I forgot to mention this in the last chapter, but "Her Warming Shield" by francisthewitcher is complete and is ready for you all to read. It's a one-shot smut story, but featuring our favorite pairing Patrick x Wendy!
You can find the story in my favorites. I definitely would go and check it out. He did a fantastic job. If you do, make sure to leave a review for him.
Now onto the story.
It was the end of another day in Gravity Falls, and the sun had already gone down. As one of the very few eateries in town, Greasy's Diner stayed open rather late into the night to accommodate those offhand insomniac customers. Or people like Veronica, who was sitting at the counter. She had just finished her late dinner and drank a cup of coffee. Work for her agency has been getting tenser lately, and she wasn't able to get out of the office until late. But she was thankful that Lazy Susan was able to stay open for her to have something to eat.
Back in the kitchen, Lazy Susan hummed while sweeping a broom across the floor. She was doing her final tasks before locking for the day, including beating possums out of the dishwasher and chasing Old Man McGucket out from under one of the tables. After all that, she walked over to Veronica with a smile.
"Any more coffee, dear?" She asked her, being one of the only friends Veronica had.
"No, I'm good," Veronica said, placing the money down on the counter. "Sorry about the dishes."
"Oh, no worries, I'll just clean them tomorrow," said the old waitress. The two women walked out of the diner together, with the waitress locking the restaurant for the night. She then brightly bid Greasy's a farewell as she and Veronica started heading home. "Good night, diner." She did the same again to the surrounding woods. "Good night, trees." She and Veronica continued down the sidewalk, passing by a group of gnomes standing on top of each other, attempting to steal a still-warm pie that was sitting on the diner's windowsill. "Good night, tiny men stealing my pie."
Veronica and Lazy Susan stopped dead in their tracks immediately after she said that. The secret agent turned around with wide eyes, while the waitress let out a shocked gasp as she spun around to face the thieving gnomes.
"Wait, WHAT?!" She screamed, lifting her eyelid.
"Lift with your knee," Jeff commanded his minions, unaware that the two women had caught them. "No, your knees. If I go one more hour without eating, I'm gonna resort to cannibalism." The gnome leader briefly paused when he noticed Veronica and Lazy Susan standing nearby. He casually tipped his hat to them. "Ladies."
Needless to say that seeing the bizarre sight of the gnome was too much for Lazy Susan. She shrieked in fear, which barely got a reaction out of the gnomes as she hurriedly backed away from them. "Little magic men! What does it mean?! What should I do?!"
Veronica quickly grabbed her by her shoulder and stopped her from moving. "Susan! Get back inside, I'll deal with them," she ordered her friend with a stern scowl.
"Shouldn't we call the cops?!"
"No, now do as I say!" Veronica shouted, scaring Susan a little. The waitress ran around the gnomes and hurriedly unlocked the door, before slamming the door behind her. With her out of sight, Veronica turned back to the gnomes and walked over to the little creature. She looked down at Jeff with a disapproving look in her eyes. "Jeff, what the hell are you doing?"
"What? Can't a couple of Gnomes steal a pie that no one's obviously going to eat?" Jeff asked as if it was the most obvious answer in the world.
But all it did was irk Veronica some more. Out of all the gnomes in Gravity Falls, she always had trouble keeping Jeff's clan in line most of the time. Grabbing the pie from the windowsill, she handed it to the gnomes before giving them a stern talking. "We had a deal, Jeff. Don't be seen by anyone. If you can't abide by the rules, then you're-"
"AAAAAAAH!" Veronica was interrupted by the loud screaming of Lazy Susan in the diner.
"Susan!" Veronica pulled out her pistol and rushed back towards the door of the Greasy's Diner. Kicking open the door, she raised her gun. It was dark in the diner. But then she looked towards the exit across the room and gasped in shock. Susan had a burlap sack over her head and was being kidnapped by two crimson cloaked figures.
"Hey! Stop!" Veronica ordered, raising her gun to aim at them. They saw Veronica and quickly picked up Susa and ran out of the diner, before she could shoot one of them in the head. The older woman ran towards the exit and ran outside to see the two figures jumping into the back of a van with another hooded individual.
"It is unseen," the hooded man said darkly, before slamming the doors shut.
The vehicle started taking off and Veronica started shooting at the wheels. Trying to stop it and rescue Susan. But the van was too fast and drove onto the road and headed off down the street. The agent ran into the street and pointed her gun to continue firing at it. But as it disappeared into the night, she lowered her gun with a frustrated growl. Veronica looked back towards the diner and scowled. Walking back towards the door that she ran out of, the director of OPI scanned the walls of the log-shaped building and saw something that got her attention. Going over to it, her scowl deepened when she saw what was on the wall. She found what she was looking for, and it wasn't a pleasant sight.
Wiping out her phone, Veronica pressed call and held the phone up to her ear. "It's me. I need an investigation team right now. A civilian just got kidnapped by a group of hooded men...and I know exactly who took her," she said to the person on the other end of the call. Continuing to stare at the red graffiti on the wall that depicted a single red eye that was crossed out.
The Blind Eye was back.
{Play Stranger Things theme by Kyle Dixon Michael Stein}
The intro begins by fading in a scene of the road sign that said: "Welcome to Gravity Falls, Oregon."
We then see a view of the town of Gravity Falls, with the strangely shaped canyons in the background, and the sun going down between the two land formations. As the sun was setting, the day turned to a blue night. However, a sinister red light comes from over the horizon. Shining between the canyon.
The next scene is of a large, dinosaur footprint in the ground. It then changed to show the trees of the forest at night, and a pair of glowing eyes staring at the viewer, before the camera switched to a wider shot and showed many more eyes staring at the viewer. The next scene was a far back show of two men dumping a body into the lake, and as that body sank down it was swallowed by a massive creature.
PATRICK
The teenage Pines is shown in a freeze shot of him walking in the woods with a lantern and his crowbar in hand. Behind him, Bill's eye in the sky looked down at him.
DIPPER
The male twin is looking down at the journal with a flashlight. Not noticing that there was a Pteranodon staring down at him, ready to eat him.
MABEL
The female twin is the final one to be seen, and it showed her wearing a sweater that lit up because it was plugged into an outlet. But in another, farther away shot show's Gideon's hand controlling her like she was a marionette.
The finale of the intro shows the Mystery Shack as the sun goes down behind it and the trees of the forest. When the sun went down and the night came, and just like the beginning, the red light appeared, but then a blue light shined from inside the Mystery Shack.
Then the screen went black and the title of the story appeared in a flash of light.
WEIRDER THINGS
It then disappeared, before the chapter title appeared.
Chapter: Twenty-Seven
The Society of the Blind Eye
The next day at the Mystery Shack, Dipper placed a picture with a head that had a question mark on the poster board on his wall entitled "Who is The Author?" He circled around the author's head and stepped back on his bed to examine all of the clues that they had gathered throughout the summer. With the laptop busted beyond repair and the bunker devoid of any further tangible clues, the Pines Cousins were back at square one when it came to their search for answers about the author of the journals. It frustrated Dipper to no end, but thankfully he listened to his cousin and started taking it easy with his search for answers and wasn't going to do it alone this time. That's why he had asked Patrick to help him sort out the leads he's gathered thus far.
Patrick stood in the middle of the room, scribbling away on a notepad as Dipper carefully examined the details and photos he had on the board. Trying to figure out the author's unknown identity. "Alright author, who are you?" Dipper muttered to himself, stepping away from the board as he started absent-mindedly chewing on the end of his pen. "Who are you?..." Suddenly, the pen accidentally breaks, and Dipper snapped out of his thoughts when the ink sprayed all over his mouth. "Blech! Not again," he groaned, tossing it into a bin full of broken pens.
Patrick sighed and stopped writing. "You should really start chewing gum, man," he remarked.
A second later, the door to the attic slammed open and Mabel excitedly came running into the room with a green bottle in hand. "Hey, guys! Look what I got!" She exclaimed, flopping down on Dipper's bed.
"Yay, a filthy green bottle!" Patrick said sarcastically. Dipper snickered.
"It's a bottle message from Mermando, remember? He was part fish, part shirtless guy." Mabel explained as she sat up, still smiling fondly at the thought of her former crush. She then gasped and asked the others, "What if he wants to get back together?!"
"I wouldn't get your hopes up, Mabel," Dipper rationally said.
"Too late! Hopes are way way up!" Mabel rejoiced as she pulled the bottle cap off and got the letter out of the bottle. She sat down as Patrick and Dipper sat next to her, smiling at her. The little girl squealed excitedly as she kicked her legs, before she started reading the letter out loud. "'Dear Mabel…' So far so good! 'It is with a heavy heart…' So far so good!"
"Oh boy," Patrick muttered, exchanging an unsure look with Dipper.
"'...that I must inform you...I'm getting married?!'"
"Yeah, there it is," Patrick remarked, but looked at his cousin with a sympathetic frown as Mabel distraughtly continued reading the letter.
"'In order to prevent an undersea civil war... arranged wedding... Queen of the Manatees?!'" Mabel finished reading, growing more distressed as she looked at the picture of an unhappy Mermando next to a manatee wearing a dress and crown. "And she's so beautiful! This can't be happening!" She wailed in misery.
"Oh, Mabel. I'm so sorry," Patrick said, placing his hand around her shoulder. "I'm sure he would have loved to get back together with you, but he did it for the greater good of his people."
"Yeah, and look on the bright side," Dipper said, attempting to encourage her. "You'll get over him eventually."
"You don't understand, guys," Mabel said, pulling out her summer scrapbook and opening it up. "On my first day here, I made this page for summer romances. The kind that Patrick and Wendy have. But look at how my luck has turned out." She pointed to a picture of Norman. "Turned out to be gnomes..." She then pointed to a picture of Gideon. "Child psycho…" She went on by pointing to a picture of Gabe Bensen. "Made out with his own hands. And now…"
The young girl taped the picture of Mermando and his new queen onto the page. Then she wrote "FAILED" at the top of the page, above 'summer romances'. Now representing every single one of her relationship attempts that ended with nothing but heartbreak.
"I wish I could just forget about them forever," she said with a look of misery.
"Hey, don't count yourself out yet, Mabel," Patrick said as he hugged her against his side for support. "Even if you don't find them this summer, you'll still have plenty of chances to find that special someone."
Mabel tried to smile, but she couldn't. "Yeah...sure…" she muttered, looking away dejectedly.
"Hey, if it's any consolation, my summer mission isn't a huge success either," Dipper said, turning back to the poster board that had nothing but dead ends. "I'm still trying to find the author of this journal, but with this laptop smashed, I've lost any lead in finding him."
"What if the author doesn't want to be found?" Patrick asked, standing up and walking over to the smashed laptop, and picked it up. "I don't want to bring you down, Dipper, but we haven't even gotten close to figuring out where he is. For all we know he could be dead…" he trailed off as he looked at the screen and noticed something that none of them had before. "Wait...someone get me a magnifying glass."
"What?" asked Dipper, confused.
"What about this?" Mabel asked, holding out the bottle Mermando's message had come in.
Patrick grabbed the bottle and peered through the end of it. It surprisingly proved a magnified view of the laptop's smaller features. Patrick looked at where he saw the thing on the back of the machine, catching sight of a small metal plate screwed to the inside of it. Engraved on it was a logo entitled "McGucket Labs".
"'McGucket Labs?'" Patrick read the logo in confusion
"Wait, as in Old Man McGucket?" Dipper asked, just as confused as Patrick was. "He made the laptop? How is that even possible?"
"But, didn't he make that giant lake monster and the Gideon-bot?" Patrick asked, remembering the fake Gobblewonker piloted by the local kook.
Mabel's eyes widened as a realization dawned on her. "You don't think?..."
Patrick's eyes widened too as he dropped the bottle. Breaking on impact with the ground. "No...No, it couldn't be," he said, shaking his head.
"Yeah," Dipper quickly agreed, but when he took another look back at the board, his tune started to gradually change. "...Doesn't make any sense, unless…" He moved McGucket's photo to the center of the board and started connecting pictures and tying multiple strings to pins. "This matches with this…" The laptop was the property of someone named F, and McGucket's first name was Fiddleford. "This goes over here…" Patrick joined in and collaborated with his cousin. The journal had the hand with six fingers, which he connected to the kook's injured hand. "And then the name…So that would mean…" Dipper muttered, stepping back, and was in complete astonishment. When they were finished connecting all the pieces, it all came together. Nearly every single clue and fact pointed to one person and one person only. "Old Man McGucket wrote the journals?!"
"Didn't see that coming…" Mabel remarked, rather taken aback herself.
"Dude, this is huge!" Patrick exclaimed in total shock.
"This goes deeper than anything we could've expected!" Dipper added with an excited smile.
"We gotta go get Wendy and Soos," Patrick said with resolve, ready to bring this longtime mystery to rest. They needed to get to Old Man McGucket to find the answers they wanted to know for so long.
"Am I blanchin', Girl we blanchin', I live up in a mansion. Am I blanchin', Girl we blanchin', I live up in a mansion." Soos sang along to the rather repetitive rap song on the radio while sweeping the broom across the floor. He's been playing the song all afternoon, much to the annoyance of Wendy until she couldn't take it anymore.
"Ugh! Soos, can you turn that terrible song off!?" She groaned, massaging her head. "I can't get it out of my head!"
"Oh, you mean 'Straight Blanchin'' by 'Lil Big Dawg?" Soos asked with a smile. "It's the catchiest song of the summer."
"What is 'blanchin'? Rappers can't just make up words!" Wendy said with a scowl of frustration.
"Rappers are visionaries, Wendy. If they told me to eat my own pants, I would do it," Soos said sincerely.
"Eat your own pants. Eat your own pants, yeah!" The boombox blared, which of course the handyman followed along with.
"I guess I have no choice," Soos said with a shrug, before unzipping his pants.
Before Wendy could talk him out of it, Patrick and the twins came rushing into the shop. Fueled with adrenaline by the discovery they just found. "Wendy, Soos! We just found out something big, but we need to go see Old Man McGucket!" Patrick hurriedly informed them.
"Wha-" Wendy was cut off by Dipper.
"There's no time to talk!" He exclaimed, running for the door.
"We'll explain on the way!" Mabel added, booking it after her brother towards the door. Patrick grabbed Wendy's hand and pulled her along as he ran for the door too. Soos followed behind as they passed a very confused Stan
"Hey, what about work? Kids!" The conman shouted after the group. But then he paused in disturbed bewilderment. "Why is Soos eating his own pants?"
"Wait, Old Man McGucket?" Wendy asked as Soos's trunk drove towards the junkyard, knowing that's where they were going to find McGucket. After getting into the vehicle and getting in the room, the Pines Cousins started explaining their findings to the two.
"I know it sounds crazy, but it couldn't be anyone else," Patrick explained, holding up the broken laptop. "The laptop, his name, his hand. And the fact that he knows more about the weirdness than anyone else in the town."
"Man, he really had everyone fooled, huh," commented Soos as he pulled up to the junkyard and parked the trunk. The Mystery team got out and worked over to the fence. Together, Patrick and Soos lifted up the bottom to allow for the others to enter.
"Old Man McGucket, are you here?!" Dipper called out, glancing around the mountains of piled trash.
"Here hillbilly-billy-billy-billy!" Soos exclaimed louder as they drew closer to the kook's shack in the middle of the dump.
As they drew closer, Patrick could hear something and signaled for the group to halt. Walking cautiously around the corner, he saw they had finally arrived at the ramshackle shack. The sound he heard was none other than Nate and Lee vandalizing the home with graffiti. Spraying on the word "McSuckIt '' on the side while laughing.
"Took an hour to think of this, but it was worth it." Lee chuckled when they finished up their prank. They two high-fived, before Old Man McGucket emerged from his hut. When he saw the teens, he started chasing them away.
"Get outta here, you salt lickin', hornswagglin!..." The hillbilly trailed off as his anger faded away as he sighed dejectedly. "McSuckit, they got me good." He turned around to go back into his hut. But he quickly perked up upon seeing the group nearby. "Visitors! Come, come!" He exclaimed, brightly, leading them into his shack.
The interior of the shack was in a state of disrepair, with trash and broken-down machine parts strewn all over the place. But McGucket hardly seemed to notice as he happily entertained his guests. "Pull up some rusty metal. You're just in time for my hourly turf war with the hillbilly that lives in my mirror." He looked into his bathtub and stared angrily at his reflection. "Quit starin' at me when I bathe!"
"You can drop the act, McGucket. I know you're the author." Dipper exclaimed boldly as he held up Journal 3. "You studied the mysteries of this town and wrote this book."
"Dude, you're the genius Patrick and Dipper have been searching for all summer!" Wendy exclaimed, as her boyfriend pulled out the laptop from his backpack.
"Recognize this laptop?" He said dramatically. The screen half of the laptop broke off and fell on the ground. "...Recognize this laptop's keyboard?"
"Uh, genius?" McGucket asked, looking at the laptop with an uneasy frown. He looked at the ground with remorse. "I'm no genius. I've never done nothin' worthwhile in my life. Everyone knows I'm no good to nobody. I can't remember what I used to be, but I must've been a big failure to end up like this." McGucket sighed as he looked up at some newspaper clippings of him eating a raccoon on the wall. His face filled with shame and self-disappointment.
"But the laptop has your name on it," Soos said as Patrick put the laptop back into his backpack.
"And it's way too old for it to be your son's," he added.
"What about this book? Are you sure you didn't write it? Here, look closely," Dipper said, presenting the journal and flipped through the pages, letting McGucket follow it.
McGucket looked at the pages the young boy showed him. None of them brought back any of his lost memories. "I told you, I don't recall. Everything before 1982 is just a blur. Just a hazy…" the hillbilly suddenly cut himself off when the journal flipped forward to an image of a single crossed evenly through its piercing pupil. The moment McGucket looked at that eye, he shrieked in complete terror. Startling the Mystery Team as he stumbled backward onto the ground in fear.
"The Blind Eye! Robes, the men, my mind! They did something!"
"Who did? What did they do?" Patrick asked, walking over to the old man and kneeling in front of him.
"I... oh, I don't recall," McGucket said, rubbing his temples.
"Oh, you poor old man!" Mabel said with genuine sympathy. "No wonder your mind's all…" she blew a raspberry and made a thumbs down sign. You've been through something intense."
"Dipper, hand over the journal," Patrick said. When Dipper handed him the journal, the teenager stood up while looking at the chapter. On one page was a robed figure, while the other had the eyes, with the author wondering what it meant and can't be unseen. "I've seen these symbols all over town." He explained, pointing to the eye.
"What if McGucket learned something he wasn't supposed to know, and someone, or something, messed with his mind?" Dipper theorized. "We've got to get to the bottom of this."
"Think, dude. What is the earliest thing you can remember?" Wendy asked the hillbilly.
"Uh, this is, I think," said McGucket as he pulled down a newspaper article and showed it to them. The page had a black and white image of him disoriented in front of the museum.
"The history museum!" Wendy gasped, turning to Patrick. "Patrick, doesn't your grandma work for the museum?"
"Then that's where we're going," Patrick said in determination.
"What do you mean there's no trace of the vehicle!?" Veronica yelled into her phone while standing in her office at the museum. On her desk were files of leads, clues, and missing person reports, all contributing to the biggest pain in her ass for years. The Blind Eye.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. The trail went into the back alley and then it's like the vehicle just vanished," Agent Powers explained on the phone. "We're looking for more evidence, but I'm not sure if we'll find anything."
"I don't care if you have to go Easter egg hunting or go on a wild goose chase. I want the Blind Eye found, and I want them found now!" Veronica ended the call and slammed her phone on the tape. Exhausted, she pinched the bridge of her nose.
Of all the problems to come up when the machine was just about ready, it just had to be the Blind Eye. She's been trying to find these people for years, but they've always remained one step ahead of her. So far they've been quiet and Veronica was certain they were gone. But it's only until recently that they started remerging and taking people. Lazy Susan was just the latest in a long line of disappearances. But she knew that the woman would show up again. They always did. Like nothing ever happened.
And if she was really lucky, Susan will still have her memories.
Her thoughts were interrupted when her phone rang again. Without looking to see who it was, Veronica answered it. "Pines here."
"Grandma! It's me, Patrick."
"Patrick," Veronica asked with a surprised look. "How's it going, sweetie?"
"Great, but listen, we're on our way to the museum and we need you to let us in. Dipper thinks we may have found the author and we need to trigger his memories."
Veronica quickly covered her mouth when she heard him. Her eyes widened with a shocked and troubled expression. "W-What...who…"
"We believe it's Old Man McGucket."
Veronica's eyes widened before she let out a soft sigh. "That's not possible," she said knowingly, but also with a look of sadness. "McGucket lost his mind a long time ago. No one knows how."
"Well, we're about to find out why. Apparently, something called the Blind Eye…" Veronica's eyes widened again when she heard the name of the organization. "Did something to his memories. His last known memory is at the museum, so we're coming over to investigate."
This made Veronica pause. Yes, of course, the Blind Eye must have had something to do with Fiddleford's condition. She's been looking for them all over Gravity Falls, but never thought that they'd be in the museum with her working there. But maybe having McGucket there will trigger some memories that'll lead them to the society and how the hillbilly turned into a kook.
"Alright, I'll be waiting for you at the entrance," she said.
"Thanks, grandma," Patrick said as he sat in Soos's truck in the front seat with his girlfriend and Soos. They were driving to the museum already while he was on the phone. Patrick ended the call, only to hear 'Straight Blanchin' playing on Soos' CD player. "Oh my God. You actually listen to this shit?!"
"Hell yeah, dawg," Soos said with a smile.
"Damnit, I can't take it anymore!" Patrick's girlfriend groaned in frustration. Wendy punched the ejection button, grabbed the CD, and tossed it out of the car window. Soos frowned at her, while Patrick held back a grin. She paused, realizing what she just did. "I'll buy you a new one."
The rest of the ride went by silently until the group got to the museum. When they got out, Veronica was there to greet them at the top of the stairs. When the group walked up the stairs, Patrick said, "Thanks for doing this, grandma."
"Ah, don't worry about it. Just remember your payment," Veronica said with a sly look as she leaned her head out. Patrick rolled his eyes and smiled, before giving his grandmother a kiss on each cheek. "Alright, let's do this."
Veronica opened the door and led the group into the main hall. "Hello? Anyone here?" Soos asked.
"Boy, keep it down!" Veronica told him. "We don't want anyone to know you're here."
"Sorry…"
"All right, keep your eyes peeled for anything suspicious," Dipper instructed the group as they spread out to look for clues.
While everyone's heads were focused on the mission, Mabel was rather disinterested as she let out a mournful sigh. Something that Wendy noticed as she paused her search to check up on the younger girl. "Mabel, are you okay? You just walked by a cat without petting it," she said, pointing to the nearby taxidermy mountain lion she just passed.
"What's the matter, honey," Veronica asked, overhearing Wendy's concern.
"Oh Graunt Veronica, everything I look at reminds me of failed romances," Mabel pouted, before motioning over to a heart in a jar with an arrow through it. "That formaldehyde heart. That romantic diorama." She pointed over to a diorama of a pioneer man carrying a kicking and screaming woman over his shoulder.
"Honey, no one finds that romantic at all," Veronica commented.
"But then there's Patrick and Wendy."
Wendy looked over at Patrick and saw him staring at her dreamily. Realizing he was caught, the dark-haired young man blushed and looked away with a bashful smile, like he was a little embarrassed to have stared at his girlfriend. Wendy smiled and blushed, slightly amused.
"Mabel, you shouldn't have to worry about finding love," Veronica said. "You're still young, and we're on a mission."
"But I can't focus when there's a poster of my most recent ex-crush," Mabel said, pointing to a poster of Gabe on a bulletin board. She pulled it down, revealing a poster of Sev'ral Timez behind it. "Aw, come on!"
As Mabel rolled up the poster and put it in her sweater, Dipper said to McGucket, "So your last memory was here. Anything coming back?" Snapping out of his previous embarrassment, Patrick looked around for any clues. At first, there was nothing, until something got his attention.
Down at the end of the corridor was a shadowy figure.
"Hey! Stop!" Patrick commanded. The figure ran away as Patrick ran after them. The others followed suit, chasing the shadowy figure down the hall. When they rounded the corner the figure went into, they found themselves running into a room filled with depictions of eyes. But as they looked around, they realized that the unknown figure was nowhere to be seen.
"Well kettle my corn. He vanish-ified," McGucket announced.
"What is this room, Grandma?" Patrick asked, looking around at all the eyes. He felt discomfort just being in the room.
"Beats me," Veronica said, walking over to a coffee machine and pouring herself a cup of coffee. "I just used it as a break room."
"It doesn't make sense. Where did he go?" Dipper questioned, looking around at the eyes.
McGucket frighteningly backed into a wall, squirming uncomfortably as he looked around the room at the eyes all him. "Eh...I feel like all these eyeballs are a-watchin' me.
Patrick looked closely at where he was before turning towards the other eyes. "Wait…" He trailed off as he followed the direction the eyeballs were looking at. Seeing that they were indeed looking at McGucket.
Walking over to the old man, Patrick gently pushed him aside. Revealing a stone tablet that had a carving of the same symbol in the journal. Looking at the others and giving them a nod, Patrick pushed on the piece, pressing it into the wall. This activated a mechanism that peeled away the fireplace, revealing a secret passageway, with a staircase forming. Leading down into darkness.
"Jackpot!" Wendy exclaimed, fist-bumping her boyfriend.
"A secret passageway," Dipper exclaimed, amazed.
"Already, this is new to me," Veronica said, peering down into the darkness.
"We'll have to be stealthy. I'll hambone a message if there's trouble," McGucket told them with newfound resolve. He then started slapping his arms and legs in a message that was lost to everyone but Veronica.
Translation: "Coyotes are coming for our sweetbreads."
"I have no idea what that means." Dipper deadpanned.
"Trust me, you don't wanna know," Veronica said, before descending down the stairs. The others followed her. Quietly going down the candle-lit corridor until coming to red drapes that blocked their way. All the while, the sound of unified chanting echoed the walls of the secret passageway. Repeating the same line over and over in Latin.
"Novus ordo seclorum"
New order of the ages.
The group remained on high alert as they continued forward. The chanting grew louder and more ominous. When they reached the thick, red drapes, they stopped, before Patrick and Veronica pulled apart the drapes. The sight they were met with was nothing they could have ever imagined.
Behind the curtains was a large, wide-open room that was lit by candles on the walls, with a reclined leather chair in the center of the room. The chair had restraining straps on the arms. But by far the most sinister thing about this setting were the multiple robed, human figures gathered in a circular formation around a pedestal with a chest on it. They were all dressed in crimson, floor-length robes with their hoods completely concealing their faces. The hoods have the Blind Eye symbol on them. They continued chanting together as they placed their hands on the chest. The circle then parted as another robed person stepped forward.
"Who is the subject of our meeting?" He asked in a cold tone. When she saw him, Veronica realized it was the same man from Lazy Susan's kidnapping.
"This woman." Two men from the dark walked forward, escorting a familiar, yet unknown figure with a sack over their head. When one of the figures pulled the sack off the person's head, it was revealed to be Lazy Susan.
"Lazy Susan?" Mabel asked quietly, exchanging a bewildered glance with the others.
Confused and nervous, Lazy Susan was put into the chair and had her hands cuffed to the arms. "What is it you have seen?" the leader questioned.
"Speak!" The other members ordered
"Uh, well, uh, I was leaving the diner," Lazy Susan said nervously. "And I saw these little bearded doodads, and I was, like, 'Bwaaa?'"
"There, there. You won't be like 'Bwaaa?' for much longer." The leader assured her, turning to the side and opening the chest. From it, he pulled out a strange-looking ray gun that had a steampunk design. The members pulled down their hoods, blocking their faces further as the leader turned the dial on the side to type out the words 'little men' into the machine.
"What is that gizmo? It looks like a hairdryer. Are you guys barbers?" Lazy Susan asked, the leader turned the gun on her and pulled the trigger. Firing a beam of energy at her face as the elderly woman screamed out in horror. When the beam finally died down, Susan was left slack in the chair, pupils dilated before shrinking back to normal, though her lazy eye closed itself.
"Lazy Susan, what do you know of little bearded men?" The leader asked, turning away from her
"My mind is cleared, thanks to the Society of the Blind Eye," Lazy Susan said in a monotone voice.
"It is unseen!" The society members chorused together.
"Holy shit," Patrick whispered in horror.
"Guys, are you seeing this? They just wiped Lazy Susan's memory!" Dipper exclaimed a stunned whisper, just as shocked as the others at the disturbing sight.
"Ha! They should've wiped off that awful mascara," Soos joked with a chuckle, trying to lighten the mood. But it only angered Wendy, Mabel, and Veronica, with the latter smacking the handyman across the back of the head.
"You watch your mouth!"
"I think she looks beautiful, Soos!"
"She's doing the best she can, Soos!"
"Whoa! Touched a nerve there," Soos said with an apologetic look.
"Lazy Susan, how do you feel?" The leader asked the waitress as two of the society members helped her out of the chair.
"I feel great!" Lazy Susan exclaimed with a big smile as she was led away. "I can't even remember what was wrong, or what I'm doing here, or if I'm a man or a woman!"
"Your memories will be safe with us, buried in the Hall of the Forgotten," the leader said, removing the tube from the memory-erasing gun, and writing Susan Wentworth's name on it.
"Into the Hall of the Forgotten. Into the Hall of the Forgotten." The other members chanted as the leader walked over to a pipe on the wall.
"Good chanting, boys. Have you been practicing?" he asked proudly, putting the tube into the vacuum pipe, which carried it up the ceiling and out of the room. "Meeting adjourned."
"Unsee you later." the member said to each other as they dispersed and left the room.
After waiting a few seconds until he could hear no footsteps, Patrick peeked through the drapes with his laser gun turned on. He looked around to see that the coast was clear. He sighed in relief before turning back to the others. "Let's go," he said, stepping forward. The group emerged from the drapes and walked into the main area.
Dipper walked over to the rail gun and picked it up to examine it. "Amazing. A secret society of evil mind erasers," he said, putting the gun back and turning to McGucket. "I'll bet they erased your memory a long time ago."
"Meaning that if we find your memories, we'll unlock all the mysteries of Gravity Falls," Patrick said. He turned to his girlfriend. "Wendy, you, Mabel, grandma stay here and make sure those robe guys don't come back."
"Whoo! Girl's club," Wendy cheered, ruffling Mabel's hair as Veronica smirked with her arms crossed.
"That means you, Soos, me, and McGucket are gonna go find the Hall of the Forgotten," Dipper said with resolve.
"But how do we find it?" Soos asked. Patrick thought for a moment before turning to the vacuum tube. Getting an idea, Patrick took off his hat and threw it into the tube. Getting sucked up and sent off to the Hall of the Forgotten.
"Brilliant! Follow that hat!" Dipper exclaimed.
He, Patrick, Soos, and McGucket ran after the hat. They followed it out of the basement and back into the museum. Chasing the tube, only to be stopped when someone shouted at them.
"Halt! Is someone there?"
"Aah! What do we do? Where do we go?" McGucket panicked as they ran. A moment later, the two society members ran around the corner. They stopped and looked around, only seeing a settler's display, which the boys were using as a disguise. McGucket was standing still with an ax while Soos had on a lady's dress and was holding Dipper in a blanket. Cradling him like a baby.
One of the society members walked over to McGucket and moved his eyes straight. But McGucket's eyes separated again. The man tried again, but the kook's eyes moved again. Meanwhile, Patrick got the bright idea of climbing into the bandwagon. Kneeling down low, he had out his crowbar in case he needed to get down and dirty. But for now, he listened to the two men talking.
"Man, these are really poorly made. I could've sworn I heard someone," said the man, who sounded familiar to Patrick when he heard his voice.
"Probably just the janitor kissing that wax settler woman again," said his fellow member.
"Whoof! Remind me to erase that from my memory."
When they left, Dipper, Soos, and McGucket let out a sigh of relief, prompting Patrick to climb out of the bandwagon. His hat then flew over their heads. "There it is. Hurry!" Dipper said. Throwing off their disguises, the group ran down the hallway after the hat, until they found a small opening in the wall with the tube going downwards. Grabbing onto it, the four of them slid down fireman-style. Reaching the bottom, they found themselves in front of a large door with the Blind Eye symbol painted on the front. Patrick kicked the doors open, and the group gasped at what they saw.
Patrick's hat landed on the statue of a robed man with his arms held out with the Blind Eye on his chest. Pipes ran all over the ceiling, with several tables and boxes holding multiple tunes. Each tune contained the memories the Society of the Blind Eye had taken away from the innocent people over the years. And there were hundreds, if not thousands of them piled everywhere. Giving them only a glimpse at how long the society had been in Gravity Falls and how many they've affected.
"Honey fogelin', saltlickin' skullduggery," McGucket said in shock
"Man, you have got to teach me some of those old-man swear words," Soos said.
Meanwhile, in the main room, Wendy sat on the steps leading into the room. Mabel was with her, laying on the floor with the lumberjack girl's hat over her face, and Veronica was trying not to fall asleep. As she waited for her boyfriend, the redhead got a text on her phone. Pulling it out, she saw it was Patrick.
P: "Found the Hall of the Forgotten. Will be here for a while."
W: "Alright, but be careful. I love you."
"Patrick and the others found out where McGucket's memories are," Wendy told the others with a grin.
"Good," Veronica said with a now. But then her attention was brought over to Mabel when she let out a long sigh. "What's the matter, sweety? Still upset over those boys that dumped you?"
"I just don't get it, Graunt Veronica. I hug a lot, I can burp the alphabet, I have scratch and sniff clothing. Why does every boy leave me?" She asked completely lost.
"Pfft, who cares? Boys are the worst. You shouldn't get hung up, man," Wendy said with a shrug.
"That's easy for you to say. You've got a boyfriend," Mabel grumbled.
"Yeah, but before Patrick, I had the worst luck with guys. Sure, I got asked out a lot, but it never worked out. They were all a bunch of jerks, but Patrick wasn't like other guys, Mabel. We started out as friends and it grew into actual love," Wendy explained.
Mabel sat up. "Maybe I come on too strong, you know?" She wondered.
"Well, what's your opener? Pretend Wendy's a boy," Veronica said. She took Wendy's hat off her and placed it back on the lumberjack girl's head. She then tucked most of her hair under her hat and took a strand of her hair to give Wendy a fake mustache. "Alright, now give me your best boy impression."
"Mmm, testosterone," she said in a deep voice and spit to the side. Mabel stood up and took a deep breath.
"HI! I'M MABEL! I'M TWELVE AND I OWN A PIG! WANT TO GET MARRIED?!" She exclaimed with a giant smile.
Wendy and Veronica exchanged looks and burst out laughing. "Honestly, that was perfect," Wendy said, fixing her hair.
"Mabel, don't let all those failed crushes get you down," Veronica said with a smile. "You should just forget about those boys and try making a real connection with someone before dating."
But when she said that, Mabel's eyes widened with realization. "That's it! Forget about boys!" Mabel ran over to the memory gun as the secret agent and cashier followed her. Mabel sat in the chair and picked up the device. "I just need to type 'summer romances' into this thing, and I won't feel bad about them anymore."
"Whoa, hold up, Mabel. We don't even know what that thing does," Veronica warned.
"Yeah! You could accidentally erase, like, learning to read, or breathe, or…" Wendy trailed off.
"Or one of those terrible summer songs you can't get out of your head? Or turning into a werewolf? Or a certain dream demon possessing Patrick?" Mabel added with a broad smile.
"Look at all these tubes!" Patrick remarked as they walked into the Hall of the Forgotten. Amazed yet daunted by the task of finding McGucket's memories as he started digging through a pile of tubes. "No wonder no one knows about the weirdness in Gravity Falls. These guys must have been erasing their memories all over town."
"Whoa, look at this," Dipper spoke up. Everyone else turned to see he was holding a memory tube that was labeled with 'Robbie V. Memories' on it. Curious as to what was in it, Dipper inserted it into a TV machine. The screen turned on and showed the angsty teen strapped to the chair in the main room.
"Yes, Robbie, what is it that you have seen?" the leader asked offscreen.
"So I was attacked by this magic blue guy that was throwing, like, balls of energy at me. I kicked his butt though." Robbie said, trying to act all tough.
"Robbie, speak honestly."
"...I was saved by this loser."
"Why are they erasing peoples' memories? I still don't get it." Dipper remarked, glancing around at the collection of memory tubes filling the room.
"Something's going on in town that these guys don't want anyone to see," Patrick said with a frown.
"Looky, fellers! It's those words what people call me." McGucket cut in, pointing to a memory tube that was on the shelf behind the statue. It was labeled, 'McGucket Memories'. Patrick, Dipper, and Soos ran over, and the teenager grabbed his hat.
"Oh, dude, your memories. We did it!" cheered Soos.
McGucket climbed onto the statue and reached for his memories. "Grabby, grabby. I got it!" he exclaimed, taking the tube. But unknowingly taking it off of a weight sensor that started blinking.
Back in the main room, Mabel finally figured out how to set the memory gun and started typing 'summer romance' into the device. "Mabel, you're not using that thing on yourself!" Veronica said firmly. "You saw what that thing did to McGucket! He can't remember years of his life because of it."
"But we don't know what they erased. Maybe it'll be different if I do it willingly," Mabel said.
"Veronica's right, Mabel. This is a really bad idea," Wendy said.
"All ideas are good ideas!" Mabel declared, aiming the gun at herself. But then Veronica's hand was placed hers, halting her progress.
"But doing this wouldn't make everything better," Veronica said, trying her best to talk Mabel out of her grandniece's choice. "Sure, you forget all your failed crushes, but you're only going to make the same mistakes over and over again. Living in denial over what happened will only hurt you in the long run. It's better to remember the bad things so you can become better."
"B-But…"
All of a sudden, an alarm went off. Alerting the three girls. "What's that sound?" Wendy asked nervously. They all looked up to see the alarm blinking over them.
"The alarm in my brain is a-ringin' again!" McGucket exclaimed. Alarms that sounded like they were from a submarine blared in the Hall of the Forgotten, as the room started flickering red. The old man turned around and saw a large stone Blind Eye in the wall moving to look in his direction, blaring the alarm and flashing the red light. "Ah!"
He dropped the memory tube, but luckily Patrick grabbed it before it hit the ground. "We've got to go! NOW!" Patrick shouted. With the memory tube in hand, he, Dipper, and Soos made a run for it out of the room. McGucket on the other hand ducked behind the statue.
"Halt! Who's there?" Shouted a distant voice, as society members busted into the room. When they saw the three running away, they chased after them. "Get back here!"
McGucket remained unnoticed by the robed men until they were gone. Poking him out from behind the statue with a look of shame for abandoning those that have done so much to help him. "Oh, you've really tarred it up now, Fiddleford. This is all your fault." He lamented to himself fretfully. The hillbilly was about to emerge from his hiding spot when he glanced down at her beard. "Why does my beard have a bandage? Does that even make sense? Why has no one pointed that out?"
Despite their best efforts to evade the society, Patrick, Dipper, and Soos were captured by the cult. The same as the girls, who were severely outmatched by the sheer number of members that converged on them. Now the present Pines family, Wendy, and Soos were tied up to a large poll in the meeting hall with multiple ropes around their bodies. All of the society members emerged from the shadows and gathered around the intruders.
"You shouldn't have come here," said the leader, taking McGucket's memory tube from Patrick. "We do not give up our secrets lightly."
"What secret!? The memories you stole from people?!" Patrick asked angrily, trying to pull out of the ropes.
"Let us go right now," said Veronica, glaring at the man.
"Who the hell are you bathrobe-wearing freaks?" Wendy asked harshly.
"Why are you doing this?" Dipper demanded.
"What's with your creepy British accent?" Mabel asked the leader.
"Well, I suppose we are going to erase your minds anyway," the leader said and nodded to his followers. One by one, the Society members unmasked themselves to the Mystery team, shocking them with each face revealed.
"Toby Determined?"
"Bud Gleeful?"
"Farmer guy?"
"Tats?"
"Creepy dude who married a woodpecker? You too? How's that marriage goin, by the way?" Soos asked the man with his bird wife on his shoulder. The other two members were a man and woman that they didn't recognize.
"Oh, great, great," said the woodpecker's husband, glancing at his wife before whispering to Soos. "Not great."
"And you've never met me before. And if you had, you wouldn't remember," the leader said, removing his hood to the group. And it was true, they didn't know him. He was a thin, bald man with a gaunt skeletal face, a pink right eye with a red X over it. But by far the most noticeable feature about him were the tattoos on his head that resembled phrenology maps and includes sections with words in them: color, size, form, weight, stress, time, fear, bias, knowledge, morals, snacks, hope, the ladies, mom, denial, dreams, creativity, reflex, ID, and cats. "I am Blind Ivan, and we are the Society of the Blind Eye! Formed many years ago by our founder... our founder... Does anyone remember who he was?"
"Seriously?" Patrick deadpanned.
"We've been usin' that ray on our own brains an awful lot," Bud said with a sheepish shrug.
"Why would you do all this? What do you have to gain?" Dipper asked.
"As you have no doubt discovered, Gravity Falls is a town plagued with supernatural strangeness," Blind Ivan began to explain. "No one knew how to stop the things that went bump in the night, so our founder invented the next best thing: a way for us to forget. We took it upon ourselves to help the troubled townsfolk by erasing the memories of the strange things they've seen. Now the people of Gravity Falls go about their lives ignorant and happy, thanks to us. And as a perk, we help ourselves forget things that trouble us. Everyone has something they'd rather forget. In fact, your own sister was about to use that ray on herself. Isn't that right?" Ivan taunted the girl, making
"Mabel? Seriously?" Dipper asked in disbelief.
Mabel laughed nervously. "Haha, maybe…" her voice trailed off in shame.
"Even if Mabel did try to do that, what gives you the right to play God with other people's memories, huh!?" Patrick asked defiantly with a harsh glare aimed at every member of the cult, pulling against the ropes. "Don't you see what you're doing wrong? This is ruining lives!
"He's right!" Dipper jumped in. "What about Old Man McGucket? He lives in a hut and talks to animals, thanks to you. Don't you feel bad about that?"
"Mmm, maybe a little…" Blind Ivan considered briefly for only a second, before shooting himself with the memory gun. "But not anymore."
"Oh, you fucker!" Patrick retorted. Suddenly he cried out in agony when Tats punched him in the stomach. Making him cough up spit and reel in pain.
"Silent! You won't be telling anyone else what you've learned here." Ivan inputted the word 'summer' into the memory gun. He then aimed it at the group. "Say goodbye to your summer."
This made the entire group panic as the memory gun charged up to delete their entire summer from their minds. "Guys, if we're gonna forget everything, I got some stuff I wanna get off my chest," Soos said anxiously. "Mabel, for half the summer, I thought your name was Maple, like the syrup. No one corrected me!"
"I only love some of my stuffed animals, and the guilt is killing me!" Mabel cried.
"Sometimes I use big words, and I don't actually know what they mean," Dipper admitted. "I mean, I'm supposed to be the smart guy. If I'm not the smart guy, who am I?"
"Okay, I'm not actually laid back," Wendy said with a terrified look on her face. "I'm stressed, like, 24/7. Have you met my family?"
"I had an erotic dream about Henry Rollins last night. And I'm straight as an arrow!" Patrick admitted, raising his eyebrow. Finding it weirder than it being an actual secret. He didn't know why he admitted that. He was just going with the flow. "And Wendy…" Wendy turned to him with an anxious expression. There was so much that he wanted to tell her, but knew that he didn't have the time. With a sad expression, he held her hand and the couple moved closer to one another. This couldn't be happening. They were going to lose the memories of each other and their summer together. They didn't want to lose the love they found for one another. "If this is really it...I just want you to know that-"
Wendy stopped him by giving him what would likely be their last kiss. Full of all the passion and love within her soul. When Wendy pulled away, she gave him the sweetest smile she could ever make. "I love you too, Patrick Pines. I will always love you no matter what," she said. The two lovers smiled with tears in their eyes, they pressed their foreheads together.
"Don't be saying your goodbyes just yet, you two!" Veronica said with a confident smirk on her face. "We're not out of this just yet."
"Oh, and why is that, old woman?" Blind Ivan asked with his own confident smirk. Thinking that he's won.
"Because you've forgotten my old friend, baldy. NOW!"
Out of nowhere, a metal gold panning disk came flying out of nowhere and knocked the gun out of his hand. That's when McGucket came running back at him as the society's members gasped in alarm.
"McGucket?!" The Pines Cousins, Wendy, and Soos cried happily as he came over with a trash can on his back. That's when Veronica was finally able to cut the rope with her butterfly knife. Once the ropes flew away, they all scrambled to their feet.
"Took you long enough," Veronica said with a smirk.
"I raided the mining display for weapons!" McGucket said, dropping the trash can in front of him, with multiple mining tools inside it. "Now fight like a hillbilly, fellers!"
Patrick pulled out his crowbar while Wendy grabbed a banjo, Dipper got stuffed raccoons, Veronica wielded a shovel, and Soos grabbed an informational display about dysentery. "Oh, nobody better miss!" He yelled.
"They know too much. Don't let them escape!" Blind Ivan shouted to his followers. The cult members charged at the group.
Patrick and Wendy stood back to back. "Get this song outta your head!" Wendy shouted, slamming the bango on the head. Smirking, Patrick whacked his crowbar in the face of another cult member.
"Dysentery's gonna get you, dawg!" Soos said, chasing a member with the dysentery sign.
In the midst of the fighting, Dipper spotted McGucket's memory tube on the ground a few feet away. "McGucket's memory tube!" He exclaimed, giving Mabel the raccoon he was holding, and rushed towards it. After picking it up, he noticed a large shadow covering him and saw it was Tats.
"Oh no, you don't!" He shouted. Dipper quickly put the memory tube into the transport tube. Tats was about to punch him when Veronica rushed in and bashed him on the head with her shovel.
Looking up at the pipes, she saw the tube zooming around the room towards her one and only niece. "Mabel, catch!" She shouted at her.
Throwing the raccoon away, Mabel tried to grab the tube from the pipe. But then Farmer Sprott beat her to it. "I'll take that, thank you," he said and started running away when Patrick and Soos stood in his way. "Give it up, boys. You're no match for the unstoppable power of-" He was cut off when Mabel bent the pipe towards him, and Sprott's rob got caught in the tube. Ripping it off, and revealing that he was only wearing underwear. The farmer yelled and threw the tube up into the air. "That's right, I don't wear nothin' under my robe. Not gonna apologize for that. Maybe y'all should apologize for bein' a bunch of prudes."
"Eew!" They all exclaimed in disgust.
"Well, time to erase that forever," Soos said, holding up the memory gun to his head. But before he could do anything, Blind Ivan rammed into him and snatched it back.
"Give me that tube!" He demanded once he saw the memory tube in Dipper's hands.
"Never!" Dipper threw the memory up into the air, letting the tube McGucket was holding take it away. Seeing where the tube was heading, Patrick and Ivan all chased after it as it zoomed down the pipe.
"That memory belongs to McGucket!" Patrick declared.
"The Society's secrets belong to us." Blind Ivan shouted back.
The tube was about to reach its destination, and if Patrick didn't get there in time to catch it, it was going to be in a pile of other tubes. But Blind Ivan ended up sticking out his leg and tripping Patrick. But the teenager acted quickly and returned the favor. Using his crowbar to trip the cult leader over, giving Patrick enough time to rush over to the pipe. Dropping his weapon, he grabbed the memory tube just as it came out.
"Gotcha!" Patrick yelled happily.
"Look out!" Veronica yelled.
Whirling around, Patrick drew his shotgun as Ivan got up. Both charged up their guns and aimed them at each other in a Mexican standoff.
"End of the line. Hand over that memory tube, boy!" Ivan demanded.
"That's not happening!" Patrick snapped. "You've messed with McGucket for too long! Now back off or I will shoot you."
"Fine, but the moment you do, so will I," Blind Ivan said, smirking. "And while I'll be dead, by the time you wake up tomorrow, this will all seem like a bad dream. Say goodbye to your precious memories."
He fired the gun.
"PATRICK, NO!" Patrick heard everyone scream, while he gasped fearfully. Unable to bear the thought of losing his memories of this summer, his time with Dipper and Mabel, Soos, Stan, Veronica, and most of all Wendy. All Patrick could do was brace himself for the inevitable impact.
But at the very last moment, McGucket jumped in front of him and took the full force of the ray. When Patrick opened his eyes and saw the old kook in front of him, he gasped in shock. "McGucket...you took a bullet for me…." Patrick said in amazement when Ivan fired again, blasting McGucket with the ray again, much to Patrick's alarm. "Oh my God! Are you okay?!"
McGucket paused for a moment, blinking. "Okay as I'll ever be!" He yelled, swinging his arms happily. He then began laughing as he slowly walked towards Blind Ivan.
"What the…" Patrick trailed off, confused.
Blind Ivan kept shooting at McGucket with the memory gun, but was starting to panic whenever it didn't seem to work. "Why... isn't... this... working?" He shouted, but McGucket continued on his way towards him.
"Hit me with your best shot, Baldy," McGucket said, getting hit in the face again. "But my mind's been gone for thirty-odd years." He was hit again before pointing to his head. "You can't break what's already broken!" He laughed as Ivan continued firing, until he walked right up to the cult leader and slapped the gun out of his hand. Letting it slide across the room. Fiddleford then grabbed Ivan by the hem of his robe. "Say goodnight, Sally!"
With that, the hillbilly headbutted Blind Ivan. Knocking him to the group and out cold. Patrick sighed in relief until he noticed McGucket's memories rolling up to his feet. The young picked it up and walked over to the old man.
"Okay, that was badass," he said with a smile.
With the entire society captured, the group tied them all up to the same pole they were tied to. After making sure the knot was extra tight, Patrick patted his hands together and stepped back to look at his work in satisfaction, as the members tried to break free.
"Unhand us!" Blind Ivan demanded.
"It isn't so fun being tied up, is it?" Mabel asked with a smug smirk, before turning to the others. "Hey, wanna draw on their faces?"
"What?"
Patrick smirked. "Go nuts."
With a permanent marker, Mabel sang to herself as she crossed out Ivan's "knowledge" tattoo and replaced it with "butts", despite the protests from Blind Ivan. The Mystery Team started laughing at him as the society leader glared angrily at them. "That's not funny!"
"It's pretty funny," Dipper said as Patrick and Wendy chuckled together.
"It's, like, objectively funny," Soos agreed, with Veronica smirking.
"We'll have our revenge! We'll never forget what you've done!" Ivan declared in a threatening manner.
"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure about that, Ivan," Patrick said with a smirk, holding up the ray gun and entering 'Society of the Blind Eye' into it. Seeing the memory gun made the group cry out in protest and fought harder against the rope. "Don't worry, fellows. By the time you wake up, this will all be a figment of your imagination."
And with a pull of the trigger, the mind-erasing cult was wiped from history.
"Thanks for visiting the Museum for Gold Miner Appreciation Night. Be sure to thank your tour guide, Veronica, and tip the gold miner on your way out," Dipper announced, standing with Patrick, Veronica, and McGucket as the former Society members, in normal clothes, walked out of the museum. Each person tipped the hillbilly in his hat, which he happily accepted.
The last person to walk out of the museum was none other than Blind Ivan, now wearing a pair of shorts and a red t-shirt. But now he looked lost and confused. Stopping short at the door. "I'm sorry, but what's my name? Where am I?" He asked, puzzled.
"Oh boy...I...might have gone too far with him," Patrick said worriedly. Luckily, Mabel stepped in.
"Your name is Toot-toot McBumbersnazzle." She informed the former cult leader, handing him the same banjo Wendy used as a weapon. "You're a traveling banjo minstrel, with a song in your heart, and funny tattoos on your head."
Accepting this as the truth, Toot-toot smiled. "Yes, I am Toot-toot McBumbersnazzle. Cheers!" He bid them goodbye and walked away, singing and playing on his banjo. "Toot-toot is my name..."
"Well, that's that," Veronica said, knowing that he wouldn't be causing any problem.
"Yeah, but not there's just one more thing to take care of," Patrick said, looking at McGucket. Everyone headed back into the underground chamber. It was finally time to uncover the secrets that lay within McGucket's memories. They gathered in the Hall of the Forgotten, eager to see what was in McGucket's memories.
Dipper turned on the machine and turned to the old man. "All right, McGucket, are you ready to see your memories? Find out who you really are?" Dipper asked.
The hillbilly looked unsure at his memory tube. "I'm not so sure. What if I don't like what I see?"
Patrick placed a hand on his shoulder, smiling gently. "We've come all this way, I say that we go a little further. Go on," he said gently.
McGucket nodded hesitantly, before walking up to the TV device. Imputing the tube into the machine, before stepping back as the screen lit up.
DAY 1
"My name is Fiddleford Hadron McGucket, and I wish to unsee what I have seen," said Fiddleford, 30 years younger. His head was covered with long brown hair, and he did not have a beard. His nose was the same color as his face and was void of warts. He also wore glasses but not a hat.
The group gasped all around Veronica, who was standing in the back. She looked stunned. The last time she saw him so young was 30 years ago.
"For the past year, I have been working as an assistant for a visiting researcher working with a government agency on a secret project. He has been cataloging his findings about Gravity Falls in a series of journals. I helped him build a machine which he believed had the potential to benefit all mankind, but something went wrong."
Upon hearing this, Dipper took out his journal and turned to the pages that he assumed were the blueprints for a mysterious device. Could he be talking about the same device? What did it do, and does it still exist somewhere? He exchanged a look with Patrick and Mabel before turning back to the screen.
"I decided to quit the project. But I lie awake at night, haunted by the thoughts of what I've done. I believe I have invented a machine that can permanently erase these memories from my mind." Fiddleford said, holding up the memory-erasing ray. To his head. "Test subject One: Fiddleford." He shot himself with the device.
DAY 5
"It worked! I can't recall a thing!" Fiddleford rejoiced.
DAY 22
The next scene showed that the room has changed, with paint splattering the walls and the Blind Eye symbol drawn on the boards. "I call it the Society of the Blind Eye. We will help those who want to forget by erasing their bad memories!" McGucket excitedly. said, having drawn the symbol onto a black notebook.
DAY 74
McGucket was more disheveled and nervous, and his lab was in a state of complete disarray, with Blind Eye signs everywhere. "Today, I came across a colony of little men, very disturbing. I would like to forget seeing this," he said, twitching endlessly. Grabbing the gun, he blasted himself.
DAY 189
McGucket's lab was still a mess, but the man himself looked awful. His hair had begun to go grey and wither, and his arm was in a cast with dark bags forming under his eyes. "I accidentally hit another car in town today. I feel terri-bibble! Terrible. I've been forgetting words lately. I wonder if there are any negative side effects…"
DAY 273
He now was growing his beard and was filming in a motel. "I saw something in the lake, something big!" McGucket yelled, pulling his hair out and dropping his glasses.
DAY 618
"My hair's been a-fallin' out, so I got this hat from a scarecrow. Hey, are my pants on backwards?"
DAY ?
The transformation was now complete. McGucket was now wild-eyed and filming from the junkyard. Maniacally giggling and speaking gibberish. "Yroo Xrksvi! Girzmtov! " He yelled, laughing and making a triangle over his eye.
When the memories finally stopped, a solemn slice fell over everyone in the room as they processed what it was they saw: a disturbing chronicle of one man's descent into madness.
For Veronica, she held her hand over her mouth as tears formed in her eyes. What she saw wasn't memories. It was a horror movie. She finally understood what happened to her friend, but it was like watching a train wreck. She knew what the outcome was, but couldn't look away. Now she understood how Fiddleford, a prodigy that could have changed the world, fell into the depths of insanity and instability. And worst of all, it was by his own hands that made him into this.
Knowing that made Veronica all the more awful and ashamed. They meddled with things that were clearly never meant to be tampered with, and Fiddleford paid the price.
"Oh, Fiddleford, I'm so sorry," she said, walking over to her friend and kneeling down to give him a hug, crying a little. She wanted to tell him what she was sorry for. But she couldn't in front of the others.
McGucket hugged her back and gave her a little pat, prompting her to pull away to look at him. "Aw, hush. You and the kids helped me get my memories back, just like they said," he said, retrieving his memory tube. This surprised the others, as they were expecting a much more negative reaction.
"Yeah, but did you want those memories back?" Patrick asked with concern, helping his grandmother up. "I mean, you drove yourself to insanity."
"After all these years, I finally know who I am. Maybe I messed up in the past, but now that I've seen what happened, I can begin to put myself back together again," McGucket told him with a smile. "Thanks for opening my eyes."
"So, wait," Dipper interjected, still confused. "You weren't the author, but you worked with him. Do you remember who he was? What was the government project?"
"It's beginning to come back, but I need more time. And reading glasses." He spotted a pair of unusual-looking gold glasses on the table and tried them on. One of the green lenses fell out, and he spat in a bucket. "Heck! I got some rememberin' to do."
Veronica placed her hand on his shoulder and said, "Take all the time you need."
"So Mabel, you still wanna erase those failed summer romances?" Wendy asked with a knowing grin, pulling out the memory gun.
Mabel paused at this, glancing at the memory gun before looking at McGucket as he examined his memory tube. She smiled and answered, "You know, Graunt Veronica was right. No one likes having bad memories, but maybe it's better to remember the bad things and learn from them than to go all denial crazy trying to forget."
Wendy smiled at her boyfriend's cousin and said proudly, "That's some mature junk right there, dude."
"Yep. Miss Mature. That's me," Mabel said proudly before turning to the others. "Hey, you wanna help me vandalize this picture of my jerky ex-crush?" She pulled out the poster of Gabe from her sweater and everyone was quick to join in on the fun. Doodling all over the picture, with Patrick writing 'jackass'. Afterwards, they walked out of the museum, with the Mystery Team and McGucket piling into Soos's truck.
"Hey, you know what? Going on this big adventure actually made me get that stupid song out of my head," Wendy remarked as she sat with Patrick in the front.
"Nice," Soos said, starting the truck. But unfortunately for Wendy, 'Straight Blanchin' started playing.
"Oh, come on!" Wendy cried in frustration, before Patrick turned off the radio.
"There. Everyone's happy," he said, as the truck drove away. Then Veronica's car pulled away from the museum and drove away towards the Mystery Shack. But unbeknownst to her or the others were two remaining Blind Eye members walking out of the front doors of the building.
"What do we do now?" Asked the one of the left. "With the Blind Eye gone, there's no way of covering up what happens in town." The two then pulled their hood back, revealing themselves to be Agent Powers and Trigger. Powers scowled as he watched his director's car disappear down the road.
"We might have lost the memory gun, but we've also got some important information," he said in a cold tone, pulling out a small camera he used to record everything from the shadows. "We'll need to tell the higher-ups that the Blind Eye is gone, but that we've also got some information that could be vital in our investigation."
As Soos drove towards the junkyard, Patrick was listening in on Dipper and McGucket's conversation as Wendy laid her head on his lap. The old man was flipping through the journal beside Dipper, trying to see if it'll stark any memories. It's all so familiar. It's almost like I can remember…"
"It's alright," Patrick said as they pulled up to the junkyard. "I'm sure you'll find the answers you're looking for. And you know you don't have to stay here, right?"
"It's been my home for as long as I could remember. I'd say it's good enough for me," he said, before hopping out of the trunk and waddling to the gate of the junkyard. He then stopped and turned around to wave at the Pines. "By friends!"
The kids smiled and waved back before Soos drove off. As they pulled away, Patrick let out a distressed sigh as he leaned back and closed his eyes. This was noticed by Soos. "Is everything alright, Patrick?"
"I just...can't get it out of my head. What happened to McGucket. How far he was willing to go to forget what he saw," he said somberly, before looking out the window. "We're one step closer to finding the author, but what will happen when we find him? If he's still alive."
"Well, then we'll unlock all the secrets of this town," Dipper reminded him.
"Secrets that a cult was willing to erase our memories for? Secrets that drove a man to insanity?" Patrick countered, before looking ahead. "You know, some days I look back on how we found that journal, and I used to think that it was one of the best things that could've happened to us. It's been there for us when we needed it. But now? I just...think that maybe we were never meant to find it. No one was. The author hid it from Bill, and we just happened to come across it."
He closed his eyes and said somberly, "Grandma warned us about going down the rabbit hole. And now...I can't help but wonder if...if we can even go back."
Dipper, Mabel, and Soos were silent as they thought about that. Could they? If things got too much or too dangerous, could they really stop investigating? Fiddleford went down that rabbit hole when he started using the memory gun on himself, and it destroyed him.
Patrick felt a hand on his cheek and looked down to see Wendy giving him a reassuring smile. "It's not going to be like that, Patrick. We'll find the author, we'll be okay, I promise," she said, sitting up.
The young man stared at her for a moment. While he wasn't convinced that they wouldn't find something horrible, Patrick appreciated his girlfriend for cheering him up. She's right. They will find the author. Dead or alive, no matter what they may face in the future.
But unbeknownst to them, the machine that McGucket helped create was right under the kid's noses. Veronica understood what happened to him was tragic, but she and Stan have been pouring the 30 years into bringing it back online. Risking everything from her career, her family, to even her own life to get it working again. But with the information they got from the 3 journals, they were growing nearer to its completion.
"All right, we're getting closer," Stan said, slowly pouring radioactive liquid into the power unit. Afterwards, he walked out of the control room and over to Veronica, who stood in front of the machine.
With a notebook and a mug full of coffee, Veronica stared at it with a frown. "The machine is stable and is getting stronger," she said, as gusts of wind were pulled into the portal.
"How strong?" Stan asked. Veronica answered him by drinking one lost sip of her coffee, then lightly tossing the mug up. The mug got sucked into the center, never to be seen again. "Haha, yes!"
Suddenly a stray pipe flew towards the machine, hitting him on the back of his hand. "Stanley!" Veronica quickly looked at the cut and bandaged the bloody injury up.
"Still thinking about what happened to McGucket?" Stan asked.
"I'm just wondering if we're doing the right thing. This machine, this entire project was shut down because it was too dangerous," Veronica said worriedly.
"Well, I don't care if it's dangerous, Veronica. I don't care how long it takes," Stan said pointedly, looking at the light of the machine. "We've come too far to stop now. We're gonna pull this off, and no one's gonna get in our way!"
Veronica stared at her cousin before looking back at the machine. He was right. They have to finish what they started 30 years ago. No matter the cost.
AN: We're so close to the end of the first half of the 2nd season and I'm really excited. We've only got 3 more chapters until we get to "Not What He Seems."
This chapter was really fun to write about and we got to see more of Veronica and a bit of her backstory when it came to McGucket. She finally sees what happened to the man she worked with 30 years ago. Now McGucket will be able to start recovering.
We are also starting to see some hesitation arising from Patrick about finding, and after what he saw in the memory tube, can you really blame him? He wants to find the author and solve the mystery of Gravity Falls, but now he's wondering if those secrets were really meant to be found. And if they did find them, would they end up like McGucket?
And it turned out that Powers and Triggers were part of the Blind Eye Society! Well, not really. It's more like they infiltrated the Society to get more information on Veronica. It would appear that the government has been using the cult's memory gun to erase people's memories for who knows how long. But mostly Powers and Trigger used the society to spy on Veronica.
The next chapter will be "Blendin's Game" and this is where things kind of get weird. I didn't know this until I looked up the timeline, but "Blendin's Game" actually takes place between "Land Before Swine" and "Dreamscaperers." So I guess when I publish "The Love God", I'll move "Blendin' Game" to its correct place in the story. Meaning that certain plot moments wouldn't be mentioned, just to keep up with the continuity of the story. The biggest one being Patrick and Wendy not being a couple yet. It's going to be an interesting chapter, that's for sure.
I'm moving onto "Living in a Frog World", as well as a commission that I've been paid to do involving Frank. So, I'll do that and two chapters of the main story.
Thank you very much for reading. "Weirder Things" will return. Please be sure to Favorite and Follow if you like the story and review it so that I know that I'm doing good and what to improve. If you have any questions or discussions, you'd have for me, then please in a Review or a PM me.
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Thank you for reading and, in parting, I wish you all love, peace, health, God's blessing, and to have a wonderful day.