When Pacifica returned to her shift, she was all too quick to notice the familiar silhouette of a man, sat against one of the breakfast bar tables, nervously clutching a battered, crackled leather satchel that looked like it smelt like vinegar.
It was a diminutive figure, blatantly trying its best to look as inconspicuous as possible; despite a bulbous nose, tiny body and whiskers.
"Toby!" She snapped. "You know you aren't allowed in here after the malt spread incident."
The little man turned his head and looked up at the sharp-tongued waitress like an ashamed labrador, before piping up in his familiar, exciteful drone. "I know that! But I have something to show you! Something you need to take to the Pines right away!"
Pacifica sighed and put her hand on her hip. "Right. Sure."
"It's about your family!" He replied, more enthusiastically. "Your original one! The Northwests!"
"I had already worked that out, Determined. Get on with it." She sighed, having little time for Toby's unique blend of dramatics and rambling. "What about them?"
"So there I was in my office, working hard on a future Pulitzer prize winner-"
"Your typewriter is a toy, Toby."
"-And suddenly, my modern office, the heart of our town's news, the prime high street journalistic location of Oregon, was destroyed by a bolt of lightning, setting the entire high street ablaze!" He grinned, throwing his arms wide. "I barely survived!"
Pacifica glared fiercely, prompting the little man to shrink back once again and slip off his hat, releasing a small army of moths. She tried to hide her disgust and contempt for the bizarre faux-paparazzi, but failed miserably.
Finally, looking over his small espresso with an exaggerated sigh, he renounced his secret. "I think your family has a connection with the train crash. And a few other things besides."
Pacifica's first instinct was to slap the man across the face and tell him to get out of her diner right this damned second for making such a ridiculous claim-
But she didn't. Instead, she wordlessly refilled his cup, sat down at the breakfast bar and brushed down her apron. "Fine. Tell me."
"But-but aren't I banned?"
"I'm making an exception. I'll relay the stuff to Dipper, but I want to hear it from you first."
Toby rummaged through his satchel - which, right enough, stank of vinegar - and pulled out a filthy old notebook, with rusted binding and yellowed paper, every page handwritten in surprisingly elegant ink pen, wrapped, as it was, in a thick old newspaper - a copy of what had once been the Gravity Falls Gossiper.
"This is everything you need to know." He whispered - as if anyone would hear him in the packed diner. "My Grampy hid it in a filing cabinet."
"Grampy…?" Pacifica was surprised that Toby even had family. He seemed more like the sort of creature that was born out of a swamp rather than one with a genetic heritage. She looked down at the yellow notepad and raised an eyebrow, deciding not to say anything.
Toby nodded sincerely and tapped the small portrait on the newspaper's header - a sharp featured, handsome man in small glasses with a newsman's hat and flowing hair. Broad shouldered, charismatic…
Pacifica even found herself admiring him. Tobias Determined was…
Tobias Determined was everything Toby wasn't.
The Northwest heir twisted her lip and looked back up at Toby, who was now drooling.
Pacifica grimaced and gestured to his mouth. "You uh- you've got an - uh -"
"Oh, butter biscuits…" he mumbled, wiping his mouth. "That happens when I drink coffee. I think I have allergies!"
"Why don't you just… like, sleep?"
"The news never sleeps! I have a duty to uphold!" He said proudly, landing a rodentine fist upon the breakfast bar, rattling the salt and pepper shakers.
"...Sure. Sure, Toby." Pacifica rolled her eyes. "So what's so great about Tobias Determined?"
"Grampy was the greatest journalist in Oregon." Toby replied, in a hushed, reverential tone. "Handsome, smart, adored by the people. He uncovered the Sticker Scandal of 1876, the Hellbilly Hunger Strike of 1882, The Beef Tea Blight of 1880 - and became a hero of the town. He kept Gravity Falls safe! The Gossiper was read by thousands. He was a bona-fide celebrity."
Pacifica blinked, trying to decode each of those so-called historic events, her eyes still fixed on that pen and ink illustration atop the newspaper's header. "So how come I've never heard of him?"
She didn't mean to sound haughty, but she considered herself pretty well taught about the town and its celebrants. Her family used to own portraits of most of them in the manor, and she was fairly sure she didn't recognise this stranger.
If she had, she'd have no doubt developed a crush on the portrait.
...Developing crushes on paintings wasn't very unusual for a kid locked in a manor for most of her life.
Don't judge. She was a lonely kid.
Toby tapped his fingers together, still acting as if he was being interrogated by the 14 year old.. "He was investigating the weirdness in Gravity Falls."
"Great. Another Stanford." She chuckled in response, flicking back her hair.
"But there was something else!" The repulsive reporter added. "He discovered something deeper. He discovered your family had far bigger secrets than The Great Flood. The Northwests were… were…"
The man shrank back again and rubbed his hands together anxiously.
"The Northwests were cultists."
Pacifica recoiled, wrinkling her nose. "You're joking, right?"
"No, I'm not! I swear on my grandmother's raisin muffin recipe!"
"Well, where's his proof ?!"
"It's in here, it's in the notepad!"
"You better not be lying to me, Toby!" Pacifica replied, now beginning to raise her voice.
"I'm not! I'm not! I s-s-swear!"
"If you are I'll personally buy out your newspaper with my pocket change."
"I know, I know! Please, Pacifica, I didn't know where else to go! Nobody else would listen to me! Nobody else would even give me the time of day!"
"You're a reporter, why don't you report on it?!"
"I can't! Your family would kill me!"
"Don't be ridicul-" Pacifica paused and rested her face in her hands, suddenly disarming herself against the effortlessly irritating little man. She took a deep breath and pinched the bridge of her nose as she tried to fight back her temper.
Truth was, the Northwests probably could kill someone like Toby Determined.
Toby looked up at her fearfully, still shrunk back into the little breakfast bar bucket chair made of old railroad car parts. For a moment, Pacifica was finally forced to admit she couldn't really, reasonably, be angry with the man who brought up all of this history.
After all, as ridiculous as a cult sounded, this was Gravity Falls. As scary as the idea was, she was increasingly dedicated to finding out more about her family's crooked past.
As reluctant as she was to see such stark answers, she was curious. She had to find out more.
Toby pushed it slowly towards her. "Will… will you take it?"
"...Fine. I-I'll look into it. Okay? I'll give it to Dipper and Ford and… and we'll see what we can work out."
The crooked little man nodded enthusiastically, poured the coffee into his gaping mouth, and then scarpered out of the diner with all of the grace and elegance of a frightened possum with a defective leg.
Pacifica blinked, before looking back at the little notepad and outsized, broadsheet newspaper folded up around it. She furrowed her brow, and - momentarily - considered throwing the entire lot away.
But that would have been the old, dismissive Pacifica. The new, curious and increasingly investigative Pacifica wrapped it back up carefully, and kept it in her satchel for the rest of her shift, with a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach that she had come across something she really shouldn't have.
A strange nausea that made her feel that, somehow, Toby was not exaggerating. That everything she knew was about to be brought to its knees.
Truth be told, it kind of excited her.