Camo was unresponsive.

The twins were staying in the motel room with her, and Stan was with Soos and his grandma. There was nowhere else to stay, and that wasn't the reason why she was so miserable. She'd finally had a life here, in the Shack, with a job and a room and practically a family, and then Gideon had to go and throw it all away.

She just didn't understand it. They'd won. They always did. They always beat the bad guy and then went home and everything was fine. She didn't understand it. They'd beat Bill, but when they went home, nothing was fine. Gideon had stolen the Shack from them.

It was hard to find the will to do anything. What would it be worth, if she couldn't trust in their victories anymore?

They were watching TV, though she was disinterested, as had become her usual. The news was on. "In a move that has all of Gravity Falls buzzing, child psychic Gideon Gleeful has taken surprise ownership of the Mystery Shack, previously belonging to area shyster Stanford Pines." There were pictures with everything, but she wasn't paying attention. "Now that you have the Shack, what exactly are you planning to do with it?"

"I have a big announcement to make today, and I'd like to cordially invite all the good people of Gravity Falls to join me." Gideon's voice was unpleasant. She might've hated it before, but . . . hating would require caring, and caring would make it hurt more. "Free admission to everyone who wears their Gideon pins! It's my face!"

She turned off the TV. She didn't want to see him anymore than she had to.

Mabel was looking at her, her eyes sorrowful. Camo turned away so that she couldn't see it.

Seeing her sadness hurt.

"Camo, come on," Mabel pleaded, her eyes wide. "We need your help. We can't get the Shack back without your help."

"Who says we can get it back anyway?" she muttered, looking down at the floor. "Gideon taught us that we can lose. I . . . I can't continue now."

Dipper angrily said, "So you're just going to what, give up? Doesn't sound like the Camo I know."

"The Camo you knew was confident, okay?!" she snapped, glaring at him. "How am I supposed to be confident if I don't have anything else to believe in. We always won. We always win. And now . . . now we haven't." She curled up tight. "I can't keep doing it, guys. Putting on a brave face and following you into battle. It's too hard, too painful."

"Come on," Mabel said softly. "Help us, just this once. If it doesn't work out, nobody will blame you."

She looked at the younger girl out of the corner of her eye, trying not to show how scared she was, because she was terrified. Terrified of the prospect of losing, of failing. "You swear?" she whispered. Nobody would get mad if she screwed up? It wouldn't be her fault?

"I swear," both of the twins chorused.

She sat upright and wiped away the tears that had never formed, and then nodded slightly. "Okay. I'll help you guys sneak in."

Mabel cheered and hugged Camo, and she had to admit, it did feel nice.

The group was wearing trench coats. At least, the others were. Camo was just wearing the most boring outfit her wardrobe could manage, with a plain collared shirt and jeans. Nobody noticed her, which was the point. "We're in," Dipper whispered.

"Just wanna say, don't know what we're doing here, but I am loving these fake moustaches!" Mabel said. Camo tugged on her backpack and tried not to look like she was affiliated with them.

"If anyone asks, I'm not Soos," Soos said, pointing to his hat, clearly labeled NOT SOOS. He also had a fake beard and sunglasses.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Gideon said, his high-pitched voice causing Camo to wince. "Today I am delighted to announce my new plans for the former Mystery Shack. I give you . . . Gideonland!" He pulled the tarp off a little model that was entirely white and light blue. Most of the crowd cheered, but their group was horrified. "We're gonna turn this dirty old shack into three square miles of Gideon-tertainment! And, introducing our new mascot, Li'l Gideon Junior!"

It was Waddles, dressed up like Gideon. It was a horrid thing to do to an animal and Camo wished she could just get this kid in jail already.

"Waddles!" Mabel screamed. "You monster!"

"All right, that's it!" Stan yelled, throwing off his hat and unbuttoning his coat. She supposed he wasn't ready for animal abuse on the animal he'd punched a pterodactyl to save. They burst through the crowd, though no one seemed to recognize Camo. She rolled her eyes. It was the boring outfit, wasn't it? Mabel kicked off a cardboard cutout of Gideon and Stan said, "Listen up, people! Gideon's a fraud! This kid broke in and stole my property!"

"Arrest him, officers!" Mabel shouted.

"Yeah!" Dipper added.

Gideon walked up. "Such accusations! Mr. Pines, I recall you gave the property to me. Look, here's the deed right here!"

Camo, who could tell this wasn't going to go great, said, "Hey, Gravity Falls, how long have you known Stan? Thirty years. He's had countless scuffles with Gideon and is not the sort of guy to give away his house and his store to some ten-year-old kid in a suit. Gideon used dynamite to blow up the wall and opened Stan's safe, stealing the deed and claiming it was now his!"

Murmurs went through the crowd, but the cops must've been under Gideon's little fingers, because Sherriff Blubs said, "He has the deed, so he owns the Shack."

Deputy Durland called, "I love you, Li'l Gideon! Sing them funny songs!"

Two bouncers came and grabbed the twins at a snap of Gideon's fingers. Stan and Camo were pulled over too, and she was mad enough that she threw her heel back and right into the guy who was holding her's shins. He gasped and dropped her, and she ran up to the front of the stage. "You can't let him get away with this!" she shouted, the tears definitely in her eyes now. "The Shack is both my work and my home, and he stole it! You can't do it!"

The bouncer came and grabbed her again, and she thrashed, fighting and crying. The crowd was definitely a little more suspicious of Gideon now, she could see it in their eyes.

Gideon said, "She's been caught committin' crimes with Stan how much now? Chamomile is not to be trusted, y'all. Now get off my property, old man." He stuck a Gideon pin on Stan's jacket, and the old man glared at him.

"I'll show you who's the old ma—" His hearing aid acted up. "Ow! Ah! My hearing aid! Ah!"

"Thanks for visiting Gideonland, friends!" Gideon called as they were carried away. Camo hung limply in the bouncer's arms, the fight having left her and the tears just streaming down her face. "Don't come back. I don't care for y'all."

They glumly stood by the fence, Camo falling back into her previous mindset. "Don't worry, guys, we'll get the Shack back somehow," Dipper said.

"We better," Wendy said, coming to lean against the fence.

"Wendy!"

"If I can't work at the Shack, my dad's gonna force me to work upstate at my cousin's logging camp."

Dipper was horrified. "What? You're leaving town? But we need you here!"

"Yeah, especially Dipper," Soos chuckled, "because of his giant crush on . . . you . . . calyptus trees!" He chuckled nervously. "The kid loves eucalyptus trees. Ha ha. Saved it!"

There was a rustle of a bush. "Aw, man, guys, don't look now."

"Take me back, Wendy!" Robbie said, carrying a boom box over his head. "My arms are too skinny to keep holding this boom box forever!"

Camo angrily threw a rock at his leg. "Then get some muscles, wimp." He cried out and nearly dropped the boom box on his head, which made her snort derisively.

Wendy, putting on her bike helmet, said, "I was never here," and biked away. Robbie chased after her, yelling something about texts. The group just forlornly stared at the ground.

They were at Soos's grandma's house. The twins were worried about where they'd be staying, and Stan was lying to their parents on the phone. Camo's motel was fine, she supposed, but especially without the Shack, they'd run out of money for food pretty quickly, and all because that skunk Gideon decided to steal their home. Her fists clenched, and she wasn't sure if she should be happy she was feeling a little more like herself.

"Grunkle Stan, can we order pizza?" Mabel called. He's gonna say no.

"We have food at home," was his relatively sullen response.

Camo interjected, "Uh, no, we don't." She reached in her wallet and pulled out twenty bucks, giving it to Stan. "Here." He looked at her with surprise written all over his face, and with a weak smile she said, "Well, I'll be eating it, too. Though we should probably go pick it up instead of having them come to us. It's cheaper, right?"

So Stan went and got the pizza, and as they were munching on it, Stan asked her, "Hey, Camo, where're your folks at?"

She froze and looked at the twins. Dipper subtly nodded, and she sighed. "Yeah, about that . . . you know how I told you that they would be happy for me to live at the Shack, since I was living at the motel?" The old man nodded. "Well, that was a lie." Stan almost did a spit take. "I've been living alone for the entirety of the summer and was only eating because of my wage at the Shack." This time he actually did do a spit take, right in Dipper's face, obviously.

"Geez, kid, why didn't ya tell me?" he asked, shocked.

"I . . . I didn't want to bother you. I had it all under control," she said, feeling her cheeks heat up slightly. "But . . . yeah. They won't be of much use."

"Good to know."

"Kids, we gotta talk," Stan said uncomfortably. They had been sitting on the floor and playing with RC cars, only without batteries and they were both red. The twins and Soos got up, though Camo stayed on the floor, since she figured she knew where this was going. "Look, I've been thinking, and I can't take care of you anymore. I don't have a house, or . . . or a job. The plan is you're going home. Your bus leaves tomorrow. Here are your tickets."

Even though she knew it was coming, it still stung. She looked away.

"But, Grunkle Stan, you can't give up," Dipper said, the strain in his voice obvious.

"Yeah, dude. Look at these faces! Be cuter, Mabel! Your summer depends on it!"

"Look, I lost, okay? We lost. The best thing is for you to be with your parents. I'm sorry, kids. Gideon won. Summer's over." Footsteps and the sound of him leaving.

Something inside Camo sparked. Something clicked back into place, something that had broken when they lost the Shack. Something definitely Camo ignited within her, and she stood up, a determined look on her face. Sitting around and moping wasn't her, and it wouldn't do anything anyway. She turned to look at the twins, and she finally, finally felt like herself again.

"You know what? No. You two are not going home. Not if I can help it." The twins looked back at her, and the three of them locked eyes. They knew what they had to do.

"If Stan won't get our home back from Gideon, then we'll have to do it ourselves!" Dipper said determinedly.

Mabel added, "Gideon may have the upper hand, but we have one thing he doesn't."

All of them said something different. Mabel said "A grappling hook!", Dipper said "The Journal!", and Camo said "Incentive!" They both looked at her oddly, and she shrugged. It was true.

The three of them were spying in the bushes. She couldn't imagine how Gideon must've been viewing them, like some kind of pest. "All right," Dipper said. "The bus to take the two of us out of Gravity Falls comes at sundown. If we wanna stay in town, we've gotta get past those guards, make it through the fence, and get Gideon to hand over that deed."

"Leave that to Mabel!" Mabel declared, shooting her grappling hook. It hit a tree and ricocheted back to hit Dipper in the head.

"Now will you admit the grappling hook is useless?!"

"Nope!"

Camo hummed softly. "Well, if we could distract the guards well enough, we could probably take the latter two obstacles pretty easily. I mean, Gideon's a ten-year-old kid. How hard can it be to intimidate him?" Well, maybe he did use superpowers and summoned a dream demon to steal from Stan's brain, but that was in the past.

"Okay. What can we use to distract the guards? Let's see. Barf fairy?"

"Yeah!" Mabel said excitedly.

"Nope. Butternut squash with a human face and emotions?"

Camo thought about it. "Could be pretty distracting . . ."

"Nope."

Mabel leaned over her brother's shoulder to look at the Journal. "Whoa, what's this?"

"I've stared at this page for hours. It seems like a blueprint to build some kind of strange futuristic super weapon . . ." Camo peered over his other shoulder. Huh. His Journal was Journal 3, so maybe it required the first 2? But where would they find the other ones?

"Boring! To defeat those guards, we need some kind of army."

"But . . . we don't need to defeat them. We just need to distract them. Hmm . . ." She thought for a moment. "Wait! Maybe it doesn't have to be supernatural. Mabel's super good at distracting people! Maybe she could light a tree on fire or something . . ."

"Ooh!"

". . . and then Dipper and I could sneak over the fence to get to Gideon!"

Dipper pondered it, then nodded. "Yeah, that could work."

"And it wouldn't reveal that you know about the supernatural and/or have one of the Journals."

"One of?"

She gave him a look. "Dude. Your Journal has the number three on it, and you still didn't think that it might be, I don't know, part of a series of Journals or whatever?" He wore a decently chagrined look, which she supposed was enough. "Never mind, we can talk about it later." She pulled her lighter out of her pocket—yes, she kept a lighter in her pocket, don't ask her why (it was in case she got mad enough at someone and decided she needed to light them on fire)—and handed it to Mabel. "I know Stan's taught you arson, so go light something on fire!"

Mabel cheered, grabbed the lighter, and ran off. The two of them watched her leave. "Hopefully, she won't burn down the entire forest," Dipper commented.

"Ah, it'll be fine. Come on, we gotta be ready."

At some point, the orange light of fire appeared in the distance, close enough to the fence that the guards ran to stop it. Thankfully, Mabel hadn't just burned some random tree, she'd burned a random tree close to important Gideonland stuff. Anyway, when the guards raced off, the two of them scaled the fence. However, she hadn't added the fact that there was barbed wire at the top of the fence to her plan.

"Uh, Houston, we got a problem," she told Dipper, concern pinching her brows together.

Dipper looked like he was going to answer, but then the guards came back, holding Mabel between them. Gideon came by, too, and Camo pouted. Well, that wasn't a great heroic mission. "I have to admit, kids, I am impressed by your creativity," the gremlin said with his cocky little smile. "I can't say I appreciate you lightin' my property on fire, but oh well. The guards tried to reach them (they were bunched up at the top near the barbed wire, so it was hard for them to reach them) and while trying to evade them, the Journal fell out of Dipper's jacket.

"Oh no!" he yelled, and he tried to grab it, but it was too late.

Gideon gasped. "No! Could it be? Is it?" He picked up the Journal, as he was on their side of the gate, and laughed. "Of course! It all makes sense! The one place I'd never think to look. You had it the whole time! And to think I actually considered you a threat!"

"No! Give it back!" Dipper shouted, making a grab for the book but having to stop halfway so as not to fall off the fence.

"Every victory you had was because of your precious book!"

"Give it back, or I'll . . ."

Gideon went for the taunt. "Or you'll what, boy? You'll what? Huh? Huh? No muscles, no brains. Face it. You're nothing without this!" He pointed to the book. "Bye bye for—"

Camo cut him off by suddenly jumping from her asylum of the fence and landing on top of him. The kid screamed when she landed, knocking him over and landing so her leg was on top of his chest. However, this way, the guards could get to her, and she was lifted into the air. She tried the trick she'd used on the stage, but it didn't work this time, so she was left struggling and midair. Dipper slipped and fell on his back, too, so the guards took away the three of them and dropped them in the woods.

"Well, that's it," Dipper said sullenly. "Guess the bus should be here soon."

"What?" Mabel asked, shocked by her brother's reaction. "Dipper, don't give up! You always have a plan!"

He angrily looked up from the drawings he was doing in the dirt. "No, the Journal always has the plan! Think about it, guys. Gideon was right. The only courageous or cool things I've ever done have been because of that Journal. Without it, I can't help you or Stan or anyone."

"There's gotta be something we can do."

Camo stood up and (gently) kicked Dipper on the back. He cried out and rubbed the spot. "Alright, quit moping. Yeah, you always had the Journal, but you know what? That Journal didn't tell you how to beat things." She kneeled down so she was eye to eye with him and put her hand on his shoulder. "It's information, yeah? Not a plan. Information is worthless if you don't know how to use it. Scuff, if you were to give an illiterate man all the secrets of the universe in a book, it wouldn't matter, since he wouldn't know how to access it."

"Whoa, sudden words of wisdom."

She stood up and looked down at him, going through all the emotional support movements. "All the Journal did was tell you what the Author knew, but the Author never had to fight a massive Gnome monster. The Author didn't crack the case of the wax figures. The Author never had to fight that little monster Gideon! The Author never did those things, so he (or she) never would've had a plan to deal with it. You figured that out."

He looked away. "I never would've been able to do it without the Journal."

She huffed. "Think of it this way. The Journal, the Author, gave you the pieces to the puzzle. Not solved, just the various little pieces that you didn't know about. You had to put forth the effort to configure them the way you wanted." She held out her hand to help him up. "The Journal didn't give you the plan. It gave you the tools to make the plan. And as far as I'm concerned, you guys aren't gone until you leave on that bus. Are you with me?"

Mabel was watching the pep talk with an excited look on her face, and Dipper looked up at her. The smallest smile appeared on his face. "Yeah, you're right. I am with you. Let's beat that kid!"

"Yeah!" That was Mabel.

"But . . . how are we going to do it?" Dipper asked. "Yeah, I might not have the Journal, but Gideon's got way more resources than we do."

"I don't know," Camo admitted. "But if you don't choose to try, the fight's over before it's even begun."

All day, she tried to figure out how to beat the skunk. Every time, she had to come up with a new plan, and every time, they failed. Before she knew it, the twins had their stuff packed and were leaving Gravity Falls. She stood off to the side, horrified. It couldn't be over yet! She hadn't stopped chaos, or whatever!

She stood with Stan, Wendy, Candy, Grenda, and Jason as the bus left, and they all looked miserable. Her pained expression shifted into fury. Gideon couldn't get away with it! He couldn't! She'd told it to Dipper: if you don't choose to try, the fight's over before it's even begun. She couldn't not follow her own words of wisdom and future yearbook quote!

She stalked off to go figure it out. But, as she had no clue what to do, she ended up going to Soos's grandma's house with Stan. "Well, Camo, this is it. Rock bottom," Stan said. "No friends except you, no family, stuck watching infomercials for whatever that is."

The TV was saying, "Are you sick of piles of owls constantly blocking your driveway? Well, then you've gotta get Owl Trowel!"

"How did you do it, kid?" Stan asked, picking up the pin, and she realized he wasn't talking to her and he was talking to the pin. "Why are you always one step ahead? Maybe he really is psychic after . . ." There was a high-pitched ringing. "Ah! My hearing aid! What keeps causing that?"

She shrugged, then they both locked eyes on the pin. A grin spread across both of their faces in unison. "Wait a minute. That's it! That's Gideon's weakness!" Stan said.

"Life isn't over after all!" Camo cheered.

Soos's grandma came over and asked, "Would Mr. Pines like a . . ." Apparently, Stan was in such a good mood that he grabbed the old lady by the cheeks and kissed her, full on, before running to the door. Camo, however, did take a sip of one of the cups of coffee. Bleah. That was why she stuck to hot chocolate. Anyway, she followed her old boss out the door and to justice!

She didn't even bat an eye when Stan climbed into the driver's seat, she was that focused. "Where do we go, where do we go . . ." she was muttering under her breath. Then she saw the massive robot falling out of the sky and the even bigger explosion of blue light, and she figured that was where they'd find the gremlin. "There! Towards the robot!"

Stan pushed pedal to the medal (it was hard to believe that he wasn't already going max speed before) and she was pushed back in her seat. She rolled down her window and shouted to everyone they passed, "Go to the source of the explosion!", which usually wasn't the best idea, but in this case, it was.

They, the cops, and the townspeople all rolled up at right about the same time. There was a massive Gideon robot in pieces and smoking, but the twins were there, mostly unharmed. She ran forward and hugged her friends tightly, glad that they were okay.

Deputy Durland ran for Gideon. "Gideon! Oh, good heavens! What on earth happened here?"

"It was the Pines twins," Gideon bullsh*tted. "They tried to attack me and blew up my statue with dynamite!" The little jerk hugged a sympathetic-looking Sherriff Blubs. "Arrest 'em!"

"What?" both twins said at once. "Officers, he's lying!"

"Sorry, kids, but we trust Gideon, and nothing short of a miracle could ever change our . . ."

Camo dragged on Stan, and the two of them came running and screaming into the area. "Wait! Wait! Stop everything! We've got something to say!" the old man cried out, and she grinned triumphantly at the twins.

"Not this guy again."

"Just you wait, officer!" Camo said, and they began alternating the explanation between them.

"You guys all think Gideon is so perfect and honest. 'Oh, I could never tell a lie! I'm Gideon!'"

Sherriff Blubs glared at the two of them. "He's more honest than—"

"Eh eh," Camo said, wagging a figure at them. "No interrupting. Anyway, look!" Stan kicked open the panel, revealing all the functional screens hidden inside the robot. She was really glad those were actually in there and they were right—it would've been really embarrassing had they been wrong. Various townspeople started to look and murmur amongst themselves, realizing where Gideon got his psychic powers from.

"That's right!" Stan said. "These pins and hidden cameras!"

"Stan's hearing aid picked up the feedback all day."

"Who's the fraud now?" Stan crushed the little pin in his hand, and everyone threw them down and broke them, exposing the techy stuff inside.

The gremlin chuckled nervously, and the cops had to arrest him with the tiny handcuffs. "Li'l Gideon, you are under arrest for conspiracy, fraud, and breaking our hearts. Durland, the tiny handcuffs." Stan shook the kid down, and Camo noticed the second Journal underneath the deed, and she narrowed her eyes as Stan picked both of them up.

The last thing she saw of him was his screaming face in the back of the cop car, and it was the most satisfying thing she'd ever seen.

"There you have it," Shandra Jimenez, the reporter, said to the camera. "Local heroes Stanford Pines and Camo . . . uh, Camo HP have just exposed Li'l Gideon as a fraud. Anything you have to say to the town, you two?"

Stan, who was giving Dipper an affectionate noogie, declared, "The Mystery Shack is back, baby!"

"Yeah, what he said," Camo agreed.

Life returned to normal. They went back home, and everything was fine. They had more customers than normal, but they were back at the Shack. They'd won again. So maybe after Gideon took the Shack . . . the story hadn't ended yet. They just beat him, so they must've won, just like they always did.

Plus, more conflict was going to come up because, well, she lived with the Pines in Gravity Falls. But she was okay with that. As long as she had her friends by her side, she could take on the apocalypse without batting an eye.

Anyway, she was reading on the floor in the attic as the twins got their stuff back in place. Mabel was meowing, and Dipper was screwing with his suitcase, and Stan opened the door. She looked up from her book and waved with an expression that said, Hi. Please go away. But he didn't. "Uh, you kiddos settling back in okay?" Stan asked, and she thought for a second, then nodded.

"Yep!" Mabel declared. "All of my favorite moldy spots on the ceiling are still there! Even you, Daryl!" Everyone looked up in disgust.

"Hey, Grunkle Stan, Camo, Mabel, and I have been talking, and I think there's something we should finally tell you. This is a Journal I found in the woods. It talks about all the crazy stuff that goes on in Gravity Falls. Gideon nearly destroyed the whole town trying to find it. I don't know what it means, or who wrote it, but after all we've been through, maybe you should finally know about it."

As Stan flipped through the pages, Camo watched his face carefully. There was a sort of . . . hunger to his eyes, like he wanted it desperately. But, well, if he knew the Author, then either he was a mega fan or he wanted the Journal so that the Author could have it back.

She realized that Stan had already known about the Journal for a while now, and that Dipper had it. Back with the incident with the truth teeth, she'd mentioned the Journal and he'd automatically known what she was talking about. Huh.

"I'm glad you showed me this, Dipper," Stan said, closing the book with a solemn expression. Then he burst into laughter. "Now I know where you've been getting it all from! Spookums and monsters. This kooky book has been filling your head with crazy conspiracies!"

"But it's all real!" Dipper insisted.

Stan laughed again, and Camo could tell it was a facade only because she knew him well. "You gotta quit readin' this fantasy nonsense for your own good. Although some of these would make great attractions!" No, they wouldn't, I found that out when you went on Cash Wheel. "Can't come up with this stuff! Mind if I borrow this?"

"Wait! No! Grunkle Stan!" Dipper shrieked as Stan left with his precious Journal. "Stan, I need it!"

His sister talked some sense into him, though. "Dipper, you don't need that book!" Mabel told her twin. "Don't you see? On your own you defeated a giant robot with nothing but your bare hands! You're a hero whether you've got that Journal or not!"

"Whoa. Thanks, Mabel. I still want it back though."

"Wait a second, did my pep talk in the woods not mean anything?!" Camo complained.

Mabel ignored her. "I'm sure you'll get it back," she said. "What would a boring old man like Stan want with that book anyway?"

Just then, Soos sprayed them with water guns from a cardboard box, and Camo shrieked at being doused in water and ran after the handyman, though she was laughing just like everyone else. What would Stan want with the Journal? She must've imagined it.

And thus ends season one! Since we're halfway through, I figure now is as good a time as any to make some announcements.

First of all, thank you to everyone posting those awesome reviews. It's kind of ridiculous how happy I get when I read them (people actually like my stuff!) I never would've gotten this far without them, and all you have to do is look at my other fics to see that.

Second of all, I'm interested in this outcome myself. I'm not giving up on Camo at this point, and I plan to see this through to the end of the series. So, buckle in and we'll get this ball rolling!