Oh boy.

I wrote and rewrote this thing several times before I was finally somewhat satisfied with it.

Fingers crossed that it turned out okay.

Finally Judge Kitty Kitty said, "Well, I think this is a pretty open-and-shut case. It's time for the verdict."

He started to raise his gavel-

"Wait a minute!"

Dipper stood up. "As the defense, it's my turn to cross-examine the witness."

The cat sighed, but leaned his chin on his paw and made no protest.

Oh crap what did I just do?! What am I even gonna ask?! Aaaaaaah I have no idea what I'm doing!

But Dipper squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and slowly walked around to his uncle's side. His mind raced, and he managed to put together the beginnings of an idea.

"...Are you doing okay?" he hesitantly asked sotto voce.

Ford shrugged as much as he was capable of doing. "This is not exactly enjoyable for my shoulders, but I've gone through far worse."

Somehow that was not overly comforting. Dipper cleared his throat.

"Great Uncle Ford, do you care about Mabel?"

Ford blinked. "I-"

"Objection!" Mabel cried. "There's no point asking that, because he obviously doesn't-!"

"I'll allow it," Judge Kitty Kitty interrupted. "I'm sure that we are all curious to know his answer. Especially me, because I'm a cat. Meow meow."

Mabel scowled, before folding her arms and scooting further back into her beanbag.

Dipper looked at Ford expectantly. He appeared to be interested in his shoes for a long moment, before finally murmuring, "Of course I do."

"When I came back, the first thing she said to me, besides a general demand wanting to know what was going on, was to compliment my hands. It had been a long time since anyone had been that friendly towards them, especially when I was living in this dimension, and I appreciated it." Ford smiled wistfully. "She never fails to impress me with her bright creativity and enthusiasm. Even here, in this...very unorthodox courtroom, I admire it." He gestured at the menagerie of brightly colored creatures that surrounded them, and the varied designs of the Mabel-jury's sweaters. "I...have admittedly not expressed it as well as I should have, but of course I care about Mabel."

For a second Mabel's eyes widened...but then she glared, and shook her head stubbornly. "Nuh-uh. Nope. You're making that up so I won't banish you."

Dipper snatched the scrapbook from one of the dream boys desperately. "How about we look a little further at some of your evidence? Because as Great Uncle Ford said, there's a few crucial details that your legal team overlooked."

He turned back to the page showing the day of Ducktective; this time they watched further as Mabel, Grenda and Stan played DD&D to save Ford and Dipper from the annoying wizard, imagining up crazy weapons and bouncy shoes before at last finishing off the Impossibeast with exploding muffins.

"I know it was rude of us to set up our game in a room we knew you were planning on using," Dipper admitted. "I'm sorry we got so carried away. But in the end, we got to watch the second showing of Ducktective together anyway, and you got to create flaming swords and a centaur-taur and stuff, and-and see that hot elf, beforehand. So even if you didn't get what you wanted right away, you still got to have a good day, right?"

He could see the corner of her mouth turn up a little.

With his confidence building, Dipper turned the page.

"And even if unicorns turned out to be jerks, in the end you did get their hair, which we needed to protect the Shack from Bill since our plan of trying to encrypt our minds, well, literally blew up in our faces." He looked down at his shoes sheepishly, remembering how his panicking had led to that little disaster. "We were both so proud of you for being able to do that." In the memory, past-Ford beamed down at his disheveled niece and ruffled her hair, before saying, "You're a good person, Mabel."

Several members of the audience "awww'd"; Soos blew his nose loudly.

But then his hopes, which had been rising ever higher, plummeted as Mabel's scowl deepened again. "That doesn't change the fact that he thinks I'm suffocating."

A sea of hostile (and in Soos, Wendy and Candy's case, anxious) eyes turned back to Ford.

Ford's mouth opened and shut, clearly struggling for words. Finally he managed to go with, "I offered the apprenticeship because I wanted to help Dipper fulfill his potential. He is a brilliant young man who loves the strangeness of Gravity Falls, and I want to give him an opportunity to study it that I would have loved to have when I was his age. I-admittedly suffocating was a poor choice of words, but I only meant that I thought it would be good for both of you to have a chance to learn and grow as individual people-"

If he was hoping to soothe her, he failed miserably. Her hands curled into trembling fists, and the jug of Mabel Juice sitting at her elbow actually exploded, sending the colorful drink flying onto everyone in the vicinity.

"THIS is exactly why I have no reason to go back to the real world!" Mabel screeched, jumping to her feet. "Everything that makes me happy is being taken away when the summer's over!"

Judge Kitty Kitty raised his hammer, but another surge of power sent it flying out of his paw; with an angry meow he went chasing after it. Mabel obliviously pointed a trembling finger at Ford as she continued to yell.

"You don't get to make that decision for us! You don't get to decide when we're ready to grow apart!" Her voice was still filled with fury-but underneath it Dipper could hear something else now. Something that was trying to break through to the surface.

"I didn't decide anything!" Ford protested. "I simply offered him the opportunity, and if you'll recall, he said yes! He decided, you should be happy for him, instead of-"

"I DON'T WANT TO BE HAPPY FOR HIM!"

Out of nowhere, a strong wind surged through the courtroom and wrapped itself around Mabel; it blew her hair and sweater around wildly, and actually lifted her a couple of inches off the floor. She glared furiously down at her imprisoned uncle, and continued to shout.

"I DON'T WANT TO HAVE TO SAY GOODBYE TO MY BROTHER AT THE END OF THE SUMMER, ALONG WITH MY CHILDHOOD AND MY PIG AND EVERYTHING ELSE! I'M NOT READY TO BE ALONE!"

The pillory ripped itself open, and Ford went flying backwards to crash into the wall with a thud. At the same time, all the windows smashed at once, and enormous pieces of multicolored glass rained down on the crowd. People ducked their heads in fear-at least until some of them realized that the "stained glass" was actually just pieces of spun sugar, and several of them started happily eating.

Dipper and his companions, however, were not interested in eating spun sugar windows. They were all far too focused on the little girl who had just had all the rage drained out of her. Slowly the winds dissipated, lowering her back down to the floor as the red lighting returned to its normal gaudy color. As soon as she reached it, she curled up in a ball and started sobbing miserably into her knees.

Slowly, hesitantly, Dipper stepped forward, and then knelt to put a hand on her shoulder.

"...I didn't realize how scared you were," he whispered. "I'm sorry I made you feel abandoned. I should have talked about it with you before saying yes."

"I'm sorry," she whimpered. "I know-I know you really wanna do this, and it's such a cool opportunity, so I don't blame you or anything. But-but everything's changing so fast, and I thought I'd at least have you, and-and then you were gone too." She hugged her knees more tightly.

Dipper just curled around her as best he could.

After a few minutes of just letting her cry herself out, Dipper cleared his throat. Maybe now wasn't the best time to bring this up, but he wasn't sure if there was going to be a better one. "Mabel, Grunkle Stan's in trouble."

Mabel froze, looking up at him and blinking in an owlish way that gave her a somewhat eerie resemblance to Ford.

"Wh-what?"

"When Weirdmageddon started, we saw him get captured by Bill. We need your help." Dipper looked at his sister pleadingly.

Candy picked her way through the mess to kneel at her other side. "He is not the only one. Grenda is his prisoner too. Many people are."

"Tambry and the guys," Wendy added, joining them.

"My grandma wasn't captured, but she got turned into a chair," said Soos. He sucked on a shard of window.

Mabel's mouth trembled, and her eyes glimmered with fresh tears.

And then Ford finally spoke up, making his way towards them before kneeling down in front of her.

"I know that I...have hurt you very badly. I'm sorry that I caused all this mess. But-please. Don't make Stanley, and everyone else in Gravity Falls, pay for my mistakes."

Mabel looked down uncertainly.

"If you come with us, I'll take more time to think about the apprenticeship," Dipper said.

Her shoulders drooped. He could tell without even asking what she was thinking.

"I can't definitely promise that I'll say no to it. I know that's not the answer you want, sorry. But-whatever I choose, I don't want to lose you either. Because you are not suffocating. You're my sister."

Mabel wiped her eyes on her sleeve, and gave him a wobbly smile.

"...Promise?"

"Yes. Definitely. Absolutely."

As Mabel pulled her brother into her arms, Ford tried to ignore the sudden aching, longing feeling in his chest.

The way I see it, Mabel is kind of like Spinel from Steven Universe: ultimately she just needed to confront her feelings and get them out of her system.