Camo sat on the grass, staring at the chaotic scene before her and wondering why she had decided she wanted to work for Stan. He had decided that he wanted to rent a fair, but cut all the expenses so that it was as cheap as possible. Still, all that money could be going towards something useful, like her wallet. But nooooo, he had to have the Mystery Fair.

"There she is, Mabel," Stan was telling his great-niece. "The cheapest fair money can rent. I spared every expense!"

The sky tram fell from the sky with Dipper in it, nearly landing on top of her. She yelped and scooted away, despite it already having landed on the ground. "I think the sky tram is broken," the preteen boy said. "Also most of my bones."

"Yeah, right. Then you'd be screaming in pain," Camo scoffed, trying to pretend she hadn't just freaked out and splayed across the ground.

Stan laughed. "This guy! All right, all right. I got a job for you three. I printed up a bunch of fake safety inspection certificates. Go slap one on anything that looks like a lawsuit."

Camo grabbed one and slapped it on Stan. He'd probably caused a couple lawsuits. Plus, he was wearing a suit. Suit . . . lawsuit . . . ha ha. She was hilarious.

"Grunkle Stan, is that legal?" Mabel asked, splitting the papers between the three of them.

"When there's no cops around, anything's legal!" Truly, words to live by.

"Oh no, Sherriff Blubs!" she screamed, pointing behind Stan. Her boss turned around so quickly, it was hilarious. She snorted and dissolved into a fit of giggles.

"Shut up," Stan grumbled. "Soos, how's that dunk tank coming along?"

"Almost ready to go, Mr. Pines," was the handyman's reply.

The old man slammed his fist on it, but the seat barely wiggled. "Ha! You got it rigged from here to Timbuktu! There's nothin' on Earth that could knock me down!"

"Yeah, except for, like, a futuristic laser arm cannon," Soos responded.

Did Soos know about Globnar and Time Baby and all that nonsense? She tried to imagine the big guy in the gladiatorial time combat and giggled a little more. She was hilarious enough that it didn't lead to too many weird looks whenever she started laughing, unprovoked. Sometimes. Most normal people still gave her some. Thank goodness there wasn't any of those in Gravity Falls!

"Hey, you haven't seen my red screwdriver, have ya? Darn thing went missing."

Camo, for her part, did look around her. If she was going to be eavesdropping, she might as well be productive about it.

"Maybe some magical creature or paranormal thingum took it."

"Oy, you been spendin' too much time with those kids!" That mindset was mostly Dipper. She had almost nothing to do with instigating those sorts of adventures. "All right, let's see. Where did I put that thing?"

Bored, she looked around . . . and just barely spotted the bald man in the futuristic suit staring at them from behind the Porta Potties. How could she tell it was futuristic? Well, nobody except her would wear something like that, and also he started to change from scene to scene, making his suit blend in with a scene that wasn't the one right there.

What would Dipper think if she told him time travel was real . . . ?

"It's 12:00! The dunk tank is now open!" Stan shouted. The feedback, no one liked. The fair itself . . . yeah, no one liked that much either. Stan? No way that anyone liked him. He started antagonizing people around him to get them to waste money trying to dunk him. That seemed like a dumb strategy. After all, it was his fair. Anyone who didn't like being mocked could just . . . leave.

Camo was riding the Ferris Wheel because it meant she could get an overhead view of the fair and see all the rides she wanted to ride. Her goal for the day was to ride every single one of the rides, taking advantage of her status as an employee to ride them for free. She could die on a roller coaster and she'd still be riding them as a ghost, she loved them that much.

So far, it'd been open for two hours and she'd ridden three of them, including the wheel. That was a little less than half of them, so if none of them broke and the lines weren't too long, she could probably reach that goal with enough time to get one of those question mark pretzels that Wendy and Dipper had said were so good. The Ferris Wheel began to tip down and she climbed off it, ready to speed in line to the next one, but someone halted her path.

He wasn't anywhere near her, but she could see that guy in the futuristic outfit, wandering over there. She peered at him, trying to get a better look, when a horrible smell hit her nostrils. She gagged and looked for the source. Of course, it was Robbie.

"Hey, dork, you seen Wendy recently?" the teenager said, and she looked up at him. She wanted to kick him in-between his overly tightly-pantsed legs, but she figured that was a bad idea in a public place, so she decided to go along with it.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I saw her at the pretzel place with Dipper," she said, and with a moody huff he walked off.

She shrugged and continued on her way to the next ride, the man in the strange outfit gone from her mind. She managed to get the ride in, it was fairly good, if obviously very cheap, before Mabel came running up with a large, pink, fleshy thing in her arms. It oinked, and Camo looked at it with trepidation. "Is that . . . a pig?"

"Yup! This is Waddles! I call him that because he waddles!" She shook the poor thing in her arms, and the older girl raised an eyebrow.

"Where did you get a pig from? I highly doubt Stan let you buy him."

"I won him by guessing his weight!" Mabel said proudly. "He's my soulmate."

"Good for you," Camo said dryly, "but I'm trying to ride all of the roller coasters in one day, so I need to keep moving." She pushed past the younger girl and rode the next ride on her list. If she could get through the whole thing quick enough, she might have enough time to play some garbage carnival games! Sure, they were rigged to the gates of hell and back, but there was just something about it that appealed to her.

And then she saw that futuristic guy again, and all of her suspicious thoughts came back. She narrowed her eyes and crept up close. He was weird, and bald. And that was Stan's screwdriver! That's where it went: into the hands of a weirdo time traveler, and in this case, she didn't use weird as a term of endearment.

"You know, you should ask people before you steal their stuff," she said nonchalantly, leaning against one of the barrels that were around for aesthetic purposes. She pretended to check her nails, ignoring his frightened shriek. "Stan was looking for that earlier. The least you could've done was tell him you were taking it."

"Wh-who are you?" the man stuttered. Oh, scuff, his voice was so annoying. She foresaw a very strained relationship between the two of them. "Y-you're not supposed to be here!"

"You're right, I'm not," she agreed. "But a dumb time wish stuck me here." At his panicked look, she groaned. "Yes, I know about Time Baby and time travel and Globnar and time wishes and all that nonsense. No need to freak out."

"O-oh," he said, and a moment of uncomfortable silence stretched out between them. She was about to interrupt it when, all of a sudden, he took a tape measure off of his belt. No, not a tape measure! That was a time machine! Before she could do anything, he pulled on it, and then poof. Gone. She groaned and banged her head on the barrel, then immediately regretted it. Ow. Stupid feeble mortal body.

She rode one more ride. Just one to go, and she'd have accomplished her task! She was on her way to the next one when Dipper came in front of her, freaking out. But then again, when was he not? "Camo!" he yelped. "Wendy and I were going to one of the carnival games because she really wanted this duck-panda thing, and I threw the ball and it bounced and hit her in the eye and Robbie got to her before I could and now they're dating!" He was practically pulling his hair out, and she sighed, squeezing the bridge of her nose from under her glasses frames.

"Okay, okay, and what do you want me to do?"

"Be my emotional support," he whimpered.

"Why can't Mabel do that? She is your twin, after all."

"She's playing with her dumb pig" was his defense. She sighed and decided to sacrifice the opportunity for the last ride to comfort the preteen boy. Normally, she wouldn't've cared, but . . . she had seen how much he liked Wendy, and she knew this had to have been hard for him. So, the two of them played some carnival games (at least she got to do that), and Dipper's mood improved slightly. He always would seem to be getting better, and then Wendy and Robbie would walk by, and he'd start having a pity party again.

"Oh, come on, don't be like that," she sighed, looking at the heartbroken kid, who was laying depressed-ly on the Slopey Toss, not allowing anyone to play the game. It was already evening, and she thought she'd helped make progress, but nope. Back to hormones and broken hearts. "Dipper, I sacrificed accomplishing my goal so help you out. The least you can do is be grateful."

He lifted his head the slightest bit to look at her. "What goal?"

"I wanted to ride all the rides," she shrugged. It didn't really matter, but it bugged her that she hadn't accomplished it.

Mabel came by with her pig dressed up in a doctor's outfit. "Paging Dr. Waddles, we got a boy with a broken heart," she said. She was the only one who laughed. "Come on, man, these are the jokes," she told her unresponsive twin.

"I think he's just sad you had a great day and he had a horrible one. He's a preteen boy, these things happen."

"Were you ever like this?"

She thought for a moment. "Not over some kid I liked, but literally over the fact that I'm not perfect. Multiple times. It's . . . kind of dumb," she said, turning a little bit red at the confession.

"Come on, Dipper, not even that cheers you up?!" Mabel moaned. He moaned in response.

"Guys, do you ever wish you could go back and undo just one mistake?"

"Nope! I do everything right all the time," his twin said, which was not the right response.

Camo hummed. "Yeah, definitely, but that's not how life works." Like scuff she was telling him about time travel.

Dipper sat up and started rambling, which she couldn't decide was better or worse than the silence. "I mean, Wendy only went out with Robbie because he was there with the ice, and she only needed ice because of the baseball, and I would have had the ice if it wasn't for . . ." He gasped and pointed at somebody behind Camo. "That guy!"

As she turned around, the only thing running through her head was Please don't be the futuristic guy, please don't be the futuristic guy . . .

It was the futuristic guy.

(It was right about this point that she realized any mental nickname she gave him could technically be applicable to her, too. Futuristic guy? Well, she was from ten years in the future. Time traveler? Her too, even though she didn't want to be one. It was dumb and she made a mental note to curse Time Baby's name, and in doing so use every fake curse word she knew, which would probably take about five minutes of incessant cursing.)

"Hey, you! Tool Belt! You ruined my life!" Dipper shouted, and she put her head in her hands. Why was he like this? The twins walked over to him and Mabel dragged her by the wrist. "Don't 'huh' me! I've seen you before! What's your deal? Are you following us around?"

"And why are you bald? What's that all about?"

The only thing Camo was thinking about at this point was that due to the weirdness of time travel, this guy could actually be unaware of whatever he supposedly did, because while to everyone else, it was later, but he could've been jumping about throughout the day. (She definitely knew what it was like to be accused of something you hadn't done yet . . .)

The time guy screamed, "My position has been compromised! Assuming stealth mode! Color match! Initiating color match! Come on! Dang it!" He was fiddling with his watch and it just wasn't matching up with his surroundings.

"Wouldn't your head still be visible, even if you did get the right background?" Camo asked, cocking her head.

The time guy looked up at her and gasped. "You!"

"Wait, how do you know Camo?" Dipper asked, confused.

His twin gasped, "That's amazing! Are you from the future or something?"

"Uh, no! Who told you that?!" He was sweating.

I could've, Camo thought. But she stayed silent. She had a feeling how this encounter was going to go.

"Memory wipe!" he screamed, and he threw something on Mabel's face. She pulled it off and looked at it oddly.

"This is a baby wipe," she informed him.

He sighed and sat on a haystack. "All right, you've cornered me. I'm a time traveler."

Camo couldn't help herself. She snorted with repressed laughter. "Well, duh!" she laughed. "But, couldn't you have pulled out your time machine and whisked yourself to a different spot in time instead of having to tell them your secret?"

The time guy gaped, and Dipper asked in an accusatory tone, "You knew?"

"Yeah. Saw him earlier with Stan's screwdriver and had a little confrontation."

"Wait a minute, so he does have a time machine!" the boy said, dropping their conversation very suddenly. She looked at him oddly.

"That's kinda how it works," the time guy said.

Dipper spotted Wendy and Robbie on the Ferris Wheel and fervently said, "Could I borrow it?" The time guy, obviously, denied it, so he kept on with his request. "Come on, can I use your time machine just once?"

"Out of the question! This is sensitive, extremely complicated equipment!" He pulled the tape-measure-like object from his belt, and she raised an eyebrow at him.

"You know you could've just said anything else was the time machine and they'd've never figured it out, right?" she told him, and he smacked his head. Maybe she should be the time employee instead of him. She seemed to have a better ability to keep secrets secret.

"It looks like a tape measure," Dipper commented.

"You shut your time-mouth!" the time guy squealed. Or maybe this guy was just the dumb, low part of the time hierarchy.

Mabel pulled herself into the conversation, "But how does Camo know about this stuff? She would've told us, right?" She felt a pang of guilt for hiding her secret from the girl, but it had to be this way.

The time guy looked at her devilishly. He actually said something smart, for once. "You mean, they don't know?" he asked, and her eyes widened.

"What don't we know?" Dipper asked with his eyes narrowed.

She laughed nervously. "Uh, this guy's name! I don't think you told us, did you?"

That successfully averted their attention, at least for the moment. "Blendin Blandin, time anomaly removal crew, year 20-snyeventy-twelve!" he said proudly, holding out his ID. He looked very sweaty in his picture. "My mission is to stop a series of time anomalies that are supposed to happen at this very location! B-but I don't see any anomalies! I don't know if it's some kind of paradox or if I'm just really tired!" He sat down on a haystack.

She had a bad feeling about this.

"You know, you sound like you could use a break," Dipper said, and her worst fears began to come true. (Well, not her worst fears. That would be the twins finding out she was from the future and/or everybody saying they secretly hated her and dying alone in an empty alley. So, just her most recent fears.)

"Definitely, definitely," his twin nodded. "Might we recommend one of the various attractions at the Mystery Fair?"

"You know what? What the heck! I'm worth it!" She couldn't see what he was doing, as she was covering her face with a hand. Oh, no.

You already know what the twins did.

"Might I be the first to say that this is a VERY BAD IDEA," she said pointedly, looking down at the time machine. They were at the Shack, late at night. She was glad Stan was still focusing on the Fair, because otherwise he might make her go back home.

"Here it is, guys," Dipper said breathlessly, completely ignoring her. They did that so often! "Our ticket to any moment in history!"

"Let's go get two dodos and force them to make out!" Mabel said excitedly.

Camo looked at the other two. "Time is important, and you could cause a massive paradox. You heard what Blendin was talking about. You can't just make anything you want come true." Unless they got a time wish, but she wasn't going to be telling them about that.

"All I'm gonna do is go back and fix my one mistake," Dipper defended himself. "If I don't miss that baseball throw, I won't hit Wendy in the eye, and Robbie won't comfort her, and they won't start going out."

She exploded at that. "What?! That's a massive change! Here, let me give you an example. Ever heard of the butterfly effect? It could cause a paradox even in the couple hours since then! Because, you see, because you missed that baseball throw and the two of them started to go out, you stole the time machine from Blendin. Maybe if Wendy and Robbie hadn't started to go out, you wouldn't've done that and Blendin would've never encountered those paradoxes because I'm thinking that it's because of you! But maybe, even if it wasn't you, somebody else would've stolen the time machine and started those same paradoxes. Time tries to fix itself, and maybe, it does a bad job of it and you destroy the entire space-time continuum!"

The twins stared at her. "Or maybe nothing happens because of it. To the past!" They both grabbed onto her and she was pulled six and a half hours later along with both of them. Everything became a lot brighter around them and Dipper's hat was on fire.

"You're both dead to me," she told them. But, since they were going to ruin the world as she knew it, since she was from the future, so she decided to go with them anyway, because responsibility reasons.

Responsibility sucks.

Dipper ran off to get Wendy her duck-panda, and Mabel went to go get Waddles again, and Camo wasn't sure what she wanted to do. Well, what she really wanted to do was go find Blendin Blandin and ask him for answers as to why she was sent here, but she didn't trust him and also got the feeling that he wouldn't be super happy to find out that they had stolen/will steal his time machine, so she decided just to finish up her ride list.

She rode it, and . . . okay, whatever, she was done. It didn't feel as interesting as it had . . . earlier/later/now, because she had theoretically as much time as she wanted to get it done, and now it wasn't something cool that she'd managed to ride them all in one day.

She needed a new goal. Hmm . . .

Her eyes landed on Stan, sitting high and dry in his dunk tank, and she got an idea. Employee bonuses meant she even got those tickets at half-off, and she had a feeling Dipper would go back in time a lot and she'd get lots of chances. She bought one, aimed, and shot.

And missed.

"Ha! Camo, did ya really think you'd get me?" Stan laughed, looking so high and mighty. Well, she'd show him . . .

She spent the rest of the day throwing a ball at a target she'd taped to the tree, as practice. By the end of the day, well, she still wasn't very good at it, but she was getting better. The Pines twins eventually came over and found her. "The exact same thing happened twice! It was spooky!"

"Well, yeah," Camo said, picking up her ball to throw it at the target again. "I told you that time tries to fix itself. Were you even listening to me?"

"Or maybe it's a time curse!" Mabel said, and she went back to feeding her pig a chicken leg.

"Is it possible that the forces of time naturally conspire to undo any new outcomes?" Dipper had started pacing, and Camo was so close to throwing her ball at his head instead of the tree. However, she still wasn't very good at throwing, so it would be better to save it for a time when she could have enough strength to knock down even Stan. "No, no. I just need to try again. Third time's the charm."

"How hard can it be?" Mabel asked.

Camo looked at her target and the ball she'd nicked from the dunk tank. Well, it would be easier to just take them with her, rather than steal them again, so she held them in her hands as she and the twins went back in time.

She spent the next . . . who knows how long throwing that dumb ball at that dumb target. It was boring, but she was getting better, and every time that they went back, her tiredness evaporated. Also, her money returned to the amount that it had been in, so every time they went back she tried at least once on the dunk tank, and every single time Stan laughed at her.

However, the joke was on him, because after twenty-three periods of five hours, which was about 115 hours of throwing a ball at a target, she rose from sucky to fine to amateur to pretty good to full-on rock star, and she was confident. She paid for her ball and lined it up, hitting the target square on with enough force that a not-rigged game would have been obliterated. Still, she managed to get him to shake and whimper slightly, which was worth it.

But not enough. She needed to see him in the water.

"Train. Train. Train. Train," she muttered, saying it every single time she threw a ball. At this point, she had nicked five of them and could throw them like a machine gun, each one hitting her target square on. Also, she knew how to throw it with both arms and threw it with a force that could EASILY leave a bruise. Even if she couldn't knock Stan down, this would definitely be helpful at some point, what with all the adventures the twins went on.

Actually, it was kind of hard to believe that she was doing this. Camo, the girl who hated exercising with every bone of her body, was doing physical training on how to throw a ball, simply because she was stubborn. After this, she could genuinely play baseball and be really good as pitcher, but she didn't want to do that. Whatever. More people should get themselves stuck in self-imposed time loops.

Finally, Dipper said he found out a way to win the toss. Camo was just lining up her shot when another ball came from the middle of nowhere, hit the target, and did absolutely nothing. Well, she would do better than that. She threw it with the force she'd trained up on, and it slammed into the target. Stan shook, and screamed, pressing up against the sides, but it was just short of enough. She huffed in frustration, but everyone was murmuring in awe.

"Seriously, Camo, when did ya get so strong?!" Stan screamed.

She went looking for the twins and eventually saw them. Dipper had agreed to go back and fix the timeline so that Mabel could have her pig. But, since beating Stan wouldn't take very long, she agreed to do something for him. As a friend.

"Hyah!" she yelled, slamming the ball into the bottles with enough force that it fell over. Sure, it was after Wendy agreed to go out with Robbie, but at least now Dipper could give his crush her toy.

Though, for sure, the highlight of her day was when Blendin Blandin got arrested (by the same guys who brought her to Globnar . . . she was glad they didn't comment on it) and one of the time guys shot his laser cannon and knocked Stan down. She cheered the loudest, because she had been trying the hardest to accomplish it.

She remembered Soos saying something about a futuristic laser cannon being the only thing to knock Stan down, way at the beginning of the day, like, for real, and her eyes widened.

Could Soos see the future?!