Dipper groaned. He was so bored. Why did his parents have to take away his electronics? To spend time outdoors? They completely neglected the super long bus ride. His books were trapped in his suitcase, which Mabel was blocking the way to get to, so he couldn't read those, and he didn't get his phone or anything!
Plus, they were going to be spending the summer with an old man they hardly knew and were supposedly related to in the middle of nowhere in Oregon! This summer was going to be so boring.
Thankfully, they were almost there. A sign said Gravity Falls: Nothing to see here! Ugh, that was so dumb. This was going to be awful.
The bus dropped them off (FINALLY!) and they then had to lug their stuff through the woods. He nearly tripped on a tree root, which caused Mabel to snicker and giggle. He huffed and dragged his suitcase harder, not very pleased with his visit in Oregon as of yet. After a moment more of grumbling, they came across what was most certainly their Grunkle's house, the Mystery Shack. How could he tell? It probably had something to with the large letters on the slanted roof proudly declaring "MYSTERY SHACK" and the girl in the lab coat shouting at tourists about the tourist trap. She was talking so loud that, even at this distance, he could clearly hear her every word.
"WELCOME TOURISTS! COME ONE, COME ALL TO A PLACE RENOWNED ACROSS ALL OF GRAVITY FALLS FOR ITS ATTRACTIONS AND DISPLAYS: THE MYSTERY SHACK! I'M CAMO, I'LL BE YOUR TOUR GUIDE FOR TODAY, AND if you'd follow me inside . . ." All of a sudden, her voice went to a normal tour-guide volume and she gestured for all of them to enter. The twins exchanged a look and shrugged, turning back to the Shack when an old man came running out.
"Hey, kids! It's me, your Grunkle Stan!" the man said, rubbing his hands together in a vaguely evil kind of way. "It'll be just you, me, and—"
"And the girl who was screaming earlier?" Dipper deadpanned.
"And the employees of the Mystery Shack for the whole summer! How's that sound?" Stan just continued on as if Dipper hadn't interrupted him. Mabel raised her hand, and Stan gave her a look. "Yes, kid? You know you don't have to raise your hand, right?"
"Who was the girl who was screaming earlier?" Mabel asked. Dipper sighed. She literally told her name to the tourists and, in doing so, the entirety of the forest.
"Oh, yeah, the new employee, Camo! She's only been here a couple days, so she's practically as new as you greenies!" Stan stepped up and gave him a noogie, and Dipper shoved him away, annoyed.
They were going to be living in the attic, which was . . . not pleasant. Mabel, for some reason, seemed excited about all her splinters and the goat on Dipper's bed eating her sweater. He was less excited . . . after all, the goat was on his bed.
After putting their stuff in the attic, they came down to the gift shop, where they were introduced to Wendy (non-committal "hmm"), Soos ("wassup, dawg?"), and Camo, after she finished her tour. He was surprised at the normal volume she spoke at, saying that before she had caused birds to evacuate their homes. "Dipper, right? Nice to meet you! I'm Camo!" She was wearing the most bizarre outfit he'd ever seen, and he lived with Mabel, of all people. Her lab coat was now tied around her waist, but she also had a button-down shirt, a purple jumper, blue jeans, heavy-duty work boots, and her large glasses had colorful frames. Her blond hair was in a long pixie cut, and her brown eyes shone with amusement. He realized he'd been staring for a while, and laughed awkwardly.
"Uh, yeah, Dipper, that's me."
She laughed and grinned at him. "It's fine that you stare. I'm pretty used to it. After all, I am rather eccentric, and, come on." She flipped her hair, which was short enough that it barely moved. "I am irresistible." They looked at each other for a moment, silent, until they both broke down into laughter.
Mabel walked over just then. "Hey! I love your sweater!"
"Well, it's a jumper, not a sweater," the other girl corrected. "But I definitely like yours!"
The two girls then wandered off to have a little conversation, leaving Dipper with his thoughts.
He wasn't sure what he thought of Camo as of yet. She seemed a little over-the-top, and he wasn't sure if he could handle everyone in the Shack being a lot of effort. And . . . something about that interaction seemed . . . artificial, somehow? She smiled a bit too much to be natural (even though Mabel was constantly smiling, it was somehow different), and it seemed like she really cared about first impressions. Also, her outfit kind of made his brain hurt, though there wasn't much he could do about that, since he got the impression she wore random outfits all the time.
"Dipper, get to work!" Stan yelled, and the boy groaned. This was not going to be fun.
Camo had just finished another tour, and leaned against a wall in the gift shop, waiting for her next one and watching the tourists. It had been a couple days since Dipper and Mabel had arrived (she was pretty surprised to learn they were twins), and a little over a week after she'd traveled back in time, putting the date at June 1st, 2012. She had no clue what her younger self was doing, but since her younger self was three years old and in Florida, it probably wouldn't be of much consequence.
She spotted Mabel looking at a boy from between the Stan bobbleheads and sighed, rolling her eyes. That girl was overdoing it. Anyone with a Y chromosome was on her dating list, and so far she'd already flirted with a boy looking at postcards, a boy sitting on a bench with his turtle, and the poor teen trying to sell mattresses. At least, those were all the ones she'd seen. Who knows how many more boys Mabel had already traumatized?
Camo walked over, since the twins were the most interesting people in the shop and Wendy was—horror of horrors!—actually doing her job as cashier, so she wouldn't have to intervene. Honestly, they got payed the same while Camo worked her butt off to entertain tourists and Wendy just sat there. She had already thought about asking Stan for a raise, but since she'd only been working there for a week and Stan held onto money like it was his lifeline, she figured her chances weren't very high.
What was she doing again? Right, walking over to the twins.
". . . but I've got a good feeling about this summer," Mabel was telling her brother. Ah, so they were talking about her summer romances. "I wouldn't be surprised if the man of my dreams walked through that door right now!" Stan came through the door she was pointing at, holding signs and a beer can and burping like there was no tomorrow. As she complained about fate, Dipper and Camo lost it, laughing at her misfortune.
"Alright, look alive people. I need someone to go hammer up these signs in the spooky part of the forest." As the twins (and Soos, though he was already doing something and she was pretty sure Stan wasn't talking to him) claimed to not be it, Camo just smirked and looked out the window at the tourists coming in. "Alright, Camo, guess it's you."
"Ah, no can do, Stan, there's more tourists coming through! I guess I have to go do another tour right this second, so I can't be hanging signs in the forest—" She backpedaled away with a grin on her face and Stan sighed and turned back towards the twins. She quickly turned around to greet the new group before they wandered away, and before Stan could change his mind and force her to hang up signs. A moment later, after making the tourists a little more amenable to the overpriced tickets, she saw Dipper glumly walking into the forest with some signs out of the corner of her eye. So he had to do it. Well, scuffs to be him!
She went through the tour without any issues, except for some idiot knocking into one of the displays and almost breaking it. Even though she'd only been doing it for a week, it already felt rhythmic and unchanging. Plus, it wasn't that difficult to channel her eccentricities to be the younger, female version of Mr. Mystery. She loved this job as of yet, and she pretty much got to do every tour because Stan would rather sit on his butt and watch TV. So, when the time was right, she'd point out how she was doing much more work than he was, so he should give her a raise . . . her mental monologue deteriorated into evil cackling.
Dipper and Mabel (she'd snuck out to make fun of him) returned after maybe half an hour, and Dipper was holding some old book in his hands. She peered at it interestedly, but when she asked him about it, he'd got all alarmed and hid it behind his back. "Uh . . . it's uh, nothing!"
"Oh, come on!" she moaned. "You found something actually interesting out in the woods and you're not going to tell me about it?"
"Uh . . ." Dipper looked from side to side. "I can tell you later, when I talk to Mabel."
She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose underneath her glasses, causing them to shift. "I'm going home in ten minutes. Either you tell me now, or you never do."
He winced. "Um, I'll tell you tomorrow, okay? I gotta talk this over with Mabel first, though."
Camo sighed. Just her luck that when something interesting finally happens, one of the people she's supposed to be accompanying on 'adventures' decides not to tell her about it! Oh, well. Tomorrow it was. "Fine," she grumbled, "but it better be good if you're going to make me wait a whole day to learn about it."
"Mabel's dating a zombie!" Dipper told Camo when she arrived for work the next morning, shaking her shoulders and sounding like a little girl that was really bad at yodeling. How did his voice get so high?
"And . . . how did you come to this conclusion?" she asked, and he pulled out the book she'd seen yesterday. It was red, dusty, old, and had a six-fingered hand with the number 3 on it. He started manically flipping through it, showing her various pages.
"I found this in the woods yesterday!" he told her, looking very excited. "It says that Gravity Falls has a secret dark side! And the pages, after a while, just stop! It's incredible!"
She held out a hand, and he gave it to her. She leafed through it, considerably slower than he'd been doing so she could actually read what it said. "So, you think that Norman is a zombie because an old book you found in the woods told you so?"
"Yeah!" He was definitely excited about this. "But Soos says I need proof. Do you want to help me?" He held up a camera, and she guessed he was going to be filming the happy couple.
"Um . . . I'll leave your stalking to you, okay? Plus, Stan's hopeless without me." She leaned up close and whispered in his ear, "I'm setting up a brilliant scheme so that he'll have to give me a raise from all the hard work I'm doing. But yeah, once it comes time for the confrontation, you can count me in!" She patted him on the shoulder, and he nodded dutifully. "Now go get your proof!"
The preteen let loose a battle cry and attempted to run out the door, but he ended up slamming into it with his face. She winced. If it was a zombie, she'd have to be there for this kid. If a door could almost kill him, who knows what a legitimate monster could do?
Dipper showed her the various clips he'd caught of Norman doing various zombie-like practices like moaning, breaking windows, stumbling around, and bursting out of graves with one hand in the classic TV-trope manner. She hadn't been in the non-tourist-trap part of the Mystery Shack yet, so she had to admit her attention was a little diverted by all the crazy stuff Stan had lying around. "I tried to tell her earlier, but she didn't believe me! Then Norman showed up, and they wandered into the woods!"
"Hmm? Oh, right. Look, maybe you're being paranoid. Do you have any concrete evidence that can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Norman is a zombie?" she asked him, and the boy sighed and slumped in the chair.
"No, you're right." He looked over some more clips. "I guess I can be kind of paranoid sometimes, and—WAIT, WHAT?!" he suddenly screamed, leaping back in the chair. She spun around, alarmed.
"What is it?!"
He replayed the clip for her, and she gaped at the sight of Norman's hand falling off and him sneakily putting it back on. "Holy scuff! You're right!"
He laughed victoriously. "Ha ha! I knew I was!"
"Dude. Your sister is in danger," she deadpanned, and he returned back to the matter at hand, screaming again and running out the patio door, knocking the sofa backwards as he did so.
"Grunkle Stan! Grunkle Stan!" he shrieked, and the two of them ran around the side of the house to where Stan was showing off the new exhibit: Rock that looks like a face rock. Apparently, he was also having some issues with the tourists, and he didn't pay any attention to Dipper's panicking. Or the fact that his tour guide was there, too. Ah, well. Mabel was in danger. She didn't have enough time to run another tour! Stan should do his own job!
"Dipper!" Camo shouted, grabbing his shoulders. They locked eyes. "We don't have time for this! Mabel is in danger! To the golf cart!" She pointed at the golf cart Wendy had just driven up in.
"Wendy! I need to borrow the golf cart so I can save my sister from a zombie!" Dipper squealed, and the teen just looked down at him, as cool as ice.
"Try not to hit any pedestrians" was her only comment when she handed him the keys.
Camo grabbed the keys from the boy. "I kind of know how to drive and I'm older, so I'm driving!" she said firmly. She looked over her shoulder at Wendy as she put in the keys. "Oh, tell Stan I'm using my ten minute break!" she yelled back as she started driving off, before being interrupted by Soos, who handed Dipper a shovel and a baseball bat, and then they went to go save Mabel.
She drove as fast as humanly possible, and it was a shock she didn't run over a squirrel as the golf cart barreled through the forest. The usual trees faded into a darker, bioluminescent area that seemed a lot more magical until they came to the end of the path, where several little, bearded men were tying Mabel up. It certainly didn't look much like a zombie attack, which was what she'd been expecting. ". . . the more you struggle, the more awkward this is going to be for everybody," one of the gnomes was saying. Camo slowed to a stop, staring at the cursed scene. "Just . . . okay, just get her arm there, Steve." Mabel was holding her own pretty well, knocking away gnomes that were trying to eat her with puffs of glitter and causing them to barf rainbows.
"What the heck is going on here?!" Dipper asked.
"You can say that again!" Camo interjected.
"What the heck is going on here?!" he repeated, and she sighed. Boys.
"Dipper! Camo! Norman turned out to be a bunch of gnomes! And they're total jerks!" She punched one that was pulling on her hair.
Dipper looked very confused. "Gnomes?" he said disbelievingly. "I was way off."
Camo was too startled to say anything as Dipper began to read out the page on gnomes in his journal. She only payed him half attention, more concerned with the scene of absolute carnage in front of them. However, she did catch him saying "Weaknesses: Unknown." Oh, scuff. The mysterious Author didn't have a plan to deal with these guys? Then what the scuff were they supposed to do?!
She finally found her voice and said, "Hey! Let go of Mabel, you shoddily-bearded monkey!" She walked up to the leader gnome.
"Oh! Hey there!" the gnome laughed nervously. "Um, ya know, this is all just a big misunderstanding, ya see? Your friend's not in danger, she's just marrying all one thousand of us and becoming our gnome queen for all eternity. Isn't that right, honey?" he asked Mabel, and she shouted something at him.
Dipper tapped her on the shoulder. "If they're looking for a queen, maybe you could—"
"Nope. I already know what you're going to say, and I am not replacing Mabel to become these guys' queen. No can do." The boy sighed. It was worth a shot, she supposed, but she didn't know anyone who would willingly become affiliated with a bunch of tiny gnomes who kidnapped the girl they 'loved'. They'd have to do this the hard way, which also sounded considerably more fun than a wedding.
"Give her back right now, or else!" Dipper shouted, pointing the shovel at the leader gnome intimidatingly.
"You think you can stop us, children? You have no idea what we're capable of. The gnomes are a powerful race! Do not trifle with the—aah!" Dipper just shoveled the guy away. He then proceeded to cut Mabel's binds while Camo went back to the getaway vehicle and got ready. The twins ran to join her and thus began the absolutely thrilling race against the gnomes. In the words of Dipper:
"See their little legs? Suckers are tiny."
Which naturally meant a large booming sounded behind them.
Other drivers were idiots and may have stopped so as to allow the monster to get closer so they could see it easier. Camo was no idiot and the booming just made her go even faster as she tried to stay ahead of the thundering steps. By the sounds of it, it was going to catch up with them sooner or later, and she would much rather have it be sooner. Sure enough, behind them came a massive gnome made out of gnomes. She pressed the pedal all the way to the floor while the twins screamed "Faster! FASTER!"
"I'M GOING AS FAST AS I CAN!" she screamed, trying with all her might not to send them to the bottom of some ditch. It would really scuff if she was supposed to make it through the summer and ended up killing the three of them on their first adventure. A barrage of gnomes landed on top of the golf cart and started ripping the top of it. The twins beat them away as best they could, but one of the gnomes landed on her face, and she squirmed and punched at it. "Dipper! Take the wheel!" she yelled, and she undid her seatbelt and moved back to the backseat, where she proceeded to throw away gnomes and yell things she wasn't supposed to say at the Gnome. In the chaos, Dipper lost his hat, but she didn't have time to focus on it, as the Gnome casually pulled a tree from the ground and threw it at them. "GUYS . . .!"
"Look out!" Mabel shouted, and Dipper swerved, the three of them barely careening underneath the tree where it had landed in front of the road. They slid across the ground, and the golf cart fell sideways in front of the Shack. Camo got thrown out and landed several feet away while the twins groaned and got out of the mess. The Gnome caught up with them, despite Camo's frantic driving, and loomed over the twins. She reached out to them, but her knee burned from how she'd landed it. The cargo pants she was wearing weren't long enough and she'd managed to slice herself open with a stick. Gasping in pain, she clutched her knee and could only look in horror as the Gnome got closer to the twins.
Dipper threw the shovel at the Gnome, but it was easily crushed under a massive fist. The twins grabbed each other, and Camo furiously wondered where Stan was. These kids were his responsibility, not hers! Ugh! The leader of the gnomes told Mabel to marry them again, but she had to admit she wasn't paying attention. She was looking around for some way out of it, for some kind of a solution! Her eyes landed on the leaf blower, and she thought back to when Mabel kissed it earlier, for some reason. That . . . that would work.
She flailed around until she got the girl's attention, and she pointed to where it was hidden, just behind a bush. They locked eyes, and Camo knew the other girl had the same idea as her. The Gnome had no clue about this little encounter, as they were too busy with Dipper. Mabel then stepped forward and said, loud enough that she could hear it, "I gotta do it."
Dipper gasped, and they had a quiet little conversation she couldn't hear. She probably could've gotten up—it was only a scratch, after all—but she didn't really want to draw the attention of the Gnome, and she could screw up their plan. So, she sat there on the ground, watching the scene play out. Something Mabel said convinced Dipper, and the boy backed up. "All right, Jeff, I'll marry you," she told the Gnome. The leader gnome, Jeff, worked his way down the Gnome and presented her with a crystal ring. She let him put it on her finger, and when the gnome did a little victory dance, she added, "You may now kiss the bride."
Jeff the gnome stopped, smiled, and said, "Well, uh, don't mind if I do." And as he turned towards her for the kiss . . .
She pulled out the leaf blower! It was pure entertainment. Mabel sucked up Jeff and, after making a couple comments, the twins fired him back at the Gnome, causing it to scatter back into a bunch of smaller gnomes. Jeff sailed into the distance and, without leadership, the rest of them ran back into the protection of the forest (except for one poor soul, who got stuck in one of those plastic soda ring things and got taken away by Gompers, the goat. RIP, unnamed gnome.) After all that was done, Dipper turned to Camo and gasped. The twins ran over to make sure she was okay.
"Guys, I'm fine. 'Tis but a scratch!" she declared, and they giggled as they walked back to the Shack. When they did, the twins made up. "Dipper, I, um, I'm sorry for ignoring your advice. You really were just looking out for me," Mabel said, looking guilty.
"Oh, don't be like that," Dipper replied. "You saved out butts back there."
"I guess I'm just sad that my first boyfriend turned out to be a bunch of gnomes."
"Look on the bright side . . . maybe the next one will be a vampire," he grinned, and they all laughed.
Camo said seriously, "I don't know why you're so eager to get a boyfriend, though. I'm closing myself off at least until high school. Boys at this age are just too immature," she said, punching Dipper in the arm, significantly lighter than when his sister did it. The twins turned back to each other and did something they called an 'awkward sibling hug', which was really fun to watch. Then they entered into the gift shop.
"Yeesh! You three get hit by a bus or something?" Stan asked, and he laughed. "Camo, what're you doing here? Your day ended half an hour ago."
"Just getting my money," she smirked, holding out a hand, and the old man groaned and gave her her cut. "See you guys tomorrow!" she said, waving goodbye to the twins. She then left, heading back home and putting her wage in her pocket.
Maybe she could make it to the end of the summer. It would at least be a lot more fun to do so now than before.