Chapter One
If you go down in the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise
Warning: there is a VERY BRIEF reference to menstruation in this. Sorry if that makes anyone uncomfortable.
"WHOO-HOO! YEAH! LET'S DO THIS!"
Mabel burst out the door of the Stanley Mobile like a multicolored comet, surging towards the trailhead at a speed that nearly broke the sound barrier and barely even being slowed down by the massive purple backpack she was wearing. It wasn't until she'd reached it that she turned around and realized that her family was still taking their time catching up to her.
"C'mon guys, what's the hold-up?" she pleaded, sprinting back across the parking lot to them. "We've got an adventure to go on, and lots of cool plants and animals to see! Let's put some hustle in it, people!"
Stan stepped out of the car at a far more leisurely pace, looking less than thrilled about having to be awake at this ungodly hour of the morning (Ford had insisted that they go as early in the day as possible to avoid the heat and mosquitos). He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand and muttered, "Hold up, sweetie, not all of us've got young legs like you."
"Ugggghhhh, you guys are so slow!" Mabel ran over to Dipper and tugged his hand impatiently. "C'mon, let's see if we can get to the main trail before the old fossils!"
"Who're you calling an old fossil?!" Ford demanded in mock indignation. "I can easily get there before you, missy!"
"Five bucks says you can't!"
"You're on!"
Seconds later they were both racing into the woods, leaving Stan and Dipper in the dust.
Stan glanced down at Dipper. "Surprised you're not getting in on that."
The boy grimaced. "You kidding? There's no way I'd beat either of them. Mabel drank a whole pitcher of Mabel Juice this morning, and Ford's...Ford."
One bushy gray eyebrow raised, but Stan couldn't help feeling a little pleased that the kid seemed a lot less insecure about his physical deficiencies than he would have been the summer before, when he was obsessed with trying to become more "manly."
Now, though, he seemed content for the time being to trot along at Stan's side, looking around for any unusual creatures that might be in the underbrush and absentmindedly clicking a pen with his thumb, while his other hand already had his pine tree journal open in case he saw something worth sketching.
Up ahead, they could hear excited crashing and whooping; seconds later there was a loud humming noise, followed by Mabel yelling, "Hey, no fair!"
"Completely fair!" Ford retorted, "You brought out your grappling hook, so I get to use the anti-gravity application on my watch!"
Stan and Dipper rolled their eyes in unison.
"Yeah, I'd definitely lose," Dipper sighed in resignation as they rounded the bend in time to see Mabel trying ineffectively to slow Ford down by leaping from the branch she'd grappled onto and grabbing him around the legs.
Eventually all members of the Pines family were back on solid ground, and they began their hike. Stan and Ford told the kids stories about some of their adventures on the high seas, and in return the kids talked about what junior high school was like (mostly pretty terrible, since junior high is one of the greatest sources of evil since the Spanish Inquisition). Both old men sympathized with their struggles, remembering all too well how difficult being a teenager was, even when you'd just barely joined the world of angst and acne.
"Of course, it has its good points too," Ford pointed out. "You don't have to be in old creaky bodies like we are."
Dipper harrumphed. "I'd take dealing with that over puberty any day of the week."
"Yeah, at least then I wouldn't have to be worried about starting my period," Mabel said with a grimace.
All three men glanced at her uneasily out of the corner of their eyes.
"...Have you…?" Ford started to ask.
"No, but Mom says I'm old enough that I'll probably get my first one soon." Despite how uncomfortable a topic this was for her, she had to smother a giggle at how her grunkles and her brother all looked like they were seconds away from running away screaming.
At last Dipper cleared his throat and changed the subject.
"Besides, if I was a grownup then I could go into stores and buy pretty much whatever I wanted."
"Yeah!" Mabel brightened. "Like age-inappropriate romance novels, or a bunch of puppies from PetsMart!"
Stan snorted, and affectionately rubbed his knuckles against her head. "Just so long as you never grow up too much."
"Don't worry, I won't," she promised, before gasping in delight and going over to the side of the trail to admire a particularly vibrant flower.
"Hey, Grunkle Ford, do you know what kinda flower this is?"
Ford came over to see it, and his eyes widened behind their glasses. "...Oh my. I've never seen one of those before."
Stan and Dipper peered curiously over their shoulders at it.
It was, indeed, an exceptionally beautiful flower; it looked kind of like a wild rose, except that instead of being pink, its petals were a deep royal blue, and glowing faintly in the pale morning light.
Almost in unison Ford and Dipper grabbed their journals and started sketching it.
"It looks similar to some of the plants I saw in this one dimension," Ford murmured, "except those were sentient, and generally tried to eat anyone who got too close."
Dipper looked uneasy, and after a second he tugged on Mabel's shoulder, pulling her back from getting too close to it. She was a little annoyed, but didn't shove him off like she would have the year before.
"Do you think it's magic?" Dipper asked. "I'm pretty sure the fact that it's glowing means it's gotta have some kinda magic, right?"
"In this forest, I wouldn't doubt that it does," Ford agreed. He sighed in annoyance. "I knew I should have packed my thaumometer for the hike! Why didn't you remind me to pack my thaumometer, Stanley?"
"Probably cuz I was thinkin' about more important things like how much I wanted ta go back ta sleep," Stan retorted.
"Uh, is it just me, or is the glow getting brighter?"
It wasn't just Dipper.
What's more, as the four of them watched, the petals began to move, waving back and forth even though there wasn't that strong of a breeze. As if that wasn't weird enough, the petals started waving a little faster, and as they did, the glow that was on them started to...rise from them.
No, really; before their eyes it lifted into the air as a sort of pollen, doing a little dance in the beam of sunlight above the flower and growing into an ever-increasing spiral, showing a lot more pollen than you'd think would be possible from one single flower.
Dipper blinked, and swallowed nervously.
"Um, guys? In situations like this, this is when really bad things start to happen. Maybe we should-"
The pollen cloud hit him right in the face.
Apparently it had smacked into everyone else too; as Dipper closed his eyes and coughed and sneezed, he could hear his family making similar noises.
It was everywhere, getting in his hair, on his clothes, even inside his clothes and making him even itchier than usual, oh come on!
Dipper stumbled back, scratching frantically and trying to spit out some of the stuff that had somehow landed in his mouth, gross!
"Ugh, what the heck?! That stuff tastes like mothballs!"
Dipper froze.
...That voice didn't belong to anyone in his family. It was a voice belonging to a young boy, probably someone about his age.
"...Who said that?"
Dipper clamped his hands over his mouth with a frightened squeak when he heard his own voice; it sounded...wrong, somehow. Like it had actually gotten deeper, like in that story he'd told about drinking a potion that made him sound like a TV announcer!
Hesitantly he opened his eyes, blinking away any traces of the pollen that were left, looking for his family-
And came face to face with a startled-looking old woman in a baggy purple sweater.
"Aaaah! Who are you! What did you do to us?!" he demanded, lurching back and putting up his fists. Then he quickly slipped off his backpack and whirled to pull out the knife he kept in there-he didn't know what use it'd be against a witch or whatever she was but it was better than nothing-but then two things happened at once.
One: a sudden sharp pain locked up in the small of his back, nearly pitching him to the ground with how bad it was.
Two: he got a good look at his hands.
Something was wrong with Dipper's hands.
They were twice the size he remembered them being when he first woke up this morning, and all weird and wrinkly-looking, with a few blue veins standing out against the knuckles.
Dipper let his backpack fall to the ground, stammering in horror.
"What-what the-"
"...Dipper?" the old woman's voice quavered behind him. "Is that you? It's me, Mabel."
Dipper slowly turned back around, managing to straighten up with an effort, and looked at the woman again, more closely this time.
She looked just as frightened and confused as he was right now, with a lock of her long gray hair clenched between her fingers on the left side of her head and being wrung in her hands. Her sweater looked a lot like the one Mabel had been wearing, except older and less sparkly.
Dipper looked into her eyes.
"...Mabel?"
"Yeah, it's me, bro-bro." She tried to smile.
Just then something moved in the corner of Dipper's line of vision, and he turned his head to see two boys standing there and rubbing pollen out of their eyes.
One of them was wearing a tiny tan trench coat and a red woolly beanie, and when he opened his mouth to cough out some more pollen Dipper could see he had a tooth missing. The other one wore a red turtleneck with a blue coat over it, and had a pair of large spectacles perched on the end of his nose. He staggered a little, and pushed them up with two fingers. Allowing Dipper to see that his hand had an extra finger on the end.
The boy saw Dipper staring at him in dawning horror, and his eyes widened.
"Dipper? Are you-are you and Mabel old?!"
"Grunkle Stan?! Grunkle Ford?!" Mabel crouched down and stared at the boys slack-jawed. "Are you guys young?!"
There was a moment of silence.
Then a flock of birds was startled by four voices all screaming in unison.