

Dipper shivered at the memory of the jail they'd been in. "The county jail was so cold…" Mabel shuddered.

"All right, maybe I haven't been the summer caretaker. But, I swear, today we're gonna have some real family fun," Stan promised with a grin. Dipper and Mabel exchanged concerned glances. "Now, who wants to put on some blindfolds and get into my car!?"

Both twins found themselves cheering, until Dipper's excitement switched to confusion. "Wait," Dipper said. "...What?"

Dipper and Mabel found themselves in the back of Stan's car, the vehicle doing sudden jerks that made Dipper curl up nervously, hugging his legs.

"Blindfolds never lead to anything good," Dipper moaned quietly, uncurling for a moment.

"Wow," Mabel marveled. "I feel like all my other senses are heightened! I can see with my fingers!" With that, she started rubbing Dipper's face, and he giggled, before the car jerked again, making Dipper curl up again.

"Grunkle Stan?" he ventured fearfully. "...Are you wearing a blindfold?"

"Nah, but with these cataracts, I might as well be!"

Dipper only felt more terrified after that.

Once the twins were finally told to take off their blindfolds, they found themselves at the lake.

"Ta-da!" Grunkle Stan shouted, grinning. "It's fishing season!"

"Fishing?" Mabel asked, confused.

"What're you playing at, old man?" Dipper asked Stan, uncertain.

"You're gonna love it! The whole town's here!" Stan continued, beaming. "That's some quality family bonding."

"Grunkle Stan, why do you wanna bond with us all of a sudden?" Dipper asked, feeling the beginnings of another headache coming on. He winced quietly and held his head.
"Come on," Stan continued, not noticing Dipper's somewhat sudden display of pain. "This is gonna be great! I've never had fishing buddies before… The guys from the lodge won't go with me. They don't 'like' or 'trust' me."

"I think he actually wants to fish with us," Mabel whispered to Dipper who whined under his breath. "Bro-bro, are you okay?"
"J-just another headache, Mabel," he answered in a high tone. "It'll go away."

"Those have been happening a lot lately," she said with concern. Dipper shrugged.
Stan raised an eyebrow. "Well," he continued even still. "I know what'll cheer you up. Pow!" He shoved a hat toward each twin, and they took the hats tentatively. "Pines family fishing hats! That's hand stitching, you know. It's just gonna be you, me, and those goofy hats on a boat for ten hours!"

"Ten hours?!" Dipper yelped, before wincing in pain again and closing his eyes.

"I brought the joke book!" Stan grinned, holding a book of a thousand and one jokes. Dipper gritted his teeth.

"There has to be a way out of this," Mabel insisted.

"I seen it! I seen it again!" screeched an elderly voice. An old man began crashing into things wildly before stopping in the middle of the beach. "The Gravity Falls Gobblewonker! Come quick before it scrapdoodles away!"

The old coot then began to dance.

"Aww," Mabel smiled. "He's doing a happy jig!"

"No!" the old coot shouts at her. "It's a jig of grave danger!"

A man came from the fishing shack to shoo the man away. "What did I tell you about scarin' my customers? This is your last warning, Dad!" the man shouted, squirting the old man with a spray bottle.

"But I got proof this time, by guppity," the elderly man went on. He pointed at a clearly snapped in half boat. "Behold! It's the Gobbeldy-wonker what done did it! It had a long neck like a gee-raffe! And wrinkly skin like…" the old coot pointed at Stan. "Like this gentleman right here!"

Stan barely noticed the insult.

"It chewed my boat up to smitheroons, and shim-shammed over to Scuttlebutt Island! You gotta believe me!"

"Attention all units," laughed the deep, smooth voice of the shorter sheriff jokingly. "We got ourselves a crazy old man." Everyone in the area then laughs in response.

The old coot began to walk away, muttering, "Aww, donkey-spittle…"

"Well, that happened," Stan said with confusion. "Now let's untie this boat and get out on that lake!"

"Mabel," Dipper smiled to his sister, ignoring his headache as best he could. "Did you hear what that old dude said?"

"Aww, donkey-spittle," Mabel said, trying to do her best impression of the old coot's voice.

"The other thing. About the monster. If we can take a photo of it, we can split the prize and prove to Stan that supernatural stuff is happening in this town! Besides, imagine what you could do with five hundred dollars."

"Human-sized hamster ball…." she whispered to herself idly. Dipper waved a hand in front of her face.
"Mabel? Mabel?"

"Dipper, I am one million percent on board with this," she said suddenly. Dipper grinned.

"Grunkle Stan, change of plans. We're finding the Gobblewonker!"

The twins then began chanting in unison, "Monster-hunt! Monster-hunt!"

Soos then joined them at the dock with his motorboat. "You dudes say somethin' about a monster hunt?"

"Soos!" Mabel greeted him excitedly.

"Wassup, Hambone?" Soos grinned, and fist bumped Mabel, complete with explosion sound effects. "Dude, you can totally use my boat for your hunt. It's got a steering wheel, chairs, normal boat stuff."

"Alright, alright," Stan interrupted. "Let's think this through. You kids could go waste your time on some epic monster-finding adventure, or you could spend the day learning how to tie knots and skewer worms with your great uncle Stan!"

The twins looked at each other and then at Soos, before glancing at Stan. They scamper onto Soos's boat and drove off toward Scuttlebutt Island as Stan saddened.

Dipper sat leaning against the small shelter atop the boat, nursing his headache, knowing it would have to go away soon, as they usually didn't last too long. He wondered what he would've been otherwise doing had he not been so slowed down by the constant annoyance. Maybe playing as captain, as Mabel was doing.

"Do either of you have sunscreen?" Soos asked suddenly. Both twins glanced up at him.

Thankfully, the headache had released Dipper from its annoying and painful grasp. Dipper paced on the boat in front of Soos and Mabel. "Alright!" he proclaimed. "If we want to win this contest, we have to do this right! Think; what's the number one problem with monster hunts?"

"Youre a side character," Soos answered, thinking about it, "you die within the first five minutes of the movie. Dude… am I a side character? Do you ever think about stuff like that?"

"No, no, no, camera trouble!" Dipper corrected with annoyance. "Say Bigfoot shows up. Soos, be Bigfoot?"

Soos turns to pose as if he were a creature caught in the middle of walking.

"There he is! Bigfoot!" Dipper pretended, trying to prove his point. "Uh, oh! No camera! Oh, wait, here's one! Aw, no film! You see? You see what I'm doing here?"

"Dude's got a point," Soos nodded.

"That's why I brought seventeen disposable cameras! Two on my ankle, three in my jacket, four for each of you, three extras in this bag, and one under my hat. There's no way we're gonna miss this!" Dipper proclaimed, grinning at his own genius. "Okay everybody, let's test our cameras out!"

"Eleven. Eleven cameras," Dipper sighed frustratedly, thinking his headache was going to come back. "We just tossed and broke six cameras in the first five minutes of this monster hunt."

"So, do we throw more cameras overboard or what?" Soos asked jokingly.

"No!" Dipper shouted. "No. Okay. Mabel, you'll be lookout. Soos, you work the steering wheel, and I'll be captain."

"What about co-captain?" Mabel asked.

"There's no such thing."

"Uh.. whoops," Mabel grinned, dropping another camera overboard.

"Okay! Fine! You can be co-captain!" Dipper yelped. "Just stop destroying cameras!"

The group crashed the boat right into the island as Mabel was messing with a pelican's beak. As they stepped out, Dipper felt a sick feeling creep over him. He fought back his nausea as he picked up the lantern.

"Dude," Soos grinned, putting his arm over the word 'scuttle' on the island's sign. "Check it out. Butt Island."

"Soos, you rapscallion," Mabel grinned. She then turned to Dipper, who was curling up in a ball, leaning against a tree, on the ground, sitting up. "Hey, why aren't you laughing? Are you scared?"

"No," Dipper said quietly, with annoyance. "I'm in pain."

Mabel poked him in the nose, and he looked up at her tiredly.

"Do you want to go back?" she asked him semi-seriously. He shook his head.

"I didn't think so!" Mabel grinned, and started poking him over and over, making sound effects by blowing raspberries.

Dipper started laughing. "Mabel, stop! Quit it!"

Suddenly, a growling in the distance made the trio look up in the direction of the sound.

"Dude, did you guys hear that?" Soos asked quietly.

"Was that anybody's stomach?" Mabel asked.

"Nah, my stomach normally sounds like whale noises," Soos replied. Dipper continued to stay in his curled ball on the ground. He hummed a no.

Inexplicably, the lantern beside Dipper shattered. "Our lantern!" he shouted, before curling up tighter in pain.

"Dude, I dunno man. Maybe uh… Maybe this isn't worth it. Dipper's not doin' so hot, and we can't really see," Soos said quietly, looking around fearfully.

"No!" Dipper said, forcing himself to his feet. "I'm fine! We're going to win that contest, and I'm not letting my ge-my headaches and stuff stop me!"

"What did you stop yourself from saying?" Mabel asked quietly, the remnant of a smile on her face left there in her confusion.

The group trudged on as their eyes adjusted somewhat. A low growling began, which made Dipper look up.

"Guys, do you hear that?" he whispered.

The growling noise increased in volume as a flock of birds fly in the opposite direction of the sound.

"This is it!" Dipper proclaimed, grinning. "Everyone, get your cameras ready!"

Soos and Mabel readied their cameras.

"Go!"

The trio yelled and ran up to the shadowy figure ahead, and the closer they got, the more they realized that the figure ahead was a shipwreck turned into a beaver dam.

"But what was that noise?" Soos asked no one in particular.

A sudden crash made the twins jump, and Dipper was the first to look up, seeing a silvery-blue reptilian head leering down at him, a sparkling gemstone in the middle of its forehead, glowing a deep crimson. The boy took a slow step back, feeling as if he were about to vomit.

Soos takes a picture of it as Dipper grins, doing the same. The monster then screeched and bit the camera in between Dipper's hands, making him gulp, and the group turned to run, all screaming as the monster climbed out of the water to chase them.

"Get back to the boat!" Soos yelled, running back a bit to pick Dipper up and put him on his shoulders, as he'd been lagging behind. "Hurry!"

As soon as they got back to the boat, Soos put Dipper down and ran for the wheel, quickly steering the boat away as fast as he could. "Let's get outta here, dudes!" he yelled.

Dipper began trying to get a photo as Mabel threw cameras at the monster, attempting to keep it at bay.

"What are you doing?!" Dipper shouted at Mabel.

The monster snapped at the boat, breaking pieces of it off. Dipper panicked, no longer caring about the photos, forgetting his sick feeling for a moment.

"Go, go, go, go, go!" he shouted at Soos, who steered out of the monster's path. Dipper pulled the journal out and flipped through it as fast as he could. "In there!" he shouted, pointing to the waterfall. "Go into the falls! I think there might be a cave behind there!"

"Might be?1" Mabel shouted.

Soos steered straight into the waterfall as they all screamed. They were suddenly pushed from behind by the monster, which suddenly stopped trying to attack them. The group turned to look at the monster, now stuck in the mouth of the cave they were all now trapped in, and it was struggling, thrashing about in attempts to get free.

"It's… stuck?" Dipper asked tentatively. Without an answer, he searched himself for a camera.

"Boop," Mabel beeped, pulling his hat off, revealing his last camera.

Dipper laughed and excitedly took pictures of the monster.

"Did you get a good one?" Mabel asked.

"They're all good ones!" DIpper yells excitedly. He turns, his smile fading, as a rock falls onto the monster and its head falls with a metallic clang. He looked at the gem on the monster's forehead, and mentally questioned why the monster didn't disappear in a puff of smoke.

Dipper cautiously approached the creature, and gave it a pat. It didn't move. He knocked on the side of it, and it made a hollow sound.

"What are you doing?" Mabel called with concern.

Dipper began to climb up the side of the creature, which seemed oddly easy.

"Careful, dude!" Soos shouted.

"Guys, come check this out," Dipper told them from the top of the monster. "The monster has a gem, but didn't turn into a puff of smoke like it should have. Why didn't it? Here's our answer!"

Dipper opened a hatch as the others arrived. He glared down at the kook from before, who had been working the inside of a monster-like machine.

"Aw, banjo polish," the old coot sighed.

"You?!" Dipper growled, anger flaring in his mind. "You made this?! Why?!"

"Well, I just wanted attention…" the elderly man admitted.

Mabel looked at Dipper with worry, but said nothing, unsure as to why he was suddenly fuming.

"I don't understand," Dipper said flatly, clenching his teeth.

"Well, first I just hootenannied up a biochemical brain wave generator usin' that ol' rock there," the coot grinned, pointing down at the gem on the robot's forehead. "It's also a power source. Then I learned to operate a stick-shift with my beard!"

"You used a sentient being, trapped in the form of a ROCK as a power source?!" Dipper hissed, grabbing the man by the collar. "AS PART OF A MACHINE?!"

"Why'd you do it?" Mabel asked the man.

"Well, when you get to be an old fella like me, nobody pays any attention to you anymore. My own son hasn't visited me in months! So I figured maybe I'd catch his fancy with a fifteen ton aquatic robot! In retrospect, it seems a bit contrived. You just don't know the length us old-timers go through for a little quality time with our family."

Dipper let the old man go, most of his anger suddenly gone as he recalled Grunkle Stan left ignored at the dock, feeling a sudden rush of guilt.

The machine under the weight of the trio and old coot shook and gave out beneath them. The gem on the beast's forehead clattered to the cave ground. Dipper slid down the monster's neck and picked it up carefully. Mabel followed his example, sliding down the robot's neck as well.

"Hold on to this for me," Dipper said idly, as Mabel grinned and complied.

"Boop," Mabel chirped, as a pink, clear orb surrounded the gem between Mabel's hands. Dipper turned his head to look.

"You can bubble gems!" Soos shouted excitedly from the top of the monster. Dipper grimaced at her hands, and looked at his own, wishing he could do the same.

"Let's get back," Mabel sighed. "Dipper, he even made us hats."

Dipper pulled the hand-stitched hat out of his vest and sighed along with Mabel.

Mabel, Dipper, and Soos joined Stan on the dock.

"Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said happily. "Let's be fishing buddies!"

"What… kids?" Stan smiled, looking up at them from his somber state. "I thought you two were off playing 'Spin the Bottle' with Soos!"

"Well, we spent all day trying to find a legendary dinosaur," Dipper admitted.

"But we realized that the only dinosaur we wanna hang out with is right here," Mabel finished, gesturing to Stan himself after putting the bubbled gem in the boat.

Their great uncle glanced at them, and smiled.

"You knuckleheads ever seen me thread a hook with my eyes closed?"

"Five bucks says you can't do it!"

Sorry I cut a bunch of bits out, but personally, I wasn't enjoying them, and wasn't sure how well they'd work in story format. Bear with me!

The next episode, since "Headhunters" sort of can't be changed much, will be off-script and up to me with a plot from Steven Universe. It will be a test of characterization. Let's see how I do. It may take me a few days, since I don't have exact words from which I can work. After that, we'll be back on schedule, but further off script than these past two episodes. After all, this IS a different story!