I would apologize about this taking so long to write, as I decided that I wanted to continue this story over a month ago after being inspired by some of the awesome feedback I got from this story, but seeing as I guess I haven't ever posted that I was continuing: here you go!

We finally do get to have the Winchesters come into play, mainly because I was depressed that they weren't, and we'll see how much closer we get to a happy ending (not yet, there's still more coming).

Enjoy!

Sam and Dean pulled in to the center of campus in another one of their silent spats. It had been a long drive to Wisconsin from that small town in backwater Oregon, and the two brothers spent absolutely none of that time airing out the problems standing between them, from Dean's stoicism about his year in purgatory to the demon trials Kevin promised would seal the gates of Hell. Sam had been trying to convince Dean of a different locale to hunt a hellhound, such as the family in Idaho who mysteriously struck oil ten years ago, but Dean wasn't having any of it.

All it took was one pop-in appearance from Castiel sensing that the hellhound who ripped child-psychic Gideon Gleeful to shreds was apparently on the move towards a college campus in Wisconsin to convince Dean that the first trial would be completed here. Sam had multiple issues with the idea, and he had made his opinion that the latest victim would likely be in Hell before the brothers arrived very clear. Given Dean's lack of response, Sam smartly turned up the radio before voicing his doubts about Castiel's intentions.

But if there was one thing the Winchester brothers were good at it was working well together despite a personal dispute. Knowing it was much harder to investigate a hunt before the monster had actually struck, the men forewent their usual police/FBI getup in exchange for being two separate reporters: Sam looking for a story about any odd coincidences going on as inspiration for a writing assignment and Dean asking about any particularly gifted students on campus to feature in the school newspaper. It seemed that for once the higher powers were smiling upon the brothers: not only was the state school large enough that none of the students were suspicious of someone their age still attending and participating in extra-curriculars, but no one they interviewed was actually involved in the school's writing programs.

After listening to dozens of college students either brag or complain about their friend's athletic prowess, creative ability, or infallible GPAs (many of the "best" college students attended far more-competitive schools than this one, and while some of the kid's achievements were great, none were really worth selling ones soul over), Sam finally called Dean in frustration. Hearing that his brother had as little success as he did, the two decided to switch to a new tactic and pool their resources.

There were a few names that both brothers had recorded being brought up in at least one conversation, generally multiple retellings of the same unbelievable story as both sheer talent or an act of God, but it was clear to the Winchesters that in order to get anything out of their interviews they would have to bring something to the table. They decided to start asking about specific names.

The name Mabel Pines caught on like wildfire.

At first, not many people recognized the name, but the eyes of those who did seemed to light up when Dean asked about talent, and Sam could barely finish his spiel about looking for unusual activity before whoever he was speaking to simply burst out laughing. Then, as the boys each made their way over towards the art department (Dean was practically dragged along by a freshman fashion design major who was so infatuated with his TA that he didn't seem to realize that Dean Winchester wasn't interested in a twenty minute rant about how fabulously she pulled off sparkles on sweaters) they discovered that each and every person they spoke to had nothing but the highest regards of the recent grad.

In the time Dean spent waiting for Sam to arrive he learned that Mabel Pines and her twin brother (though people only seemed aware of his existence in that he was very clearly dear to his sister) both graduated in the spring, only for Mabel to get a job as a TA with one of the professors in exchange for getting to use the studio in creating her own work to sell online. After being shown a couple of her pieces by eager fans, Dean had to admire the obvious craftsmanship, even if the results were a bit… quirky.

How one was able to carve a perfect smiley face onto each individual piece of glitter Dean would never know.

"But what's even stranger is how much everyone seems to like her. It's creepy. I mean she's a damn TA for crying out loud. Everyone hates TAs!"

Sam hadn't even reached Dean and he was already exuding the bitchface. "You never even went to college."

"I've seen some movies. Done a couple hunts on campuses." Dean remarked as they entered the empty main hallway of the building (most of the students they were interviewing cleared out as the next classes began). "Heard a few girls complain about a TA or two. Some girls like to vent their frustration when-"

"Did not need to think about that." Sam all-too-quickly cut his brother off. For a second it was almost as if they were back to the last time they had a hunt on a college campus, back when they were travelling the country looking for John. A ghost who called itself the Hookman if Sam remembered correctly.

"Still hate it when this stuff hits campuses and preys on naïve kids." Dean muttered, apparently thinking along the same lines.

"Whoever it is this thing's after made a deal with a demon. They can't be all that innocent." Sam couldn't help but counter.

Of course given the university setting as soon as they hit the road Sam immediately looked up if there were any professors in the history or religion departments who had sudden bouts of fortune ten years ago, but it seemed that across the entire university there wasn't a single staff member who made the news in that timeframe. Whoever the hellhounds were after was probably a student.

Dean stopped moving for a second as he looked at Sam, making eye contact in a way that told Sam that this was another one of those conversations that suddenly became about him. "Whoever it is who made this deal was ten years younger than they are now when they made it. It's probably another case like Bela: they didn't know what they were getting into."

Sam couldn't help the smirk that came to his face. "Bela isn't really the best example of innocence."

"Shut up, Bitch."

"Jerk." And despite the odd direction that their day had taken, Sam couldn't help but be grateful to Castiel for sending them in a direction that brought the two brothers back together.

The brothers each couldn't help but pause outside of the door of the now infamous Mabel Pine's studio.

They would never admit it to anyone – not even each other – but each Winchester couldn't help but be a little afraid of whatever monster lie behind that door. The humans always were the freaky ones.

Looking over at each other and silently piecing their cover together, the Winchesters quickly nodded before foregoing knocking and simply pushing the door open.

For the first two seconds the Winchesters looked in it appeared to be a normal –albeit largely empty- art classroom. There were various types of painted artwork hanging from drying lines hung across the space, each with a growing range of quirkiness highly correlated to the amount of glitter on it. Sam Winchester had to tear his eyes away from what appeared to be a caricature of a cat who looked like Larry King to complete the hunter's scan of the room John Winchester had ingrained in him since birth. Seeing nothing that could potentially be hiding a person or a weapon (with the exception of a large tub that apparently held 'industrial-grade sprinkles') the younger Winchester moved on to examine the room's sole occupant.

The young woman appeared to be in her early twenties, with brown curly hair that reached down to the small of her back and covered what appeared to be a bright pink, short sleeved wool sweater. Her face bore a look of innocence and total concentration, perfectly characterized by the tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth and resting on her lips as she chiseled the statue before her: a life-sized star wearing what appeared to be a pair of sunglasses.

Sam felt Dean lean over closer to him. "Is that Shimmery Twinkleheart?"

"…"

"What?" Dean whispered even softer. "Daytime television, dude."

Apparently his whispers hadn't been enough to hide himself from the young artist, who immediately perked up as she began frantically putting her tools aside. "Oh My Gosh you're a fan of Shimmery Twinkleheart too! I've loved that show so much ever since I -!" Only as the woman turned around did she see who exactly was at the door and her voice cut off as she took in the Winchester's well-worn plaid outfits. "You are not what I expected, but if this is the new face of Believe in Yourself then I believe!"

"… Are you umm... you wouldn't happen to be Ms. Pines by any chance?" There wasn't much that could suddenly throw Sam Winchester through a loop after all he's encountered, but not even the lore was enough to prepare him for this.

"Yeah! I mean, everyone always calls me Mabel. But you can call me anything you'd like!"

The Winchesters shared another glance with each other, trying to find a way to normally begin an interview with the peppy young-adult in front of them. Hysteria, they were used to; concern at speaking to cops they handled all the time. Hell, the boys even knew how to deal with Becky, and her obsessiveness was far creepier than the perkiness of the girl in front of them, but there was simply no natural way they could imagine talking about something like Hellhounds with someone like this.

"Uh, look, um… Ms. Pi-" Dean's attempt at starting a conversation paused at an expectant smile from the woman in front of them "Mabel," if anything the grin grew even wider and more hopeful. "You wouldn't happened to have witnessed anythi- why are you building a life-sized statue of Shimmery Twinkleheart?!" And Sam could barely withstand the urge to smack himself in the face as Dean's gaze kept switching between Mabel Pines and the giant wax star that seemed to loom over her from its place in the back of the classroom.

The girl seemed to be honestly surprised at the question, though she didn't seemed bothered by it at all, practically bouncing on her feet as she turned behind her to subconsciously look at her work in progress. "Oh, that? Well, one of the animation students asked for my help on making stop motion figures for a student film festival and…" she paused a bit to shiver slightly before recovering with that infallible smile "given the last experience I had working with stop-motion back in Gravity Falls I figured I could use some inspiration!"

She shook again as if a sudden cold draft went through the classroom just at the thought and darted back towards her station in the back. "As much as I love almost all kinds of art those people are crazy. Animation really is black magic!" How the woman managed to clearly emote an exclamation point while muttering incoherently under her breath was a mystery that not even the Winchesters could explain.

"Wait. Black magic… did you say Gravity Falls?" Suddenly Sam seemed to have regained his composure as he pushed his way past Dean. The older Winchester paused for a second as he tried to remember why Sam suddenly perked at the familiar name, until he remembered seeing the former child-psychic's corpse and realized that Mabel Pines could very well be the lead they were looking for.

"Yeah! Dipper and I spent the summer there once when we were kids! It's a shame Grunkle Stan never let us come back, but I guess I can understand why he did… How did you hear of the place? It's not exactly a very large town."

Dean shot a glance at Sam that hopefully translated to 'it's probably not a good time to mention the dead kid who happens to be her age and is likely at least an acquaintance' and interrupted the conversation just in case Sam didn't get the message. He may have only known this odd girl for all of two minutes, but Dean had a strong feeling that he didn't want to make Mabel cry.

"That summer you spent down in Gravity Falls with… I'm going to guess that Dipper is your brother...?" Dean shot a quick glance at Sam just screaming 'who would name their child Dipper?' which was quickly met with a shrug that responded 'what kind of parents could have raised Mabel Pines?'

"Anyway, that summer didn't happen to be exactly ten years ago, did it?"

Something about the question, be it the inquiry into Gravity Falls or the mention of Dipper, caused a sudden shift in Mabel. It was subtle enough that the untrained eye might have missed it, but Sam and Dean had worked with enough people to notice that her posture seemed to settle down from the balls of her feet into a much stronger stance and her smile, while as sincere as always, curved into a slightly more guarded position.

"Yeah… and why are you asking?"

"It's something that we needed to know."

"And who are you two anyway? Besides being really adorable…" Mabel now had shifted into an obvious guard, her left hand grabbing a device that Sam quickly identified as a phone from a fanny pack resting on her hip. Looking into the unzipped pouch the younger Winchester could tell that there was something else in there that appeared to have the tell-tale gleam of metal, but whether or not it was a weapon Sam couldn't tell.

Dean instinctively positioned himself between Sam and the woman's guarded arms, hands raised in a gesture of surrender that made it clear that he considered protecting the girl much more of a priority than he would an average civilian, especially given the potentially-combative nature of her stance. Sam couldn't helped but be a bit shocked at the impression Mabel had made on them, and quickly realized that there was a reason they had heard such incredible things about her.

"Look, we don't want to hurt you. My name's Dean, and this is my brother Sam. We're just… concerned that there's something… strange… about to happen here…"

"And you think that something from Gravity Falls might be involved." Dean approached her slowly and calmly, obviously unsure of what the right thing to say to someone who was acting suspiciously like a hunter for someone so obviously a civilian. But if the girl had been in Gravity Falls ten years ago and her art was so obviously impacted by it…

Maybe Mabel Pines wasn't as much of a civilian as they thought after all.

Hearing no question, only acceptance in Mabel's statement Dean decided to risk continuing from his position. "We think it had to do with something that happened when you were there that summer, yes. Did you happen to meet any unusual people while you were there?"

Mabel raised an eyebrow at him for a second that seemed to scream 'have you been to Gravity Falls?' which Dean took as his cue that the woman wasn't planning on bolting or calling the cops at this moment and relaxed. But once he took a second to think about it and remembered his time in Gravity Falls (both working with a combination of very persistent government agents and the very tight police department and one of the more unusual meals the brothers have ever had at Greasy's Diner) Dean had to admit that yeah, that was a pretty stupid question.

The moment gave the young artist all the time she needed to catch up on the full implications of the older Winchesters questions. "Wait, you don't think that I have something to do with… whatever it is that's going to happen here? What is going to happen here? Who are you people?"

Sam pushed his way back into the conversation to steer it away from any questions that might lead to any more escalation as Mabel's fist tightened on the phone she apparently forgot was in her hand while Dean took a mental note that he could cross out his suspicions of the woman being a hunter. That much pink yarn also probably destroyed any chance of stealth or bloodstain removal anyways.

"No! We're worried that whatever it is we're trying to stop is after you. Now, Mabel, have you ever heard of a hellhound before?" Dean could see in Sam's eyes that his little brother had obviously decided he was done beating around the bush with Mabel Pines and wanted to hear how much time she had left.

"No…" The word was just a weak echo of the one before it, as Mabel clearly recognized that no matter how crazy the two men seemed in front of her they were conspiracy theorists in the way Dipper was: the kind who sometimes spouted weird thing that sounded infeasible (if you could even understand them) but were right more often than not. Whatever it was that the Winchesters were chasing, whatever catastrophe from Gravity Falls had somehow decided to leave Oregon and chase her to Wisconsin was here and now and would obviously endanger her life.

With flashes of late nights watching Dipper pore over the journal in their room and of reading the newspaper clippings they found online flashing through her mind Mabel was scared to admit that she could realistically envision more monsters chasing her than she could count.

Dean could see that Sam was simply running through a script in his mind on how to best get the answer he wanted out of the girl. That Sam wasn't reading Mabel's reaction at all, noticing how all of the blood drained from her face not in guilt or even horrified recognition but in the way a child's does when told that a monster is right under their bed after they've lied down in it. Dean was even tempted to run up and grab his little brother to keep him from saying the words pouring out of his mouth.

"It's said that they work for demons, to help them collect deals." And here Dean could see the gears turning in Mabel's head, trying to latch on to the words not as someone who's had an axe hanging over them for a decade, but as someone trying vainly to see what threat lies ahead. Dean would know, he's been in both scenarios more often than he'd care for. "Ten years after a deal when the contract comes due, they show up at the person's door to drag them to Hell." Dean could hear the venom in Sam's voice, the contempt he still carried for all those who made deals with demons and got a full ten years as is due, the judgment he had for anyone who willingly through their soul away for a cause that he automatically deemed unworthy in light of their challenges. The irony wasn't lost on the elder Winchester that they were ones to judge, but the accusatory nature of the statement seemed to have gone over both of the parties' heads.

Mabel Pines had finally locked on to what she needed to hear.

"Dipper." The word was spoken softly, as if time stood still, which for a moment to Mabel probably had. Yet the seriousness of her actions complemented that of her words as a blur of motion from the once-perky girl burst out of the classroom, shoving past the Winchesters with a blow that was comparable to that of the monsters they fought, though the girl didn't seem to notice. Even with years of physical training at the hands of John Winchester, the boys barely managed to catch her before she reached the exit of the art department in a race to her brother.

Please drop a line and give me some thoughts, especially about the cutoff point as I was intending on having this chapter continue into the arrival at Dipper's apartment (but that would be at least another couple weeks and this chapter is already significantly longer than the first). There'll be two more chapters, and I have a couple hundred words of the next one, but we'll play by ear in terms of timing. It shouldn't be as long a wait as it was for this chapter, though.

Thank you so much for keeping up with this story! Whether you've been following it in hopes I would continue or just found it now, seeing that other people enjoy this story and this crossover has made me so happy to be a part of both fandoms!