Isle of Circe

Mabel was still trying to process the shock.

"I had a Greek god for a boyfriend," she said. "I'm a single mom at twelve going on thirteen. And I don't even remember the fun part."

"At least your ex is trying to help us," said Dipper. "He gave us a way back in time to get my sword to save the world."

"I have to raise Soos now..." said Mabel.

"No, you don't," said Dipper. "His Abuelita is taking care of that."

"But she must have been tricked. My son, Arkas, was made to look like a relative of hers. He once told me he looks a whole lot like his cousin Reggie. But it was a fake-out. He should really look like a Greek... and so should we! Our parents have been tricked, too!"

"What do you mean?" asked Shaggy.

"Reah, what do you mean?" echoed Scooby-Doo.

"She's right," said Dipper. "Our real parents must have lived and died in ancient Greek times. We're not really Pines at all."

"And Grunkle Stan isn't really our Grunkle," said Mabel with a little sob.

"Cheer up guys," said Shaggy. "At least you're still related to each other."

"Prepare to land!" came a cry from aloft.

A beautiful island was in sight. The sailors lost no time in steering to it, and landing the ship in a cove.

Odysseus ordered his men to go ashore and scout for supplies. Mabel and Dipper remained on the boat with him. Hours passed, and nobody returned.

"What is taking them so long?" asked Odysseus.

Dipper took out his history book and started looking things up.

"Oh-oh," Dipper said. "This could be the island of Circe. She's the daughter of Helios. That's the Titan sun god, who is the son of Hyperion. That makes her a demigod, and she may have the power to turn men into pigs."

"This sounds like divine prophecy, Domiclese," said Odysseus. "What should I do?"

"You should go in and confront her so she will put your men back to normal," said Dipper. "But make sure you get a promise from her not to harm you, with no loopholes, before you let her touch you. Demigods keep their promises, but they're tricky."

"Take my flower, Molly, for luck," said Mabel. She took out her hairpin and gave it to him.

"A divine herb, the flower moly," said Odysseus. "Methinks you are more than the mortals you seem. You are incarnations of the gods of Olympus, good ones who were not tyrants to man: Hermes and Athena, whose symbol is the owl."

"Whatever," said Mabel. "Just be careful."

After Odysseus left, Dipper said, "With him distracting Circe, we need to sneak into her house and look for something."

"What?" asked Mabel.

"It seems to me that the Greek gods didn't really turn people into animals. They just made them swap minds with them" said Dipper. "Circe may have a mind-swap carpet in there somewhere. That could be useful."

"Like, you need us along?" asked Shaggy nervously. "We could just hang back at the ship."

"We need you for luck," said Dipper.

They sneaked into the house and soon found a room full of pigs. Dipper tried his idea and spoke to them. (Soos had told them how he was able to speak as a pig).

"Did Circe touch you with something to make you change bodies with pigs?" Dipper asked.

"Yes," one pig said. "She has a piece of the Golden Fleece. She said it was a gift from her brother Aeetes."

The pig nodded in the direction of a high shelf, where they found a piece of the golden material.

"Got it," said Shaggy, reaching it down for them. "Now we'll run back to the ship with it."

"No!" said Mabel. "It we take the fleece how will these men get back to normal? We have to find where she keeps the pigs with their bodies."

It didn't take much searching to find the room, because of the odor of excrement. Each man found his body and they used the static from the fleece to swap them back.

There was one pig left, and Mabel didn't want to leave a victim behind.

"Where is your body?" she asked the last pig.

"It's locked up in a room upstairs," said the pig. "Circe likes it near her bedroom. She says men with pig minds are better lovers. She taunts me about it, even makes me watch, sometimes, ya know?"

They sneaked quietly upstairs, and found the room. It seemed Odysseus was keeping Circe occupied in her bedroom, so they were able to get in undisturbed after Mabel picked the lock with a hairpin. The man they found there looked familiar, except for the six fingers on each hand.

"You look a lot like our Grunkle, Stanford Pines," said Mabel.

"It's his body, all righty," said the pig.

"I don't get it," said Dipper. "But you can explain more after we get you back to normal."

They swapped the man back, and sneaked out of the house to get back to the ship.

"Now tell us who you really are," said Dipper.

"I'm not really Stanford Pines. He was workin' on an inter-dimensional portal with me, Fiddleford McGucket. There was a creature helping him invent it, a demon called Bill Cipher..."

"Bill Cipher!" said Dipper. "We've seen him."

"He's plain awful," said McGucket. "Stanford figgered out that Bill was evil after I got pulled into the portal by accident. He wanted to put a metal plate in his head to protect himself from being possessed. I was the only one he could turn to for help, even though I'd quit and messed up my own head a bunch with a mind-erasing device I invented. Nobody can operate on themselves to put a plate in their own head, ya know."

"Zoinks!" said Shaggy. "I guess not."

"So you operated on him?" Dipper asked.

"He couldn't trust me to do that. He got me to swap bodies with him using his Electron Carpet and then he put the plate in himself," said McGucket. "But then it turned out the carpet couldn't swap us back once the plate was in. We were stuck with each other's bodies."

"But we just swapped you from a pig using Circe's carpet," said Mabel.

"The ones the Greek gods have are a lot more powerful."

"I'm still confused," said Dipper. "You called the inventor Stanford Pines. But we know Stanford Pines. He's alive and well, running a tourist trap in Gravity Falls."

"Our Grunkle Stan," said Mabel.

"And there was an Old Man McGucket, really crazy, with the stub of a sixth finger on one hand," said Shaggy.

"Reah, really razy," said Scooby.

"Well, the Stanford I know got kinda crazy, livin' with my messed up head, and I got a lot better," said McGucket. "He experimented on himself with shape-changer genes, and that's how he developed an extra finger like he had on this original body."

"How did you end up here?" asked Mabel.

"We were real worried about Bill and his schemes. We decided we had to split up. There were three Journals, and in each was a page to help operate the Portal. He took and hid one, I hid another, and I called on his twin brother Stanley to take and hide one more a long ways away. That way, no one person would have them all and be able to open the Portal again, and let out the Evil Entity."

"A twin brother Stanley?" asked Dipper. "We have another great uncle?"

"Yeah, kind of the black sheep of the family that nobody talked about. I sent for him, talked to him posing as his brother. But we got into a fight and the portal turned on. I ended up pulled into it, to this here place. I got stuck as the slave of a witch," said McGucket.

"So who have we been living with this summer?" asked Dipper.

"I don't know anythin' about what happened after I was gone," said McGucket.

Shaggy said, "Like, I guess it's been Stanley Pines, posing as his brother ever since you disappeared."

"He's been lying to us all along," said Dipper with a scowl.

"Maybe there's a good explanation," said Mabel.

"Anyway, we still have to find the Sword of Domiclese before we can get home and deal with that," said Dipper.

"I know who has that," said McGucket. "Circe does."