Ahaha illustrating takes longer than you'd think - -;... BUT HERE YOU GO! Enjoy!
Mike turned to observe his new workplace. The store looked to be a sort of weird, paranormal-themed antique shop. There were stone tablets with symbols all over them, (presumably) fake skulls of different sizes and species, and what appeared to be a jar of eyeballs sitting on the front counter. T-shirts and other memorabilia, all bearing "Mystery Shack", were hung on the walls and off of stands. Half of the hand-painted signs were misspelled.
He folded his arms and leaned against the counter. He could technically leave. He hadn't actually been paid for anything and getting back to Motorcity was more important. But that would still leave him in the middle of nowhere with no food, no money, and no transportation. He sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. May as well look around. Pushing off the counter with his elbows, he headed towards the door in the back that read "Employees Only" in large, red letters.
He opened it and, walking through, found himself in a living area of sorts. A small round table stood in the corner nearest to him with an old lamp hanging over it. On the opposite end of the room there was an aquarium, a TV against the wall, and a…what? Mike looked again, needing to refocus for a second to see the girl sitting in the chair. Well, not 'sitting' exactly. Her legs were on the seat with her feet up against the back of the chair, and her hands gripped onto the armrests, letting her head hang down to look underneath the base. At his entrance, she lifted her head and stared at him through the long hair that half fell over her face.
"Um." Mike tried his best to look like he hadn't just barged into someone else's home. "Hey there."
The girl continued to stare at him upside-down for a few moments, then kicked off of the chair and planted her feet on the ground. She crouched down and frantically ran her hands over her hair before standing up straight and smoothing out her skirt and large, lime-green sweater. The stitched design of a pink cupcake was on the front of it.
"Hello!" she said, smiling brightly with her hands clasped behind her.
"Hi. Sorry, do you live here?" asked Mike.
"Mm-hm," said the girl with a nod. After a pause, her smile fell. "Wait, did Grunkle Stan just leave?"
"Um, yeah. I think he just walked out the door," he replied, following with a nervous laugh. Grunkle?
"Oh," she said, "So…does that mean you're working at the Shack now?"
"I guess it does. For the time being, anyway."
The girl beamed up at him and clapped her hands together.
"Well then, Mister, ah…" She gestured at him to finish her sentence.
"Chilton."
"Mister Chilton! I'm Mabel. Crafting expert and people's-day-brighten-upper extraordinaire!" She threw her arms up with a flair and waited expectantly.
"…Oh!" Mike realized after a moment. "Mike Chilton. Um, automobile expert and driver extraordinaire."
"Ooo, really?!" replied Mabel excitedly, "Do you have a cool car?"
"Sure do. Unfortunately she's, ah, not with me today," said Mike, shrugging a little sadly.
"Oh, that's too bad," she said sympathetically before brightening up again, "Anyway, Mister Chilton-"
"Mike's fine."
"Mike," she repeated, giggling inexplicably before continuing, "I don't think we've met. Have you been in Gravity Falls long?"
"No, not long at all. I'd been meaning to ask that actuallyabout that…" He hesitated for a moment, knowing how bizarre his next question was going to sound. "Which state are we in?" Assuming they were still in the states. He really hoped they were still in the states.
"Oregon," answered the girl without much hesitation, "Or we were the last time I checked." She looked up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "Of course, we may have moved since then." Smiling, she returned her gaze to him. "But I kinda doubt it."
"Ah," mumbled Mike. Oregon? That was somewhere out west, wasn't it? He tried to sum up the miles he would need to travel in his head. 'Mess' didn't do this situation justice.
"Is something wrong?"
Mike popped his head back up, realizing that he had been staring at the ground dismally. Mabel was looking at him with curiosity. "What? Oh, no." He tried to smile back at the girl. "Sorry, I was just thinking about something." Mike didn't have the heart to throw his problems onto a cheerful little girl he had just met.
"Oh. Okay then," she said, grinning again, "Anyways I, Mabel, would be happy to be your guide to the many and mysterious wonders of the Mystery Shack." She lowered her voice and waved her hands dramatically at the end, then continued in a normal tone, "If you would follow me, please." She hopped onto the steps leading to the hallway at the end of the room and turned towards him.
"This is the living room!" she announced with wide-spread arms. She pointed to each item while naming it. "That's the TV. Over there is the table. This is the TV chair." She spun halfway around. "This is the front door. Wait." She paused. "Maybe it should be called the back door? But we kind of use it like a front door." Mabel tapped her lips with a pondering expression on her face.
"You could always just call it the door," suggested Mike after she hadn't said anything for a while. Still there was no reply.
"Mabel?" he walked around to look at her face.
"OH!" she exclaimed, startling him, "I was looking for Waddles! Um- um-" She hurriedly looked around. "Here!" Mabel grabbed Mike's sleeve and led him over to the armchair. "You can sit right here and I'll be back in just a bit, okay?" She started to head towards the Gift Shop.
"Actually," interjected Mike. Mabel halted mid-step with one of her feet in the air. "I could help you look if you'd like."
"Aww! Aren't you a gem!" said Mabel, beaming up at him, "Okay, then." She grabbed his sleeve again, leading him down the hall this time. "You can search the kitchen…" She gestured to the white room. "While I go check the shop!" With that, she skipped back towards the living room.
"Sure thing!" Mike called after her. Then after half a step into the room, he paused and leaned back out. "Who is Waddles, again?!"
"My Soul Mate!" he heard her shout from another corner of the house.
"…Fair enough." Mike turned to the task at hand.
The kitchen's only visible cooking features were a refrigerator with a single door and an old microwave. Aside from that, the rest of the room looked more like a work area with an unvarnished white table and various hardware tools lining the walls. It didn't seem to Mike like there were many places someone could hide, but he searched around anyway. He checked around a short cabinet in the corner, under the table and chairs, and behind the door. Whoever it was, they weren't out in the open. Figuring he might as well be thorough, Mike knelt down next to the kitchen counter and reached over to open the cupboard.
Just as he touched the handle, the door flew open, smacking him on the forehead, and something rocketed out and skidded into the hall. Mike clutched his head and scrambled after it. It might have just been his imagination, but he swore that thing just grunted at him. He threw his hand out to keep from slamming into the wall outside the kitchen and just caught a glimpse of the thing vanishing around the end of the hall. It took him three long strides to reach the living room entrance and, grabbing the doorframe, he turned into the room.
In the center of the floor was a round, pink animal, half twisted around to look at him. It backed up and crouched low, preparing to take off again. Mike was about to dive for it, but Mabel moved first. She leapt out from around the corner, snagging it around the middle and tumbling onto the floor.
"WADDLES!" she exclaimed with delight, "There you are, you little rapscallion!" She held him belly-up on top of her, arms wrapped around him securely. Waddles, for his part, seemed perfectly comfortable with this and made no motion to escape.
"So that is Waddles," said Mike, stepping onto the carpet, "That's good. I was worried for a second that you might have a mutant rat problem."
"You're just a bundle of trouble, aren't you?" said Mabel, nuzzling her pet's head. She lifted Waddles towards Mike.
"Waddles, this is Mike." Then she turned him towards her. "Can you say 'Mike'?" Waddles made a noise somewhere between a snort and a grunt. Mabel let out an excited cry and hugged him, praising him as if he had just spoken perfect English. She then held him out again and said with a much straighter face, "Don't hit him in the head anymore, okay?"
Mike realized that he still had his hand to his forehead. He quickly dropped it.
"It was an accident," he said simply, shrugging it off.
"I know," replied Mabel, shooting him a braces-filled smile, "Waddles wouldn't do that on purpose." She paused for a moment, looking at Mike. "What's with the goofy face?" she laughed, "Never seen a pig before?"
Mike, who had indeed been staring at Waddles (though he wasn't sure what "goofy face" she was talking about), started a bit.
"Actually, no," he admitted, "There's not much in the way of farmland where I'm from." He had only seen pictures of them, usually advertising food. Mabel gasped.
"You poor thing!" she exclaimed, hugging Waddles closer. Mike smiled and shrugged lightly.
"So." He knelt down and rubbed the soft, stretchy skin on Waddles' head. "Soul Mate, eh?"
"Yep! We do everything together. Everything," she repeated dramatically, pulling Waddles' face towards her own and holding it there.
"TOUR!" Mabel popped onto her feet. "We should get back to that!" She hopped over to where she had been standing some fifteen minutes before in the hallway. "…Where was I?"
"The front door," answered Mike, stepping back over with her, "Or the back door. Or both."
"Right!" She set Waddles at her side and picked up where she had left off, again pointing to things as she named them. "This is the front-back-whatever door. This is the hallway." She turned to her left. "These are the stairs. That's the railing. That's Dipper. Down there's the museum…"
Mike, who had been looking obediently at each thing she pointed out, did a double take to look at the person she had casually addressed as "Dipper". The boy at the top of the stairs was staring down at them with an expression of disbelief. He seemed to be about Mabel's age and looked as if he had just gotten out of bed.
"Hey," said Mike with a small wave.
"What's up," said Dipper habitually after a pause, though his face was a mixture of suspicion and caution. He quickly descended the stairs. "Could you, uh, give us a minute?" He slipped past them, grabbing Mabel by her sleeve.
"That's the floor-OW! STEPS! Careful on the steps!"
"Mabel, we need to talk," he said and pulled her past the TV area and into the shop.
"You're interrupting the tour, Dipper!" was the last Mabel could get out before the pair disappeared into the other room.
Once again, Mike was left alone in a strange room with little idea of what he was supposed to do next. Glancing down, he noticed that Waddles was staring up at him with dark, round eyes. The pig twitched his nose slightly then stood up and walked across the room, then around the corner. Mike followed him. Waddles, with no particular sense of urgency, sat next to the gift shop door and waited.
Nice call, thought Mike as he leaned against the opposite doorframe, crossing his ankles. Pretty soon, he began to hear raised voices. He stepped over and listened through the wood more intently.
"Because you don't just let random people you just met into the house!"
"Come on, Dipper, he's a cool guy! Besides, Grunkle Stan was the one who hired him."
"He what-? Augh, look, just think about it. Every time we meet someone that we've never seen in town before, they end up being evil, or supernatural, or both!"
"Are you suggesting that Mike is a bunch of gnomes?"
"What? No. I mean- okay, maybe, but that's beside the point."
A loud, drawn-out gasp interrupted the conversation.
"Do you think that he might be a vampire?!"
"Mabel, you're missing the point here!"
The 'employee's only' door clicked and swung open.
"You know, I could be mistaken," said Mike thoughtfully, resting his hand on the top of the door, "But I think I might be a little too big for that gnome theory."
The two children, one of them characteristically pleased to see him and the other looking a bit panicked, were squatting next to the counter.
"No, see, what they do is stack up underneath clothes so that they look bi-" Dipper clapped his hand over the girl's mouth.
"We, uh, we weren't being serious about that," he said with a weak smile. Then he stood up, laughing awkwardly and muttering a jumble of sentences, "Just kidding…" "…inside joke." He eventually quieted down and leaned back against the counter, staring at the floor with an intense look on his face. Mike looked from him to Mable, who smiled and waved, and back to him.
"You two are here on your own, aren't you?" he said finally.
"For the moment, yeah," replied Mabel as she rocked back and forth on her heels.
"Huh," Mike sighed through his nose, "I guess that makes up my mind for me then." Mabel tilted her head at him questioningly.
"Well, I can't just leave two kids by themselves, can I?" he explained, "Not with a clear consciousconscience, anyway." The contrasting looks that the two children gave him were almost comical. Mabel's was one of eagerness and excitement, while Dipper's bordered along surprise and shock. Mike addressed the latter.
"Look, I can understand your anxiety," he said and tried to smile reassuringly, "I'll just keep to the gift shop if it'd make you feel better."
"What? No, you don't-," Dipper's expression looked almost guilty and color flushed over his cheeks as he tried to object.
"Aw, Mike, don't let Dipper bother you," Mable cut in, "He's always paranoid. Especially these days. You should see him blocking off the bedroom door at night."
"Mabel!" Dipper whispered harshly, his face heating up even more.
"Come on, Dipper!" she said, for once with genuine disapproval in her voice, "You've barely even talked to the guy. The least you could do is give him a chance." For a moment, Mike thought he was going to start arguing with her again. Instead, the boy turned back towards him, rubbing his elbow awkwardly.
"Look, I-." He paused, closing his eyes and exhaled. "Sorry. It's just…there's a lot of strange stuff that goes on around here." Mike thought he looked distracted, as if deep in a memory. "Sometimes it's hard to know who to trust."
"Yeah, I know the feeling," said Mike with an almost cynical smile, "I'll stick to the ground floor then, alright?" Dipper looked at him skeptically, but there were hints of a smile there,; like he wasn't sure if he should be taking that last part seriously or not.
"Great! So we're all friends now, right? Right?" Mabel looked between the two of them eagerly, swinging her loose sleeves back and forth.
"More or less I think," answered Mike.
"Awesome! 'Cuz we still have a tour to finish!" She trotted over to Mike, grabbing him by the sleeve once more, and guided him back into the house.
I had a blast writing this one so I hope you had a blast reading it. Until next time! :D
