Stan-doff Part 2
"Hmm…" a doctor said curiously as he skimmed a piece of paper on a clipboard.
In front of the doctor was Stan, who sat up awake in his hospital bed. He wore a hospital gown instead of his nightly outfit, which was standard procedure. His eyes were no longer bloodshot and he generally looked healthy in appearance. Ford sat in a chair right beside his bed, dressed back in his normal outfit as opposed to his own nightwear.
Since their arrival in the hospital, Stan had undergone basic tests for his condition. The doctor had come back with the results, reading them in his head as the Stan twins patiently waited for an explanation.
"Well, according to these test results, it doesn't appear like there's anything wrong with you, Mr. Pines," the doctor said, letting go of the sheet of paper, looking back up at Stan.
"What?" Ford said, chiming in before Stan could. "That can't be possible. I saw him collapse right in front of me. He even had a fever!"
The doctor stood up and inserted an ear thermometer in Stan's left ear, catching by surprise for a second.
"Hey, hey!" he exclaimed, jolting his head a bit. "How about a little warning?"
The thermometer beeped, and the doctor promptly pulled it out. He inspected the number, which read a perfect 98.6 temperature. He then looked back at his clipboard.
"Well, our initial temperature checks do confirm a very high fever of 103.7, his temperature now is...perfect," the doctor told them. "And the rest of our tests don't present any sort of basic issues. Normal heart rate, normal blood sugar, a little overweight but that doesn't appear to present any issue either. Everything on the surface just appears normal. Especially since his temperature has lowered since, perhaps this was all a result of heat exhaustion or dehydration?"
"That can't be," Ford denied. "It can't be that simple. This was at night with no sun. His eyes were all red and this wasn't the first time."
"You mean he's collapsed like this before?" the doctor asked.
"What? No," Ford shook his head. "I meant the red eyes."
"I see," the doctor nodded, stroking his chin. "Well, if there truly is anything wrong, it's going to require more thorough testing. Perhaps an MRI."
"What? No, no, no," Stan shook his head in refusal. "That's not necessary."
"Of course, it's necessary! Stanley, you're unwell," Ford argued.
"I'm fine," Stan assured him. "Really. I feel great! Like a new man. My muscles feel strong and my head feels good! Trust me. Whatever happened to me a few hours ago doesn't compare to me now."
"I'm glad you feel that way, Mr. Pines," the doctor told him. "But just to be safe, we're going to hold onto you overnight. Just in case anything happens again, we'll be ready to take care of it."
"Aw, c'mon! I gotta keep wearing this paper dress for the rest of the night?" Stan complained unhappily, not appreciating the discomfort of the hospital gown.
"He'll deal with it, doctor," Ford told him while also giving Stan a look to cut it out. "But if I may, can I please have a moment alone with my brother?"
"Of course," the doctor nodded before leaving the two, shutting the curtains behind him.
Upon being left alone, Stan laid himself back again in his reclined hospital bed, sighing with discontent. "Great. As if we haven't waited long enough to get back to Gravity Falls. Now I'm gonna have to stay here overnight only for them to find nothing."
"Actually, Stan, I've been doing some thinking," Ford said as he brought his chair closer to Stan, bringing his volume down a bit since their only walls were the thin curtains that surrounded them. "And I feel like a fool for not bringing this up earlier, but I feel like I know what might be causing this."
"Let me guess," Stan said, thinking about it. "It was the gas station sandwich I had for lunch, right? Ya know, I was starting to feel kinda funny after that. And I remember reading somewhere that you shouldn't eat food from gas stations."
"Um...no, that's not it," Ford replied somewhat awkwardly. "Stan, do you remember what happened back in the Arctic? With Bill's Nightmare Realm friends? Anything at all?"
"I remember riding a giant two horned rhinoceros or something down a mountain if that's what you're talking about," Stan told him. "Why?"
Ford sighed, knowing things would be too complicated to explain. "Well, they did something to you back there. They took the energy of the multiversal rift that was in the mountain and amplified it with a stream of ongoing electricity for a good few minutes while using a metal bed you were strapped to as a conductor."
"And uh...what does that do to me?" Stan asked, growing concerned about his well-being with this revelation.
"To be completely honest, I'm unsure," Ford admitted. "But considering you've been acting strange ever since…the short-term memory, overly aggressive behavior, especially by your standards..."
"Ah, please, Ford. That all just sounds like the typical behavior of an aging man, which I am," Stan brushed off. "Maybe the doc is right. I haven't been drinking much water this whole trip. Probably just a bit dehydrated. Nothing to be concerned about."
"Stan, you can't seriously be blowing this all aside like it's nothing," Ford told him with a serious look. "I truly believe there could be something dangerously wrong with you. We need to figure out what and I know how. I have some equipment back in my lab in the Shack's basement that we can use to do a quicker and more thorough scan of your body than any of these hospitals or MRIs can find after a month's wait for results."
Stan thought for a moment, thinking about his final claim. "You're not kidding about that wait for test results."
"I've had it with the waiting for anything, Stanley," Ford told him as he stood up from his chair. "In fact, before taking you to the hospital, I checked us out of the motel we were staying out. As soon as we get out of here, we're getting back on the road again and are finishing this drive to Gravity Falls."
"I'm with you," Stan said with a nod. "But, uh, didn't the doc say they're gonna keep me overnight?"
"Uh...yes…" Ford nodded with a look of uncertainty. "About that though...because of your banned status here in Wyoming, I had to come up with fake names and payment info just to get us in here. It's only a matter of time before they find out about-"
"Hey, sorry to interrupt, you two," the doctor suddenly interrupted, poking his upper body through the curtains with a clipboard in hand. He glanced over at Ford. "Mr. Gerald Pines, we tried using the credit card number you gave us so we could charge you for the visit, but the number appears to be invalid. Any chance you can review it with us in case we made a mistake?"
Ford stared at the doctor with bulged eyes of fear and growing nervousness. Stan then suddenly grabbed him by his collar and pulled his face close to his, giving him an angry look.
"Fake name?!" he whispered frustratedly at him. "Did you seriously keep the same last name and only change the first? Are you seriously that bad at this kinda thing?!"
"Well, I'm sorry that I'm not an expert criminal like you," Ford whispered back defensively.
"You told me you were wanted throughout the multiverse! I thought that meant you had picked up some skills in that portal!" Stan whispered back frustratedly.
"Um...is there a problem here?" the doctor asked awkwardly as he just hovered over the Stans quietly bickering with one another.
Ford pulled himself away from Stan's grasp and gave the doctor a nervous smile. "No, no problem at all. We're just discussing the payment number is all!"
"Yeah, and about that…" Stan continued as he dug around under his hospital bed sheets.
At that moment, Stan quickly dug out a smoke bomb and threw it violently against the ground in front of the doctor. It blew up right in his face, creating a thick ball of smoke that blinded him as it completely took over his face. He began coughing and sputtering within the smoke, waving his hands around to wind it away. He started to recover his ability to see as the smoke cleared up. He turned to his left and immediately spotted Ford running through the hospital corridor while pushing Stan's mobile hospital bed.
"RUN FOR- I mean, RUN GERALD!" Stan exclaimed as he rode in the hospital bed that Ford was pushing behind him.
Several other doctors had noticed the commotion with the smoke bomb and looked over at the corridor the Stans were moving through as they turned a corner. The doctor they had blinded at first narrowed his eyes angrily.
"DON'T LET THOSE TWO GET AWAY!" he ordered the other doctors surrounding before beginning to chase after them. With that command, several other doctors ran along with him to chase the Stan brothers.
Ford had a good lead on the doctors, but he knew it wouldn't last long, as they didn't have the bearing of having to push a hospital bed around. Still, he ran and pushed Stan through the hospitals with all of his force, trying his hardest not to accidentally run into anything that would stump his progress.
The doctor wasn't lying about Stan's weight though. He may have been pushing him on wheels, but the bed definitely felt heavier to push than he thought it should have.
"Keep pushing, Sixer!" Stan told him as he sat up on the bed, watching cautiously ahead of them.
"By the way...where exactly were you keeping that smoke bomb in your gown?" Ford asked him, the thought suddenly coming to mind.
"Trust me. You don't wanna know," Stan answered, prompting a confused look from Ford. "Just focus on pushing! I'll watch ahead!"
"What's up ahead?" Ford asked, trying to peek his head to the side to look.
Stan turned his head forward ahead of the corridor they were traveling through and quickly caught sight of a doctor pushing a trolley bed across the corridor. The speed Ford was pushing at was quickly beginning to close the distance between them and the doctor, and he didn't seem to be aware that he was about run right into him.
"Swerve right!" Stan called out to his brother.
Ford did as commanded and swerved the bed to the right, which sent them turning around a corner right in front of the doctor and his trolley. He stopped, preventing himself from suddenly running into the Pines. He stared at them silently as they ran off, wondering what was going on. His confusion only increased upon seeing several doctors from his right come rushing through the hallway and proceeding to turn ahead of him to chase the Pines.
As Stan and Ford continued running through the corridor, Ford took a second to look behind him and noticed the pursuing doctors.
"Stan! They're gaining on us!" he called out as he turned back ahead.
"Alright…uh…" he said, trying to come up with a potential solution. He looked forward and noticed a cart ahead with some various medicines placed against the left wall. He had an idea. "Move me a bit to the left!"
Ford carefully did so as he tried to keep up their current speed while trying to put more emphasis on moving the bed leftward, which was a slight struggle. Nonetheless, he managed, and Stan began to lean his arms left in his bed as they got closer to the cart. As soon as they passed it, he quickly got a hold of two pill containers. He proceeded to bite off both covers at the same time before getting on his knees and turning to face the doctors behind them.
"Mr. Pines! We urge you and your brother to think about what you're doing!" Stan's doctor called out to him as he chased him. "We're trying to help you! If you pay for our services, you can stay overnight and if we find something wrong with you, we can prescribe you the proper medication or other possible treatments for your condition!"
"Oh yeah? Well, prescribe this!" Stan exclaimed as he proceeded to empty out both pill containers with the single swing of his arms. The pills came bouncing against the floor until they rolled right underneath the feet of the doctors, causing them to slip and fall to the ground.
With the doctors delayed, the Stans whooped at their success as they continued running through the hall, eventually turning yet another corner, leaving the doctors' sights.
"Nice work, Stanley!" Ford called out as he kept running. "Now to find a way out of here!"
Stan sat back down on the bed and faced forward ahead of them. Right down at the end of the corridor was a large elevator, presumably built for bringing trolleys up and down the floors. "Well, we're in luck! Elevator straight ahead, Sixer!"
"Perfect!" Ford exclaimed with a smile as he picked up his pace a bit more.
The two soon reached the elevator at the end of the corridor. Ford stepped away from the back of the bed and walked to the button panel, pressing the down button. The door didn't open right away, however, basically signifying they had to wait for it to show up. This brought stress to Ford, as he realized the wait would give the doctors a chance to catch up.
And right on cue, Ford turned behind him to notice that the doctors had just turned the corner from the other end of the corridor that they had just run.
"They're taking the elevator!" one of the doctors' voices exclaimed as they began running after them again.
"Oh c'mon…" Ford said worriedly, pressing the elevator button multiple times as he began to panic.
"Ford?" Stan asked in a concerned tone as he peeked his head behind the bed to see the doctors beginning to catch up to their position. "Ya know that just because I'm in a hospital bed doesn't mean I can't walk, right? We should think about going for the stairs."
Ding!
At that moment, the elevator doors had opened, prompting Ford to smile in slight relief.
"Too late!" Ford exclaimed as he ran behind the bed again and pushed it into the elevator. As he stepped inside beside the bed, he reached for the button panel and pressed the button to go to the 1st floor.
"NO! STOP THEM!" Stan's doctor shouted as he and the other doctors came close to catching up to them.
At that moment, Ford rapidly pressed the button to close the elevator doors over and over, sweat beginning to balm on his forehead. The doctors soon reached the elevator, but they were stumped by the shutting of the doors, to which the Stan twins were now on their way to the first floor.
"DAMMIT!" Stan's doctor yelled in frustration, frustratedly banging the metal elevator doors with his fist. He looked back at the other doctors and pointed over at a set of doors labeled 'Staircase'. "Take the stairs! Beat them to the bottom floor! Don't, under any circumstances, let those two get away!"
Inside the elevator, Stan continued to sit in the mobile hospital bed as Ford stood right beside him, mentally planning their escape to their car upon the elevator doors opening again. However, his mental processes were soon disturbed when he heard a noise coming from Stan, who was humming along with the elevator music.
"Hmmm...mm...mm...bore...hmmm...mmm...mmm...door…" Stan hummed aloud. "...gonna show them the dance floor…" His eyes then glanced over at Ford, who was staring at him weirdly. "What? It's a catchy song."
Ford just sighed in response. He then found himself unable to retrace his former thoughts and just stared forward waiting for the elevator ride to finish.
Ding!
The elevator doors opened up again, and Stan and Ford stood frozen in place as they were immediately greeted by all the doctors from upstairs. The doctors surrounded the two on the elevator, leaving them with no way to get through. Right beside them was a single police officer, who was also standing defensively among the rest of the doctors.
"Aha! We got you now!" Stan's doctor exclaimed to the two. "Now we can do this the easy way or the hard way. You can provide your payment info and stay or leave as you please, or you'll have to deal with the police. What's it going to be?"
Stan and Ford stared at the doctors and the officer fearfully, not moving a muscle. They glanced at one another once before looking forward again. Then, without a word, Ford casually moved his hand over to the button panel and pressed a single button, prompting the elevator doors to close again.
The doctors and single officer simply stared on at the closed elevator doors in silence. Stan's doctor's eye twitched upon realization of what just happened.
"Well...crap," he said before standing up straight again. "Well, people. Upstairs again it is. Let's get moving!" The doctors groaned in response, not thrilled by the idea of running back upstairs again. "Yeah, yeah! Moan all you want! It ain't gonna help our paychecks."
The doctors and officer proceeded to all make their way back to the staircase, though much slower than before due to the lack of want to be going up and down the stairs again. Soon after, the doors to the staircase closed behind the last doctor and the elevator was left undefended.
At that moment, the elevator doors opened again with Stan and Ford still inside, with Ford's finger held on the button panel. Ford then poked his head out of the elevator and glanced around, searching for any doctors or other security.
"Huh. I wasn't expecting simply closing the elevator doors and waiting it out to actually work," Ford said, not finding anymore doctors waiting for them.
"You're telling me that they all went back upstairs for us without leaving anyone down here in case we'd come back?" Stan asked. "Yikes. Not a hospital I'd want 'helping' me."
"C'mon," Ford said as he moved behind the bed again and began pushing Stan out of the elevator. "Let's just get out while the coast is clear."
The two casually made their way away from the elevator and out of the building without any further trouble from any doctors or security. Ford rolled Stan out into the parking lot and over to his car, which was parked in the back of the lot. Before reaching it, Ford urged Stan to get off the bed, to which he then pushed the bed on its wheels into the middle of the lot for it to be taken back by the hospital whenever they got around to it.
"It was really nice of ya to roll me around, Sixer. I wasn't feeling like doing the running myself," Stan joked at the fact that Ford needlessly continued to roll Stan out of the hospital on the bed despite his legs working fine.
"Funny," Ford said sarcastically as he began walking over to his car. "But honestly, I'm sure me pushing your 'slightly overweight' body around was a faster choice anyway."
"Alright, don't go quoting idiotic doctors on me now," Stan told him as he followed with his smile wearing off with Ford's comeback.
In the backseat of Ford's car, the Snacken sat waiting. Its tentacles hung out over the seat's edge, swinging occasionally out of boredom. However, once it heard the two brothers conversing outside, it perked up. It crawled up the seat and looked outside, noticing the twins approaching. Growing excited, it promptly jumped onto the right window, just as Stan approached that side of the car.
"GAH!" he exclaimed, caught off guard by the Snacken's presence. "What the hell? Ford, you left that damn octopus in the car?!"
"I left a window cracked open for it," Ford addressed, pointing over to the slightly opened window at the front of the car as he entered the driver's seat.
"No, I mean you brought that thing along with us? Why?" Stan asked, not thrilled by the idea of the Snacken still tagging along on their ride home. He hopped into the passenger seat beside Ford and closed the car door behind him. The Snacken then jumped and wrapped its tentacles around the head of his seat, catching him by surprise. "Hey, hey!"
"Easy!" Ford shouted at the Snacken, using his arm to gesture for it to get off of Stan's seat. It listened to his command and jumped back into the seat behind him. "Anyway, I brought everything along with us. Remember, I checked us out from the motel."
"Oh, right," Stan remembered, cautiously resting his head against the back of his car seat. "So we're really doing this final run back home, huh?"
"That we are," Ford said as he adjusted the rearview mirror at the front.
"Well, what're we waiting for?" Stan said excitedly. "Let's get a move on!"
"We will," Ford said as his eye glanced over at Stan, scanning him very quickly before looking away. "Although, before we do, Stanley- since we're out of the hospital now, and as long as we're parked here and your stuff is in the backseat...can you please do us both a favor and put on some pants?"
Stan's eyes glanced down at his lower half and quickly noticed that he was still in his hospital gown. And it wasn't doing him much covering while he was sitting up in a car. "Yeah. I guess that'd probably be a smart thing to do."
The next day quickly arrived and a morning sun had risen over Gravity Falls and the Mystery Shack. Obviously, the day was Summerween, but being early in the day, there wasn't much to celebrate just yet. The most that could be done was continue to stack up on decorations and candy for the evening festivities and trick-or-treating.
The Mystery Shack already had its decoration in place, however, and an abundance of candy had already been purchased for the night's event. They've done all they could already, and so the morning was just like any other morning.
Dipper sat in the chair in front of the TV, writing in his journal as a commercial played. Despite his plans to be wrapped up in the middle of an otherwise normal Summerween party, he contemplated different ideas of potential weirdness that could come up in the evening. The Summerween Trickster was a threat that they had no intention of ever having to deal with, but they still came into contact with it.
He hasn't looked into them as much as he should, but perhaps there were other Summerween legends that they could run the risk of facing. The vampire bat situation that they never solved before they ran into Pacifica at the diner was still at hand. Maybe there was some evil Summerween vampire that was controlling them and preparing to unleash them upon the town in the evening.
If that were the case, they do have plenty of garlic in the freezer that Soos keeps for his Texas Toast. It wouldn't be a bad thing to use.
Dipper cataloged these potential ideas and scenarios and how he'd plan on solving them should the night bring them to it. As he did so, he heard the thumping of Mabel running down the staircase.
"MY MABEL-SENSES ARE TINGLING!" Mabel exclaimed as she ran down the steps and over to the door. "And they're sensing…" She then proceeded to open the door, revealing an extraordinarily hairy mailman, who had his fist raised frozen in the air as if he was just about to knock on the door. "Harry! There's my favorite mailman! How're you doing on this fine Summerween? Are you dressing up? With all that hair of yours, I think you'd make a great werewolf! Don't you think?"
Not processing her stream of questions and statements, Harry simply continued to stare at her in wonder of her ability to beat him to the door yet again, just as he still had his fist raised. "How do you always do that?"
"I work in mysterious ways, Harry," Mabel told him. "But nevermind me- do you have anything for me?"
Harry lowered his eyebrows as he realized the contradictory nature of Mabel's statement. Nonetheless, he reached under his arm, where he was holding onto two boxes. He handed them over to her. "Here you go."
Mabel quickly accepted the packages in her hand and walked back inside. "Thanks, Harry!" she exclaimed before slamming the door right in his face. He stood there for a moment, not sure how to process things. Soon enough though, Mabel opened the door back up. "Oh, I almost forgot!" She proceeded to grab a bag of candy from inside, taking a few wrapped up pieces before walking up to Harry's mailbag and personally stuffing them inside. "Happy Summerween!"
She walked back into the Shack and slammed the door in his face again. Outside, Harry continued to stand in place, still unable to process what had happened yet again. However, Mabel had opened the door one last time with another handful of candy. She walked up to his bag and placed the pieces inside. "And some for the kids!"
She took a step back to walk back inside the Mystery Shack again but stopped herself. She turned back and stepped up to Harry's bag, placing her hand inside and picking red pieces out. She looked up awkwardly at Harry, who gave her a look of curiosity.
"Sorry, I just really like the red pieces."
After picking a few more red ones back out of his mailbag, she stepped away from him and shut the door in his face for the last time. Harry's eyebrows lowered exasperatedly as he sighed and turned around, beginning to walk away from the Shack.
Back inside, Mabel grabbed the two packages she had received and quickly ran over to the living room with them. She threw one of the packages right in Dipper's lap before throwing her body on the floor in front of him with her own package.
"Check it out, bro-bro!" she exclaimed, gesturing toward the package she threw to him.
Dipper put his journal to the side and picked up the package, examining it. "What's this?"
"Something special I ordered," she told him with an excited smirk. "Open it, open it, open it!"
"Alright, alright," Dipper said as he proceeded to pulled the tape off the package.
Once it was off, he opened the box and looked inside. He then raised an eyebrow as he found himself looking at a familiar tan coat. As lifted it up for closer examination, but found that underneath the coat was an also familiar red turtleneck sweater. Putting the two together, the idea clicked in Dipper's head.
"Great Uncle Ford's clothes?"
"Well…?" Mabel asked as if she was pleading for his thoughts.
"I don't get it," Dipper admitted as he continued to look back and forth between the clothes. "Are you doing his laundry or…?"
"No, you big ding-a-ling!" Mabel denied as she shoved him in the shoulder. "Those aren't his exact clothes. Those are fitted for you! It's your Summerween costume!"
"What? Really?" Dipper asked as he spread out the clothes in front of him. Looking at the tags, he realized she was correct. They were fitted for him.
"Yep! And check this out!" Mabel nodded as she tore into her own package. As soon as she opened her box, she pulled out a red fez, similar to the one that belonged to the Mr. Mystery outfit. She stood up and placed it on her head. "Hey there, Dipper! It's your Grunkle Stan!" she imitated in a rough voice reminiscent of Stan himself. "I'm back from the Arctic and...UGH!" she exclaimed as she suddenly slouched, placing a hand on her back as if she was suffering back pain. "My back! Oh no! I'm four years older! Ow…."
Dipper chuckled at her imitation of their great uncle. "No way. Stan and Ford outfits? How'd you get these mailed in such short time? We only just realized that today was Summerween yesterday."
"I borrowed Soos's credit card last night when I ordered them so I could get Day One delivery," Mabel explained.
"Borrowed?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I left him an IOU," Mabel told him.
"Oh sweet!" Soos's voice exclaimed from the kitchen. His head suddenly popped out and into view of the living room, where he cheerfully held out a pink sticky note in his hand that read the 'IOU' in blue marker. "Another IOU! Thanks, Mabel!"
"Anytime, Soos!" Mabel nodded with a salute before he returned to the kitchen.
"Why does that excite him?" Dipper asked, confused as to why Soos is joyful over receiving a sticky note.
"Because I use a different colored sticky note each time! Who isn't excited by colors? Oh wait..." she said before suddenly resuming her imitation of Stan, slouching over again and returning to her rough voice. "I am. Ohhhh...I'm grumpy and old and rainbows hurt my eyes."
Dipper chuckled once again at her imitation, genuinely finding it amusing how accurately she portrays people like Stan. "Wow. That's cool. So I'm Ford and you're Stan then."
"Yep," Mabel nodded. "It's the most obvious choice."
"Obvious?" Dipper asked, confused by what she was implying. "What do you mean by that?"
"Well, with you and your smarty pants and Ford with his smarty hands…" she said as she wiggled her fingers in front his face. "...I felt you two parallel well as the nerds of us two pairs of Pines twins. Whereas Stan's more my kind of match. Outgoing, dangerous, and reckless!"
"Yeah. I guess that makes sense," Dipper agreed.
"Yup!" Mabel nodded. "And I've always seen you as the type to grow up to be someone just like Ford. Not just the nerdiness but the personality, the history, and the cold presence! Grunkle Ford is almost like an old man version of you! The parallels are almost scary!"
This statement made Dipper think a bit. The idea that Mabel thinks of him as the type to grow into some like his Great Uncle based on everything they had come to know about him based on his past with Stan, he couldn't possibly process the idea that he mirrored him. Especially when Mabel claims that she imagines him replicating his history.
"Well, I don't think of myself like that."
"What do you mean?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.
"I mean I don't see myself growing into someone like Great Uncle Ford," Dipper told her. "If anything, the similarities end at the 'nerdiness' and above average intelligence."
"That's cool with me, bro," Mabel shrugged. "It'll still be adorable to see you walking around like wittle teenage Ford. And me as wittle teenage Stan, although more feminine and about 85% less angsty than the real teenage Stan was."
"Actually, Mabel. I don't think I want to anymore."
Mabel's eyes lit up at this statement, prompting her to face her brother with a look of confusion. "Wait, what?"
"You can dress up as Stan, but I think I'll keep away from dressing as Ford," he told her.
Mabel wasn't sure how to respond to this claim and ended up just chuckling awkwardly. "Uh...Dipper. The whole point of the costumes is to match. We're supposed to be Pines twins dressing as the original Pines twins."
"I know," Dipper nodded understandingly. "I'm just saying that I don't want to."
"Why not?" Mabel asked, starting to grow a little tense by Dipper's sudden mind change. "You were on board just a second ago."
"That was until I realized that the costume doesn't suit me like that," he reasoned.
"Um, yes, it does," she refuted. "It's your size. I made sure of it. And you haven't even tried it on yet!"
"That's not what I meant."
"Are you seriously leaving me hanging on my costume idea just because you don't 'see yourself' growing up to be like Grunkle Ford?" Mabel asked, now getting completely irritated by Dipper's reasoning. "That's like if you didn't want to be Chewbacca because you don't 'see yourself' growing up to be a furry, growling wookiee!
"Chewbacca is fictional, Mabel," Dipper said, narrowing his eyes at this comparison.
"They're both costumes, Dipper! You're not actually becoming Ford the same way you didn't actually become Chewbacca!" Mabel argued. "It's just dressing up for fun and for one night! That's it! Why do you always have to make things so damn complicated?"
Dipper's eyes bulged in shock at Mabel's language. Despite them both being teens now and their vocabulary evolving, she still wasn't one to use such words like 'damn' too often. Seeing her use it in an angry tone caught him off guard, and reminded him that she was truly upset.
He saw her eyes mist slightly, but she quickly rubbed them dry with her sleeve, preventing herself from getting more emotional than she knew she should be, which was something she had learned to do more as she matured. She then grabbed the rest of her Stan costume in the box. "Fine. If you care that much about a costume representing who you are, then I'll just dress up for Summerween on my own. I'm sorry for assuming that we were past this kind of thing already."
With her costume, she promptly left the living room and went back upstairs, leaving Dipper on his own. As she left, Dipper slumped back in his seat and sighed, unsure whether he should feel guilty or not. On one hand, he was defending a legitimate feeling of his, but perhaps it was the wrong thing to be feeling about the situation.
Soon, he heard Mabel slam the door shut back upstairs. Melody appeared to have heard it too, as she suddenly poked her head from the gift shop doorway. Her eyes landed upon Dipper in the chair, who hadn't appeared to have noticed her.
"Dipper?"
Dipper looked up at the sound of his name and saw Melody right across from him. "Oh. Hey, Melody."
"What's going on?" she asked, walking over beside his chair, leaning her side against the wall behind him. "It sounded like you and Mabel were having an argument or something."
Dipper sighed. "Nothing. It's just...Mabel wants us to dress up as our great uncles for Summerween tonight. They're twins, of course, so she thinks since we're twins, it'd be fun to mimic them."
"Aww, that's a cute idea!" Melody said with a smile, charmed by the idea.
"I don't want to do it though," he added.
"Oh…" Melody said awkwardly at this addition. "Well, why?"
Dipper gave a sigh as he prepared to go on a ramble. "You see- she wants me to dress as my Great Uncle Ford, but I feel like that sort of draws some sort of parallel between us. For as much as I look up to him and have a lot of things in common as him, I don't see myself becoming like him. Mabel thinks I'll grow up similarly to him though. The same cold presence, she says. I mean, I'm not cold! I'm a target for spitballs in high school. Most girls think I'm weak. My best friend does most of my defending for me. I don't know what I see myself becoming in the future, but it's not Great Uncle Ford." He sighed again, realizing how jumbled his ramble may sound to her, considering he didn't know her too well. "I don't know. It's all kind of complicated."
"Oh, Dipper," she said, putting a hand on his shoulder comfortingly with an apparent look of understanding. "That's not kind of complicated. That's very complicated."
"Well then…" Dipper said, expecting a completely different response based on her gesture.
"Look, based on the little bit I heard from Mabel before I walked in here, it just sounds like she just wants you to put on a costume and have fun with it for one night," she explained to him. "This whole perspective-thing you got going on just makes things seem complicated for the sake of being complicated."
"Seems like 'complicated' is the word of the day," Dipper claimed as he slumped forward in his seat.
"Is it?" she asked in slight shock. "Soos and I haven't watched today's episode of Sesame Sheep. I made a bet with him that the word of the day is going to be 'possession'. Is the word really 'complicated'?"
"Uh...I couldn't say," Dipper answered, not at all sure how to respond to that.
"Darn," she replied somewhat dejectedly.
"Anyways, I guess I get what you're saying, but it all kinda goes back to this one time where I was with my Great Uncle Ford on an adventure and he had told me that he sees a lot of himself in me and offered me an apprenticeship, which meant staying here in Gravity Falls with him and leaving Mabel alone back in California. I was going to accept, but then I decided that spending high school with Mabel was more important. And that hasn't changed," Dipper explained to her as he looked up at the ceiling. "But there have been times when I still think about that offer and how different things could've been had I taken it. But every time I do, I feel bad because I know that's not the decision I made and I shouldn't be thinking about it. So when I see myself getting compared to Ford, I just feel like I'm just supposed to...refuse. Just like the apprenticeship. Just that...mental association, I guess."
"I think I understand where you're coming from," Melody nodded. "I still remember this one Halloween when I was a kid. My sister and I had finished trick-or-treating. Then she thought it'd be a smart idea to eat half the candy in one night, which led to her throwing up a rainbow of colorful assorted candy on me. I was mortified. I refused to step out of my room for several Halloweens, as I always associated that one time with every Halloween after. But eventually, I realized that that was just one time and that despite how terrified I was of getting rainbow puked on again, it probably wasn't going to happen. And so when I decided to go trick-or-treating again, it didn't happen! My sister and I were cool again," Melody said positively until her facial expression suddenly changed as she recalled further events. "That was until college rolled around and she became a sorority girl, stopped caring about education and her own well being, and focused on partying and st...I mean...other things. But mom and dad are supportive of her though, so why stop? She's enjoying life. She's paying the bills. I still love her to death, but, uh, we haven't spoken in some time…"
"Um...okay..." was all Dipper could say after Melody basically poured out a bunch of her own family issues unexpectedly and in a very blunt manner. He just looked on at her in concern as she just stared up at the ceiling as if she was facing flashbacks of her described past.
Melody's eyes then looked back down at Dipper, and she came back down to Earth, rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly as she realized what she had done. "Sorry. I can see how I got way off track there," she said with an awkward chuckle. "Look, Dipper. My point is you'll only continue to associate that moment with your great uncle with small things like dressing up like him for Summerween if you don't just face those small things. It's like conquering a fear. Sometimes you just gotta face it head on in order to, ya know, move on. Your sister's just asking you to put on a matching costume with her for a party. Don't miss out on something fun because of something so needlessly complex that it's messing you up in the head, okay?"
Dipper thought for a moment, eventually smiling once he realized what Melody was getting at. "You're right. I really am being ridiculous, aren't I? Man, I don't know why I do this. To myself and to Mabel…"
"You just miss your great-uncles," she justified for him, rubbing his shoulder comfortingly. "I've gone through similar deals with Soos. Except he's a bit more...stubborn about it…"
"Alright, Mr. Pines. I need your opinion again," Soos said to a framed picture of Stan on the wall as he held a bowtie in each hand. "For tonight's Summerween party- black bowtie or orange bowtie? I've been feeling the black one, but I think the orange one is pretty dope too. I don't know. What do you thin-"
He stopped himself as he stared on at the picture as if he was receiving a response. His eyes suddenly lit up at something he thought he was hearing.
"R-really?" he asked the picture, his eyes sparkling happily. "You're...you're being honest?" He waited a bit more for another response before suddenly dropping the two bowties out of pure shock and happiness. He then grabbed the picture frame from the wall and held it out in front of him. "Yes! Yes, Mr. Pines! I will be your son!" He then wrapped his arms around the picture frame, hugging it tightly out of pure joy. He began tearing up through his tightly shut eyes, but he suddenly opened them as he considered something. "Melody?" his voice called out. "Am I doing it again?"
In the same room right behind him were Melody and Dipper, who had simply turned their heads to watch Soos and his delusions ensue in the corner of the living room. As Soos stared on at Melody for confirmation on his question, she gave him a mellow nod, confirming he was just seeing things again.
"Of course," Soos sorrowly replied to her nod as he placed the picture of Stan back on the wall. "Maybe another day then."
Dejectedly, Soos walked out of the living room and went upstairs. Dipper and Melody simply watched him shamefully walk away, both feeling bad for his missing of Stan.
"For reference, I've been dealing with that since I moved in with him four years ago," Melody told Dipper.
"Wow. Poor Soos," Dipper said, shaking his head slightly in sympathy. "Well, anyways. Thanks, Melody. You've really helped open my eyes a bit and I appreciate it."
"No problem, dude," Melody nodded with a smile. "I like being all morally reasonable and stuff, if that's even what it's called. If you or Mabel ever need anything, don't be afraid to ask."
"Of course," Dipper nodded back. "And uh, just to be sure, you're okay, right? With your sister and all?"
"Oh, of course!" Melody blew off with a smile. "I've been long used to how crazy my family is. I mean, my dad was a circus clown and my mom played fiddle in an old Irish band. They met in an Australian hospital after both getting bitten by brown snakes touring the same town. My dad fell for my mom's black-skinned ankle, and she for his coagulated arm. Their wedding was an Irish Circus event and within the next ten years, they decided to have me, my two sisters, and my six other brothers. Crazy stuff, huh?"
Dipper stared at her with mixed thoughts on how to feel about everything she had just said. "Yep...pretty crazy stuff indeed…"
"Well, glad we could have this talk," Melody said as she readied herself to leave the room. "I better go tend to Soos before he suffers another emotional breakdown. I'll catch you later, dude."
She proceeded to casually leave the living room and walk upstairs, leaving Dipper alone once again. He looked down at the package with the Ford costume and held up the tan coat right in front of him. He stared at it for a good second before beginning to feel guilty for denying Mabel. He really was making things needlessly complicated.
Now, he knew he needed to make things up to her.
Later that day, Stan and Ford found themselves driving through a highway somewhere near the border of Idaho. At that point in the afternoon, they were approximately six more hours before reaching Gravity Falls if driving was consistent. The drive from Cheyenne to their current location in Idaho had been fairly normal and without any unusual gestures from Stan. The rest of the drive home was looking to be mostly free of any major situations.
However, Ford had decided to pull up into a nearby rest area for something he had been meaning to do since leaving Cheyenne. He drove into an empty parking space and promptly parked the car. He sighed, leaning his head back in his seat exhaustedly. Stan looked out the window, noticing they were stopped and then looked back over at him.
"Why're we stopping?" he asked. "We already took a bathroom break half an hour ago."
"This isn't a bathroom break. This rest area has a shop," Ford told him. "I'm gonna go inside and finally grab some temporary batteries for Meridian. Seeing as though we're only about six more hours from Gravity Falls, I wanna call Dipper and Mabel and let them know that we're to be expected later tonight."
Ford then proceeded to let out a large yawn as he leaned forward in his seat. He hasn't gotten a proper amount of sleep for over a day at that point, and the very few hours he did get back at the motel had done nothing for him. He was basically ready to just fall asleep right on the wheel.
Stan noticed this, however, and gave him a concerned look. "Yeesh, Sixer. You really need to give the driving a break and get some rest. The bags under your eyes are starting to make your face wrinkles actually look healthy."
"I'm fine," Ford assured him, leaning away from the wheel.
"Come on, Ford. I know after the sleepwalking thing in Cheyenne that you're worried about me going crazy in the middle of the road, but honestly, I think we're risking more by having your twenty-four-hours-without-sleep ass driving us for another six hours," Stan told him. "You gotta get some sleep, bro. And trust me, I feel as well-rested and healthy as a man can dream. I can easily complete this drive for us."
Ford proceeded to yawn again before looking over at Stan. "It's too risky, Stan. Don't worry about me. I've spent far more days without sleep during my trips through the multiverse. This is nothing in comparison."
"Sure thing, Mr. Multiverse. But if I may remind you, you're in the real world now. Not another dimension," Stan pointed out. "You wanna stop needlessly challenging yourself to do stuff you don't have to do?"
"As long as I'm keeping my family safe, I'll challenge myself as much as I like," Ford told him as he opened the car door and stepped outside. "I'll be right back."
Ford closed the car door and walked away, heading toward the rest stop's shop. As he did so, Stan poked his head out the lowered window and called after him. "Just to clarify- by doing this drive, you're not really keeping anyone safe!"
Ford paid him no response and simply continued on his way to the shop. Stan sighed somewhat irritatedly and brought his head back in the car, bringing the window back up.
"Ford's worrying too much," Stan said aloud to himself as he crossed his arms. "Sure, maybe I nearly killed myself by sleepwalking, even though I have no memory of it. And sure, maybe I randomly collapsed and had to go to the hospital, which is another thing I have no memory of…" His facial expression appeared to grow less stubborn as he continued to think about what had been wrong with him. "And maybe I did throw Thistle Downe through a window. And according to Ford, I constantly forget the last thing I had apparently said. And my eyes have gone bloodshot for no reason..."
He then looked at himself in the rearview mirror, looking right into his eyes. They were perfectly white and appeared normal and he felt no oddly painful sensation in them. He looked away from the rearview mirror and simply stared forward, thinking about himself. All this time he had truly led himself into believing that it was just a simple case of dehydration, but it was starting to become clear to him now that it could be something more.
"Is there really something wrong with me?" he said as he looked down at his hands. However, he clenched them tightly and confidently. "There can't be! I feel fine! I look fine. Everything feels and looks normal. Stan Pines feels normal." He looked back at himself in the rearview mirror and narrowed his eyes at himself confidently.
"I am normal."
He then smiled at the mirror after successfully reassuring himself. However, he frowned upon another realization.
"Now that I think about it, is talking to myself while I'm alone in my brother's car normal?" Stan asked his reflection. In the mirror, his eyes glanced behind his reflection and at the Snacken in the backseat, which was staring right up at him in the mirror as well. He frowned at it. "Oh, please. You don't count."
He then stopped looking up at the mirror and mentally realized he should stop talking directly to himself. He then started to glance around at the unopened compartments at the front of the car.
"Maybe dad left behind some money in his car," he said as he opened one of the compartments, digging his hand into it. "Or some sorta old 60's or 70's thing that's worth a lot now."
Not too long later, Ford emerged from the rest area's shop with a pack of lithium cell batteries in hand. Not wanting to waste time, he promptly ripped open the pack and took four batteries out from the pack of six. He pressed a button on the side of Meridian which triggered it to flip open from the top, revealing its open battery compartment. In the center of the watch was a single, large, gold-colored cell battery. He carefully took the piece out from the watch and stuffed it into his coat. He then placed the four lithium batteries in place of where the single large battery used to be.
Part of his prototype design for Meridian was having versatile functions and features, including using normal batteries as a backup in case his specifically designed battery for the watch stopped working. One of his plans for the finished version of the watch, however, was making a single unlimited usage battery using materials he had kept in his lab from the portal. The temporary battery was built only to test out any potential errors in the watch, and therefore, he didn't want to waste advanced resources on something that might not even work properly.
After inserting the lithium batteries into the watch, he pressed the same button he had pressed to open it to close it back again. With all the advanced technology featured on the watch, he knew that the few cheap lithium batteries would be quickly drained. But he also knew it would provide just enough power to the watch long enough for him to call Dipper and Mabel, which was the only reason he bought the batteries in the first place.
After a brief moment, Meridian's interface lit up, prompting Ford to crack a smile in his success. However, his smile quickly faded when he saw a prompt come up.
Recalibrating design. This may take awhile…
With the watch having been powered off and stuck in offline mode for several days, it was now entering recalibration, where it would try to correlate itself with its previous state before its battery drained. And since it had been several days, the process was bound to take even longer to catch up.
"Damn," Ford said to himself, facepalming at the fact that he had forgotten his own design. "How can I forget about the recalibration process?"
HONK! HONK!
Ford was startled by the sudden honks of a car, to which he quickly realized was his own as he looked ahead of him. Stan had taken over the wheel and pulled up to the curb of the rest area, glancing over at him through the open window.
"Hey, that seemed to have woken you up a bit!" Stan remarked, having noticed Ford's jump.
"Stanley? What are you doing?" Ford asked his brother as he walked over to the vehicle. "I told you that I'm driving us home."
"Oh please, Sixer," Stan said, rolling his eyes. "Look at how drained you are. There ain't no way you're gonna get us to Gravity Falls without unnoticeably driving us off a cliff."
"I told you that I'm…" Ford said, before interrupting himself with a sudden need to yawn. Realizing how bad that makes his attempted statement look now, he tried to call himself out on it before Stan could. "Alright, that looked bad. But-"
"No buts," Stan cut off. "You need rest. Me? I'm tired of it. My eyes are fine, my attitude couldn't be better, and I feel as healthy as can be. I'm good enough to finish this for us, Ford."
"Stanley, I really don't…"
"Trust me, Stanford," Stan pleaded.
Ford stared into Stan's eyes, seeing that he was very insistent about driving them home. Stan was right about his earlier assumption of him being afraid of him driving because of what had happened the previous night. And his fear hasn't lessened very much with his pleads.
However, as much as he hated to admit it, he really did need rest. And truthfully, Stan has been acting the most like himself since they came from Cheyenne. While having him take the wheel could still be risky, being drowsy on the road could lead to just as much disaster and perhaps even worse.
"Alright, fine. You can take the wheel," Ford said as he proceeded to enter the passenger seat right beside Stan. "I don't feel comfortable making this decision, but I'm willing to trust your word here this one time."
"Don't worry, Poindexter," Stan said as he patted Ford on the back. "I promise you that when you wake up, the first sight you'll see is the Mystery Shack herself."
"One can only hope," Ford said skeptically as he rested his head back against his headrest. "But in case you do start to face issues again, I encourage you to wake me anyways."
"Nothing's gonna happen," Stan continued to assure him. "Just go to sleep already. I ain't gonna let anything bad happen to ya..."
Ford had already begun to quickly doze off at the moment and almost instantly fell into deep sleep, which went to show just how much rest he had been lacking previously. As soon as he began to snore, Stan took the car out of parking and began carefully driving out of the rest stop, making his way back to the highway.
"...not again," Stan continued as he focused on the road ahead of him, assuring his brother and himself that he wouldn't put his family in danger again.
He pulled right into the highway and picked up his speed to match the other fast moving cars through the lanes. Now only six hours away, their final drive to Gravity Falls had begun.
Did not anticipate it taking this long for this chapter to come up. But since my school year is coming near its end, things are ramping up as per usual end-of-year gimmicks. I promise I haven't been forgetting about this fic. The fact that it keeps growing support each chapter is just all the more reason for me to keep going at it. So yeah, don't ever expect me to just stop updating. Longer waits just mean busier me. Just wanted to clear that up for future reference (although, I think I've done this several times before already, so /shrug).
Anyways, let's check out some reviews.
Lord Demolitions - Those are some pretty neat costume concepts for the Pines twins honestly. Especially fitting for Soos and Melody, haha.
Lord Demolitions / Hourglass Cipher / Jeptwin / 13ForLife - (insert thinking emote here) (+ thank you for the kind words to those who gave them)
Not going to go into any further detail. But anyway, the next chapter is the last part of the episode, of course. I highly recommend staying tuned.
Until then, my friends...
-Absolute Rift