Camo was overseeing Stan overseeing the workers fixing the Shack after the zombie apocalypse. There were massive cracks in the ground, soda was spilled on the ground, the Shack itself was even more busted than it used to be, and there was a disco ball impaled in the ground. Basically, it was pretty clear it was a zombie attack, but . . .
"Mr. Pines, what exactly caused all this damage?" That was the foreman, manager, whatever. She wasn't sure exactly what he was called. "I need to write a report."
"Uh, a big woodpecker," Stan told him, the gift shop sign collapsing behind him. He pulled out a wad of money. "Keep the change." He stuck it in the man's vest pocket. "I'm winking under my eyepatch."
The man said, "Works for me," and walked away.
Camo took a bite out of her granola bar. Eating more was a must, since pulling all-nighters busting zombies wasn't great for your energy levels, not to mention she didn't get great sleep the night before, either. So, to make sure she had the energy for the mystery hunt Dipper had planned later that day.
Stan lifted his eyepatch. "Hey Camo, where'd those kids run off to?"
She froze. Later that day . . . scuff! It already was later that day! They'd left for the hunt without her! "SorryStanbyeIgottago!" she said very rapidly before running off into the woods in the general direction that Dipper had told her they were going.
It was a good thing she'd eaten that granola bar. She never would've had the energy to do all this running if she hadn't.
Eventually, after like ten minutes of running around and screaming at the top of her lungs (which was a good deal louder than most people could manage), she located them and was finally able to rest.
Wow, she was in significantly better shape than she was at the start of the summer. Granted, that was a low bar, but . . . wow. She wasn't the type of person to exercise or get any workout whatsoever, and now . . . well, she was still a really great shot with that baseball. She should've become a baseball star.
Dipper banged his pen against his lantern to get their attention, and he said, "Thank you all for coming." Mabel, Soos, and Camo were the only ones there.
"Hey, when there's a mystery, you can count on your sister . . . ee," Mabel said.
Soos chuckled. "That's an amazing rhyme. 'When you want some good . . . When, when you need a Soos . . . you've . . . oh, gosh. I don't know."
"'When something needs repair, you can bet Soos is there'?" Camo suggested.
"Yeah, that!"
Dipper brought them back to the topic at hand. "We're here to solve the number one mystery in Gravity Falls," he said, his eyes wide. He pulled out the Journal. "Who wrote this Journal? Thirty years ago the Author vanished without a trace, but according to this new clue, we may have found his secret hiding place." He shined the black light on the page with the tree, showing the drawing of the staircase surrounding it. "We find that Author, we learn the answers to everything."
He turned off the light and stepped back next to them to examine the tree. "We just need to figure out a way to get down there . . ."
"Chop it down, dudes," a familiar voice called. Wendy showed up on her bike.
"Wendy!" Mabel said.
"Oh, hey. You came," Dipper said, waving and looking significantly more excited than his twin.
Wendy responded by taking off her helmet. "Dude, I'm so stoked about this. I've been wanting to go adventuring with you guys. Sure beats picking up after my dad at home." She wore an expression that told Camo she was having a flashback. "Thanks for the invite, man."
"Hey, you should've said something earlier," Camo called out from where she was sitting on the ground and pulling apart dead leaves. "These guys are desperate for companionship. Why else would they spend time with me, of all people?"
Dipper was rambling something with the biggest grin on his face, and it was going nowhere. Mabel was watching him with a skeptical look. "Uh-oh," she said, poking her brother. "Inviting Wendy on our mission? Me thinks there's romance afoot." She was talking in a lower voice, but Camo was close enough to hear. However, she walked out of range to investigate the tree.
Hmm. There was a panel that opened up, revealing the fact that the tree was artificial, which made sense. A regular tree wouldn't be permanent enough to make a base out of. When she banged on it with her hand, it echoed.
"Hey, is it just me or does that branch kind of look like a lever?" Wendy asked, pointing up. Indeed, one of the branches had a metal bit at the tip that made it look suspicious.
"Yeah," Dipper said. "But how do we get up there?"
Camo threw a rock at it (baseball throwing skills, remember?) but it still missed and almost hit her on the head as it came back down. She shrieked and hastily got out of the way, watching it plummet in front of her. She shrugged. It was worth a shot.
Wendy, meanwhile, took off her belt and started to scale the tree with it like Mulan. She pulled out her axe and slapped the lever with it, causing it to go all the way up. "Boosh," she said, and everyone gasped. Camo clapped briefly. "Oh, yeah." She put her axe back in her belt. "My dad used to make me compete in these lumberjack games when I was a kid. Guess I kind of ruled at it."
The tree started to shake, the birds roosting in it cawing and flying away. Wendy fell off the tree and into a bush, which was close enough to the tree that it started descending downward. Camo, who had sat down again, scrambled backward to avoid falling in herself. She peered over as it went all the way down and steps came out of the wall and a door opened.
But where does the excess dirt go? she wondered. Or was that all removed upon creation of the base?
"All right, guys. This is it," Dipper said, looking down. "Remember, whatever happens down there, we tell no one." Except maybe Stan, if they did figure out who the Author was and she wanted to boast. Still, she nodded dutifully as they went down the line, Mabel giving him a thumbs-up, Soos turning his hat backwards, and Wendy miming locking her mouth shut. "Now, who wants to go first?"
"Me! ME!" Camo shouted, grabbing the lantern from his hand and practically bounding down the steps. She'd been turning her gears on this for a while, and it felt like she had most of the puzzle pieces bouncing around in her head. If she got a couple more, maybe she'd be able to figure it out. She led the way down into the bunker, looking significantly more excited than everyone else.
They came into the room, and everyone gasped. It was a fallout shelter (a sign told her so), and there was a closet labeled WEAPONS, a gas mask hanging from a peg on the wall, a bucket of caterpillars which Mabel put her face into, and a series of boxes with food inside them. She was particularly interested in those, as they reached all the way to 2070. She stopped at the 2020 box and grinned to herself a little. Yeah, that probably wasn't overkill right there.
"It's like he was preparing for a disaster," Dipper said, and she nodded. "But what kind of disaster would need supplies for over sixty years?"
"A bad one" was Camo's expert opinion.
Soos opened the WEAPONS closet thing and gasped. Camo's eyes grew to the size of plates as she saw the sharp knives and other various weapons. She was still salty about not being able to keep the sword from pioneer day. This was on a whole other level. However, Soos was more interested in the "shmez" dispenser. She frowned. Maybe it was a Gravity Falls offshoot of Pez?
"Wait, guys," Dipper said, picking up something on the floor. An open can of beans. "I think this can was opened recently."
"The Author might still be alive, down here."
Wendy broke in, "Wait a minute." She was looking at something behind Mabel (who still had caterpillars crawling on her face). Camo followed her line of sight to a map of Gravity Falls, waving in a breeze that wasn't supposed to be down there. The teen strode over there and pulled it off the wall, revealing a way in to . . . somewhere.
Camo giggled excitedly. Answers! Possible answers!
"I think I know where he might have gone," Wendy told the rest of them, who were just gaping into the tunnel. They crawled through and into a strange room with symbols on the ground. Camo frowned and squatted to look at one of them. "Oh man. Was this place built in the past or the future?"
"Yeah. This room is way creepy," Soos agreed.
"Not as creepy as Dipper's Internet history. Hey-oh!" That was Mabel, who had finally gotten rid of the caterpillars on her face. She shoved her brother, and he stumbled around, his foot falling on one of the tiles. The trapdoor thing swung closed dramatically, and Camo froze, looking at it over her shoulder and then back down at the symbols.
Ah, great. This was just like every adventure movie ever.
The symbols lit up, a siren started blaring, and some of the tiles began to rise up out of the floor. Everyone was screaming, confused. "Alright, Dipper, what tiles do we need to press?" Camo asked calmly, standing mostly still and managing to avoid the rising blocks. The structural design of this room was incredible.
"WHAT?!" the kid yelped, then he pulled out his Journal and frantically read through it, shining his black light and whatever. However, Camo kind of made him take longer, because she didn't spot one of the blocks, and it shoved her in the back and into him, causing him to stumble and lose his place. Finally, he found it, and he ordered them, "Find these five symbols. Quick. Everybody step on one."
Soos found the first one and pressed it in. Wendy punched one of them on the floor. Mabel made a big jump and slammed her hands onto it. Camo spotted one above her and pressed it by jumping on a rising pillar and then again at the tile. Dipper found the final one and pressed it just before it got covered up by another moving block.
They all waited, and then the sound of something spinning. A door opened, and they rushed towards it frantically, as the blocks still hadn't stopped. Honestly, the design—how would they all fit together? It looked like chaos, but she bet the Author was smart enough that they would've all slotted together perfectly, crushing anybody who didn't know the code.
There was a moment of laughing and cheering at not being smushed to death. "Yes! Yes!" Wendy yelled, slapping her knee. "That was . . . that was nuts. You ruled back there, man." She punched Dipper in the shoulder playfully, and he laughed embarrassedly. "Get a load of this crazy surveillance room."
"Check it out, dudes," Soos said, grabbing something. He spun around to stick two beakers in front of his eyes so he made a silly face.
Wendy finger-gunned him. "Soos. Soos. That is hilarious."
Mabel mentioned Dipper's vest, but Camo was gaping over the control panel along the wall. It was so intricate! She tried to read labels and stuff, hardly understanding most of them. She always enjoyed doing that—reading science-y things and testing her knowledge on it by seeing what she could actually read. It made her feel smart.
"Dude. Dipper, you gotta check out this weird metal closet." That was Wendy. She stepped into the closet, which was really dark. "I am a robot," she said in a robotic voice. "I have a metal closet."
"Coming!" the preteen grinned, and then turned to his sister. She barely heard him say, "This never happened."
Mabel wore an expression that told Camo that something bad was going to happen. She rushed over to Dipper and said, "Brother, whatever happens, I just want you to know something. This is for your own good."
"What? Ah!" She shoved him into the closet with Wendy and shut the door. She heard him banging on the door, though she had to admit, she was more focused on the spinning chair. Soos had been spinning on it, and she couldn't resist. Now she was showing him how much better at chair-spinning she was.
She spun for a little while, but then she got bored and wandered around the room. "Mabel," she asked, "what's going on with Dipper and stuff?"
"Oh, I trapped them in the closet so that he could tell Wendy about his crush on her," she replied cheerfully.
"Oh."
Camo wandered around a good deal longer, then she frowned at a sign on the wall. Decontamination . . . oh, scuff. That wasn't a closet, was it? Through there would probably be more intense clues, but . . . was it bad she wanted to get in without telling Mabel about it?
She sneakily threw something across the floor and said, "What was that?!" as realistically as possible. Sure enough, the preteen went to go check it out, and Camo tucked a little bit of money into Soos's hand, feeling very much like Stan. "Keep the change. This never happened." The handyman nodded (maybe he recognized her Stan-liness and that she was basically one and the same with his boss at this point) and she snuck into the decontamination chamber before Mabel could come back.
This felt wrong, but if Stan had taught her one thing, it was that morality was relative.
She pulled on the string and got sprayed in some foul smelling stuff and dried off before the door opened. It opened into a strange room with various tubes that reminded her of Several Times (she still wasn't spelling that correctly, it didn't deserve to be spelled correctly) and the walls were all bulbous instead of smooth stone. The lights flickered slightly, and the whole place was cast in an eerie blue-green glow.
She walked over to the wall and rubbed it with her finger in an attempt to figure out what it was, and she was surprised to find it dirt. Cold, hard clumps of rocky dirt. Huh. Couldn't say she'd been expecting that. What next grabbed her attention was one emphasized tube with broken glass. The control panel below it was warped and broken, as well. There was a whole bunch of holes in the walls, too.
No evidence as to who the Author might be or where they might be, unfortunately. Those pieces were floating around in her head. She could feel just how close she was—one single more clue might just push her over the brink. However, she did find another type of clue. Footprints. Only a couple really stood out, but she could make out Dipper's small feet and Wendy's significantly larger ones. The prints were disturbed, too, and she guessed they'd been running from something.
Only one thing to do. Camo set out after the path they marked.
It went down a tunnel with a lot of water at the bottom. She wrinkled her nose at it and tried to peer into the darkness to see if they were back there, since she was wearing dress shoes (why had she decided to wear dress shoes on an adventure? she didn't understand herself) and didn't especially want to get them wet. She didn't see them, though, and she spotted another tunnel a ways off. Through the water. She sighed, but it was a sacrifice she had to make.
It led to another entryway, this one blocked by a tarp. She peered past it and saw Dipper and Wendy . . . with some other dude. She frowned and stepped forward as sneakily as one can expect with soggy dress shoes. She went squeak squeak squeak and she thought, Well, I'm never wearing dress shoes ever again.
"Camo?" both of them asked, confused. The weirdo man looked towards her, too—his eyes were slits. She whitened slightly at the sight of him.
"Uh, yeah," she said, hoping her voice didn't sound as shaky as she thought it did. "We should, uh, probably get going, guys . . ."
Dipper frowned. "What do you mean? We're meeting . . . the . . ." Wendy had picked up a can of beans and showed it to him, and he wore the same expression that she expected was on her own face. "Yeah, you're right. C-can I have my Journal back?"
The thing had the Journal?! Was Dipper an idiot?!
Oh, wait, yes, yes he was.
The thing's head turned backwards with a horrible squelching noise and said in a voice too deep, "You're not going anywhere." Oh, scuff, that thing was terrifying. How didn't they realize that it was a monster?! Really! It climbed up the wall with the Journal, the body moving but the neck stretching to keep the head motionless. Once it was on the ceiling, the head retracted and four spider legs shot out of it. It yelled, its eyes going pure white and an animalistic roar coming from its mouth.
Dipper and Wendy screamed. Camo had already done that.
Suddenly, the thing turned into an amorphous creature, white and pink with weird teeth and stuff. Its eyes were completely pink, no irises or pupils or whites to the eye. Just pink. "How do you like my true form?" it asked, retaining that deep voice. "Go on, admit it, you like it."
"Eh. If we're rating creepiness, ten out of ten, for sure," Camo said, but she went ignored, as usual.
"You!" Dipper yelled angrily, pointing up at it. "What did you do to the real Author?"
The shapeshifter replied, "You'll likely never find him. That six-fingered nerd hasn't been himself in thirty years. But I do thank you for bringing me his Journal. He used to write it while I was in my cage. So many wonderful forms to take." It switched to various creatures—a gremloblin, a gnome, a tree monster that reminded her vividly of Groot.
"We've got to get that Journal back," Dipper whispered to the others.
Wendy responded by picking up the bean can and saying, "Hey, body-snatcher. Snatch this." She threw it at the shapeshifter, who transformed into something she'd never seen before and barely retained grip of the Journal. It lashed out with its tongue and Wendy stopped it by picking up a sheet of metal at the last second. When she let go, it smacked the beast in the face and it groaned, dropping the Journal. Dipper retrieved it and they ran.
"Run! Run! Run!"
Camo dashed as fast as she could muster, shooting ahead of the other two. She squeaked around a corner and picked up a rock, throwing it backwards, where it hit the shapeshifter, which was in the form of some centipede thing. It bought them a little time, though not much. She pushed off of the wall and shot off again. Honestly, the only reason she was keeping up in dress shoes was the sheer effort she was putting in.
They came to a crossroads. Wendy chose the left, Camo followed, and Dipper chucked the flashlight down the right path before continuing on with the two teens. They slammed right into Mabel and Soos, who was wearing a lab coat for some reason.
There was a moment while they all randomly said each other's names, even though they obviously all knew each other. Then Dipper backed up, pushing Wendy and Camo back too. "Wait. Careful. How do we know they're not the shapeshifter?"
Soos gasped. "Maybe I am. Mabel, inspect my shape." He pulled up his shirt, and Mabel poked him in the stomach. He chuckled. "Do that again." Mabel complied. He chuckled again. "Even better the second time."
Dipper stopped being so suspicious and deadpanned, "It's definitely them." Then he looked down at the ground and gasped in horror. She leaned to look at whatever he was so worried about. "Oh, my gosh, Wendy, you're bleeding."
"It's cool. It's cool. It's just blood, man. Don't freak out." Camo liked that mindset. Also, it was funny how she was the one comforting him even though she was the one all scuffed up. (Hey, her fake curse actually logically applied to something—)
"What happened?" Mabel asked.
"We got attacked by the shapeshifter," Wendy explained, unbuttoning her flannel and taking it off. "He broke out of his cage, pretended to be the Author, and wants Dipper's Journal." She ripped off a sleeve of her flannel with her mouth—either it was really low quality or she was really tough—and wrapped it around her leg where it was cut.
Dipper continued anxiously. "Imagine if he escapes into town. He could transform into anything."
"Or anyone," Camo reminded him, and he nodded frantically.
"We could never trust anyone ever again."
"What do we do?"
"Well. He took us into his home, tricked us, and tried to destroy us," Wendy said. She stood up dramatically. "I say we return the favor."
Camo grinned. She loved the idea of karmic revenge . . . and she felt so close to the answer for who the Author was. The shapeshifter would probably drop at least one more hint, and that might just tip her over the edge.
"Dipper, my boy," the shapeshifter said, attempting to creep up on them. It was back as his beans-man person. They had moved back into the room with the tubes. "Come out." It almost seemed to glitch out for a second. "I must speak with you!" It growled in frustration and exploded into some weird crab-spider-alien hybrid.
"Reveal yourself, you single-formed human weakling," it yelled in a significantly deeper voice. He slammed his head into the ground.
Camo could only see this because she was peeking around a corner away from everything they were planning, since she wasn't a major part of the plan.
"Oh, boy, Dipper," Mabel's voice could be heard. "That book sure is full of some great monsters." The twins walked out, holding the Journal, with Mabel broadcasting her voice so the shapeshifter would be sure to hear.
It turned its weirdo one-eyed head toward them and away from Camo. "There you are. Ooh! And a new one." It shrank into the form of Mabel. "Should I be one?" It shifted into Dipper. "Or the other. How about both?" It shifted into some creepy massive insect with a Dipper-monster-face on one end and a Mabel-monster-face on the other. She was glad it was facing the other way as it roared and chased them.
Then she was upset because they went and ran away. She raced after it in hard-soled boots (her ruined dress shoes wouldn't work, and she'd found these lying around) that were significantly better for running. She managed to tail them, just far enough that the shapeshifter didn't realize she was there, but close enough to stay behind them and watch.
This is dumb, she thought. I'm putting myself in danger for the sake of some entertainment.
Then again, she found she didn't especially care.
They went to where Wendy and Soos were trying to spin the water thing. She watched as the Dipper-monster-face shot out a tongue at the Journal in an attempt to grab it, and so she ran underneath and kicked one of its legs hard enough that it stumbled. (Her practice embarrassing herself in private had paid off!) Still, the Journal was pulled towards it, along with Wendy, who had been helping Dipper.
Wendy, however, was scuffing awesome, so she prepared to cut the monster's tongue with her axe. Camo was hanging onto one of the legs and punching the thing in its demented body when a massive blast of water sent all three of them moving. She shrieked and just clutched the leg tighter so as not to fall off as the flood started.
She found herself laying on the ground, gasping like a dying fish, in a random tunnel, with Wendy. She coughed and rolled over, choking on the water for a second before it sprayed out of her mouth. "You okay?" she panted.
"Yeah," Wendy answered, pulling red strands of wet hair out of her mouth. "Where is everybody?"
Just then, she heard Dipper's voice yell, "Wendy!" Camo raised an eyebrow at the older teen, and the two girls got up to go find him. They found him crying and confessing over Wendy's dead body. Camo looked between the two redheaded teens bewilderedly, and then she narrowed her eyes at the corpse.
"Uh . . . Dipper?" the real Wendy asked, holding the Journal in her hand. When Dipper turned around, she expected it to be a dramatic rom-com moment: sparkles in the eyes, dramatic tears, even more confessing. Instead, he automatically jumped to the truth. The shapeshifter jumped up with an insect-like growl and rushed to Wendy. Camo sidestepped to get out of the way.
It dissolved into a fight for the Journal between the Wendys. Pretty soon, there was no telling who was who, and Dipper had the axe, prepared to strike the shapeshifter . . . but he didn't know which one it was. "I . . . I don't know who's who!" Dipper shouted, visibly sweating. "Give me a sign!"
Wendy 1 smiled and winked.
Wendy 2 did her trademark 'lips are sealed' gesture.
Dipper slammed the axe into the gut of the shapeshifter. It bled a green liquid, not blood at all. It screamed and transformed into its true form, bleeding what looked like green paint. She watched as it snarled and spat around, shaking its head.
One of the tubes blinked ready, and the shapeshifter pulled the axe out of its chest. "Push him in!" Dipper yelled, and the three of them shoved the beast in the tube. (Whaaaaaat? Camo actually helping? Yes, now shut up.) The glass lowered before it could escape because of Mabel and Soos. She stared into its creepy pink eyes until it switched.
It took all kinds of forms to try to beat its way out, but none of them were working. She slammed a fist on the glass (lightly, she wasn't an idiot) and asked, "Alright. How long ago did you last see the Author?"
"Thirty years ago! Let me ooooooout!"
She smirked. "Nope." But, inside, she was thinking. Thirty years . . . thirty years . . . an idea surfaced, but it was too soon to really think about. The shapeshifter froze, and they went to leave, when they heard evil chuckling.
The shapeshifter put its ugly face up against the glass. "You think you're so clever, don't you, Dipper? But you have no idea what you're up against. You'll never find the Author. If you keep digging, you'll meet a fate worse than you can imagine. And this will be the last form you ever take!" It transformed into a screaming Dipper, at which point it froze. Dipper stared in traumatized horror, as did everyone else.
Soos chuckled. "Good luck sleeping tonight."
They left the bunker at that point, watching it rise back up. Everyone was worn out from it, but Camo needed to go home, so she pushed through her fatigue and ran back to the Shack, thankfully not getting lost in the woods.
Could it be?
She showed up, panting and completely out of breath, but she needed to know. She rushed past Stan with a quick "hi" and into her room, checking briefly to make sure Stan wasn't looking. She pulled her box of stuff out from under her bed and rifled through it, finally finding it. The calendar. Just like she remembered, it was 1982.
Thirty years ago.
She shoved it back into the box and back under the bed, and then she wandered back out into the gift shop, where Stan was restocking, trying to pretend she was nonchalant. "You okay, kid?" Stan asked, eyeing her wet clothes. "Just how rough was your adventure today?"
"Rough," she sighed, fingering a knot of wood on that counter. "Uh, Stan?"
"Yeah?"
"How long have you lived in Gravity Falls, again?"
He frowned, confused, but he answered anyway. "Thirty years. Why?"
Thirty years. Thirty years. Thirty years. "Oh, no reason. Bye!"
She ran back down to her room, where she proceeded to sit on her bed and hyperventilate. It made sense. It all (well, what fit in the puzzle) made sense. All the science-y trophies and papers and that Gravity Falls notebook. The calendar, the fact that thirty years just kept showing up. Stan had known the Author.
The Author had lived in the Mystery Shack before Stan.