Chapter Eleven: A Death in the Family

"Dipper, Wendy, Mabel… We need to talk about… What happened in that hot spring." Pacifica said. Dipper sighed. He knew that this would come up at some point. He was still embarrassed about it. He'd had sex with his own sister. He would never do that. He'd never even considered it… At least he didn't think he had. Was drunk him really so out in left field that he'd have sex with his own twin sister? He'd asked himself that a few times already.

"Okay. Paz… You know, I know that what we did was… Not what we'd normally do. I know that you had rules about what was allowed in the poly relationship. I'm really sorry that I let things get so…"
"Up up…" Pacifica cut him off. She sighed, because she was starting to remember what happened now. The haze was wearing off and memories of what they did, while still a bit fuzzy were starting to become a bit clearer.

"I know that we weren't exactly… In control of ourselves…

"And that's nobody's fault, I'm not naming any names. Dipper." Mabel joked.

"Mabel! I wasn't the one making jokes about my penis size to everyone in the cave!" Dipper shouted angrily. Dumb things had been said and done all around. Pacifica sighed. She hadn't been intending on causing trouble. She just wanted to talk about it and make sure everyone was on the same page. The sex had been incredible. She hoped she wouldn't have to get high again to have great sex a second time.

"I'm not looking for a fight. I just… Want to talk about this. I'm not angry at Dipper or at any of you. I just… Have you always wanted to sleep together?" Pacifica asked, looking at Dipper and Mabel.

"What! No!" Dipper protested. Mabel shook her head as well.

"Okay, well… Good, that's… That's good. I mean, far be it from me to judge if you had. And if we're really the only immortal people in the world, in seventy years, who else will Mabel really have?

"But maybe we can just try to put this behind us for now?" Pacifica asked.

"Yeah, absolutely. I'd like nothing better." Mabel said, hoping that they didn't end up alone like that. Wendy nodded in agreement that they could put the bath behind them. Dipper did as well.

-0-

"Yes, I see. I understand. Of course. Yes, I'll tell them right away." Ford said, sounding calm but very sad.

"Dipper, Mabel… We need to talk." Ford said, sitting down on the couch with them.

"Your father… Suffered complications from his seizure and… He died. Your mother wants you to come home, at least for a while until after the funeral." Ford said.

"Y-yeah… Yeah, of course!" Dipper said, trying to stay calm, while Mabel was obviously crying. Dipper put a hand on Mabel's shoulder, hugging her tightly.

"We'll go back to Piedmont. Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Stan… I know we haven't been here very long this time. But we have to go home and help our mother, take care of the funeral and… Well… Wendy and Pacifica… I just… I'm sorry that we can't stay here with you longer."

"What are you talking about, dumb dumb? We're coming with you!" Pacifica said, blushing slightly as she hugged him. Wendy smiled. She was curious to see how Piedmont would clean up after a major earthquake like they'd had. Gravity Falls hadn't been strongly affected. But Piedmont had clearly been torn up. Earthquakes didn't often affect as far North as Gravity Falls. The Cascadia Fault Line could affect it, but the San Andreas Fault Line was more active and Gravity Falls just wasn't in that much danger usually. So Wendy was interested to see how a city recovered from an earthquake.

"We'll go with you, Dude. You know we're with you till the end." Wendy said, slapping Dipper firmly on the back. Dipper smiled ruefully.

"Thanks." He said. The foursome got ready to go, charging up their teleporters. It would take them about forty minutes to fully charge them.

They sighed as they waited. Honestly, Dipper just wanted to get to their parents' house. They could help clean up as best they could and keep themselves busy. Their home had good insurance on it. He just hoped that his collection of antique first edition leatherbound books, his Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder books along with the other things he collected weren't destroyed. He would need to assess everything in his room and take everything that he could with him to Gravity Falls. They were relatively safe from earthquakes up there.

Even if the Cascadia Subduction Zone became active again, the biggest threat was tsunamis and that would mostly affect coastal regions. Oregon would feel some tremors. But odds were good that no major earthquakes, even from the Cascadia Subduction Zone would hit.

"Okay, let's get going back to Cali." Mabel said.
"I've actually never been to California. I mean other than when we went for your father." Pacifica said. Dipper shrugged.

"It's nothing that special. Just cities and towns like anywhere else." Dipper said. Pacifica nodded.

"Hey, do I like… Owe you guys money for staying with you? This is hardly what I'm used to in terms of luxury. But I am staying here free of charge so far." Pacifca said, assuming that they were going to demand that she pay for her stay.

"Ah, are you kidding? It's a pleasure to have you here. Just help out in the Shack and we'll be good." Ford said. The Shack was successful enough that they didn't have much trouble making ends meet.

And Dipper still had his troubleshooting business. Most of what he did, he could do over the computer. He could remote view the troubled computer and do things remotely. It was easy enough to fix almost anything like that. Mabel called him a dork, but he made good money doing it and he had a account that allowed him to accept payments remotely as well.

-0-

Forty minutes later, they were ready to go. They'd packed up while they were waiting for the transporters to charge. They collected the transporters and set the coordinates, joining hands, preparing for the jerk that would result from their being moved instantaneously. Dipper counted down from 5 and gasped as they were lifted off the ground and crashed back down in the middle of Piedmont.

It was obvious that they were quickly repairing the city after the earthquake. Wendy didn't expect that much work to have been done in less than a week. But they had set to work right away apparently and there were work crews all over the place. Dipper looked around and headed towards his mother's house. They were about 1,000 feet from their intended destination, which was pretty normal, considering that the transporter was relatively new and still being fine tuned.

"DIPPER! LOOK OUT!" Pacifica shouted, running towards him, shoving him out of the way as a pile of beams crashed down on her. Dipper growled in pain as the beams crushed his leg. She had been incredibly fast in her reflexes. But she'd gotten crushed herself.

"Paz!" Mabel shouted. Immediately, there was a rush of people, getting the trucks over to them and pulling the beams off of them. Dipper growled in pain. He was sure that once the beams were off, Pacifica and he would both make a recovery that would be both miraculous and very hard to explain.

Dipper sighed as he struggled to his feet, his knee not shattered like it normally would have been (He had the Ultra Dense Organic Liquid in his bones. His leg was broken in multiple places. He was in a lot of pain, but between his nanomachines and his natural regeneration or in this case supernatural regeneration. He sighed as he moved his leg around, standing up, looking at Pacifica, whose body looked broken and dead, but he knew that any minute, she would start moving again.

"We'll call an ambulance for the two of you." One of the workers said.

"Thanks. But I'm okay. Nothing is broken on me." Dipper said. He wasn't going to make a big deal out of this. He was going to hope that when they saw that Pacifica was okay, they would just let it go.

"Mnnnnggg… Ouch! That freaking hurt!" Pacifica growled, sitting up and getting to her feet.

"What! Over 1,000 pounds of metal fell on top of you! How are you standing right now?" One of the workers gasped, staring at her like she was some kind of monster. Pacifica shrugged.

"I dunno. Maybe the bars weren't as heavy as you thought.

"Or maybe it was just dumb luck that they didn't fall on me in such a way to kill me. It still hurt." Pacifica said, not jumping to the "I'm going to sue you" route that she often had in the past. She didn't want to draw undue attention to the situation either. She sighed and rotated her arm a bit, groaning in soreness.

"I would appreciate it if you two would go to the hospital. If only to get examined. I would feel better if you let a doctor take a look at you." The foreman said.

Dipper hesitated. He knew that this was a bad situation. Either way, they'd been discovered in a big way. There were at least two crews that had just seen them get at least part of their bodies crushed and then stand up like nothing happened. But resisting their attempts to assure themselves of the two's health would probably not help either.

"Okay. We'll go to the hospital." Dipper said, letting the construction crew call ambulances and take them to the hospital.

-0-

Dipper's mother was at the hospital when they got there. She had been called summarily by the crew as well and told where they'd be and what had happened. The doctor did X-Rays on both Dipper and Pacifica and examined them to make sure of any damage that could have possibly been caused. The woman was amazed when she saw that not only was there no damage, it looked like they were healthier than ever.

There were some things that looked a bit suspicious inside them, like fake organs. They didn't have a pulse either. Dipper hadn't considered that. If he had, he never would have let himself be examined. But it was what it was.

"I have some experimental organs in me. It's brand new and a bit secretive. So I would appreciate if you wouldn't tell anyone." Dipper said calmly. He still had anxiety sometimes. But he'd gotten good at hiding it and he'd gotten pretty good at lying when he needed to.

"I can't tell anyone. Doctor-Patient Confidentiality. I must take these secrets to my grave." The doctor said with a chuckle. Dipper smiled.
"Thanks." He said. She went on to examine Pacifica, nodding as she finished up.

"Well… Considering that you two just got crushed by cast iron beams, you're looking surprisingly healthy. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be any damage." She said.

"I recommend that you come back in three days for a checkup, just in case there are some effects that we haven't seen yet. But you two can head out if you want." She said. Dipper nodded, taking Pacifica's hand and heading back to the waiting room, where his mother, Wendy and Mabel were waiting for them.

"Well… You came here for a funeral and you got a life threatening accident." Amanda laughed. Well, it would have been life threatening for anyone but them.

They went back to the house, where Dipper immediately went up to his room to examine his books and other possessions. He went over each of them carefully to determine if there was damage and if there was, how much. He took down each book in alphabetical order and took some notes on the condition of them. Overall, there was very little damage. He was especially relieved that the leatherbound first edition books were undamaged. He began packing them into boxes and preparing them to go to Gravity Falls with him. He couldn't risk them being stuck in a major earthquake again.

Finally, he finished packing and went downstairs to see Mabel coming down, having packed up some of her things as well. Her things were less intrinsically valuable for the most part than his. But they were important to her. So he understood that she didn't want them destroyed in an earthquake.

"So, what is this Cascadia Subduction Zone that Grunkle Ford was talking about?" Mabel asked.

"Oh, well, you know about the San Andreas Faultline. That's where two plates meet. The Cascadia Subduction Zone isn't so much where two plates meet, but where one plate slides under another.

"And it's under the Pacific Ocean, so if the zone were to activate in a major way, that would cause major tidal forces in the coastal areas of California and probably in Oregon as well. Oregon wouldn't be as severely affected as California, but there would be damage there as well." Dipper said.

"But didn't Ford say that it was starting to wake up?" Mabel asked uncertainly.

"Yes. But major earthquakes on any Faultline aren't exactly common. It's unlikely that it will start up after over 300 years with a major earthquake. It could.

"But odds are very strong that we'll be okay." Dipper said, sounding more confident than he felt. If this past earthquake had taught him anything, it was that nothing was certain. All conventional knowledge said that the San Andreas Faultline couldn't produce an earthquake greater than an 8.0. But here, it had just produced one of 8.8. That meant that the Cascadia Zone could produce a major earthquake right off the bat as well.

"For now, let's just worry about preparing for Dad's funeral. I'm not sure if I have a suit that really fits me. I only have the suit I wore to prom." Dipper said. His prom had been nice. He'd taken a very shy young woman named Staci Griffin. They didn't have a lot of the same interests, but neither of them had a date to the prom. Dipper and his ex-girlfriend had broken up two weeks before and Staci and her boyfriend had broken up about a month before.

So they were perfect for each other under the circumstances. They weren't going to start going out. But people at the prom said that they had surprising chemistry with each other. They were both sort of nerdy. They both liked dorky jokes. And Dipper found her slightly snorting laugh to be cute. They never dated, but they still stayed in contact with each other. Staci was going to go to college to be a veterinarian. She wanted to work with animals. She worked better with animals than with people, she said.

"Come on, Dipping Sauce. You haven't changed that much since prom." Mabel teased him.

"You put on some sudden weight, Pines?" Pacifica asked, raising an eyebrow. Dipper blushed slightly.

"No. I-maybe-maybe I bulked up since then!" Dipper protested.

"You haven't." Mabel said. He was muscular, but still slender.

"What about you, Mabel? Do you have a dress that will work for the funeral?" Dipper asked.
"Of course! And if I don't, I can sew one." Mabel said. She'd always been a talented seamstress. But she'd really become quite skilled over the years She could probably sell some of the dresses that she made for a lot more than she asked. She sold them mostly to friends and didn't ask a lot. Maybe 50 dollars for some of the more complex designs. But she could probably get 70 if she pressed for it.

"We'll be fine. I actually don't have any dresses." Wendy said.
"And I used to have a lot of dresses for all occasions. But I doubt my parents would let me have any more of them than I've already taken when we went to the mansion and I didn't take any that were designed for funerals." Pacifica said, cursing herself for not thinking ahead. People died. Funeral dresses were needed.

"That's okay! I'll make you two a dress! Free of charge!" Mabel said, starting to draw concept art for their dresses.