Headhunters
"I have a keen sense of observation." Dipper said, smugly. Bip, on the recliner, and Mabel on the ground each tilted their heads in a similar manner. "For example!" said Dipper, feeling the need to elaborate "from just smelling your breath I can tell you've been eating… an entire tube of toothpaste?"
Mabel muttered under her breath, no doubt claiming it was sparkly and that was her reason for eating it. Bip laughed.
"Yeah, 'keen sense of observation', alright." He chuckled with a cheeky grin "ANYONE could've told you that."
"Yeah, well, you do better!" Dipper growled, his cheeks flushing red. Bip's grin widened at the challenge.
"Alright." His eyes scanned the living room, he closed his eyes. "Someone is in the hallway over there. From the sounds of it… Soos. Yeah, Soos. Definitely his footsteps." He paused. Mabel looked awed by her brother's amazing sense of hearing while Dipper rolled his eyes, not convinced and fairly certain the boy was just making things up. "He's coming this way now. Dunno why." He opened his eyes and met his siblings' expressions with a comedic pout. "What?"
"There's no WAY you could tell that!" Dipper declared. He crossed his arms, satisfied. Mabel laughed a bit sheepishly.
"Yeah Bippity, it DOES sound a bit far-fetched." She snorted. Bip rolled his eyes and held up three fingers. The other two siblings watched in slight confusion as he put each finger down in intervals. When he put the last finger down, Soos appeared in the doorway.
"Yo dudes I just found some weird mystery door!"
Mabel and Dipper, baffled, turned to their sibling who smirked smugly.
"Told ya."
(Insert Theme Song Here)
Bip sat on the floor, watching his sister pace around her workspace. Apparently behind the mystery door was a good amount of wax figurines, each sculpted with a surprise amount of realism. But upon the realization of the death of Wax Abraham Lincoln, their Grunkle Stan was flabbergasted. Mabel, being the artsy, overly-eager girl she is, took upon the challenge of creating a new sculpture to replace the one that had melted.
"Hey Bip, what do you think? Fairy Princess or Horse Princess?" the sister grinned, holding up her sketches for her brother to critique. Bip studied them for a moment, stroking at a non-existent beard.
"Both." He said with an approving nod. Mabel's face lit up and her grin grew over her face.
"Brilliant!"
"Whatever is brilliant, no." Dipper interrupted, pushing down the sketchbook between them. "How about something more…realistic? Like from your family." He smiled as he said this, putting his hands on his hips. Bip rolled his eyes.
And it seemed as Dipper suggested this, Stan happened to waltz in, asking the whereabouts of his pants or something when he posed dramatically. A smile slammed onto Mabel's face and she thanked a muse that was not present. The family members in the room proceeded to be confused.
It took Mabel a surprisingly short time to make a rather creepy wax figure in likeness to their great uncle. After an understandable short freak-out Stan seemed to have gotten rather chummy with the wax figurine, declaring it as the 'Seventh Wonder of the World' and re-opening the wax figurine portion of the Mystery Shack.
Wax Stan's fame was short-lived, being decapitated shortly after. Stan took the beheading rather seriously, and Dipper and Mabel set themselves out to solve the mystery of the wax figurine's death.
"Hey Bip, we're gonna go inspect murderer suspects." Mabel said casually, with a grin. "Wanna come along?"
"Sounds kinda pointless." Bip rolled his eyes, kicking his feet on the wall of their room. Dipper and Mabel exchanged looks for a second. Dipper took a step forward.
"You still feeling sick?" he said, his expression saying it all. All the shame of not realizing his brother's crisis the day before and coming across as so callous. Bip thought it was a bit too much, but appreciated his brother's concern none the less. Mabel tilted her head behind him, her eyes subtly taking in all of Bip's body language and at the same time calculating it. Now Bip loved his sister, but hated it when she did that. Chances are she wasn't even aware she was doing it, but he absolutely loathed that look. That was the look that said 'you have no idea what I know about you just by looking at you'. And he hated it because HE could do it and therefore knew what kind of conclusion one can come to.
Maybe he just hated the people-people? The people who are… er, people-smart? Bip was so caught up in his pondering that he ended up missing the appropriate answer-frame.
"Bip?" Dipper blinked, his mouth folding into a concerned frown.
"Just thinking about how weird the word 'people' is." He muttered in response (completely sincere, by the way). He waved his hands out in front of him as he explained " 'People' is plural, right? So why do we say 'peoples'?"
Mabel's eyes widened as if she was just confronted with the greatest question known to humanity. Dipper rolled his eyes and muttered: 'he's fine' under his breath.
"We'll see ya later then, Bip." Dipper muttered.
"And we shall come back to you with the answer to your people-question!" Mabel grinned, pointing finger guns at her brother. Dipper lightly jabbed her side with his elbow. "Oh yeah, also with who murdered Wax Stan!"
"See ya siblings." Bip waved them off, going back to his pondering. The two made their way off and Bip continued to think about the word 'people'.
Eventually, as expected, the topic got rather boring and his mind started to go numb thinking about it. Blankly he stared at the ceiling of the shared bedroom and then-
Open the Portal.
Bip swung his feet, using the momentum to get himself up and made his way down the stairs. Stan was probably doing something interesting…
Huh.
Bip frowned as the thought occurred to him. He kind of wanted to talk to Stan. A grin crossed his face. Liking people was kind of fun.
It actually took him a few minutes of searching before he found his grunkle…setting up a funeral…? The boy stood in the doorway, confused as Stan dragged pieces of furniture about, looking oddly somber. He cleared his throat to catch the man's attention, which worked swimmingly.
"Hey kid, what's up?" Stan said, leaning on the chair he was dragging about.
Bip walked into the room and motioned around "What's this for?"
"Oh." Stan rolled his eyes and waved dismissively "Just holding a funeral for Wax Stan, is all." Bip laughed a bit, not putting any effort in to hide it. Stan suddenly looked annoyed "What?"
"Well I knew you were a bit vain but this is a tad too much, don'tcha think?" he chuckled. Stan looked hurt for half a second but quickly covered it up.
"Yeah, kid. I'm this vain." The old man didn't mean to put in the scorning tone. Bip blinked, blushing slightly and kind of flustered.
"What? What did I say?" Bip asked, his voice dropping. He was good at picking things like that up. Stan hadn't seemed to realize it until just that moment, though.
"Nothing." Stan said, rolling his eyes and continuing his task. "Hey, maybe you should go catch up with your brother and sister, eh? They're out doing stuff."
Bip frowned, upset. What did he say…? He found himself hurt. He was NEVER hurt. Well, maybe once when Mabel got mad at him, a few times with Dipper but… Stan offered nothing else, so Bip didn't say anything. He muttered an 'okay', shoved his hands into his windbreaker's pockets, and walked out the door into the early-evening.
His footsteps down the road were more shuffling as he stared at his slippers and kicked whatever stones or pebbles that came across his path. The boy liked this particular pair of slippers. They were neon green with dark purple sequins, and of course, as per usual of Mabel's handiworks, covered in glitter.
Bip felt his heart drop. Maybe that was why Mabel was so upset about Wax Stan? She worked really hard to make the weird thing and then someone went out of their way to wreck it. His mouth felt dry.
Wow, he suddenly knew how Dipper felt earlier.
The more Bip thought, the more he realized Mabel often grinned off her problems. All three of them had an issue with that, it seems. Dipper worries too much, Mabel ignores it, and he just hides it….
He found himself wondering if Stan was hiding anything.
A rock came across his path and the boy swung his leg back to punt it, but stopped, realizing it was moving. Slowly, he knelt down onto the ground, and then laid on his stomach. Under the rock-which-wasn't-a-rock, there was a small tortoise meandering across the path.
Bip picked it up, sitting on the dirt and observing the tiny reptile. It blinked at him with beady, yet adorable, eyes. The boy found a grin and lightly petted the turtles head with one finger. The creature seemed skittish at first, but then rubbed its green head against the boy.
He stared at it for a moment, pondering. "I'm going to call you Mr. Turtle." He nodded satisfied. It was a tortoise, he knew that, but 'Mr. Tortoise' didn't sound as adorable as 'Mr. Turtle'. Bip proceeded to be intrigued by his small new friend as he gently carried it, momentarily forgetting about his siblings and his imagined dispute with Stan. He was a grown-up, maybe being so oddly vain was just part of that.
?Drofnats tuoba woh
The boy ignored the nonsense and chose to pay attention to the not-turtle instead.
Bip sat at the edge of a small pond he found in the woods, leaning back on his arms and enjoying the slight breeze and the rustling of pine needles.
Mr. Turtle was in his coat pocket, munching lazily on a baby tomato Bip had bought at the local market. Afterwards, he had looked for his siblings, who he couldn't find anywhere. He called Mabel and she had picked up, but said (rather quickly):
"SORRYBIP,DIPPERANDIFOUNDOUTWHOKILLEDWAXSTANSOI'LLCALLYOUBACKMAYBEBYE!" then she hung up.
Bip rolled his eyes, satisfied that his siblings were okay. It was probably around 11 at night when Mabel made good on her kind-of promise and called him back, waking him up from a rather unexpected nap. Now to be perfectly honest, the first thing he did was look for his tortoise, which was now sleeping in his coat. He sighed in relief and carefully took his phone out of his pocket and answered.
"Hey Bip, where are you?" she said, worried.
"Oh. I found a turtle." He said, pressing the phone between his shoulder and ear.
"Oh cool a turtle." Mabel sounded slightly relieved. There was the sound of the phone shuffling and suddenly Dipper's voice said, rather quickly and cracking every other syllable:
"Man, where are you? You have us worried sick!"
"I'm okay, I'm okay!" Bip said quickly, trying to calm down his near-hysterical brother. "I found a turtle and I fed it by a pond, I must've of fallen asleep is all!"
A low groan served as the response "Do you need one of us to get you? It's probably dark out right now." His brother said, sounding both annoyed and concerned.
Bip looked about, finding he could see perfectly well. The stars were shining brightly above but that just made him wonder how far away he was from town… Then again, he still had a cellphone signal so he couldn't have been that far.
"Nah, I got it. Sorry for worrying ya." He said. "Yeah. Alright. I'll be careful. Bye." Bip closed his phone and slowly stood up, stretching his arms upward. This wasn't one of the most unusual places he had fallen asleep at, but granted he usually fell asleep inside. He stretched his legs out, finding them oddly stiff and then went about his way home.
His approximated distance was a tad off, and he forgot to factor in how dark it was and how easily distracted he is and how he really didn't know where he was. Luckily his insomnia played in his favor this time and he managed to not fall asleep on his feet on his way back. But by the time he did get home it was rather…early.
Probably around 6?
He hoped with all his heart his brother and sister were asleep or busy doing something else besides trying to find their idiot of a brother. Bip sighed and felt Mr. Turtle squirm in his pocket. He took the reptile out and stroked its head, and then offered it another baby tomato. The tortoise seemed pleased.
Unfortunately, he was right about his siblings being distracted.
The Mystery Shack came into his view right as Dipper ran down the side of the roof and stumbled onto the loft. What looked like the wax figurine of Sherlock Holmes was close behind- And judging from the sheen of pre-dawn against its glassy features- it WAS the wax figure. Bip's confusion was quickly devoured by fear as the wax man went after his brother with a sword.
His mind raced. The sun was coming up rather quickly, it was summer so it was probably hot enough to melt the Sherlock but-
Dipper's weapon flew out of his hands and he fell onto the roof, Sherlock standing over him.
Bip's eyes widened. He suddenly felt hot. Dipper was going to-
NO! NONONONONO!
ENIM S'EH
Mr. Turtle squirmed wildly as if pained and wiggled its way out of Bip's numb hands and fell limply to the ground. The boy didn't notice, his vision wavering with all the possible results of this battle. Literally. Too many endings. Too many things he didn't want. He didn't want Dipper to die, he didn't want to become a monster, he didn't want to burn down the shack-
Suddenly time stopped to him. He knew what he wanted.
EB TXKQBA FQ QL YROK
Time started up again. The wax figure melted into a puddle. Dipper was safe. Bip lowered his still-glowing hand and felt the heat let up.
His brother was okay.
Latrop Eht Nepo.
Shut the frick up I'm having a moment.
So yeah I lied, this chapter was long and it did take me a while. I'm aiming to update this story at least twice a month because that seems to be my pattern for it so far.
….Next chapter is The Hand that Rocks the Mabel.
….
Well I hope you like fire.
Post A/N/Credit Scene:
The triplets sat in their respective places in the living room: Bip on the recliner, Dipper and Mabel on the floor. Dipper and Mabel were covered with scrapes and drops of now-hardened wax, Bip covered in twigs, dirt and grass. Stan wandered into the room, confused.
"Hey what happened to you three?" he asked.
"I decapitated Larry King." Dipper offered.
"I melted Shakesphere." Mabel shrugged.
"I found a turtle." Bip said, holding up his new pet tortoise.
