AN: Hey all. Newcomers, my name is Outliner and this is my fourth story here on FFNet. To those who know of and read the other three, I ended up being unable to finish the next chapter of Dark Visage on time due to university workload and time constraints. For now, accept this as an appetiser.
Now, I've been a fan of Gravity Falls since it came out. An awesome show that I'm sad had to end. However, just because the canon story came to a close doesn't mean I can't build onto and alter it. This is a heavily AU version of events featuring the Pines Twins aged up two years and moving to Gravity Falls under much different circumstances. The original plot will be altered right from the onset. More will be revealed as the chapters go on. There will be action, there will be romance, there will be adventure and shit's gonna get wild at points.
Fair warning, this will not be updated as regularly as my other stories. It's more of an emergency offering for when I don't have an update for my main works ready on time.
Anyway, enjoy.
Long Time No See
The two children sat huddled together on the couch, eyes glued to the TV screen. They leant forward, the seats of their cargo pants and skirt perched precariously at the edge of the cushion, as if ready to take flight at any second. It was dark; the pristine, white curtains were drawn and the lights off.
On screen, the logo for the News Channel spun away to reveal a bespectacled man swathed in black robes taking a seat behind a long, wooden bench.
A woman walked into the room, her steps delicate and measured. The rich shag carpet sank beneath her feet. She wore a crocheted white cardigan, slim-fitting jeans and carried a large plastic bowl full of doritos. She stopped and regarded the siblings, worrying her bottom lip as her gaze flicked from them to the TV. The two didn't react to her entrance in the slightest. Hesitantly, she went and joined them, sitting the bowl on the coffee table before them.
Still no reaction.
The robed man picked up a small wooden hammer and banged it atop the disk in front of him, his voice rumbling over the speakers and declaring at large to the crowded hall in front of him that the session would resume.
The girl, not looking from the screen, absently reached forward and grabbed a handful from the bowl, the chips cracking and crumbling in her grip.
"Mabel, honey, you're getting that all over your clothes."
As the woman fussed over the girl's ridiculously loud unicorn sweater, the camera angle changed and showed the room that spread out before the judge. The gallery was brimming with people, most dressed in formal clothing and sharp suits. The front rows were occupied by tripod-mounted cameras, their operators and news reporters; they were pressed right up against the bar that separated the audience seating from the rest of the room.
Two smaller benches sat before the court interpreter's table. Well-dressed men and women sat at each, moving papers around with serious expressions on their faces and sending each other the occasional challenging stare.
The jury box was empty.
And there, tucked into the corner of the room as if to draw attention away from it, sat a plexiglass cage. A bailiff stood on either side, guarding the chained man that sat within.
The woman stared. How could he look so calm?
She saw the twins stiffen out of the corner of her eye. She glanced between them where their hands rested, fingers intertwined in a death grip. A lump caught in her throat.
The three watched as discussions commenced between the judge and the two tables before him, each person standing to speak and using technical terms that she was sure the kids didn't understand. She barely followed herself.
Eventually, a lady from the leftmost table stood and walked to the magistrates bench, handing the judge a piece of paper with a solemn look on her face. The man readjusted his glasses and began reading. She could practically feel the tension rolling off the children beside her. A bad feeling began to grow inside her chest.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the judge finally announced, setting down the paper, "we have reached a verdict."
The woman's hand twitched towards the remote, her maternal instincts screaming at her to turn off the TV. They didn't need to see this. She wasn't sure she wanted to see it.
Instead, a small hand slipped into hers. She looked at the girl next to her; her face was pale and her skin clammy. She looked on the verge of throwing up; her brother too. She gave the hand a squeeze, ignoring the grainy texture of dorito dust and corn chip crumbs.
"On the twelve counts of murder, second degree-"
Oh God.
"-this court finds the defendant guilty."
Her hand was being crushed, but she found herself unable to tear her eyes from the screen. How could he look so calm? Why was he so calm?
"On the five counts of murder, first degree, this court finds the defendant guilty."
She could hear Mason hyperventilating. So was she, she realized a second later.
"On the five counts of physical torture-"
Oh God, please no.
"-this court finds the defendant-"
Please.
"-guilty."
XXX
"Six."
"Six."
"Five."
"Two sixes."
Mason peered suspiciously at his sister over his hand of cards.
"Seven."
She plucked three cards from her own hand and laid them face down on the pile between them. "Three sixes!"
"Mabel, that's six sixes you've put down in a row. Bull."
She gestured to the pile challengingly, a confident smile on her face. Feeling less sure than he had a second ago, he flipped it over and shuffled through the last few cards. Not a single one except the one he'd put down was a six.
"Mabel, this is the poker hand guide," he said, showing her one of the cards she'd played.
"Ooh, we haven't played that one yet! Can we?"
He sighed and threw his hand down in defeat. "With what?" He asked as he slumped in his seat, gesturing to the grimy, empty bus they were in. "Unless you want to bet with whatever chewed-up gum you find under the seats, it isn't much of an option."
She peered beneath her seat, then tapped her chin in thought. "Five spearmint wads to a watermelon and two watermelon wads to a cherry. That sound like a good value system?"
"We are not touching the gum wads."
Staring straight into his eyes, she began reaching beneath the seat.
"Mabel."
She ignored his warning tone and continued her hand's advance toward the filth-infested underside of her seat. Frowning, Mason picked up one of his cards and flicked it at her venturing appendage.
"Hey!" she shouted as the flimsy rectangle scored a red line across the back of her hand. Picking up a card of her own, she tried to retaliate. Instead of slicing through the air as his had, it fluttered weakly to the ground as soon as it left her hand.
"Pfft-Ow!" Mason's scoff was cut off as his sister slugged him across the arm. That had hurt. He glared at her before grabbing a handful of cards and running down the aisle, sending them spinning out with impressive accuracy at his twin. She yelped and ducked behind the backrests of the row in front of her, but not before one or two smacked her in the face.
Mason waited for her to emerge once again, his throwing arm coiled and ready to unleash the card between his fingers. All of a sudden she burst out from behind cover and raced toward him with a war cry, her arms and head having disappeared inside her sweater which was now being utilised as a shield. All of Mason's panicked shots just bounced off the stretchy fabric. He tried to dodge, but there just wasn't enough space and she tackled him to the floor.
Mabel's hands and head popped out of her sweater and she began trying to pin him to the floor, laughing all the while. Mason's head was inches above the rubber mat that lined the bottom of the bus' interior, which was feet closer than he had any desire to be to it. His nose was right above some weird stain he didn't want to know the origin of and it reeked. He immediately began struggling against his sister.
While he didn't exactly like admitting it, Mason was pretty scrawny and didn't have much in the way of physical strength. Having said that, neither did Mabel, and he had the advantage of almost a foot, a good fifteen pounds and absolutely no desire to make contact with the stain below him. Pushing her off of him with a heave, he stood and ran back toward the rear of the bus, Mabel not far behind.
"Glomp attack!" she shouted as she jumped on him, the two falling heavily onto the back row. Laughing, they wrestled, pushed and grappled one another, each trying to gain the upper hand in their fight for dominance.
"Surrender!"
"You surre-!"
"Hey!"
The two froze, Mason with his foot against his sister's chest and his hand ready to pull her ponytail, Mabel looming over him with her hand on his pony-tail-pulling wrist and mouth prepped to bite the foot keeping her suspended body at bay.
"Quit it!" the bus driver growled, his head glaring at them from down the aisle. The twins shared a glance, then simultaneously pointed behind him and screamed in terror. He screamed in terror too and whirled around to face the oncoming… miles and miles of empty highway.
He glared at them again, this time from the rear-view mirror, as the twins began cracking up. They laughed long and hard, having to lean against one another at one point to stay upright. When their amusement eventually faded in content sighs, Mason got up and began collecting the cards that had been scattered in their impromptu brawl. He then sat down and idly began shuffling them as the minutes passed in silence.
"What do you think he's like?"
Mason stared down at the cards as he fanned them out in a crescent in his hands, his face just a little tighter than it had been before. "Dunno'. He's old, so probably gross and crotchety."
"What if he's the cute kind of old? Like, the kind that's all wrinkled, smiley and gives us candy."
Mason frowned as his sister gave the generic profile of a child predator. "Or he could be riddled with Alzheimers and need help every time he goes to the bathroom. Or maybe he needs some extra child labour." He separated the deck into stacks and twirled them in between and around his fingers before bringing them back together.
He heard his sister sigh. "Come on, Dipper. We can't just judge him without giving him a chance. We don't even know him."
He glanced at her. "Exactly. Fourteen years and we had no idea he existed. Not a single mention. Now all of a sudden we're going to be living with him, indefinitely, in the middle of nowhere. That doesn't bother you?"
She was quiet for a moment. "You know it does."
He glanced at her again. She sat slumped back in her seat, eyes examining the roof of the bus. Her hand was beneath her sweater, resting just below her collarbone. Mason sighed, squared the cards and put them back in their box, before copying her posture and pulling his cap over his eyes.
Minutes, then hours, passed in silence. Mason fell asleep, woke, then fell asleep again. The sun travelled with them through the sky, which slowly began to darken.
Mason was daydreaming and fingering the stitching on his jacket when he felt Mabel nudge him. Following her outstretched finger, he glanced out the window. There sticking up out of the trees, a lone monument amid nature, was a water tower. He knew that wasn't what his sister was pointing to though; it was the lettering along the side.
Gravity Falls
They had arrived.
XXX
All that greeted them when they stepped off the bus were long shadows and an old beat-up convertible painted a questionable shade of… what even was that? Maroon? Purple?
He searched around and shared a confused look with Mabel when they found nothing, or more specifically no one, else.
"Uh, hey," he said, turning around. "You wouldn't happen to-"
Making full eye contact with him, the bus driver pulled a lever and the doors closed with a hiss. The twins watched silently as the bus pulled away from them and disappeared down the road.
"Well, we're stranded."
Mabel groaned and picked up her bags, walking over to the car. Mason joined her. They circled around it a few times and peered in through the windows. Nothing but scrunched up yellow slips, holes in the upholstery and pink-colored cans that Mason sincerely hoped had not contained alcohol.
They took a few steps back and regarded it side by side.
"We could probably hotwire it," he suggested.
Mabel hummed. "Only if I get to drive."
"Fine, but we switch if the police start chasing us."
Before Mabel could very strongly protest to him getting the fun part, they were interrupted by the sound of another human voice.
"Ha!"
The siblings flinched back, startled, as a cloud of smoke exploded into existence before them. Mason stepped in between it and his sister instinctively.
"You two are definitely my family!"
Out of the smoke emerged one of the strangest people Mason had ever seen. A tall man dressed in a business suit that somewhat clashed with the red fez on his head stood before them in a striking pose. He held a cane topped with an eight ball in his right hand, his left held out as if gesturing to something on the ground; both wrists, as well as his neck, were adorned with gold chains. His ears and nose were engorged with old age and he wore an eye patch behind the lens of his glasses.
He was also wearing an ear-to-ear grin.
Mason and Mabel stared at him, stunned, as the smoke and smell of sulfur drifted away on the wind. One of Mason's arms was held protectively across his sister's chest, the other hidden behind his back. Undeterred by their reactions, or non-reactions, the man straightened and planted his cane in the dirt. "The name's Stanford Pines, your great uncle. It's great to finally meet you kids; last time I saw you two was when you were in your swaddling clothes." He thrust his hand forward. "You can call me Grunkle Stan. Put 'er there!"
Mason stared at the hand as if it were an alien object. The back of it had tufts of white hair and the skin of his palm looked rough; his fingers, though, were long and slender. Except for the middle, he noticed. That one was bent and crooked.
Just before the silence got awkward Mabel pushed past him and took his hand, an award winning grin on her face. "Nice to meet you, Grunkle Stan. My name's Mabel. Mabel Martha Pines."
Their great uncle chuckled with what Mason was mildly surprised to note seemed genuine affection. "I know who you are kiddo. You look just like your mom."
He turned away from her stunned expression and presented his hand to Mason next. "You must be Dipper then. You definitely got the Pines in ya'; I can see a bit of your old man in your eyes."
Mason stared at the hand, then the man's eyes. The one that wasn't covered was a little watery and lighter of color, but otherwise exactly the same as the ones he saw in his reflection. For an eye that had apparently last seen them when they were newborns, it held a surprising amount of warmth.
"Mason," he said eventually, shaking the proffered appendage. "Only Mabel gets to call me that."
"Noted," the man said with a chuckle. "Well come on, lets get your bags in the back."
He started off toward the car. Mabel and Mason stared after him for a moment before turning to look at each other; Mabel wore a happy smile and was giving him a smug 'I told you so' look. Mason didn't know what to make of their new guardian just yet, but he had to admit that as far as first impressions were concerned, the old man could have done a lot worse.
They carried their bags to the car, where Stan helped load them into the trunk. "Thanks," Mason grunted as he handed off his suitcase, their arms bumping together.
The interior of the convertible smelled a lot like it looked; an old man's mobile man cave. Cheap cologne mixed in with the faint smell of something on the verge of going rotten. Mason flicked a scrunched up parking ticket to the other side of the car and kicked a few empty cans under the driver's seat in front of him before he sat down. The car started with a protestant growl, like an old dog that resented being woken up.
"You kids want some soda?" Stan asked, holding up a six pack of the pink cans whose ilk littered the floor. "It's warm, but hey, a free drink is a free drink."
Mason watched as Mabel took a sip; her eyes went wide and she began chugging the drink with fervor. He eyed his own can warily; it was either good or very bad. He took a whiff. It smelled okay. He raised the drink to his lips and took a tentative sip.
"Gah! Oh god, what is this!?" he demanded in between coughs.
"The worst damn soda you'll ever taste in your life," Stan said, raising his own can with a grin. "But it's really all there is to drink around here, unless, you know, you want to drink tap water." his scoff and condescending tone said exactly what he thought of such people.
Mason got a weird look on his face, before he leant forward and spat a purple lump of something out onto his hand. "And this!?"
The evil smirk Stan gave him in the rear-view mirror made him decide he didn't want to know the answer.
"Mabel, I don't think we should…." He trailed off and watched in despair as his sister chugged her third can of the stuff, rivulets of pink liquid running from the corners of her mouth. Oh god, it was Smile Dip all over again.
Stan watched her with an impressed expression. "I had a buddy, Juarez, who used to drink like that. 'Course it wasn't soda and he ended up needing a new liver."
"Did he get one?"
"Yeah, just, uh... not from a hospital."
Mason stared at him. "Okay then."
Stan glanced at him in the rearview mirror. "So how'd you get the shiner, kid? I could polish my shoes with that."
Mason fought back a scowl and resisted the urge to touch the bruised skin around his eye. He was wondering if the old man would ask about it. He'd been hoping he wouldn't. "I got punched," he said shortly.
"In the face," Mabel surfaced from her can to helpfully add. "Three times. It was swollen shut for, like, two whole days." She giggled and took another sip of her soda. "It was fun to poke."
Stan laughed and slung an arm over the backrest of his seat. "I'll tell you what kid, that's one of the better ways you could have gotten it." He flipped up his eye patch to reveal a balck eye of his own. "All I did was twirl my cane around too fast and snooker myself in the eye."
A snort of laughter escaped Mason before he could stop it. Stan chuckled and flipped the patch back down. "Just don't tell anyone, or I'll have you chasing rabid possums out from under the house."
In a display of instant irony, one of said critters ran across the road at that exact moment, forcing Stan to swerve to avoid it. Mason was thrown into the back of the driver's seat, face smooshed into the back of the headrest and his arms extended on either side of it.
"Whoops, sorry kids. What was that, a wolverine?"
XXX
"Sooo? Huh? huh? What do you guys think?"
Mason looked at their new home incredulously. This… this looked like a-
"A tourist trap?" Mabel voiced his thoughts perfectly, right down to the doubtful tone. "We passed, like, thirty other places like this since we crossed the state line. And no offence Grunkle Stan, but this place looks pretty… well, cruddy compared to those."
Stan stumbled back, hand held against his heart and an afronted expression on his face. "Tourist trap? Cruddy? Listen here, you city slickers, The Mystery Shack is neither of those. This is a place that houses befuddlements both weird and bizarre, a place where intrigue and curiosity will infect your soul and plague your mind! Here be dragons and goblins and ghouls! I have displays that will defy sense, artifacts that will steal your sanity!" He struck the same pose as earlier. "And you can see it all for the low, low price of thirty dollars per person!"
Both children looked at the house doubtfully.
"There's grass growing out of the roof."
"And a goat eating the grass."
Without skipping a beat, Stan planted his cane into the dirt and leant forward, an earnest expression on his face. "Uh, but you see, that goat is Tanngrisnir, one of the retired steeds of Thor the Thunder god. He's a magic goat and only eats grass grown from the roofs of houses that hold divine energy. I had to seduce a valkyrie to get the proper seeds."
The twins stared at him incredulously. "People can't seriously be taken with that crap," Mason expressed. Stan's serious expression disappeared in favor of a smirk.
"Kid, all it would take is some glow-in-the-dark paint on the grass and a taser taped to the goat's horns. The rubes in this town would fork over their life savings to get zapped by it."
The house was bigger than a cursory glance would lead you to believe. It had been fairly large to begin with, but the shop was an extension that had been built on later, Grunkle Stan explained, and added a good two thousand square feet to the property. The inside was actually pretty creepy, which made Mason feel stupid for thinking so because it shouldn't have been. Everything was quite tacky and obviously fake, nothing that should have caused him concern. The gift shop held the standard gift shop merchandise: snow globes, T-shirts, hats, a few geodes and… and a bowl full of broken glass that was marked 'Magic crystals'.
Just past that was where all the attractions were. Stan led them passed misshapen plastic skeletons that had quite obviously been glued together, a taxidermied hare with antlers pasted to its head, a spray-painted zebra pelt that had apparently belonged to something called a 'rainbow tiger' and many other cheap gimmicks such as those.
And none of it sat well with Mason. Mabel was looking around with obvious bemusement, but that wasn't what he felt. He'd scoffed outside; now that he was actually seeing everything the house held, his skin prickled. He wasn't sure what it was, but something was off. It felt like he was standing in a familiar room and something was grossly out of place, but he couldn't identify what. Something was just wrong. A feeling of unease pricked at the back of his mind and the hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end.
His gaze was drawn to a desk full of jars containing various body parts and biological oddities swimming around in clear alcohol. Off to the left was one that contained an eyeball the size of grapefruit; obviously too big to be a human's. Mason found himself staring at it, transfixed. The hairs on the nape of his neck were so erect it almost hurt. It's iris was an iridescent ring of colors, glinting in the light of the room. It bobbed gently in the alcohol, facing toward him. Mason stared at it and blinked.
And the eye blinked back.
Without any eyelid, or muscles to facilitate such a movement, it somehow blinked at him and then didn't blink again, no matter how hard he stared at it. Cautiously, he approached the jar and tapped it, as one would tap a fish bowl holding a live piranha. It didn't move.
"Ooh, cool!"
Mason's soul just about jumped out of his body as Mabel suddenly appeared beside him, her delighted face pressed right up against the jar. "Grunkle Stan, is this real?"
The old man shrugged from behind the counter. "Dunno, found it in the basement," he explained as he opened the cash register. "It's probably glass or something."
Mason looked back at the eye. It was still and lifeless, just as it should be. He still felt uneasy, but there was no longer that weird sense of wrong that had been screaming at him; that was gone now. His nape hairs had relaxed. The store just seemed tacky, as opposed to both tacky and menacing as it had a few seconds ago. Had he imagined it? Letting out a slightly shaky breath, he drew a hand down his face and rubbed his eyes.
Stan saw the gesture and cleared his throat. "Look, I know you two have had a long day and you're probably tired."
'Right, long day. Tired. Probably just my mind playing tricks on me,' Mason reasoned, still eyeing the jar.
"Why don't you go unpack your bags while I rustle us up some grub? Your room is in the attic."
"Awesome!" Mabel chirped as she began dragging her wheelie bag up the stairs, the suitcase banging against each step. Mason gave the eye one last look before going to follow her. Just before he walked through the doorway, he paused and turned to Stan.
The man raised an eyebrow as he thumbed through a stack of bills. "You need something, Squirt?"
"Yeah." Mason smirked a little as he pulled three gold chains from his pocket. "I figured I should probably give these back before you started wondering where they went."
Stan regarded the chains dangling from his finger with a mild look. Mason's grin slowly faded as he took in the man's completely unsurprised expression.
"You got work on your lifts kid," he said, a smirk appearing. "I got to admit, I didn't notice my necklace was missing until a few minutes after that critter ran across the road, but the handshake? That little bump loading your luggage? Too obvious."
Mason blinked, having a little trouble processing.
"But, hey, you have them now and I don't expect you to just hand them back. Here, why don't I trade you?"
Mason stared at the watch the man offered him. The watch he'd received for his thirteenth birthday. What was it not doing on his wrist?
"No? Not good enough? Fine, I'll sweeten the deal."
The next item he pulled out of his pocket was Mason's phone. The boy patted his pocket out of instinct, already knowing it wasn't there.
"When did…"
"Still not interested?" Stan shrugged and reached into his pocket once again. "Fine, how about I just mug you and take everything."
Mason tensed as his grunkle held up a small, black flip knife. He levered the blade out into the open with a practiced movement of his thumb and wiggled it between his fingers.
The two simply stared at each other for a while, Mason trying not to look nervous and Stan with a placid expression on his face. Eventually, he set the knife down on the counter top.
"This is what you were reaching for, right? When I threw down the smoke bomb?"
Mason looked away, scowling.
"So your first instinct when meeting new people is to pull a knife on them, huh?" Still no answer. "Would you have used it?"
"You just surprised us," he muttered. "It was instinct."
"If I had turned out to be a threat, would you have used it?"
"Dunno'. Maybe," he growled, reaching for the knife. "I guess I'll find out one day."
Stan moved it out of his reach. "Do you really think you'll have to?"
Mason glared at him. "I'm not taking the chance that I won't."
Another stretch of silence passed.
"Okay." Stan nodded, a small smile playing across his thin lips. He closed the knife and dropped it back into his pocket. "I think I'll keep this."
"But-!"
"This one will serve you better, anyway."
Mason barely caught what was thrown at him, fumbling a bit before he managed to secure it. He stared down blankly at the leather sleeve in his hand and the hunting knife that rested within it. Hesitantly, he popped the clip holding it in place and drew it halfway out the sheath; it was old, and plainer than a blank sheet of paper. A simple wooden handle, bearing scuff marks and scratches, and a worn blade that held a patch or two of rust. He thumbed the blade - dull, but that was easily fixed.
He looked back up; Stan had gone back to counting the money in the register. Mason opened his mouth to ask if he was giving him the knife, then realised that was a stupid question.
"Why?"
Stan shrugged. "Because I felt like it, that's why. You and I have a lot in common, kid."
"Yeah? How do you figure? You don't know us."
The old man's smirk told him he was wrong. "You two are Pines. That's everything I need to know right there." He threw the money back into the register, bumped it closed with his hip and headed through the door adjacent to the counter, shedding his jacket along the way.
Mason watched him go with a confused expression on his face. Who was this guy?
He glanced down at the knife one more time before stowing it in his bag and heading up the stairs. Something told him that his and his sister's lives had once again gotten interesting. The goat he found on his bed all but confirmed these thoughts.
He fingered the pattern stitched into the sleeve of his jacket. Hopefully this time it would be for the better.