"Order 617!" one of the Hermanos Brothers cashiers called out, placing a tray of tacos out on the front counter.

Dipper stood to the side against a wall inside the restaurant, arms crossed as he watched the long line of people waiting to order their food. In his hand, he held a receipt for the food he ordered for Mabel, which she had finally decided on beef enchiladas before he left.

The restaurant was pretty busy, as he had been waiting for his order for around fifteen minutes already. Not that he was necessarily bothered, considering he did have forty-five minutes to kill before the new bus to Gravity Falls arrived. Although at the same time, he was growing somewhat impatient with how long he's been having to wait at a restaurant he didn't particularly care for as much as Mabel did.

A man in a red flannel with a goatee walked up and grabbed his tray of tacos from the counter, staring at them ravenously. He then stuffed his face and began to gorge on his tacos as he walked toward his table while Dipper watched in disgust.

How do people eat this stuff?

He had never been too big on tacos. There was something about them that always made him feel uncomfortable when he thought about them. He wasn't sure what it was. He then shook his head, trying not to think too hard about it.

"Excuse me?"

Dipper turned to see an old man, presumably in his late sixties to early seventies.

The man held an empty cup in his hand. "Can you please move over just a bit? You're in the way of the soda fountains."

Dipper looked behind him and realized that he was, indeed, standing in front of the fountain machine.

"Oops, sorry, sir," Dipper said as he promptly stood out of the way.

"It's no problem. Thanks," the man said with a smile.

Dipper leaned against another spot on the wall, ensuring he wasn't in the way of anything. The man had begun to fill up his cup with soda and glanced back at Dipper for a split second. However, he suddenly turned back and stared at him again, this time more analytically. He scanned Dipper from head to toe and narrowed his eyes, pausing himself from filling up his cup.

"Hold on, have we met?" the man asked him.

Dipper looked back over at him and quickly scanned him back, but found nothing of recognition. He shook his head. "Uh, no, I don't think so."

"You look familiar. I feel like I've seen you before..." the man continued to press. Dipper realized the man wasn't saying so in a particularly friendly way either.

"I'm sorry, but you may be confusing me with someone else," Dipper replied in the kindest way he could think of.

"Wait a minute!" the man suddenly exclaimed, realizing something. His eyebrows tilted angrily. "You're the kid that stole and trashed my car last week!"

"Wait, what?" Dipper questioned, holding his hands up defensively. "Dude, I've never ever seen you before in my life! And this is my first time in this town!"

"You liar!" the man blurted. "I remember you! I was getting the mail when I saw you break into my car! You tried to drive off, but you crashed into a tree and then ran off into the woods! You think wearing a different hat would make it so I couldn't tell who you were?"

Dipper had no idea what the man was talking about. Not that he liked to assume, but based on the man's older age, he figured he had to have been getting confused for a similar-looking person. Looking around, he saw that the man's shouting was attracting the attention of the other customers and staff. Everywhere Dipper looked, there were people looking at him.

"Sir, this has to be a misunderstanding! I swear I've never stolen anyone's car!" Dipper tried to reassure.

"Hang on a second!" a woman holding a child's hand suddenly intervened. "I think that's the same boy who stole and crashed my car!"

"What the-?" Dipper said, left eye twitching. He was now being accused of committing a crime he didn't commit by two different people.

"It's because of you that I can't drive my child to school!" the woman shouted tearfully. "Now I have to send him to school on a bus! A BUS!"

"Wait, my car was stolen and crashed last night!" another man claimed, standing up from his booth seat. "That means it must've been you!"

"How does that possibly mean that?" Dipper shouted back.

"He crashed my car too!"

"Mine too!"

"Why are all of your cars so easy to get into?" Dipper asked, growing more confused than anything else now.

Suddenly, just about every adult in the restaurant broke out into a series of claims about their cars being stolen and crashed. Dipper was absolutely floored by the situation at hand and all of the accusations of the same crime.

"Somebody, call the police!" the first man who accused Dipper demanded. "He's a criminal!"

Everyone began to crowd together around Dipper and corner him, shouting various different things to the point where he couldn't even make out what any one person said anymore. However, he realized there was no way to convince anyone of his innocence anymore with such a big crowd of people against him and him not having anything to show for himself in defense.

Ding! Ding!

All of the sudden, everyone silenced as their attention was drawn to the cashier ringing the call bell a few times. The cashier stared at everyone silently, appearing as though he had no clue what the commotion was all about. He then placed a brown take-out bag on the counter.

"Um... Order 618?" he awkwardly called out.

Looking back down at his receipt, Dipper realized that was his order. He smiled awkwardly at the crowd before quickly squeezing through them and running up to the counter to grab his order.

"Thank you!" he told the cashier before bolting around the crowd and bursting straight through the main doors, leaving the restaurant.

As he stood outside, he looked around quickly. He knew he needed to get back to the bus station, but he couldn't go there just yet, in fear of the crowd chasing him there. He knew he needed to divert their attention.

Before he could think of a way to do so, the crowd burst through the door behind him.

"There he is! Get him!" a man shouted.

Dipper began to sprint away from the crowd, who immediately began to chase after him. As he ran as fast as he could, he tried to think of how he was gonna lose them.

Just ahead, he spotted a white brick wall with open woods directly behind it. Knowing this, he suddenly had an idea. He turned around him and quickly analyzed the current distance between him and the crowd. He then glanced back ahead and ran around the corner of the white brick wall.

The crowd chased him around the corner and continued straight down the sidewalk, completely unaware that Dipper had actually changed course into the woods.

After running for a brief moment, Dipper stopped in his tracks. The woods were dark and he didn't want to run too far into them and lose track of where he was. Out of breath, he dropped to his knees. He turned to look behind himself and realized that his plan had actually worked and no one had given further chase to him.

"Yes! I lost them!" he said excitedly as he panted. "Nice to know that cartoonish plans of action are still effective."

He got up from his knees, holding himself up against a nearby tree as his legs were still sore from all the running. He shut his eyes as he continued to pant, still trying to catch his breath.

However, he soon felt a warmth in front of him. He opened his eyes and looked up in front of him to see a tall man in a large trench coat and a hood, coated by the darkness of the woods. Dipper's eyes bulged at the sight of the man. Panicked, he screamed and fell backward on his rear, frantically backing up.

"Please! I didn't steal anyone's cars! I swear!" Dipper pleaded as he shielded himself on the ground with his arms.

"Calm down, man," the man said in a somewhat familiar voice. "Sheesh, and I thought you'd be a lot less of a wuss after all this time."

"Excuse me?" Dipper asked. He got up from the ground and brushed off the back of his pants with his hands. "Do I know you?"

"You mean us?" the man asked as he unbuttoned his trench coat.

Dipper raised an eyebrow in brief confusion. However, as "the man" took off his trench coat, he quickly realized that he wasn't a man, but two boys; one stacked on top of the other to form a single figure, both boys wearing yellow raincoats. Dipper's eyes bulged once he realized that these boys were two twelve-year-old versions of himself. They both wore his old pine tree hat, except instead of pine trees, they read numbers. The top Dipper had a '3' and the bottom Dipper had a '4'.

"'3'? '4'?" Dipper read aloud. "My old clones?!"

"That's right," 3 nodded as he jumped down from 4's shoulders. "We're clones 3 and 4. Although, we've been going by Tracey and Quattro respectively for a while now."

"Huh, nice to see how much taller I've gotten in four years," Dipper said with a smirk as he examined his height over the two. "But I haven't seen you guys since you ran off when I found you two in my closet after the party."

"You had a Pitt Cola can in your hand! You were gonna murder us like you murdered the others!" Quattro shouted, poking Dipper in the chest.

"What? No, I wasn't!" Dipper shook his head. "I was happy to see you two! If you guys stayed, we could've hung out and done some cool things together that summer! Like I don't know... watch TV or play video games or something. I don't know, hard to think of much when liquids kill you guys. But I definitely wasn't gonna hurt you!"

"Uh-huh. Sure," Quattro said sarcastically, rolling his eyes.

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "Oh yeah? Well, if I remember correctly, you two were going to try to lock me up in my own closet forever and take over my life so you guys could be with Wendy."

"What? No, we weren't!" Quattro said defensively.

"Uh-huh. Sure," Dipper mocked.

"Anyways..." Tracey intervened. "We're past the whole Wendy thing now. It's been four years. We've moved on. We've grown up."

"Really?" Dipper asked as he scanned them. "You both still look twelve to me."

"Hey, paper doesn't grow!" Tracey shot back. "Point is- we have other goals now. Rather than pining after Wendy forever, we decided that we wanted to do more worthwhile things with our lives."

"We're going to travel the world!" Quattro announced excitedly, with Tracey nodding in agreement.

"Really now?" Dipper asked skeptically. "What exactly are you doing only hours away from Gravity Falls after all this time then?"

"Well, when we first ran off into the woods, we ran pretty far from Gravity Falls," Tracey began. "We also acquired these abandoned raincoats along the way to help protect us from the rain. And this nice trench coat for fashion."

"We had spent about a year roaming the woods of Oregon before we decided we wanted to see new sights and new lands," Quattro continued. "But obviously, traveling the world isn't exactly an inexpensive task. However, because we also had your knowledge of the Shack's tools and supplies, we realized that the Shack had just what we needed to build something that could take us all over the world."

Tracey took out a rolled-up piece of paper from the inside of his raincoat. He unrolled it and showed it to Dipper. The paper showed a drawing of a hot air balloon in the sky, with Tracey and Quattro drawn standing inside the basket with smiley faces.

"You guys are gonna build a hot air balloon?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yep!" Tracey nodded happily. "And the Mystery Shack has the exact materials we need to construct it."

"Rip-stop polyester and nylon, Palembang canes, stainless steel, propane tanks, a burner, and Mabel's sewing machine," Quattro listed.

"So you guys are just trying to find your way back to the Mystery Shack?" Dipper asked.

"Yeah, we've tried to walk back in the direction we came from, but Quattro got the directions wrong and got us lost," Tracey said, eyeballing Quattro.

"Hey! You're the one who confused the word East with West!" Quattro defended.

"That was you, Quattro! That was all you! We are out here all because of you!" Tracey scolded, causing Quattro to lower his head and cross his arms guiltily.

Dipper glanced between the two uncomfortably. "Yikes. Sounds like you two have issues."

"Anyways, since then, we've tried different ways of heading back," Tracey continued to explain. "We followed roads, but they led us nowhere. We rode the bus, but we got banned from riding them for not paying. We stole cars, but we can't drive and kept crashing every one we stole. We-"

"Hold up..." Dipper cut off. "You guys are the ones who stole and crashed cars from the people of this town? And that's why I'm getting blamed for it?"

"Yeah... sorry about that," Quattro awkwardly apologized. "Two people coordinating to drive a single car isn't exactly the easiest thing."

"Yes, it is, Quattro! You're just terrible at it!" Tracey scolded again. "The brake is the left pedal, the gas is the right. What's not to get about that?!"

"Well, you're the one who can't steer properly!" Quattro argued.

As the two began to bicker, Dipper sighed in growing annoyance and began to walk away from the two. "Look, I have a bus that leaves in a few, so I'm gonna catch it before that crowd finds me again."

"Wait! Don't go!" Tracey pleaded.

"We need your help!" Quattro added.

"With what?" Dipper asked, stopping to turn back to them.

"Getting back to the Shack," Tracey said. "We can only assume you're going to take that bus to Gravity Falls, right?"

"Um, yeah...?"

"Well, you see, we're banned from buses individually in this area," Tracey explained. "But if we use our trench coat tactic to look like one person, we can get away with it unrecognized. We need you to help us get on that bus so we can get back to Gravity Falls."

"And how exactly am I going to be able to do that?" Dipper asked.

Tracey and Quattro looked at one another for a moment before looking back at Dipper, who was waiting for an answer.

"We have a plan," Quattro stated.

"And we think it's the only way that will get us on that bus successfully," Tracey added.

"Alright, let's hear it then," Dipper said.

Mabel paced around back and forth at the bus station. Waddles sat still on the ground, watching her pace around. The time was now 10:55 a.m., and the bus to Gravity Falls was estimated to arrive in about five minutes. There was no sign of Dipper since he went across the street to Hermanos Brothers, and she was getting anxious by the fact he wasn't back yet when their bus was almost there.

"C'mon, Dipper," she said to herself anxiously. "How long does it take to order enchiladas? And he says that I take too long…"

"Mabel!" Dipper's voice called out behind her.

"Dip-" she began enthusiastically, before pausing at what she saw in front of her. "-per…"

As Dipper walked up to her, she immediately noticed him wearing a giant trench coat, and Wendy's hat wrapped around the top of his head abnormally, as though he wore something else beneath it. The trench coat itself managed to cover him up from his feet all the way up to his chin. Even Waddles turned his head in confusion upon looking at him.

"Here I am," he told her. He then held out the Hermanos Brothers takeout bag to her. "Here's your food. Sorry for taking so long. That line was crazy long."

"Thanks," she said, casually accepting the bag from his hand, although she was too busy scanning his appearance to care about the food she just received. "But, uh, what's with the, uh…"

"Oh, this?" he said, noticing her looking at his trench coat. "Uh, someone just gave it to me. No cost! Can you believe that? Makes me look pretty mysterious, doesn't it?"

"Yeah... mysterious... like a drug dealer..."

"Ha-ha," he laughed sarcastically. "Very fUNny." His voice had cracked, and he covered up his mouth out of shock.

Mabel snorted, suppressing a sudden laugh. "Did your voice just crack?"

"Um, no," he replied, trying to cover himself up. It didn't help though, as she burst out laughing anyway.

"Wow! I haven't heard a voice crack like that from you since you were twelve!" Mabel said as she laughed.

Dipper's eyebrows lowered in annoyance as he watched Mabel continue to laugh at him. "Alright, alright. Enough. Are we good for the bus?"

Mabel wiped a tear from her eye as she calmed down. "Yeah, yeah, I got the transfers like you told me. Mabel's got us covered!"

"Great," Dipper said. "I guess we just wait for the bus to show up now."

"Yep," Mabel agreed as she took her phone out. "By the way, is your phone dead or something? I called you like five times while I was waiting for you to get back and you never answered."

Dipper stared at her blankly for a second. "I have a phone?"

Mabel stared back at him for a moment, somewhat put off by the question. "Um, yeah? The new one mom just got you?"

"Um... uh…" Dipper said as he patted his hands around his trench coat. His phone then randomly popped out from the inside of his collar. "Ah, there it is!" He grabbed it with his hand and examined it. "Gee, this is fancy."

"Feeling extra dorky today, aren't you?" Mabel teased, crossing her arms.

"Pfft, what makes you say that?" Dipper asked, examining the features of his phone. His eyes suddenly bulged. "Woah! This thing takes HD photos! And it has Tetris!"

Mabel raised an eyebrow, somewhat weirded out by his strange behavior. "Yeeaahh, well, I hope you don't mind, but I'll be sitting on the bus away from you this time around." She turned back around and walked away with Waddles following her, leaving Dipper on his own, staring at his phone.

"Is she gone?" a voice whispered beneath the trenchcoat.

"What?" Dipper asked, distracted by the phone.

"Get off the phone, Quattro!" the voice told him.

"Tracey, you have no idea how cool this thing is!" Quattro said as he continued to browse the phone's applications. "It's got so many features on it! Not bad, Dipper Prime."

"Put that thing away! You're going to blow our cover! She's already onto your stupid prepubescent voice!" Tracey scolded.

"Hey, it's your stupid prepubescent voice too!" Quattro defended.

"This is why I'm always on top. But no, you just had to be the one this time," Tracey said, annoyed. "Now if we make Mabel any more suspicious, we're totally gonna get caught."

"Relax. We're not gonna get caught," Quattro said confidently. "Dipper Prime was the only one who could possibly catch us, and we already took care of him."

Tracey relaxed a bit with Quattro's reassurance. He grinned. "You're right. Mabel's never been the attentive one. With Dipper Prime out of the way, what do we have to worry about?"

"Ourselves," Quattro told him.

"No, only you," Tracey belittled, causing Quattro to frown sadly.

Dipper's eyes slowly opened as he woke up from an unexpected slumber. He felt dizzy and disoriented. As his eyes began to readjust, he looked at his surroundings and found he was still in the forest, sitting against a tree.

"What the…?" he said, confused as his eyes adjusted.

He tried to move but suddenly realized his arms were tied behind his back. This realization caused him to start panicking. He tried to kick his feet around but saw that his feet were also tied up. Both his arms and legs were tied up with rope. His head also felt somewhat bare, and he came to one last realization his bomber hat was missing.

He remembered the last thing he did before knocking out was talking with Tracey and Quattro about a plan on how they can get back to Gravity Falls. It was at the moment that he realized that he had been betrayed by the two. They had knocked him out, tied him up, and stole his hat so they could take his spot with Mabel on the bus back to Gravity Falls, leaving him stranded in the woods of a small town near the Oregon-California state border, something that he felt he should've seen coming long ago.

"No... Tracey... Quattro... dammit!"

He kept trying to move around and free himself from the constraints of the ropes, but to no avail. He only struggled and didn't have the strength to simply break loose from the thick and tightly tied ropes. He wasn't sure what time it was or how long he had been knocked out, but he knew he needed to get free as soon as possible. Struggling wasn't helping, so he was left with the only other option he thought he had.

"HELP!" he cried out into the forest. "SOMEONE HELP ME!"

Poor Dipper. He still can't trust anyone. Not even his twelve-year-old clones.

Anyways, the plan is to slowly reintroduce original characters and such as I also introduce some new things into the mix. Hope that sounds interesting to you all.

-Absolute Rift

(Chapter updated as of November 24, 2022)