I contemplated merging chapters 1 and 2, but decided I liked the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 1 too much to do that.
Enjoy.
"Damn." Never in Dipper's life had he ever imagined Soos letting out even the simplest of swear words. The man was like the ultimate kindhearted human sized teddy bear.
Well, it did just about sum up everyone's thoughts.
"And…" Mabel wasn't quite done yet, and Dipper knew exactly what was coming next. It was the second worse part of what drove them to this. "Mom and dad tried to kill Waddles!"
"Mable, surely…" Ford didn't get far.
"Twice." Dipper sighed. It wasn't exactly a memory he was interested in revisiting, mostly for Mabel's sake.
"What?" Ford looked at Mabel, then back at Dipper, his features twisted into complete shock. "Why? As far as swine go, he is very well behaved and clean."
"He's a filthy animal." To everyone present, Dipper was speaking, but they all knew they were not his words to begin with. "He's growing too large to make a house pet. No daughter of mine is going to have a disgusting pig as a pet."
"She would like a puppy, or a kitten so much better!" Mabel followed up, anger rising. "Those are real pets, doncha know!"
"Mabel, let's just calm down for one…"
"No, Grunkle Ford!" Mabel shouted. "They lied to us, to me! They told me Waddles got out, went missing, poof into thin air. Know where Dipper found him?"
"Sweetie…" Stan's attempt to defuse the girl fell on deaf ears.
"IN A KILL SHELTER!" Mabel took a number of steadying breaths before whispering softly. "Sorry."
"Don't you apologize." Stan always did have a way with Mabel. "You've got nothin' to be sorry for."
Before anyone else could say or do more, Dipper heard the sound of another car outside. Much like Stan's, this one screeched as its driver slammed on their brakes at nearly the last instant. Had they hit the pedal any later, they might have just crashed through the gift shop's front door.
Whoever they were, they must have been in a hell of a rush.
Again fearing the worst, Dipper darted around Ford to grab Mabel by the hand. She must have had the same idea, because the instant Dipper did so, she in turn gripped his. Now that he had his sister this time, Dipper was more than ready to run.
The younger set of twins didn't even get to blink before there was a crash of the wooden door being thrown open. That poor door finally had enough, this last hit didn't so much as knock it off its hinges, as break it free from its frame.
Dipper caught sight of a red and bluish blur before thin, yet strong, arms wound around him and Mabel both. While said arms nearly crushed the life out of him and his sister, an all too familiar scent of earth and wood resin reached his nostrils.
A scent that seemed to cling to a specific person Dipper remembered quite fondly from his time in Gravity Falls.
"Wendy?!" Dipper and Mabel both exclaimed in unison.
"Gotta say." Wendy was grinning like a kid on Christmas Eve. "Thought she was pulling my leg when she said you guys were back in town."
It was strange seeing Wendy, not bad strange but good strange. It occurred to Dipper that he'd only ever seen her during Summer. Seeing as how they were in the early days of spring, she was of course bundled up in a heavier coat instead of that green flannel shirt Dipper remembered so vividly. In addition to… hey, was that his hat she was wearing?
Also, how the hell Wendy even know they were here? She couldn't have seen them when they got off the bus, she'd have greeted them then and there knowing her.
From the corner of his eye, Dipper caught sight of Melody returning from upstairs while pocketing a cell phone. There was one mystery discovered and solved in record time.
"What brings you two up here? Why didn't you… let me know you were coming… up?" It slowly dawned on Wendy that something wasn't right. Now that the initial shock had worn off, she had to have felt the skyrocketing tension that filled the room. "Uh… any one wanna let me in the loop?"
"Dipper and Hambone are on the lam, dawg." Soos was just as deathly serious as Stan and Ford. "Mom and pop don't know they're here."
"What?" Wendy laughed. "No way. Nice joke, guys. Little lame, but it was a good try."
Nobody else was laughing.
Upon noticing this, Wendy humor abruptly died. "Dudes, what the hell is going on? All I got from Melody was you guys showed up at the shack."
"Mom and dad wanted to kill Waddles!" Mabel blurted. The pig in question oinked at her ankles, as if trying to confirm she was right.
Wendy had to do a double take. "They… what?"
"Dipper was able to rescue him just in time." Mabel beamed, reaching down to try and hoist up the pig. She regularly forgot that he'd grown too large to be able to do that, anymore. Like Dipper, Mabel had done some growing up herself, but she still didn't have the physical ability to pick Waddles up like she used to. Didn't stop her from trying. "You should have seen my bro!"
Dipper dove from shadow to shadow. It was nighttime, but the streetlights gave off more than enough light to allow the guards to spot him if they caught him in their sights. He had to be stealthy, his target depended on it.
The obvious approach, the fence, was out of the question. The sharp wires around the top would be a recipe for total disaster if he tried to climb it. With that route closed off, he had no choice but to climb the wall of the building itself. Normally, such a thing would be impossible, due to a lack of places to grip. Thankfully, he had thought to bring…
Mabel's awesome grappling hook!
Taking aim, Dipper fired the device over the side and onto the roof. After tugging a few times on the line to test its strength, he began his ascent.
Dipper only made it halfway up before the unthinkable happened.
The line came loose.
He began to fall, but Dipper kept a cool head. Luckily, the metal hook caught somewhere else on the roof and stopped him midfall, but in his haste to swing across to what he hoped was a place to grip, he had built up too much momentum. Weaving through the air, he barely missed the fence's razor wire by a few inches at most.
Releasing the line, Dipper did a somersault in midair and…
"Mabel…" Dipper pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "That isn't what happened at all! You weren't even there."
Mabel gave a meek shrug muttering under her breath. Dipper heard, and maybe Wendy, but no one else was close enough to do so. "Just wanted you to sound like the hero you were to me."
No, Dipper wasn't upset in the slightest. If Mabel was back to telling fantastical stories like that one, maybe Gravity Falls really was helping the girl back to her old bubbly self. Under any other circumstances, he might have just let her continue on, but they needed to hear the truth.
"Okay, this should be the place. If I'm right, he'll be here." Dipper peered through the fence. The place wasn't that large, mostly just a single larger building with a few smaller ones scattered around. "Please, please be wrong, Dipper."
Scaling the fence was no issue. It wasn't the first time he'd done it, maybe not the same one fence, but still. Once on the other side, he had to dive for cover behind a dumpster when he thought he heard someone approaching. Luckily, it was nothing, just a car passing.
It was after hours, in the middle of the night. There shouldn't be anyone here, but Dipper didn't want to take the chance and risk detection. Unless he was sure the place was empty, he needed to play this quick and quiet. If he had more time, he would have scouted ahead of time, but this was a luxury he couldn't afford.
Avoiding any potential illumination from the outside streetlights, Dipper made his way across the yard into one of the small outbuildings. Just as he hoped, the door wasn't locked. The people running the place must be putting all their trust in the fence's locks.
Now inside, Dipper found the place to be living space for animals staying at the shelter. Most of the cages and stalls were empty, but a handful were occupied.
This was the reason he had to do this alone. As much as he loved his sister, they couldn't afford her to get emotional about all the other animals here they couldn't save. With no sign of his target, Dipper left the building and slipped into the next closest one.
Again, more animals, but not what he was looking for.
At last, Dipper came to the main building itself. Unlike the outbuildings, this one's door was actually locked. A quick search around the back revealed an open window. It was small, had Dipper been thirteen again, he would have easily fit, but that was no longer the case. He may not be as young anymore, but he still had the build of a scarecrow. He was able to heave himself through.
There was more office space and worktables than anything here, but Dipper wasn't going to be satisfied until he'd searched every last square inch of the property. Up to and including waste bens and dumpsters.
Dipper stopped dead in his tracks when he heard a familiar squeal.
"Found you!" Dipper felt like cheering. Rushing over to the closed cage, he was greeted with a flurry of oinks from his sister's pet, Waddles. Dipper put his finger to his lips in an attempt to quiet the scared animal. "Shh!"
Waddles went silent.
"Hang tight, buddy." Dipper put a hand against the cage's door. "Let me find the key. I'm getting you back home to Mabel."
At the sound of his dearest friend's name, Waddles squealed happily before quieting himself again.
"Smart pig." Dipper chuckled.
The cage key had to be around here, somewhere. Maybe on that table over there?
Fortune was on Dipper's side. Searching the worktables clutter and papers, Dipper found an entire keyring, finding the correct one would be trivial, but something else caught the boy's eye.
It was dumb luck, really. Dipper just happened to see one of the papers with Waddles name written on it. Indulging in his curiosity, Dipper grabbed the paper and scanned over its contents.
The words made Dipper's blood run cold.
"We are leaving, now." After what he just read, had Dipper not found the keys as quick as he did, he would have just taken the nearest blunt object and smashed the lock. "Come on."
As soon as the cage was opened, Waddles all too happily jumped out, nearly knocking Dipper over trying to lick at his face.
"No time for that." Dipper chuckled, momentarily forgetting what he saw. With his objective acquired, Dipper relocked the cage, threw the keys on the table, and dashed for the exit, Waddles following closely at his feet.
"Paperwork from the shelter." Dipper produced from his backpack the folded sheet of paper he'd swiped and handed it to Ford. "Read it, out loud, Grunkle Ford."
Ford did just that. That same document Dipper had read over a dozen times, hoping he'd misread it each time. It started out simple, what type of animal Waddles was, his measurements, name, things like that. But the line toward the bottom? That was where the horror set in. "At request of owners, scheduled at 4:30 p.m. for…" Dipper didn't, no, nobody present missed the way Ford's voice hitched. "Euthanizing."
"Uh… sorry guys, but what does…"
"It means they were going to put him down, Soos." Wendy choked back all snippy comments, knowing full well he wasn't being insensitive, he just didn't know.
"Oh."
"Dipper. You said twice." Ford realized it first. "If that was the first, what was the second?"
"I didn't want to believe mom and dad really turned Waddles over to the shelter." Mabel answered. "Dipper showed me the paper but, like a moron, I didn't believe him… didn't want to. It's just a mistake, I said. A misunderstanding. But then…"
"A few days later, I caught mom trying to leave with Waddles." Dipper picked up where his twin left off when she couldn't continue. "She told me she was taking him for a walk in the front yard but she was dragging him the leash. He didn't want to go, anybody could see that."
"She coulda have been…"
"No, Grunkle Stan. Her car was parked out front and running. She was caught but tried to lie her way out of it like I was too stupid to catch on. If I hadn't of come home early after school, we would have lost Waddles again."
"We left pretty quick after that." Mabel leaned down to pat Waddles on the head. "I never let him leave my side 'til then."
"This can't be it." Wendy looked to Dipper and Mabel. "Guys, no offense to you and Waddles, but that seems a really lousy reason to run away from home. I mean, is…"
"Oh, no." Mabel's lips lifted in a smile again, but once more it was a bitter one. "Waddles wasn't the only reason. Our parents are getting divorced."
"Ouch." Wendy winced. "I'm so sorry. No kids should have to go through…"
"Ding ding, the fun train hasn't reached the last stop yet!" Mabel singsonged, almost cheerily. Not for the first time, Dipper truly wondered if Mabel really had gone off the deep end. But he supposed this was her way. "Wanna tell them, Dippingsauce? Or shall I?"
And here they had at last come to the thing, the final spark that ignited the powder keg that had been building beneath the Piedmont dwelling branch of the Pines family. What could have possibly been it? What could have made Dipper Pines, master of planning and thinking every tiny little act through a thousand times over, do something so abrupt, so world altering, as this?
"Once the divorce was finalized…" Dipper swallowed past the lump building in his throat. "Mabel and mom were going to stay in Piedmont. But dad and I were moving. To the other side of the country for dad's work. And they said... neither of us would be coming back to Gravity Falls ever again…"
There was a crash of shattering glass from nearby. From the corner of his eye, Dipper could faintly see the outline of Soos rushing to broom up the remnants of the glass bottle he'd dropped.
Nobody could speak. Expressions on those present ranged from Ford and Stan's disbelief, to Soos' confusion, all the way to some bizarre combination of fury and terror on Wendy. If Dipper thought the redhead was going to crush him to death a minute ago, that had nothing on how intense her hold on him and Mabel had become.
"Mom and dad gave us no choice." Mabel gripped her twin's hand, only now did Dipper notice they hadn't let go. "After everything we went through with Weirdmageddon… and Mabeland… we found each other after all that. I didn't want to… couldn't, leave my Bro-bro."
"It was my idea!" Dipper was perfectly willing to admit to being the mastermind. If there came any kind of punishment for this hairbrained scheme, he'd take every scrap of it. "Mabel was completely…"
"On board as soon as he suggested it!" Mabel slapped a hand over her twin's mouth to shut him up. "I'm like the… the co-planner."
"Dipper." Dipper internally paled. He hadn't heard Ford sound like this since that time he put the mind reading helmet on him. "What you did was extremely foolish and irresponsible. Any number of things could have happened, could still happen. Do you understand what you've gotten yourself and your sister into? How risky this was?"
"I do." Dipper was having a mild heart attack, but stubbornly held his ground before his grunkle. "And I'd do it again."
"Me, too!" Mabel quickly shrunk when Ford's glare turned on her.
Ford's six-fingered hand found its way to Dipper's shoulder again. At first, Dipper thought he was going to shake him, maybe in an attempt to make Dipper see sense. But that never happened.
"Dipper." Ford's countenance visibly softened. "Forty years ago, I was faced with the same situation. When my brother needed me most, I turned my back on him. It was one of the greatest mistakes of my life. You had the courage to do what I could, what I would, not."
Much to Dipper's surprise, and most of the spectators around them, Ford pulled the boy in for a hug.
"I'm proud of you."
After a whole second and a half, Dipper mentally counted, Mabel made her approach. Her own arms snaking around her brother and grunkle. An additional three seconds later, Dipper heard a grumble of "eh, what the heck" before Stan himself joined in.
"Comin' in, dawgs." Soos came next, almost immediately after Stan.
"We gotcha." To Dipper's somewhat shock, Wendy had no intentions of being left out.
Nobody could see it save Dipper, but Mabel's smile easily outshone the sun.
"Okay, okay, that's enough mushy stuff." Stan was first to pull away, but even he couldn't get away with a happy Mabel clinging to his waist. "First things first, we need to come up with some kind of plan of attack."
"Agreed, Stanley." Ford said. "We should…"
Dipper's stomach chose then to remind him of its displeasure with some of his recent life choices with a mortifyingly loud growl.
"Dude, when was the last time you ate something?" Wendy's concern would be touching, if Dipper hadn't been trying to not die from embarrassment. Something of which he was failing spectacularly.
'Well, we skipped breakfast the day we left." Dipper felt smaller with each word. "We snatched some snacks on the way out, but neither of us really had much of an appetite, so… a while?"
Wendy was not amused, her hand gripping his jacket by its collar. "Okay, plan of attack phase one, you." Her other hand found the matching spot on Mabel. "And you, are coming with me down to Greasy's Diner for some decent food. I'm buyin'."
"Wendy, I don't know if we should have them…"
"Stow it, Ford." Stan gently pushed his brother aside. Pulling out his wallet, he handed Wendy a number of bills. "Here, you three kids get whatever you want, heck, go nuts. They could use some normalcy. While you're keepin' em' busy, we'll see about getting the that room back up to snuff."
Mabel perked up at Stan's offer. Dipper could already see the uncontrollable hamster wheel turning in his twin's brain. Knowing their luck, they were going to have to carry the girl back to the car once she ate her self into a near coma.
"Yes, I suppose you're right." Ford reluctantly agreed. "But keep your heads down, and your eyes open until we figure out what to do next."
"No problemo, dude." Gripping the twins by their coats, she pulled them both out the door. Good thing they were happy to come of their own free will, Wendy didn't seem to be in a mood for dissent.
I'm finding this a bit easier to write than I expected to. Let me know what you all think.