(A/N: Ah, yes, the final part for the third episode. Feels like my writing quality has gone down. Oh well. I can't write fight scenes, even if I have to have fight scenes.
I don't own Gravity Falls. Or even the original Reverse Pines. Just my version of it.)
The air in the Magic House's parlor was thick with the scent of wax. Gideon mostly thought it was due to either the wax figures in the room, or the fact that he, Pacifica, and Bill were busy melting candles into soft wax to mold into a new head for Wax Bill. If they couldn't find the old head, they might as well just move along and make a new one.
For a con man who thought the wax museum was a way of making more money, Bill had been surprisingly forgiving when his niece and her friend came back empty-handed. The nine-year old thought he was just taking pity on them. He probably thought they didn't have a chance in the end, either. Like all those other adults.
Whatever. This wax-melting ought to take the kids' minds off of the day's events.
Because the activity was set early in the morning (not to mention dull), all three of them were beginning to feel weary of it. After a while, Bill put his burning candle down, making it stand upright on the floor, and stretched. "Well, I'm going to go drink some water or something. You kids want something?"
Gideon shook his head, and Pacifica said, "No, we're fine."
Bill noted the hint of sadness, but didn't want to show that he noted it. So he just said, "Suit yourself. If I have to go thirty more minutes with a headless version of me, I think I'm gonna begin t'have nightmares." He walked out of the room with his hands on his hips.
As soon as the magician left, Gideon let out a long sigh, and put his own candle down as well. Pacifica looked over to him. "Gid, don't let what those cops said get to you," she said. "It's not over until we find that head."
"I just wish it seemed like that," Gideon said, standing up and wandering around the room. "I mean, I considered everything, like they do in those detective shows! The suspects, possible motives, evidence..."
He trailed off. Somehow the nine-year old had found himself in front of Wax Bill, which was lying uselessly on the floor. In his current position, he was looking right at the wax statue's feet, and then found something quite interesting.
"Wax Bill's got a hole in his shoe," he mused.
From her spot in the center of the parlor Pacifica said, "All the wax people have them, so you can attach them to their poles and then to their stands."
Gideon stared at it for a little while, before his eyes widened in realization.
"Pacifica, come over here slowly."
"Why?"
" 'Cifica..." Gideon's voice dropped to a stage whisper. "What has a hole in their shoe, and no fingerprints?"
"Gid...you don't mean... ?"
"Good children, I salute you!"
Gideon and Pacifica froze. That was not a voice they knew.
Slowly, Gideon turned his head and Pacifica looked up at the doorway. The wax replica of Abraham Lincoln was standing there – on his own two feet. He opened his mouth, and spoke. "You have finally discovered our little secret."
At this, the other wax figures (save for Wax Bill) began to move and moan. They went around the room, even snatching the knife – their knife – from the floor. Pacifica yelped, and got to her feet while Gideon ran to her. They stood together as the living wax statues gathered and surrounded them. Wax Lincoln in particular came forward, if only to take the head of Wax Bill from the wax statue of Robin Hood.
"Applaud their victory, my fellows, applaud!" Wax Lincoln said sarcastically, and the other wax statues did such.
Gideon still couldn't believe what they were doing, or rather, how they were doing this. He felt himself go paler than an albino should. Yet he proceeded to ask, "H-how are you alive? You're wax people!"
"Is there some kind of black magic at work?" Pacifica narrowed her eyes.
Wax Lincoln laughed a little. "I suppose you could speak of it that way. Though we do prefer the term...cursed."
"CURSED!" The wax replicas echoed.
"Yes, children, we are cursed to come to life whenever the moon is waxing," Wax Lincoln continued. "Though you might think of it as a blessing for us rather than a curse. Let me explain, however, why we think of it that way.
"Six years ago, William Northwest bought us from a garage sale. When his stage magician business was still not well-known, the Gravity Falls Wax Museum was largely how he made money." Wax Lincoln turned away, perhaps in thought. "In the daytime, people gave us curious looks and queer expressions. However, in the nighttime, when William slumbered, we had the freedom to roam about the House as we pleased. It was as if we, formerly confined to a small space, had the luxury of great monarchs!
"That is..." his tone turned venomous, "...until that magician did not make money off of us any longer, and so he closed us off. One cannot describe how gladdened we were when that young lad found us!"
Gideon and Pacifica drew closer to each other as they sensed Wax Lincoln's voice grow darker and darker. "We waited so many years to get our revenge on William Northwest for trapping us in that closet. But in the end," he paused, then finished, "we had cut the wrong head off."
"...You were trying to murder my uncle for real?!" Pacifica cried. "Gid, you were right! Wax statues are creepy!"
"And here we pause, children," Wax Lincoln turned to them and put his hand up, calling for silence. "For now that you know what we truly are, you must...die."
The wax figures' irises rolled back into their heads, causing their eyes to become an eerie white. Gideon and Pacifica backed away, hoping that somehow there would be something to turn the tides. "What do we do?" Pacifica asked, but Gideon didn't know how to answer.
The nine-year old tripped over the candle he had left standing on the floor, and it rolled on its side towards the toes of Wax Shakespeare, who cried out in pain as his foot melted in the heat. He kicked the candle away, and it landed in the pile of soft wax, putting it out.*
"That's it!" Pacifica realized, looking at the other two lit candles on the floor. "We can melt them with hot melt-y things!"
Quickly Gideon and Pacifica grabbed those two lit candles and aimed the flames at the wax people, who cowered away from the heat.
"One more step and we'll melt 'yer body parts off!" The nine-year old threatened, feeling a little braver.
"While you watch!" The twelve-year old added.
"Do you really think you can defeat us with those?" Wax Lincoln asked.
Gideon and Pacifica looked at each other, and gave nervous smiles, talking on top of each other. "Yeah, probably." "We're up for it." "I think we've got a chance."
"So be it." Wax Lincoln said, and with that the fight was on. "Attack!"
The wax figures lunged for them, but the children were quicker and evaded them. Wax Robin Hood tried to swing the knife down on Pacifica's head, but she dodged and he accidentally cut off Wax Lizzie Borden's arm. Pacifica kept running, almost missing the wax replica of Mozart running at her. She turned just in time and melted his legs off, leaving his torso to fall to the ground. However, his still-moving legs started chasing her across the room and she had to slam them into the wall to get them to stop.
Meanwhile, Gideon was busy cutting off the heads and arms of various wax figures, as well as trying not to hesitate. One slip-up, and they would get him. A bloodcurdling scream came towards him, and he ducked out of the way just in time for Wax Shakespeare to fall into the lit fireplace and melt into a hundred wax fragments.
"Heh..." he tried to quip, "...'ya fell harder than Macbeth at the end of the play!" He laughed a little at his own joke before thinking, maybe it's really not that funny, and ran up to defeat more wax figures.
Pacifica was having a better time herself, already having managed to knock down most of them using the head of Wax Genghis Khan, which was melted so that she could stick it on her own candle. She took a moment to catch her breath, and looked up to see Wax Lincoln going for her friend.
"Gideon, watch out!" she warned.
Gideon turned to see Wax Lincoln, who already looked furious. "Let's get this over with," he declared, throwing the head of Wax Bill into a corner and grabbing one of Bill's prop swords from the wall. Before the nine-year old could move, Wax Lincoln knocked the candle from Gideon's hand, and it landed in a pile of melted wax, effectively killing its fire.
However, Pacifica had already been holding a fire poker over the fireplace, and with the word, "Catch!", she tossed the red-hot poker to her friend. He quickly caught it in mid-air, and began clashing weapons with the wax statue.
He'll be fine, Pacifica thought to herself as she moved to melt the rest of them. He always has a plan.
Isn't that why he's leading Wax Lincoln out the door?
The nine-year old had already led the wax president out of the parlor and into the attic. They struck weapons a few times more, and dodged each other's blows even more, before Wax Lincoln had Gideon against the bench below the window.
"Once our enemies are defeated," Wax Lincoln cried, "we will rule the night once more!"
Gideon glanced from him to the window, and jumped onto the bench to avoid a strike. "Don't count on it!" He threw open the window, and began to climb out of it and to the ladder beside it which led to the roof. The calls of "Come back here, insolent child!" indicated that the wax president was following him outside, and Gideon climbed even faster to the large sign on the roof.
Once on top of the lower sign, Gideon wobbled a little. He hadn't realized that the sign would be so narrow. He looked down at the ground from where he was standing, and looked up to the lit spotlights above him, but then the sound of footsteps behind him forced him to keep going forward.
With a little difficulty he turned to face the wax president, and tightened his grip on the fire poker. They clashed some more, moving further along the sign, until an upwards strike from the prop sword caused the unstable wooden "C" to drop off from the sign above them.
As it crashed on the ground, Wax Lincoln screamed, "You really think you can outsmart me, lad? I'm Abraham Lincoln! Have you seen my top hat? It's enormous!" Gideon guessed he was trying to intimidate his opponent, but then his attention was turned to the second ladder leading to the top of the higher sign. He ran to it, dropping and climbed it as fast as he could.
Once at the highest point, he jumped down to the other side of the roof, landing on a flatter part of the roof. He stopped to catch his breath, looking over his shoulder. No Wax Lincoln there. He turned back, and looked down, sighing. Then he looked up again.
Suddenly, Wax Lincoln was there, and before the nine-year old could defend himself, the wax president swiped at his feet, and in trying to dodge, Gideon was knocked onto his back.
"Any last words?" Wax Lincoln asked, raising the sword up for the killing blow.
Gideon took a heavy breath, and looked from the wax president to over his shoulder.
"...Got any sunscreen?" he asked, trying not to smile.
" 'Got any' – what?!"
Wax Lincoln looked up to see drops of wax coming from his already melting hands. He dropped the sword, and looked to the rising summer sun already coming from the horizon. Gideon pushed himself to his feet, already watching the wax president melt in the heat.
"Lettin' me lead you to the roof just before sunrise..." he said, "...not a very sharp decision, was it?"
"Outwitted by a schoolboy!" Wax Lincoln screamed to the sky as he melted into a puddle of wax. "NO!" With that last shout, he fell onto the ground below.
Gideon stared at the puddle on the ground for a little while, and then fell to his knees, gasping for air.
"Oh my goodness..." he said to himself. He put a hand to his forehead.
Well, at least it was over now.
After a few minutes, Gideon finally returned to the parlor, just in time to see Pacifica toss one of the last pieces of the living wax figures into the fire.
"Gideon!" She turned to him, and ran up to him. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine..." he breathed. "Didn't believe I could survive that, but I'm fine. Well, I couldn't have done it without you, 'Cifica."
"Hey, look!" Pacifica pointed to the head of Wax Bill on the floor. She ran up to it, and picked it up, then beamed at her friend. "Case solved!"
"It's 'case closed'," Gideon sighed. Pacifica rolled her eyes. "Whatever."
In the hall, Bill yawned. How he had managed to sleep at the dining table while getting a simple glass of water was probably due to lacking so much sleep anyway, combined with waking up early in the morning. No matter. He wondered how the kids were coming along with making the new head.
And then he walked into the parlor to see various piles of melted wax, and no more wax figures save for Wax Bill.
"Mother of triangles!" he exclaimed. Bill looked down to the two children in the center of the room. "What happened to my parlor?! You better have a good explanation for this!"
"Oh, your wax figures turned out to be alive," Gideon began.
"And evil," Pacifica added.
"So we fought them to the death."
"I also cut off Larry King's head," the twelve-year old finished proudly.
Bill paused, looking down at their smiling faces. Live wax figures? Fighting until they were all insignificant puddles?
How familiar.
He laughed it off. "You kids and your imaginations," he dismissed.
"Well, on the bright side, look what we found!" Pacifica said, showing him the wax head.
"My head!" Bill said, taking it from her hands. "You've done good, kids! Now c'mere and lemme give you some affectionate noogie-ing!"
Pacifica and Gideon tried to protest at first, but Bill knelt down anyway to noogie them. They were all laughing about this when police sirens rang outside their open window. They looked up to see the police car pull up beside the House, and who else was inside but Sheriff Powers and Deputy Trigger.
"Well, you're looking awfully happy," Sheriff Powers said in a condescending tone. "I'm going to presume you've found that missing head." He took a long slow sip from his cup of coffee.
Gideon smiled, and held up Wax Bill's head to show them. "Of course we did!"
"W-what?!" At the sight of the head, Sheriff Powers did a spit take on Deputy Trigger, who screamed at having his eyes scalded. Defeated, they drove quickly away, and Gideon, Pacifica, and Bill laughed.
"So," Gideon turned to Pacifica, " 'ya got rid of all of the wax people, right?"
"I'm positive I got rid of most of them," Pacifica hand-waved.
"Alright, then."
Unbeknownst to them, a wax head was watching them from the safety of the air vents in the House.
"They'll never find me in here," Wax Mozart laughed to himself.
His laughing was short-lived, however, as a cockroach crawled onto his face and he tried not to scream like a girl.
(A/N: Finally, I'm done with Headhunters! And now on to the part you've all been waiting for: when the Pines Twins come into the picture!
* - Does sticking a lit candle wick-first in a pile of melted wax really put it out? I feel like my logic has gone down a little just by making that how easily the candles were put out. Someone please give me an answer. (And if you do want to try it out, do it in a controlled environment. Preferrably not at home.)
Well, that about sums it up. Keep looking out for more!
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