Rational Treasure (Part 2)
(Back with Mabel...)
She wished she could say that this was an all-new low for her, but that would be a lie.
Grauntie Mabel continued trying the break out of the stock, but it seemed like she would be stuck there for a while. In a last attempt to break out, she grabbed her hair pin with her teeth to try to undo the lock, but it fell from her mouth, "Darn it," she grumbled.
"Well, look at this," came a young voice she recognized from the ceremony. "If it isn't Stan's old-lady aunt," Preston teased.
"Beat it, kid," she spat. "You mess with one Pines, you mess with all of us. Don't think I'm just going to ignore what you said to my nephew earlier."
He laughed, "Like that matters! By the way, what was up with his loser brother? Was it just me, or did he have, like, twelve fingers?"
"That's none of your business, Northwest," she growled. "Where are your parents?"
Preston leaned casually against the stock, "They're busy flaunting their money. So it's just you and me for now," he noticed a hair pin on the ground and picked it up. "You want me to help you out?"
"What do you want?" Grauntie Mabel asked. "Money? A football? Candles?"
"I want you to say that my family will always be better and smarter than yours," he smiled smugly.
"You want that in writing?" Preston held out a notepad and stuck a pen in her mouth, and she wrote on it. "There you go."
Preston looked at the note, but it read, 'Preston is a dummy head', "What?" he asked, confused.
"Well, what did you expect me to do? Lie?" She laughed, ignoring Preston's growing anger.
He whistled to get the attention of some towns folk and pointed at Grauntie Mabel. They held tomatoes in their hands, prepared to throw them at her.
"Oh, COME ON!" She yelled.
(Back with the twins…)
Stan, Ford and the gang made it to the cemetery and found a statue of an angel pointing off in the distance, "It looks like the statue is pointing to the next clue," Ford said. He turned to his right to try to find where the statue was pointing at as Fids and Heather did the same. However, Stan had different ideas and Ford turned towards him just in time to see that Stan had the statue's finger stuck in his nose.
"Oh, gross! She's picking my nose!" Stan laughed. The tip of the finger bent upward. "Ach!"
Ford was about to tell his brother to get down, but then a secret door opened in the grave in front of the statue, "Stan, look!" He pointed.
"Is it me or is he scary good at this?" Heather asked.
Fids shrugged.
"Ha! Whose silly now, Preston? Bam!" Stan struggled to get his nose out of the statue's finger, hurting himself in the process, and then jumped off. "I'm okay."
The gang walked down the staircase, and as they traveled further from the surface, the area around them darkened. Ford fumbled through his bag and pulled out his trusty flashlight to help them see better. At certain times, the kids had to duck or move around to avoid cobwebs and bones of small rodents that once lived here.
"Now we're getting into real conspiracy mode," Stan said in a hushed voice. "I feel so serious…" He took out his bag of candy and popped another few in his mouth.
"Watch your step," Ford warned. He extended his arm to block Stan from walking ahead of him. They reached the bottom of the stairs, but there was a long, empty path ahead of them. "This looks too easy. I think there might be booby traps set out for trespassers."
Stan giggled, "Booby traps…" he glanced at Ford, noticing his glare, and stopped laughing. "Serious. Right. Don't worry, Poindexter. I got this," he found a heavy slab of rock near him and threw it on the ground in front of him. Nothing happened. "Huh. Looks like its clear."
"Maybe we should throw another." Heather advised and picked up another large rock before throwing it. "Uh nothing..."
"The third times the charm?" Fids asked.
"Can't hurt." Ford agreed and Fids threw the third rock.
"Alright no traps." Stan said. "Now were good right?"
"I wouldn't be too sure," Ford frowned skeptically. "Maybe it's a specific tile that activates the trap, and you guys missed it."
"All three times?" Heather asked unconvinced.
"Better safe than sorry." Fids reasoned.
"Fine." Heather agreed.
Ford nodded. "Okay, on the count of three, we all jump to where you threw the rocks. Got it?" they all nodded, and Ford took a deep breath. "One, two, three!"
The Kids jumped off the last stair and landed right next to the rocks. Fids however couldn't balance himself, and he started to fall, "W-Woah!" Stan caught him, but not before Fids stepped on another tile. The two boys hugged each other in fear, but they soon sighed in relief when nothing happened. Fids and Stan looked at each other when they noticed they were still hugging, and they separated and dusted themselves off, mentally deciding not to mention the hug. "I guess there are no booby traps," Ford admitted.
"Told you," Stan teased, crossing his arms. "Come on!" The boys kept walking, but then Stan felt one of the tiles he was standing on sink into the ground beneath him. "Ford…?"
"What?" He asked. Ford looked around him in time to see darts flying out of the walls towards them. "Tranquilizer darts! RUN!"
The Kids ran as fast as they could to maneuver past the darts. They saw a small opening ahead of them where the booby trap ended, and they made a break for it. Miraculously, none of them was hit by a dart as they fell through it. Stan groaned, but he gasped when he saw the room around them. There were hidden artifacts and files all around them, and everything there contained confidential, historical information.
"We found it!" Ford gasped.
"Woah!" Stan walked around the room and picked up a top-secret document. "Hey, Ford! The reason Abraham Lincoln wears a long top hat is because he has a hand sticking out of his head!"
Heather picked up another file. "And look at this Ben Franklin was secretly a woman!"
"I knew it!" Fids whispered.
"Guys focus." Ford warned them. "We're proving the Northwest's to be fakes, remember?" He reminded them.
"Right. Where is that?" Fids said as he rustled through some files.
Ford continued to look around until he found a document labeled 'Northwest Cover-up', "Here it is! Now we'll find out who the real town founder was."
"And humiliate Preston!" Stan exclaimed.
"And become famous!" Heather exclaimed, surprising them all. "What a girl can dream." she countered.
Ford turned away to read the from the document, "Let it be here recorded that Nathaniel Northwest, fabled founder of Gravity Falls, was, in fact, a fraud…" he smiled, "as well as a waste-shoveling village idiot?!" Ford laughed loudly at that. "Oh, man! Bad news for Preston! Wait till the papers hear about this!"
"And once people see that I uncovered a historical conspiracy, they can never call me silly again!" Stan exclaimed. He glanced at the others. "Of course I never could have done it without the help of my trusty sidekicks."
Ford frowned, "Wait, I thought you, Heather and Fids were the sidekicks."
"No you are all my side kicks." Heather said with a teasing tone. "Though I think the roles were switched today." She gave Stan a wink.
Stan shrugged, "Anyway, if Nathaniel Northwest never founded Gravity Falls, then who did?"
"That's what I'm finding out right now," Ford continued reading from the document. "The true founder of Gravity Falls was sir lord, Quentin Trembley, the third, Esquire."
Stan glanced over Ford's shoulder to look at the document, "Whose Quentin Trembley?"
"That. Is none of your business?"
The kids gasped, and saw that the two police officers caught up to them.
"How did you avoid the darts?" Ford asked.
Deputy Durland raised a finger, as if to answer, but then he passed out. Several tranquilizer darts were sticking out of his back, "He didn't," Sheriff Blubs answered the obvious. "You kids shouldn't have been snooping around in the first place, and how you got that document that lead you here is beyond us, but the point is that Quentin Trembley's a matter of national security."
The deputy started regaining consciousness. While still woozy, he stood up and pulled out the darts from his back, "Ouch… I think I'm colorblind now…"
"What do you mean, 'national security'?" Ford asked.
"And who is Quentin Trembley, anyway?" Stan added.
"And why has no one in town ever heard of him!" Fids demanded.
"And why hide all this stuff in a cemetery?" Heather asked the obvious. "Don't you have like a volt or something?"
"See for yourself," Sheriff Holt took out a reel of film from beneath his hat and inserted it into an old, dusty projector. The projection screen in front of them showed a countdown in black and white.
"Aww, its black and white?!" Stan groaned. Ford shushed him, and the reel started.
A government official in an office spoke, "If you're watching this, then you are one of eight people in these United States with clearance to view this information. In fact, I myself will be shot as soon as the filming is complete," he looked off-screen for a moment, like someone was talking to him. "What? No? Ho! Well, that's a relief!" The official looked back at the camera. "Of all of America's secrets, the most embarrassing was that of Quentin Trembley: The eighth-and-a-half president of the United States."
"President?" Ford asked.
"Eight-and-a-half?" Stan repeated, both in equal confusion.
"That's not even numerically correct." Heather pointed out. "How can you be half in line?"
"After winning the 1837 election in a landslide," the video continued. It showed a picture of an actual landslide where the other presidential candidates were killed, "Quentin Trembley quickly gained a reputation as America's silliest president. He waged war on pancakes, appointed six babies to the Supreme Court, and issued the de-pants-ipation proclamation. His state of the union speech was even worse."
A pre-recorded tape of President Trembley played, "The only thing we have to fear is gigantic, man-eating spiders!"
"He was kicked out of office and escaped to an uncharted valley he named Gravity Falls, after plummeting into it at high speed. Trembley's shameful term was erased from history and officially replaced by William Henry Harrison as President and local nobody Nathaniel Northwest as founder of Gravity Falls. The whereabouts of president Trembley's body are unknown."
The reel ended, and Sheriff Holt spoke, "Until now," he shone his flashlight to a man that was completely encased in an amber-colored rectangular prism. It was none other than Quentin Trembley himself.
"Oh so he hid all this stuff here." Heather said, answering her own question.
Ford gasped, "Is he trapped in amber?"
Sheriff Blubs scoffed, "The idiot thought he could live forever by encasing himself in a block of solid peanut brittle. Great job, Mr. President!" He added sarcastically, he turned back to the boys. "Finding Trembley's body was our special mission, and thanks to you, it's complete."
Deputy Durland held up one of Stan's wrappers, "Who knew all we had to do was follow a little kid's trail of candy wrappers?"
"Ugh," Stan face-palmed sadly, "silly!"
"Now that you know the truth," the sheriff continued, "we can't let you go around talking about it."
Ford gasped, "Does that mean…?"
"Are you going to KILL US?!" Fids asked frantically.
The officers laughed, "Kill you?" Holt repeated. "We're not going to kill you. We're just going to escort you and all this stuff back to Washington. You won't be coming back, by the way," he added.
"But that's ILLEGAL!" Heather exclaimed.
"Yeah!" Ford added. "What about our great aunt?! And our parents?!"
"Pops won't like it if we become government property," Stan added nervously.
The police officers glanced at each other, and turned back to the kids, "We'll let the FBI sort that out. Until then, you four are coming with us..."
Author's Notes: Tune in next week to find out what happens next! Thanks again for reading and please review!
Yours Truly, RoxieDivine ;)