Pacifica slept fitfully that night. She couldn't deny she felt almost personally protective of that railroad. The thought of anything going wrong down there made her genuinely fearful. It didn't help, of course, that they had just seen the shack's boiler blown up by fuel with particularly sinister tastes in uh… well, dispatching themselves.
Those miniature carbon miscreants were there one minute, speaking, showing impressive levels of cognition - and, the next, were jumping into open flames, happily tossing their lives away with the belief it was simply what… what they did. How they did things.
It troubled her. It really troubled her. They had dealt with crazy before - plenty of times, really - but something about these things just happily throwing their lives away was… disturbing.
She thought back to when Curzon took over the Northwest Manor, and showed them - in graphic detail - the Great Train Crash actually happening. She was terrified of the idea of that happening again. The idea of it happening to the people, the town, the land that she loved so much - the railroad she had helped build.
The idea of it barrelling towards the floor with people on board, exploding into a giant cloud of shrapnel, smoke and flame, the idea of people screaming, of people running, of the town's single fire engine trying to fight back the carnage...
It sent chills up and down her spine. The thought of Susan crying as yet another train fell from her father's bridge, the thought of McGucket watching his gift to the town destroyed - the thought of the Corduroys seeing all of that work disappear…
All in one, big, fiery explosion.
What if it got worse? What if somebody like Susan or McGucket or Kevin-
...Y'know. Got too close?
She squirmed and glanced over the squat little attic bedroom to Mabel - who was fast asleep, curled up next to Waddles, snoring quietly, as if there was nothing in her head to cause the slightest trouble. Probably due to her nightly sugar crash.
The pig was still wearing its little helmet, too.
The Northwest heir gazed up at the crooked wooden ceiling, biting her lip as she tried to shut up those niggling, machine-fired doubts in her mind. She just didn't want to sleep while all of this was going on. She was sure it wouldn't all go so easily.
She was half tempted to talk to Ford about it - but she was no fool to herself. She knew it wasn't just that she wanted to get up for...
It had been, what? Four girlfriends . She deserved - ney, demanded movie nights. After all, she was a Northwest. A Northwest with only, like, a week left to get those mushy moments in.
Besides, they'd only gotten through like, two of John A. Romeo's Dead trilogy. And she was suspicious about it just being a trilogy. Dipper insisted there weren't more than three - but she was sure she'd seen, like, six when she looked online. How bad could the others really be?
Yeah. Y'know, that worked. She could go down there and tell her cute little dork that she wanted to see more zombies or something. She wanted some spooky films because she was as tough as nails and could sit through any movie!
...Except 'The Caterpillar Made of Humans'. That, that was a movie she regretted watching.
Gross.
She slipped out of bed quietly, tip-toeing to avoid stirring her sister-in-law - when something inevitably caught her eye.
Wait.
Was that a picture of Kevin under her pillow?!
She snickered and took a photo with her cell's night mode, before heading on her way downstairs. Blackmail worked both ways, and save from the odd theft of Mabel's diary, there was still a huge deficit between the two couples. A broad grin spread across the young socialite's face as she slipped it back into her pocket - and continued on her way.
The grin didn't last very long. She was panicking. She could feel her hands going clammy - feel the little rattle in her knees. She knew that above all else, she was scared. And it wasn't just because she was walking around the Mystery Shack in darkness.
The old building felt strange during the night. And it wasn't even old old, especially compared to Northwest Manor. It just felt so crooked and wonky that rooms seemed to appear and disappear, that the corridors shrank and grew, that the windows twisted in their frames - that the deep, plunging shadows still harboured something within them.
It occurred to her that, much like Northwest Manor, she had never seen every room, explored every door, mapped out where she actually lived. Even Ford's blueprints seemed strange… out of order, compared to the shack they knew.
It was… probably nothing. Maybe something to explore some other day…
In any sense, she had grown to feel as attached to the Shack as she was to her new family. A crooked, wonky and bizarre as the triangular structure was, the hovel felt homey, loved, lived in. It wasn't sterilised, it wasn't full of furnishings too expensive to sit on…
She loved all of its little imperfections as much as she loved-
"Dipper?" She asked, tentatively, tapping on his door.
Dipper blinked as he looked up from his book, Fantastic Feats of Heroism for the Strength Disadvantaged Youth, and quickly stowed it away. Crap, he wasn't prepared for - for bedroom door meetings! He rushed over to the door - then quickly realised he had to play cool.
Be cool, Dipper. Be cool! He slicked back his hair (futily) and opened the door with a casual smile. "Hm?"
She blinked and wrinkled her nose at what looked like a grimace of pain from her boyfriend. "...Do you have a stomach ache or something?"
His face dropped. Maybe being cool wasn't quite in his repertoire yet. "N-no, I'm fine - j-just surprised. Uh - what's up?"
"You uh… wanna watch a movie or something?"
"It's like midnig-" He started. He soon picked up that Pacifica was a little shaken; that slight tremor in her voice that betrayed a lack of confidence. "You worried about the railroad too, huh?"
"Dipper, we just saw weird talking rocks that- that just-"
"I know." He said quietly, holding her. "It's- it's a bit weird to see something just-"
"And you saw what it did to that boiler! A- a steam train has a boiler, right?! It could kill people! I knew it'd be bad, but I didn't think-"
"Shh." He whispered, holding her head over his shoulder. "I get it, I get it… Ford will stop things going wrong, okay? He'll stop them firing it up, disaster averted-"
"I hope you're right." She sniffed.
Dipper's eyes widened as he felt a tear trickle down the back of his neck. Pacifica had really managed to frighten herself. "Let's - let's just get a movie, relax a little and eat our body weight in candy, alright?"
She wiped her eyes and giggled. "You know exactly what to say."
It was a few hours later when Waddles opened his beady little eyes and noticed that the bedroom door was standing open; He wiggled his head idly, the little helmet clanking as its light rocked back and forth.
He was hungry. Not hungry for his usual food - no, he had seen Soos planning an exhibit made entirely of deep-fried Europa Pies. Waddles was aware of two things in life; he knew he loved Mabel, and he knew that Soos's exhibits were usually delicious.
And if the bedroom door was open, the rest was a piece of cake.
He gave a happy little grunt as he wiggled free and trotted his way down the stairs, innocent of the stresses being faced by the Pines, innocent of ramifications, innocent of… well, anything at all, other than a very sincere intent to scoff those Europa Pies.
While this was going on, down in the laboratory, Ford Pines was slipping on his finest gloves, preparing to visit his old friend to break the news. He had been practicing his 'serious concern' face for a good half hour, and was now fairly content that he was ready to explain the problem.
He stepped out of the 'secret' staircase behind the battered old vending machine, being sure to help himself to a bag of jelly beans en route. The old scientist knew he was running a little early. He ripped open the bag of candy and smiled, opting to take a slight detour this evening; a quick spell of looking through the frankly ridiculous museum that his brother had managed to make a living from.
The room's oversized parlour hall took on a certain atmosphere at this time of night. What had once been full of filing cabinets, oscillators and insulators was now full of dodgy looking mannequins, of disfigured taxidermy projects and strangely shaped vegetables, and, in the barely creeping light of the early morning, seemed to leer and creep over anybody who entered.
While Stanley's charisma in public was never in question, relatively little thought tended to go towards his imagination and craft for the utter crap he had on display. What Ford used to treat with disdain now raised a little smile on his unshaven face.
He looked up at the now inanimate lump of coal in a jar, teetering on the shelf alongside the preserved Snadger head and a Scorpion wearing a little hat. It was almost impossible to believe that the lump of mineral, inside that little Mason Jar, had been capable of such catastrophe.
Then he heard it. A little grunting. A happy little grunt - the unmistakable sound of shellac jelly bean shells being chewed open by a greedy little mouth.
Ford had dropped a jellybean.
And Waddles was now sitting at his feet, expectantly, resplendent in his little miner's hat.
The last thing that Stanford Pines could remember was the sound of rocks cracking, of dusty minerals splitting open - and of a muffled, booming battle cry...