Mabel and Pacifica screamed in terror as the giant ants got closer and closer to the two. At that point, they had basically accepted their fate of potentially being eaten alive by giant ants, having instinctively embraced one another as the ants neared.
However, the ants walked up to the girls and started examining them closely rather than attacking them. However, the girls kept screaming, unaware that they were being examined. Pacifica eventually had an odd sense of nothing happening to her yet and opened her eyes to see the neutral-standing ants. She calmed down slightly as she processed that they were just staring at her rather than eating her.
However, Mabel was still screaming for her life. Pacifica's eyes darted over to her and saw that she also had her eyes shut tightly and remained unaware of what was happening.
"Mabel!" she quietly exclaimed, grabbing her attention.
Mabel's screaming instantly stopped, and her eyelids flew open. Her eyes immediately darted to Pacifica. "Are we dead yet?" she asked very casually.
Pacifica's eyes narrowed slightly as she pushed Mabel's arms off of her. "No, you klutz. Look!" She pointed around at the surrounding ants, which just continued to just stare at the two in presumed confusion, not even reacting to their conversation. "The ants aren't doing anything. That's good, right?"
"How should I know?" Mabel asked, raising an eyebrow.
"You've dealt with a bunch of weird stuff before. Isn't this along those lines?" Pacifica assumed.
"This isn't even weirdness. They're normal ants. We just shrunk down to their size," Mabel reminded her. "Even then, what makes you think I know how to speak ant?"
"You speak pig, don't you? Is it really that far-fetched?"
"Alright, maybe I do know how to speak to a lot of animals, but even then, you're still greatly overestimating my abilities," Mabel told her as she folded her arms.
Suddenly, a single ant stepped forward and got up close to the two, causing them to shriek in fear as they flinched back defensively. The ant used its antennae to smell them as it continued to examine them. Afterward, it tilted its head toward another ant and made some noises. Mabel and Pacifica glanced at one another nervously without moving a muscle.
"This is weird," Pacifica said quietly as she looked around at the ants. "Why are they just standing there?"
"Would you rather be eaten?" Mabel asked quietly.
"I would rather get out of here."
At that same moment, the ant that was smelling them before turned back toward them and leaned its head forward, and bit down on the back of the collar of Pacifica's diner dress, picking her off the ground, prompting her to start screaming again.
"Pacifica!" Mabel screamed out, reaching her hand out to her as she saw her getting picked up.
She started squirming around as she hung from the back of her dress collar, trying to hopefully free herself from its grasp. It wasn't successful, however, and the ant proceeded to walk off with her through a path cleared out by the surrounding ants.
"MABEL! MABEL HELP!" her voice echoed through the tunnel she was then taken into, her screams quietly fading away as the ant made a speedy getaway.
"I'm not really sure how!" Mabel called out to her. "But, I mean, at least you got out of here like you wanted!"
She knew it was a really bad and inappropriate joke to crack at the current moment, but she was absolutely terrified by what was happening and couldn't think of a way to properly react. Pacifica was right about her always trying to lighten up situations, especially when it really wasn't necessary. She then looked around at the ants that surrounded her now that she was now on her own.
"So, uh, how are you guys doing?" she casually asked the ants, while still internally terrified. "Or are you all girls? No, wait, the only female ant's the queen, right? Man, I am so off with my ant knowledge. I guess I need to get better at anthology! Eh, eh?"
She smiled, glancing back and forth between the surrounding ants as if she was expecting some sort of applause for that joke.
"Just kidding. That word actually has nothing to do with ants... I think..."
Her attempt at small talk was suddenly disrupted when another ant behind her swooped its head down and picked her up by the back of her sweater collar, walking toward the same tunnel Pacifica was taken into.
"HEY! WATCH THE FABRIC! This stuff ain't cheap! And I don't have nearly as much money as the blonde!" Mabel shouted as she was carried off, as all the other previously surrounding ants followed the ant carrying her into the dark tunnel she was taken into.
After some time of being carried through darkness, Mabel saw a light at the end of the dark tunnel that she was being taken through. Once they exited it, she looked above and her eyes bulged in amazement. There were large open tunnels and paths stacked on top of dirt hills around in a large, spacious room of sorts. In each tunnel and on each path, there were hundreds of ants crawling and making their way around. To her, it looked like being inside a giant ant farm.
She saw they were standing on one of many large dirt-molded bridges with a large platform in the center that the ants were taking her to. Up ahead on the platform, she quickly saw the ant that was holding Pacifica come to a stop. She looked like she was alright. Absolutely terrified, of course, but alright.
The ant carrying her then stepped up right next to Pacifica's ant and stopped, lining the two up.
"Pacifica!" Mabel called out.
Pacifica's head turned toward Mabel as she hung from the ant's mouth. She looked at her in surprise. "Mabel! What's going on?! Why are we here?!"
"Beats me," Mabel shrugged.
"Why haven't they just eaten us already?!" Pacifica asked, panicked. "Is this some sort of sacrifice? Or are they going to bring the queen out and feed us to it instead?" She then put her face in her hands. "Oh god, I could've married into royalty and become queen but now I'm gonna get eaten BY the queen! The queen of ANTS!"
"Geez, would you just relax already?" Mabel told her.
"Relax? We're dangling from ant mouths right now! How can you possibly be relaxed?!" Pacifica snapped.
"Because right now, we're dangling from ant mouths!" Mabel restated. "Obviously, we're here for a reason. Keep squirming and they might change their minds."
Pacifica took these words to mind and processed them. Right away, she stopped moving around so violently and immediately let herself hang loose, not wanting to risk making the ant carrying her upset as Mabel implied.
Across the dirt bridge, there were a bunch of ants walking over to the center platform they stood at. They soon lined up on the platform, forming a wall of ants right in front of the girls. Ants from the back started stepping aside one by one to let a single figure in the center step forward. Mabel and Pacifica anxiously awaited the presence of the being that was to approach them, wondering if it would decide their fate.
The front ants then stepped aside and right before their eyes stood Dipper, dressed up in a brown robe and a black helmet with two antennae sticking out, resembling an ant's head.
Dipper's eyes bulged in surprise when he saw the two girls. "Mabel?! Pacifica?!"
Mabel and Pacifica's mouths hung open in pure shock at the sight of Dipper and his odd apparel. "DIPPER?!"
"Ha! You're actually here!" Dipper said thankfully as he stepped up to the two. He then looked up at the two ants carrying them. "You guys- you can let them go! They're friends!"
As requested, the ants placed Mabel and Pacifica back down on the ground and let go of them. Mabel and Pacifica both weirdly looked back and forth between the ants and Dipper himself.
"You have no idea how happy I am to see you guys!" Dipper said as he walked up to them.
"Yeah! It's good to see you all and stuff, bro-bro, but if you don't mind- WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?!" Mabel asked abruptly.
"Yeah, are we just going to skip the part where you just talked to the ants and they understood you?" Pacifica pointed out curiously.
"And that getup," Mabel said, eyeballing Dipper's robe and ant helmet. "Seriously, do we even need to ask? You don't wanna wear the clothes I make for you but you wear this?"
"Look, I'm gonna be honest, I don't know too much either," Dipper admitted, scratching the back of his head. "I was running from these guys until they cornered me in one of their tunnels. Then they took me to the center of their colony and gave me this robe and put this, uhhh... crown... on top of my head," he explained, pointing to his ant helmet. "And so, I guess I'm some sort of... I don't know... ant king?"
"Ants don't have kings, genius," Mabel pointed out. "They only have queens."
"Yeah, well, they have a queen already, so unless you have a better idea of what this all means, then I'm settling with king for now," Dipper told her. "Plus, ant king kind of sounds cool."
"Maybe they made him the jester and they're just waiting for him to make a joke," Pacifica joked over to Mabel, who started to giggle.
"A joke? From Dipper? They're gonna have to sit back and keep waiting then because it's gonna be a while," Mabel chuckled.
As the two girls began laughing at their mockery of Dipper, he simply stood there and sighed, taking the shots. The fact that the first thing the girls do upon seeing him again was make fun of him didn't surprise him, although he can't say he didn't hope for a more appreciative reunion. Then again, it has only been about half an hour since they last saw each other on the surface so there wasn't a lot of time to 'miss' one another.
Suddenly, Dipper started to hear a bunch of loud static noises. Mabel and Pacifica appeared to have heard the noises too, as they immediately stopped laughing. Without the laughing, the direction of the static noises became a bit more distinguishable, and so Dipper and Pacifica's eyes darted toward Mabel. She looked up at the two, appearing just as confused as they were.
"Mabel, what's that sound?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.
"It sounds like my walkie-talkie," she assumed as she brought her backpack forward and dug through it. She then pulled out her walkie, which turned out to be the source of the static. "It's receiving something. Is your walkie on?"
"I dropped mine long ago when I was running from these things," Dipper said as he gestured toward the surrounding ants.
"Why's it going off now then?" Pacifica asked as Mabel put her ear up to the speaker.
Mabel's eyes went wide as she listened in on the static closely. "GUYS! I hear voices!"
"Voices?" Dipper asked.
"SHHH!" Mabel shushed as she continued to listen closely.
Dipper walked up closer to her to hear the sound better. Soon, he was also able to distinguish voices as she had said. Lots of voices. All of them were layered upon one another as if they were listening in on a crowded room full of people talking. Because of this, it was hard to make out any specific words, but it sounded like English.
"Where is this receiving from?" Mabel asked.
Dipper took the walkie away from Mabel and put his own ear close to it, trying to figure it out himself. He was also wondering the same question as her, but couldn't come up with a logical answer. However, as he continued listening in on the voices, he was able to start making out a few words from one particular voice.
"I think they're listening to us."
Dipper's eyes bulged as he heard this, pulling his head away from the walkie in shock. Mabel and Pacifica both noticed this action.
"What happened?" Mabel asked him, concerned. "What did you hear?"
He was too shocked to answer, dismissing her question and looking up from the walkie. He turned his head toward the surrounding ants, looking at each and every one of them. He then pressed his ear against the walkie again.
"The boy is looking at us."
"He looks scared."
"Do you think they can finally hear us?"
"I don't know."
"My brother ate my kids last night."
Dipper turned his head back to Mabel and Pacifica. "Guys…" he said as he turned back to the girls. "The voices... they're coming from the ants!"
"They CAN hear us. We gotta do something."
"What? The ants aren't talking," Mabel said, chuckling at the oddity of Dipper's revelation. "Look at them. Do you see them talking at all?"
"EVERYONE! EVERYONE! SETTLE DOWN!"
Mabel's humored smile faded away as she turned back toward Dipper, who promptly held out the walkie-talkie to her. She then looked up at the ants in disbelief. As for the voices, they began to quiet down in the walkie as commanded by the other voice.
"Okay, this is starting to freak me out," Pacifica said as she looked around at the ants as well.
"Please, don't be freaked out," a single, monotone voice emerged from the walkie. At the same time, a single ant stepped forward from a line of ants right behind Pacifica.
The three looked up at the standout ant in shock. Frightened, Pacifica retreated beside Dipper, thinking back to how he was the supposed ant king or whatever it was they made him.
"So... talking ants…" Mabel said dryly and nervously as she gave in to the ridiculous idea. "This is a new one."
"How is this possible?" Dipper asked the ant. "Are you some abnormal type of hyper-intelligent ant species that has the ability to telepathically communicate with technical devices?"
"Actually, we're just normal garden ants," the ant revealed. "We're not actually talking with you either. We're simply communicating our thoughts via our antennae to the signal we receive on the device you call 'walkie-talkie'."
"The walkie's antenna," Dipper realized as he examined the device in his hands, where all of the ant's words were coming from.
"I apologize. I believe we, as ants, should formally introduce ourselves to your kind. I assume this all must be incredibly jarring for the three of you," the ant told the three.
"Gee, you think?" Pacifica asked sarcastically.
"My name is Ant-hony," the ant introduced. "This is our colony. We've been settled in this here location for approximately fifty years. I myself have only been around for seven. As you can see though, I'm only one of exactly seven hundred million, three hundred and fifty-six thousand, four hundred and two garden ants. That is until tonight when our queen lays about three hundred thousand more eggs.
"That's, um, a lot of ants," Mabel said with a slightly disturbed smile.
"Indeed. Yet, here in the colony, we all know one another," Ant-hony said as he turned toward a line of ants behind him. "Behind me, there's Ant-onio, Ant-ione, Ant-ero, Ant-on, Ant-wan, Ant... you know what, you get the point. We all have names that start with Ant. Except for Calvin." Ant-hony then lifted its front leg up and pointed toward another ant behind the three. "But we don't talk about Calvin."
"Aw, c'mon guys," Calvin's sad, yet still monotone voice emerged from the walkie as he stepped forward to some other ants. "We're family though."
"Booooo," an ant beside Calvin exclaimed.
"You ruin this family," another ant exclaimed.
"The queen should've eaten you years ago," yet another ant exclaimed. "That's the only form of cannibalism I would've been cool with."
"Aww," Calvin said as he looked down at the ground sadly.
"Okaaay then. Well, this is great and all, but can you explain why you've taken us here?" Dipper asked Ant-hony. "Also, why was I given this robe and ant crown?"
"You, Dipper, which we assume is your name because that's what those other human friends of yours called you, are the first human to ever make intimate contact with us ants. And so for that, we have crowned you our king," Ant-hony explained.
"Ha!" Dipper laughed spitefully as he turned back to Mabel and Pacifica. "You see? I am king!"
"Aw man, KING of the ANTS?!" Mabel asked sarcastically, making exaggerated jealous gestures. "I'm soooo jealous."
"Yeah, yeah," Dipper said, rolling his eyes as he detected her sarcasm. He turned back toward Ant-hony. "So wait, what does a king do if you've only ever had a queen?"
"Good question," Ant-hony nodded. "Your job as king is to sign the peace treaty."
"Wait, uh, peace treaty? What peace treaty?" Dipper asked curiously.
"Well, you see, since the dawn of time, for us ants that is, we have been trying to establish a friendly relationship with humans. We were always fascinated by them and so we wanted them to understand us and we wanted to understand them. However, we could never communicate because we are so small and they are so big. And because they're so big, we're not the easiest to see. That means that we're often stepped on and killed by them, but we know that it's unintentional. And so for millions of years, we've been trying to figure out a way to establish communication with humans, but nothing has worked. And because of our failures and your kind constantly continuing to step on us, our species became divided and no longer wished to help us on our making peaceful endeavors with humans, splitting off and later evolving into other types of more aggressive ants, such as the fire ants, the pharaoh ants, the bullet ants, and so forth."
"So how exactly are you guys able to communicate through the walkie-talkie now as opposed to when we're our natural sizes?" Dipper asked, holding the walkie up.
"Our antennae can be used to send thoughts through telepathic signals, but they're not strong enough to send messages to signals that are beyond our telepathic capabilities," Ant-hony explained. "Because of the smaller size of your device and how close you are to us, it's easier for us to receive and send signals to it. Whereas a normally sized signal is usually too strong to make any sort of communication."
Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica just stared up at Ant-hony in a mix of awe, shock, and just pure bewilderment at all the information he was giving them. To think that completely normal garden ants were actually looking to form a cross-species peace treaty with the human race for millions of years was absolutely mind-boggling. What they've been disregarding for several years as some pesky ants were actually a species with a whole separate level of intelligence they never knew.
"Anyways, King Dipper, we'd be honored if you could sign this peace treaty, which will finally promise a sealed alliance between humans and ants," Ant-hony explained as a pair of ants brought over a small stone plaque toward Dipper, which he took in his hands.
The plaque read 'Human/Ant Peace Treaty' at the top and had a bunch of unreadable scribbles of wet dirt in the middle. At the bottom, there was a line for him to sign. Another ant gave him a thin, pointy stone with a wet dirt tip to mimic a pen.
"It shall serve as a promise that your kind will no longer step on us so we could potentially get to work in trying to reunite our disbanded ant brothers and become a single species of ants again, putting an end to our potentially toxic nature toward your kind."
As he held the treaty in his hands, Dipper looked over at Mabel and Pacifica, who still looked like they had no idea what was happening due to the absolute absurdity of the situation. Dipper then looked back at the Ant-hony, who just looked on at him patiently along with the other ants, all waiting for him to sign the treaty. Dipper himself was still floored by what was actually happening and contemplated the idea of everything being some really messed up dream of sorts.
How the hell did I wind up here after messing around in a diner at midnight?
After a moment of processing everything, he realized that Ant-hony's expectations for the treaty's effects were too high. There was no way that every human on the planet was going to suddenly stop stepping on ants because an irresponsible teenager signed a stone treaty with a dirt pen made of stone. It wasn't going to happen. However, he felt guilty knowing that ants actually did have good intentions and that they shouldn't be taken for granted. Nonetheless, despite this remarkable discovery, there was no way they'd be able to convince the planet that ants can communicate with humans if you shrunk down using size-altering crystals without causing some sort of big human-ant issue, well aware of the nature of humans in the world.
Regardless, he didn't want to lie to Ant-hony and his colony only to appear as if they betrayed them as soon as they went on their way. He needed to be direct with them.
He sighed and put the treaty down on the ground. "Look, guys, as amazing and slightly scarring as all this is, I can't sign this treaty."
This statement caused a bunch of gasps to then emerge all at once from Mabel's walkie.
"Why not?" Ant-hony asked. "We crowned you king!"
"It's just not that simple to get the human race to not step on you anymore," Dipper explained. "We're just three teenagers who hardly even know what we're even doing here. Even if I signed this treaty, the rest of the world isn't gonna suddenly change. And the idea of you guys being able to talk to us is already crazy enough. There's no way we can convince the rest of the world without causing some major trouble. You want me to promise that you guys will be safe from us with this treaty, but the truth is - I can't promise that. The human race is diverse and full of billions of people with different minds and ideas. While we might want to help, someone with more power than us might not want to. It's just far too complicated for us to handle. And that sucks, because I, of all people, actually have some interest in learning more about you guys."
After he finished explaining his reasoning to the ants, a bunch of different murmurs started to come from the walkie. Dipper couldn't make out a single thing that any of the ants were saying, but he had hoped that they were good things. That wasn't too easy to assume considering they hadn't even known them for too long, though.
"You're right," Ant-hony said, though sounding somewhat disappointed in his monotone voice. "We understand. It probably is too far-fetched to believe that a stone plaque would solve all our problems. But nonetheless, we're happy to have finally met humans in a way that isn't the bottom of a shoe. Even better, to have one as our king."
"Well, I mean, sure..." Dipper nodded. "It was definitely good to meet you guys and all, but, I, uh... I don't think I can be your king either," he said as he took off the ant crown from his head and threw it on the ground, taking off the robe as well. He then took out his normal hat from his hoodie and placed it back on his head.
"W-what?" Ant-hony questioned. "You're leaving us?"
"I mean, I have to. I'm still a human. Not an ant," Dipper told him. "I mean, as honored as I am to have been crowned the first-ever ant king, I never really planned on staying here. I have to go back home, go back to my normal height and do human things again. The three of us do- me, my sister, and our friend."
"Acquaintance," Pacifica corrected.
"What?" Dipper questioned, thrown off by her sudden intrusion.
"It's a long story," Mabel added to the intrusion.
"Anyways..." Dipper said, dismissing the two. "We hope you don't mind us going on our way."
"And you guys seem to know your way around here better than we do, so any chance you might be able to take us back to where those giant keys were?" Mabel asked hopefully.
Rather than answering the question, Ant-hony stomped forward menacingly. "So you just came here, rejected our treaty, and now reject the role of our king? A role our kind have been holding onto for a human for millions of years? And now you're going to return to your world and continue to crush and kill us as you have always been doing?"
"Uh, oh," Dipper said quietly, having a bad feeling about what was going to happen.
"That... does not answer my question," Mabel said worriedly, as the negative shift in Ant-hony's voice was enough to prompt her to back up slightly.
"Ant-hony, it won't be like that!" Dipper tried to coax. "Now that we know how you ants think, the three of us will be more respectful of your kind! That we can promise! The entire world, though? That we can't!"
"Forget it! You've rejected our peace offering and the honorary role we've given you!" Ant-hony exclaimed. "For that, we will not allow you or your friends to leave!"
The ants then began to slowly move toward the three in a surrounding circle. Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica backed up toward one another as they watched the ants start to close in on them.
"Great, they hate us now," Pacifica said as she looked around. "Now we're actually going to get eaten this time."
"I don't think so," Dipper confidently claimed as he turned toward Mabel. "Mabel, get your size-altering flashlight out and give us a bit of an edge here. We need to remind these guys who the real big ones are."
"Already on it!" Mabel said as she already dug the flashlight out of her bag. However, a smaller ant suddenly lunged at her. This prompted her to reflexively use the light as a melee weapon, bashing the ant in the face with it, which seemed to surprisingly hurt it and send it back a bit. However, as a result of the strength of the hit, the crystal broke in half before falling off the top of the flashlight and onto the ground. "Uh, oh."
"Mabel!" Pacifica exclaimed in panic as he saw her break the crystal.
"It's fine! Dipper, just hand me your size-flashlight instead!" Mabel tried to reassure the two as she picked up the broken crystal pieces and stuffed them into her sweater pocket.
"I don't have it! I lost that too when I was running from them!" Dipper told her.
"Oh," Mabel casually said. "Well, this isn't looking too good for us then."
As the ants got closer, some of them prepared to lunge at the three and began making sinister-sounding noises at them. Pacifica fearfully hid behind Dipper while Mabel stood back and looked around at the incoming ants. She then looked up in the direction that she and Pacifica were taken from earlier and noticed a series of different tunnels, with one of them appearing to be empty. She took this as a potential escape opportunity.
"Welp, time for Plan B!" Mabel claimed as she took her grappling hook back out. She aimed it at the empty tunnel above all the ants and fired. She quickly grabbed ahold of Dipper's arm in preparation, looking back at him and Pacifica. "You two better hold on!"
The hook made impact with the empty tunnel and stuck, and Mabel began to zip toward it. As Dipper was dragged along, he held his other hand out for Pacifica's, who grabbed ahold of it just in time before zipping along with the two. The three then went zooming across the colony and over Ant-hony and the other ants grouped with him. Ant-hony turned around toward the other ants and made a noise, prompting them to begin moving in the direction the three had gone in.
Mabel, Dipper, and Pacifica eventually made contact with the empty tunnel and were flung inside. Mabel recovered the hook back and secured the tool before looking back at Dipper and Pacifica. "C'mon guys! This way!" she shouted, gesturing further into the tunnel.
"Why? What's over here?" Dipper asked as he caught up to her.
"The ants took me and Pacifica from this direction. We found the keys this way!" Mabel told him.
"And this is the tunnel you guys went through?" Dipper asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Probably not," Mabel admitted. "But it's our best shot anyway, so let's get going before the ants catch up!"
Mabel and Dipper began running through the tunnel, while Pacifica stood back a few feet behind. She sighed annoyedly, still completely struck by the fact they were now running from giant, talking ants after losing keys to the diner. She's been through Weirdmageddon, but she felt this entire evening was dangerously close to topping that experience in terms of absolute weirdness.
The three had been running through the ant tunnels for some time without encountering very many ants. There had been a few that had jumped in their way, but they had easily avoided them with the help of Mabel's grappling hook and her pulling them all to safety. However, the ants had the advantage of knowing how to navigate the entire place, whereas they could've been running in circles this whole time and haven't even noticed.
However, Mabel had continuously said that she had a good feeling about where they were heading along the way, though Dipper and Pacifica had extreme doubts.
Despite that, Mabel was truly positive about where she was leading them. She finally came around a corner that she appeared to recognize when she approached it. As they turned it, they entered a four-tunnel crossroad room. In the center, the diner keys lay.
"The keys!" Mabel cheered as she spotted them. "See? I told you guys I knew where we were going!"
"Great! Now, what do we do? The crystal's broken!" Pacifica pointed out. "How are you going to shrink it down?"
"It's only broken in half," Mabel said as she took out the two pieces of the crystal from her pocket. "I'll just press the two together and hold it up to the light."
"Yeah, you might wanna hurry up with that," Dipper told her.
"No worries! We have time!" Mabel assured him as she pressed the two broken halves of the crystal together.
"Are you sure about that?" Pacifica then asked as she turned around to look at the tunnel.
Mabel turned toward the tunnels and noticed that ants were beginning to crawl out from each one, surrounding them yet again. "Aw, c'mon! Stupid, speedy ants!"
An ant then lunged at Dipper, but he jumped back to avoid it and fell on his back. He picked himself back up as he glanced toward Mabel. "MABEL? ANY TIME NOW!"
Mabel flicked the flashlight on, the light going through the crystal, but giving off a blue hue rather than a pink one. The blue light shined on the keys, which caused them to grow even larger instead of shrinking them. The keys grew large enough to hit the ceiling, breaking a small hole through the diner's floorboards due to the sudden violent expansion.
"Oops!" Mabel said as she shut the light off, realizing that was not what she wanted.
"MABEL!" Dipper and Pacifica shouted in panic as the ants continued to get closer.
"I'm trying!" Mabel said as she continually tried rotating the crystal pieces and flicking the light switch, but she only got a blue light. "I'm turning the pieces but it won't turn pink! It just stays blue!"
Another ant stomped forward right behind her, causing her to drop to flinch forward in fear. She then began to back up to the enlarged keys along with Dipper and Pacifica.
"TRAITOR!" Ant-hony's voice emerged from the walkie-talkie, along with a lot of various angry voices from the other ants shouting at them.
"Hey! We're not traitors! We were just being honest with you guys!" Dipper argued.
"We? They're looking at you, King Dipper. Not us," Pacifica told him. Another ant then lunged forward at Pacifica, prompting her to jump back away from it. "OKAY! THEY'RE LOOKING AT US TOO!"
Mabel and Dipper both helped Pacifica up and pulled her back to the center, as far back as they could get away from ants. That wasn't very far though, and the ants were still very much right in front of them. They were running out of breathing room, as well as time to breathe.
"What do we do?" Mabel asked anxiously. "How do we fight back a bunch of giant, sugar-loving ants?"
"Sugar-loving…" Pacifica repeated to herself. Her eyes then bulged as she suddenly had an idea. She glanced over at Mabel and her eyes darted toward her backpack. "That's it!" Without warning, she then grabbed and aggressively tore Mabel's backpack off of her.
"Hey! Pacifica?!" Mabel cried out in response.
"Trust me!" Pacifica told her as she unzipped the main zipper of the bag before proceeding to toss it toward the ants.
The bag then landed right in front of Ant-hony, and a bunch of the sugary snacks that Mabel had taken from the diner, such as cookies, donuts, cake, and melted ice cream, poured out of the main pocket that Pacifica had opened up. Ant-hony looked down at the snacks, sticking his antennae around them to smell. Suddenly, all the ants seemed to be sticking their antennae in the air, catching the scent as well.
A gasp suddenly came from the walkie. "FOOOOOOOD!"
With this announcement, all of the ants including Ant-hony proceeded to pour themselves all over one another to get their fair share of the very minimal contents of sugary sweets that poured out of Mabel's bag. Some ants actually began fighting one another to push them away from the bag. It quickly became a frenzy of ants that were just trying to get a share of the sugary diner food.
Meanwhile, the three just silently watched the ants as they attacked one another for the backpack. They then glanced at one another, wondering what to do next.
"So, uh, is that it?" Dipper asked.
"I'm guessing we just wait for them to kill each other now," Mabel pitched.
"That'll take too long," Pacifica said as she stepped forward. She stuck her finger and thumb up to her mouth and blew, sending out a loud whistle. "HEY UGLIES!"
The ants all turned their heads toward her, suddenly stopping their fighting to give her their attention.
"You all like food, don't you?" she asked.
"Just a little bit, sure," Ant-hony nodded, with a bunch of other ants agreeing.
"Well, I work at a diner right above," Pacifica said, pointing up at the diner's floorboards. "If you like food so much, then I can get you even more."
All of the ants then started murmuring with one another, appearing to be interested in the offer. After some brief discussions, Ant-hony stepped forward with less hostility than he displayed before.
"More food, huh?" Ant-hony questioned, intrigued.
"All the food you can dream of," Pacifica nodded with a smirk. "The only price- you let me and my friends go and get away from your filthy ant farm."
Ant-hony thought for a moment before backing away from the three and returning to the other ants. They appeared to have another brief meeting to discuss the potential deal. None of the three could translate what they were saying, however. But soon enough, the meeting broke and Ant-hony walked back toward the three.
"Us ants accept your offer," Ant-hony nodded, sticking his front leg forward as if he was trying to shake hands with Pacifica.
Pacifica walked up to his giant raised leg, not entirely sure how she was supposed to shake hands with an ant, but also not too pleased with having to either. She glanced back and forth between the twins and Ant-hony in confusion for a moment before simply placing her two hands on the tip of his leg, instantly pulling them back in disgust. That seemed to work just fine for Ant-hony, however, as he lowered his leg down acceptingly.
"So, uh, when are we going to get our food?" he asked curiously.
"Well, we have to get back to the surface first," Dipper said as she stepped up beside Pacifica in front of Ant-hony. "We still need to fix the flashlight though."
"No worries! Now that we're not running for our lives anymore, I can figure out how to fix these two pieces of the height crystal!" Mabel said as she walked up to the two and took the two crystal pieces out of her pocket. "It'll just take me a few minutes."
However, the moment she said this, the two halves of the crystal suddenly crumbled to dust completely within her hands. Dipper and Pacifica stared at the destroyed crystal in complete horror before glancing back at Mabel herself, who kept a smile despite knowing exactly what just happened.
"Better make that a few hours," she said in a positive tone, despite her eye twitching.
Despite the crumbled crystal, the twins and Pacifica continued to get to work on fulfilling their promise to the ants. While Mabel stayed behind beside the giant keys with the ants to fix the crystal, Dipper and Pacifica were given her grappling hook to transport themselves back and forth between the burrow and the surface. They would then bring themselves back to the kitchen and grab whatever food they could reach and carry before taking them back to the floor. Using their strength as shrunken-down teens, they had carried tiny individual pieces of various food items to bring back to the hole. They would then build a pile of tiny food pieces back in the diner keys room, building onto the pile as time progressed and they waited for Mabel to fix the crystal.
Approximately three hours later, Dipper and Pacifica returned from above once more, zipping down the rope of Mabel's grappling hook as they came back with pieces of food to place in the pile. Tired and out of breath from constantly running back and forth between underground and above ground, the two collapsed against a dirt wall.
Dipper wiped balms of sweat dripping down his forehead as he turned to Mabel. "How's it going with the crystal, Mabel?" he asked through his heavy breathing.
Over the past few hours, Mabel had managed to basically 'glue' the crumbled pieces of the crystal dust back together using a brown sap she had found. As Dipper asked how it was coming along, she stuck another tiny bit of dust to the nearly rebuilt crystal. She examined it closely afterward. "I think... I'm finished!"
"Oh, thank God," Pacifica said as she threw herself on the dirt ground. "I'm so tired that I couldn't care less that I'm laying in muck right now. Do you KNOW how far you have to push me for me to not care about that?"
"Maybe this will make you feel better," Mabel claimed as she aimed the flashlight with the reattached crystal at the giant diner keys in the center of the room.
She flipped the flashlight on and a pink light emitted through the crystal. The light made an impact on the keys and began to shrink them down. She held the light on the keys until they reached a normal size relative to their shrunken height. Once she finished, she turned off the light and walked over to the keys. She then picked them off the ground and tossed them over to Pacifica.
Pacifica caught the keys in her hands and laid them out in her palm. She smiled as she looked up at Mabel. "It helps a little."
"You're welcome," Mabel told her with a smug smile.
Pacifica's smile then faded away with this reply. "Don't forget that you're still the one who got us into this mess in the first place."
"And don't you forget that it was an accident," Mabel reminded her.
"Very well. You've solved your key problem. Now, what about us?" Ant-hony's voice reemerged from the walkie, intervening. The three turned around to see Ant-hony and all of the other ants right behind them.
"Is this seriously all the food we get?!" another ant asked, sounding dissatisfied.
"You promised us all the food we could dream of. And I don't believe this quite lives up to the amount of food that I typically dream of," Ant-hony said, also sounding dissatisfied as he looked on at the pile.
"Yeesh! Do you ants ever get cold? Because right now, you need to CHILL," Mabel told him.
Mabel then rotated the crystal a bit more before pointing the flashlight directly at the stack of food. She flipped the switch and a blue light shined out upon the pile of small food pieces. It instantly began to grow the pile, growing it all the way to the top of the room. The ants had backed up as the pile grew bigger and bigger until Mabel shut the switch off. What was once a pile of tiny food pieces was now a pile of large food pieces that were even bigger than the ants themselves.
Dipper looked over at Mabel's flashlight and smiled. "Wow, you managed to put that crystal back together pretty well. What did you use?"
"Some stuff I found in the corner," Mabel said as she wiped her hands on her already dirtied sweater.
"Some stuff?" Pacifica questioned, raising an eyebrow.
"Let's just say I'm tossing this crystal and we're getting a new one when we grow back," Mabel said with a slight look of revulsion, seeing the implication clear to both Dipper and Pacifica, who exchanged looks of disgust. "And you two complained about being tired…"
"Well, anyways…" Dipper began. "Now that the snack pieces are big, I guess that means the ants can…"
"FOOD!" shouted the voices of a few hundred ants, including Ant-hony.
Without hesitation, the ants immediately began swarming the food pile, crawling all over the pieces as they began shredding through them. Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica just watched as the pile began to gradually decrease in size.
"So, uh, I guess they're cool then?" Dipper asked, looking over at Mabel and Pacifica for any confirming looks. However, the two just shrugged, not anymore sure than he was. Dipper looked back at the ants crawling over the food and walked over to them. With all of the ants, it was hard to specifically pick out Ant-hony from the others, but he needed confirmation that they were on good terms, not wanting to risk unintentionally making a new enemy. "HEY, ANT-HONY!"
At that moment, a single ant's head poked out from behind the stack of food and glanced right over at Dipper. "What is it?!" Ant-hony asked impatiently, mouth stuffed with food.
"Are we cool now? Because now that we filled our end of the deal, so we're gonna get going now," Dipper replied.
"Yes, yes! We're 'cool'," Ant-hony instantly dismissed. "Thank you for your delivery. Farewell. May we never cross paths again. Yada, yadda. I'm gonna keep eating."
As he said, Ant-hony immediately went back to eating the food pieces along with the rest of the ants, the pile now less than half of what it used to be.
Dipper seemed to make note of this as he turned back to the girls. "So... they realize they're already about to finish all of the food, right?"
"Welp, that'll be their problem now," Mabel shrugged before bending over and picking up the grappling hook from the ground. She immediately aimed it upwards at the floorboards above and fired the grapple, latching onto the wood above. She grabbed onto Dipper's arm while he grabbed onto Pacifica's before the three slowly ascended back up to the surface; the ants not paying attention to them as they left.
A minute passed, and the ants had finished the remains of the food pile. Overall, they appeared satisfied with their meals as they began to settle down, most of them feeling full.
"Ah, that hit the spot. Really good stuff," Ant-hony said as he began to relax. However, this relaxation merely lasted two seconds. "So good that I'm already starting to feel ready for seconds!"
A bunch of ants appeared to feel the same way, as many stood up and looked around at that moment. However, they all quickly noticed that there wasn't any bit of food left from the pile. Ant-hony looked closely at his surroundings and the ground, but couldn't find a single spec of food left to eat.
"Um, I think we may have already run out of food," an ant suggested.
"DRAT!" Ant-hony shouted disappointedly. "Out of food already? This is an outrage!"
"I blame Calvin!" an ant shouted, gesturing toward Calvin, who stood alone in the center of the room.
"It's always Calvin!" another ant agreed.
"Agreed. Everyone, blame Calvin!" Ant-hony nodded
At that moment, all of the ants surrounded Calvin and began booing him, showering him with remarks blaming him for the food running out so fast. Calvin just stood in the center, looking around at all the ants that were shaming him.
"Aw, c'mon guys. I didn't even get a bite of the food," Calvin tried to tell them.
"THAT'S WHY IT'S YOUR FAULT!" an ant stood out from the sea of other ants unjustly shaming Calvin.
"Aww," Calvin moped as he hung his head low.
Back on the surface, Mabel had her ear pressed against the walkie-talkie, still able to listen in on the ants talking to one another as she walked beside Dipper and Pacifica. She promptly turned off the walkie, somewhat disturbed.
"So the ants seem to be taking the food problem pretty well," Mabel informed the two.
"How so?" Dipper asked.
"Well, it sounded like they're blaming one another for it," Mabel replied.
"Good for them," Pacifica said. "Now they can tear each other apart instead of us."
"That's one way to look at it, I guess," Dipper said as he stopped in place and looked up. They stood directly in front of the bottom of the metallic surface fridge. "Anyways, here we are. Back to normal heights we go."
"Thank God," Pacifica said. "We still have a cockroach problem here, and I swear... if I have to come face-to-face with one more giant insect…"
"Aw, but cockroaches are so cute!" Mabel said as she got the height-altering flashlight back out. "To me, they're much more adorable than ants ever were."
Pacifica stared at her silently for a moment in utter disgust. "I want you as far away from me as possible."
"C'mon, Mabel. Let's just grow back and put an end to this... whatever the hell this whole experience was," Dipper said, already beginning to blank out on the entire adventure and its absurdity.
"Three growth spurts coming right up!" Mabel said as she pointed the flashlight toward the fridge's reflective surface.
She flipped the switch and a blue light shined out, bouncing right off the reflective fridge back to the three. Within seconds, they began growing; their point of view ascending as they became taller again. Mabel eventually flipped the switch off, and the three found themselves back to their approximately normal heights. They patted their bodies and the items they carried on them, ensuring everything was in their correct places and back to their own sizes.
"Is everything the size it needs to be?" Dipper asked the two, seeing how they were checking for themselves.
"I think so," Mabel said as she finished checking herself.
Pacifica pulled out the diner keys again, seeing how they appeared perfectly normal in her grasp again. She clutched them tightly in her hands and smiled. "Yep. Everything's just how it needs to be."
"Except for the diner," Mabel pointed out, addressing the fact that the place still wasn't cleaned up after all the messes they had made last night prior to the ant adventure.
"Oh crap!" Pacifica shouted as she looked around at the messes. "We still need to clean this place up!"
"Yeah, it's beginning to smell like scrambled eggs in here!" Mabel said as she analyzed the smell of the air. "Smells kinda nice actually..."
Pacifica took in a good whiff of the air herself, verifying Mabel's words about the suddenly pleasant smell. "Wait, why would it smell like scrambled…"
Her eyes bulged as she remembered something. At that moment, she slowly turned around and looked behind her, the twins turning as well.
It turned out that all that time since the moment they grew back to their normal heights, none of them had noticed the diner's chef, Franklin, was present again and standing by, cooking scrambled eggs on the stove. His eyes were fixed upon the three, and his face showed an odd mixture of shock and trauma as he stared at them without saying a word.
Pacifica was mentally punching herself for forgetting that she had paid Franklin the night prior, ordering him not to come back until the next morning. Seeing the look on his face, she knew that he must've seen them suddenly grow back from being tiny, considering how much of a scare that must've been for an older guy like him.
As the three made awkward eye contact with Franklin for a good moment, Pacifica figured she had to break the silence and try to explain things to him. "Hey, Frank-"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Franklin suddenly screamed out of fear. The unexpected scream caused the three to flinch. He continued screaming for a good moment before fainting instantly, dropping his spatula, and falling unconscious on the floor.
Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica nervously stared at Franklin as he lay unconscious. Pacifica had no idea what she was going to explain to him upon his awakening, or if he might possibly rat her out to Lazy Susan. She began thinking of numbers in her head, as it was likely going to take a large amount of money to convince him to forget about this incident.
"Hold on," Mabel intervened, suddenly realizing something herself. "I thought you had this place locked up? How was he able to-"
At that moment, the back door of the kitchen suddenly opened up. "Hey, Pacifica, is there something wrong with the front door?" said the voice of Lazy Susan as she walked inside. "I tried opening it, but it was locked, and had to come here through the- WHAAAA?!"
Lazy Susan stopped herself as soon as she laid her eye on the kitchen. To confirm her sightings more easily, she pulled her dysfunctional eyelid up so she could see the room with both eyes. Right away, she was able to see the floor, walls, and ceiling covered in various dried-up spills and goops. The next thing she noticed was Franklin lying on the floor unconscious. Lastly, her eyes landed on Pacifica and the Pines twins standing to the left and right of her, all of them staring right back at her with guilty looks.
Pacifica knew what was coming the more she looked on at Lazy Susan. Despite how dimwitted she may have been, she knew this wasn't something she was going to get out of. Even with help from the Pines.
"Both of you- beat it," Pacifica ordered the twins quietly without looking at them.
The twins both exchanged hesitant looks with one another, not quite wanting to leave their friend alone. But Pacifica knew this didn't concern them nearly as much as it concerned her.
"Now," she ordered.
As told, Dipper grabbed Mabel's wrist and pulled her along, rushing right past Lazy Susan and out of the diner. Lazy Susan watched the two run off but made no effort to stop them. Instead, she directed her focus back to Pacifica. Rather than going off on Pacifica, she just sighed, giving her a strong look of disappointment rather than anger.
Pacifica readied herself for a rough conversation. But no matter how she planned on explaining herself, she knew what the end result was going to be.
Across the street from Greasy's, Dipper and Mabel stood and waited near the edge of the forest. Dipper stared at the restaurant intently, while Mabel paced around beside him anxiously.
"C'mon, Lazy Susan's reasonable, right?" Mabel asked him. "She'd totally give her another chance, wouldn't she?"
"I don't know," Dipper said honestly. "Doesn't bode well for her though. I mean, lying about the actual midnight shift, letting us in after hours, messing around, stealing and eating a bunch of food, creating a big mess everywhere, and potentially traumatizing a man for life... how do you justify any of that?"
"UGH! This is all our fault!" Mabel shouted, lightly hitting her head against a tree out of guilt. "This was the last piece of a normal life that she had left and we ruined it for her! We should never have gotten involved."
"Now she's going to have to go back to working for her scummy parents," Dipper said, folding his arms guiltily as he thought about it. "Man, we really did blow this one."
Mabel's eyes darted back toward the diner, eyes widening. "SHE'S COMING OUT!"
Dipper looked up at the diner and at the front door. Through the glass in the door, he saw Pacifica putting a trench coat over her waitress dress as she exited with a sad look on her face. Lazy Susan had stood back behind her, watching her walk off with a look of disappointment. She then walked back inside and held a white board of some sort. She wrote some words on it before putting it up at the window, displaying 'HELP WANTED'.
Dipper and Mabel exchanged frowns with one another before walking across the street to meet up with Pacifica. Dipper stood cautiously behind while Mabel rushed up beside her, putting on a fake confident attitude despite knowing the result.
"Hey!" Mabel greeted as she walked along with her. "Soooo, how'd it go?"
"Really?" Pacifica rolled her eyes as she kept walking. "Like you guys don't already know..."
"Well, what if we don't know?" Mabel asked kindly, still trying to maintain a positive vibe.
"You do," Pacifica dismissed.
"How do you know that?" Mabel asked. "Unless Northwests also take psychic classes, I would've never taken you for someone who-"
"I GOT FIRED, OKAY?!" Pacifica burst out at her as she stopped walking.
Mabel instantly began to regret her attempt at trying to fake positivity, as her outburst was the very thing she was hoping to prevent. At this point, there really was no other way to respond without giving in to the truth.
"We're sorry, Pacifica," Mabel sighed, folding her hands guiltily. "This whole thing wouldn't have happened if we had just stayed out of the way like you asked us to. This is all our fault."
"Yeah, it is your fault!" she told her straight up. Then she sighed, cooling off some of her anger. "But... it's also mine."
Mabel looked back up at her and raised an eyebrow. "Huh?"
"I mean, look, I literally only did all of this in the first place just to get out of doing a stupid chore," Pacifica reflected aloud. "Sure, you two did get in the way, but let's be real, I was probably gonna get caught sooner or later for doing this sorta thing anyway. It just so happened to be sooner... but maybe that's for the best."
"But I thought this job was the one part of a normal life that you had left?" Mabel asked. "Now you have to work for your parents."
"Yeah, and it sucks, but my dad's been trying harder and harder to get me away from the diner for a while. I'm sure he would've eventually found a way to pull me away even if I didn't get fired," Pacifica said. Her disappointment was very clear in her face and voice, but they simultaneously radiated acceptance. "Now I just gotta suck it up and deal with living a full-time rich girl life again."
"But you shouldn't have to! Ugh!" Mabel said as she turned to the side, tucking her face in her hands as she felt nothing but guilt over everything. "Why'd I have to knock those stupid keys off the counter?"
Pacifica's eyes softened up as she looked over at Mabel, who she could tell looked to be genuinely remorseful and sorry over everything. While her sorry feelings had no chance of getting her job back, it still meant something that she seemed to really care about what she had done to her.
"I know it was an accident," Pacifica told her with understanding eyes. "And besides, all the ant stuff aside... last night was a blast. Probably some of the most fun I've had, like... ever."
Mabel turned back to her with a small smile. "Really?"
"Yeah, I haven't gotten to mess around like that since... well, since you guys were last here if I'm being honest," Pacifica admitted. "It may have gotten me fired, but what can I say? I still had fun. Which is weird to say, but I guess I should know by now that weird is your thing so... yeah. Regardless of everything that happened, I guess I'm just glad to have friends like you two."
Both twins were surprised by her earnest words. Hearing Pacifica open up was always somewhat of an anomaly in itself when considering just the type of person they knew her as when they met. Meeting for the first time again in four years, while not the smoothest, seemed to show that the effect that had on her seemed to remain to a strong extent. Even despite some of her rich-girl tendencies staying intact and regaining her fortune again, she had not regressed a bit. So they both smiled at her words, but Mabel was most touched.
"Aww, Pacifica!" she said happily as she suddenly wrapped her arms around Pacifica, hugging her tightly. "We're glad to have a friend like you too."
Pacifica stood in shock at Mabel's hug. She felt somewhere stuck between accepting and generally not too appreciative of it. The latter feelings got the upper hand, however, and so she pushed her back dismissively.
"Yeeeah, we're not exactly at the hugging phase," she told her bluntly, backing up a few steps.
"Fair enough. But at least you finally admitted that we ARE friends! HA!" Mabel shouted with a wide grin, much to Pacifica's immediate dismay upon realization. "I knew it! You're so fake! Not wanting to admit we're friends when that's what you thought this whole time! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!"
She then took her phone out of her sweater pocket and held it in her face, displaying an audio recorder that was still recording at that very moment.
"And I even recorded it! So there's no use denying it either!" Mabel doubled down. "Complete undeniable evidence that Pacifica Northwest considers Mabel and Dipper Pines her friends! HAHAHA!"
Pacifica just stood there, somewhat agitated that she let her cover blow while she was having a moment of sincerity. Rather than making any attempt to deny her own words, she just let Mabel have her moment. She had clearly kept her game up all day, and there seemed to be no point in trying to take away from it, no matter how much it annoyed her. But while she was fine with her winning this battle, she didn't want this to be the end of the war.
As Mabel celebrated, now beginning to run around all over the street victoriously, Pacifica turned toward Dipper. "Can I pay you to delete that recording from her phone while she's sleeping or something?"
Dipper chuckled. "I'd consider it, but then I would have to deal with her instead."
"I think you deserve it after everything that you two have cost me today," Pacifica said with a smirk.
"So you're guilt-tripping me now..." Dipper realized, folding his arms.
"Is it working?" Pacifica said slyly.
"Maybe earlier it would've," he admitted. "Now? Not so much. But I respect the effort."
Pacifica scoffed but smiled, showing a bit of admiration for Dipper's stubbornness. However, she noticed a black limousine slowly driving up right behind him. The twins then turned to look at it as well once it had parked next to the curb beside them.
The window rolled down and an elderly driver's face popped out, glancing over at Pacifica. "Ms. Northwest," he greeted. "Ready to go home?"
"Hi, Ernesto," Pacifica greeted, suddenly straightening her posture. "And yes. I am."
She then walked over to the back of the limousine as Ernesto then turned to look at the twins. "Friends of yours?"
Pacifica opened the door to the back as she looked over at him and the twins. "Something like that."
"Hmm," Ernesto nodded as she entered the back and shut the door behind her. "By the way, your father wanted me to let you know ahead of time that Bernardo called in sick earlier and so he won't be serving you today. Therefore, your father says you're still responsible for cleaning up Mason's stable later."
Pacifica took a second to process this thought. As if she hadn't taken enough mental punches already, now she was learning that staying overnight in the first place was entirely pointless, as she didn't even get to avoid the very thing that she was trying to avoid in the first place by spending the night at the diner.
"Lovely," Pacifica simply responded to him, trying not to let her bitterness get the best of her while she was in front of one of her family's workers.
Remembering the name of her pony again, Mabel once again started trying to fight back another urge to burst out laughing. However, she couldn't contain herself and fell back on the ground, kicking her legs back and forth as she clenched her stomach, laughing hard. "She has to clean after Mason!"
Dipper stood frozen as he listened to her in annoyance, his face reddening again. Pacifica, on the other hand, just stared at her through the car window, still not understanding Mabel's obnoxious behavior over the name.
"Why is that name so amusing to her?" she asked, looking over at Dipper.
"Gee, uh... I'm not sure," Dipper shrugged awkwardly as he rubbed the back of his head. "A mystery for another day, I guess?"
"Your sister is a mystery," Pacifica told him as she began raising her window again. "And I'm not sure she's one you can solve."
Dipper chuckled at the joke, waving goodbye as her limo began driving off. Mabel suddenly kicked herself off the ground once she realized Pacifica was leaving and started waving as well.
"Bye, Pacifica!" Mabel called out. "Say hi to Mason for me!"
Dipper flinched at the sudden use of his name once again. Now that Pacifica was gone, he was free to be reactionary and so he immediately clenched his fists as he got in her face.
"I swear, Mabel. If she EVER finds out about this…"
"Don't worry, Mason!" Mabel said, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Your secret's safe with me."
"STOP SAYING THAT NAME!" Dipper barked, causing Mabel to flinch back a few steps.
"Okay, okay!" Mabel chuckled, raising her hands up innocently. "I promise I'll never say Mason again."
That did it for Dipper. As soon as he heard her say the name, he went after her. She was ready for him to make that move, however, and immediately bolted off as he gave pursuit. She turned her head slightly back as he chased her.
"I'll race you back to the Mystery Shack, Mason!"
"Dammit, Mabel!" he shouted back as he ran after her. He wasn't pleased with the fact that she was using his real name but knew it was mostly in good fun considering there was no one else around to hear it. Nonetheless, he wasn't giving up on his chase, and she wasn't giving up on her getaway.
It may have been all in good fun, but with the two of them, there would always be an element of competition when it came to matters like this.
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Personally, this one was just a bunch of fun to write. I hope you enjoyed the twist. Maybe you'll think twice about how you treat your ants.
-Absolute Rift
(Updated as of December 22, 2022)