Mabel was sitting by herself on the roof of the Mystery Shack. Following their heart to heart, Grunkle Stan had spent the rest of the day instructing her on less dangerous but just as useful things like lock picking, sleight of hand and lying. With her first day complete, she was left thinking about just how to put these skills to use.
A twinkling in the sky caught her eyes, and a small smile crossed the girl's face that rapidly became jittery concern as the twinkling star fell from the sky and crashed into a distant section of forest!
"Oh my gosh, a shooting star!" She exclaimed with wonder, then felt a bad taste in her mouth when the phrase brought back memories of Bill. Then however, Mabel's memory fired and she quickly opened up her smart phone and began scrolling her emails, specifically each and every one she'd received from Dipper since he'd remained in Gravity Falls, all meticulously saved.
Mabel soon found the one she was looking for, a bunch of pictures Dipper and Ford had taken of a meteor shower over the town about a year ago. Besides the regular discourse about how things have been going and other normal details, Dipper had talked a bit about meteors.
"Let's see: Although we get way more meteors in Gravity Falls then anywhere else in the world (it's a whole thing dealing with Alien Gravometrics, I'll email it all to you) this shower was exceedingly rare and beautiful, so I thought I'd send you some pictures. Tomorrow morning me and Grunkle Ford are going to see if we can gather some meteoroids, they can be used for some interesting arcane purposes..." She read aloud before pocketing the phone in resolution.
Soon after, Mabel Pines was clattering through the forest, pack full of supplies over her back and a rickety shopping cart she'd noticed sitting in a stream during her earlier forest outing with Dipper and fished out to haul the space rock back in. The sun was beginning to set, the fading orange light dimmed further by the thick tree canopy above. Though the girl had many good memories of running through these woods during that first summer, now the forest felt different: The pervading hum of life, both natural and supernatural, was dull and faded compared to her memories.
Mabel remembered back to her first weeks in alone in California, when Dipper and her had communicated constantly: Dipper had talked at length about how silent and lifeless the woods had become, after Bill Cipher had salted the earth with blood. Life was returning here, but the scar tissue would always remain.
The oppressive atmosphere of the place sent a chill down Mabel's spine and made her wince with each particularly heavy creaking noise her cart made, but she pressed on regardless of this disquiet. It took a pair of sharp yellow eyes opening from the darkness a mere five feet in front of her to finally bring Mabel to a frightened stop.
The creature had been there all along Mabel realized, as it's emergence from darkness more resembled a body growing in place around the yellow eyes, now recognizable as those of a large reptile. It was tall and muscularly slim, green scales coating a human shaped form, arms and legs ending in long, webbed claws, while a whip-like tail slowly drew itself out of the undergrowth. Those yellow eyes split vertically and were crossed by swollen veins, and seemed to drill holes in Mabel as the reptilian creature extended to full height, towering over her. Then, it began to speak.
"Have you come to the deep, dark woods chasing falling stars, little human?" It whispered, voice like dripping oil on a carpet floor. "There are no stones from space here small mammal, only food and menace down here in the undergrowth."
"What are you talking about?" Mabel replied, discreetly feeling about her pockets to see what's there and trying not to show fear to the creature.
"Can't you taste the air!?" It asked harshly, before extending a long forked tongue into the air and whipping it around rapidly, drawing it back in with an exalted look on its face. "The scent so thick you can cut it with a knife and devour it by itself, the scent of food! And food from above means only one thing, a Rod egg sac has hit the earth!"
"And you want to it eat?" Mabel asked, carefully allowing more fear to enter her voice.
"Of course I want to eat it!" The lizard man snapped, gesturing with genuine anger. "Sizable prey has been damn near impossible to find in this forest since the fire and death scourged it, even all these years later, and the last time I tried hunting a unicorn I nearly got my lung popped!" But then, his anger faded as his eyes looked far away while his clawed fingers twitched in anticipation. "But if I get this motherload hidden nice and away, I'll be able to eat good for years! Yes, I'm going to eat it little mammal, and you're going to help me!"
"Why... why do you need my help?" Mabel asked while shivering in place. "You're such a big, scary monster and I'm just a human, how could I possibly help?"
"Oh, I'm not quite as strong as I look," the strange monster said with a creeping sarcasm to his voice, abruptly closing the distance between himself and Mabel in the blink of an eye, as if to prove himself wrong. "I'm nothing but scales and bones from these months of hunger fate has dealt me. You're going to go deeper into the forest and bring the egg sac back to me in your lunch wagon." Then, after extending his long tongue to wipe down every corner of his stubby, stunted snout, the lizard creature declared "I'm not leaving this forest on an empty stomach!"
Mabel burst off running, pushing the cart deeper into the woods in an attempt to get away from the threatening creature, mind scrambling for a solution to her situation and unsure if the lizard man had followed her or not. Fortunately though, instead of becoming lost, her sprinting put the girl in sight of an eerie glow radiating from deeper in the forest, white light mixed with dancing flames. Taking a moment to let her heart slow down and her head clear, Mabel then broke the treeline to find a small circle of destroyed earth where goal had landed.
The crater was not nearly as deep as one would expect and the fires of impact were almost extinguished from lack of fuel. Instead of a solid chunk of rock waiting in the earth dent, a mess of organic material was waiting, a single sheet of white, flexible tarp ripped and leaking fluid in some places, which when complete would wrap snugly around a mass of squishy, circular ovals that were stuck together with a similar looking biological fluid. As Mable drew closer, eyes wide in amazement, she was able to spot extremely small, thin squiggles occasionally wiggling around inside the oval eggs.
Mabel was dazzled by the eerie beauty of the site in front of her, fear of the reptilian hunter temporarily forgotten. She turned around to return to her dingy shopping cart, but felt her blood run cold when, as soon as she completed her turn to be able to see the cart, a dark figure dropped from the treeline and perched directly on the front metal bar, wings growing from the back of the human body shape seeming to shift into a voluminous cloak wrapping around the body. Despite being the size of an adult male human, the strange figure did not produce a single sound of movement from the shopping cart by landing on it.
The two stared each other down for a few moments, then the wings of the moth human began to twitch through the air, first slowly then quickly and erratically while the air around the crater swirled into motion, all the while the central body of the creature stayed perfectly still. The soft movements began to create a soft buzzing in the air, and the buzzing gradually gave way to words Mabel could understand, in the air or inside her head she wasn't sure.
"Why are you here?" the Mothman asked her.
Mabel's breath caught in her throat as the question ran to her core. "I came here to help my brother. I want to win Dipper's trust back. I want to take this egg sac home to my family. I'm being chased by a hungry lizard monster. I hurt my family. My brother doesn't trust me. I have to outdo the Northwest girl. I don't know if my brother even loves me." Were all involuntary thoughts the question set off in her mind, but when control of her tongue returned, she stated simply that "I saw a meteor fall and was curious."
Buzzing filled the air again, and a response formed. "Curiosity then? A noble trait. I too have curious motives: I see visions of disaster and death, but never the outcome, so I arrive, curious why this things happen and if they can be changed." It explained, almost whimsically. "Tonight however, is no mission of curiosity, though it does depend of my visions of the future. No, for tonight is a mission of love."
"Love? Are these... are these your eggs?" the Pines asked.
"No, but perhaps they will be, my vision is unclear on the subject." The mothman responded. "These are the spawn of the great Mother Rod who dances across the highest edges of the sky, falling to earth to grow to maturity before joining her. I attempt to protect her spawn in hopes they carry word of my deeds to the sky, and that the Mother Rod may return my love." He stopped for a moment at her growing confusion. "Rods are like flying, silver fish you see, that dwell in the upper atmosphere..."
"Has an egg sac ever returned to the sky?" Mabel asked in blunt curiosity.
The air was still for a moment before the words returned quickly. "No." It admitted. "Though I can foresee the locations the egg sacs fall to, I am blind to the dangers that surround them, and have not yet succeeded on my mission." For the first time, the creature's body moved, its arms stretched and flexed. "Have you come here as an unforeseen disaster, or might you be an unexpected piece of fortune?"
"I came out here to collect this for myself, but I was thinking it was just a big dumb space rock." Mabel explained. "If you need it to impress your sky girlfriend though I'll help you out! I still got my matchmaking touch after all." She continued enthusiastically, then spoke with trepidation. "But, on my way in here I was chased for a little bit by a big scary lizard monster! I can show you a safe way out of the forest if you keep your eyes out for him."
"Agreed." The mothman said simply. "Lead the way, ground dweller."
A short while later, the two of them where retracing Mabel's path to the crater, egg sac loaded carefully into the shopping cart. Despite the mothman perched on the front of the cart like an insectoid gargoyle, Mabel has no additional trouble moving the shopping cart, as both it and the eggs seemed supremely light weight. The unlikely pair were totally silent, senses wide open for the predator lurking in the bush.
Though they'd not predicted the exact moment, the ambush came as expected, a snarling flash of a toothy line bursting from the undergrowth and ripping into the mothman, who protected his delicate looking wings by throwing a first into the oncoming snout. The lizard rebounded, slashing forward with his claws, spraying foul green liquid from the flying insect's abdomen, but in a moment the defender was using his wings to his advantage, floating into the sky to kick the lizard in the eye. Unfortunately, the reptilian hunter responded by clamping down on a leg with his toothy snout, drawing more green fluid, and lashing his neck to slam the mothman into the dirt.
After watching for a few seconds to confirm the mothman had been driven to the ground and was being sliced into, Mabel took off into the woods, cart rattling in front of her as she ran from the fight for her life. Her flight was desperate and panicked, and Mabel very nearly ran the shopping cart into a tree a few times. She was always looking over her shoulders for a pursuer, but came to a screeching halt when, upon looking in front of her, she discovered a yellow pair of lizard eyes had materialized in front of her.
"I'm disappointed in you mammal. Nowhere in our agreement was there supposed to bring a bug freak for me to fight before dinner!" The creature expressed with angered disgust, advancing towards the shopping cart with heavy steps.
"It, I didn't have a choice!" Mabel began to bargain. "That thing was just some hopeless lovesick fool who was trying to impress a girl he had no chance with by some stupid scheme that I wanted no part of, and the girl in question happens to be the mother of these eggs! It was either let you ambush him or try and fight him myself, and I'm just a human, what would I do against something like that!?"
The lizard monster was leaning against the shopping cart. It had a few scratched and busted off scales, as well as swelling around the eye the mothman had kicked him in, but had otherwise come out of the fight looking much better than his enemy did. It contemplated Mabel's words while licking its lips. "Hmm, even if you are lying to me, I suppose it doesn't matter, does it? That thing is dead and the egg sac is all mine. I could still eat you as well, but honestly, I don't want to spoil my appetite. Unless of course, you want to try and stop me for some reason?"
"Noooo, no no no no!" Mabel replied quickly, waving her hands back and forth in front of her chest, palms facing out. "Don't let me stop you from enjoying your dinner big guy! You're free to go!"
"Your permission means so much to me." the lizard hunter said sarcastically, then without further words, snatched the handle of the shopping cart and took off into the forest. Mabel stood in place for a few moments, shivering with fear, then turned to face the mothman emerging from the brush, badly wounded and dripping his green blood all over the place.
"You're just in time! He ran me down and stole the egg sac, but we can still catch him!" Mabel implored to the wounded figure.
"You, you're not surprised I'm still alive?" the mothman asked simply.
"Love can make you incredibly determined." the human girl replied, pulling out some emergency band aids she'd brought for her forest trip and began sticking them on the cryptid, to limited usefulness. "That lizard thing thinks he's got us beat, but we can still track him with the slowly emptying can of glitter I opened and stuck sideways on the bottom plate of the shopping cart!"
"I am... I am in no shape to fight that creature again." The mothman spoke, resignation and despair in his voice. "And so another tragedy comes to pass..."
"Hey, what kind of talk is that!?" Mabel admonished. "You said you were doing this for love, right? Well let me tell you something: Love never gives up, never gives in! Can you imagine how impressed sky lady will be if you get her eggs back from this ravenous beast!?" Then she began to grin. "Besides, I have a plan!"
The glitter trail followed the cart pushing lizard man to the edge of the lake, which he was walking along to reach his cave home. Given the circumstances, the hunter was traveling slower then he could have, taking his time to enjoy the night sky and embracing the pain of hunger that grew inside him, knowing it will soon be satisfied ten fold. This relaxation ultimately cost the cryptid however, as his slow pace not only allowed the pair of pursuers to reach him, but allowed the mothman to glide from the nearby treeline and snatch the lizard into the air by sliding his own arms into the scaly armpits and traveling upwards, wings beating furiously to achieve vertical flight.
Stage 1 complete, Mabel herself came out from behind a tree, gripping her treasured grappling hook in hand. With careful aim, she used the silver glow of the moon to send the metal hook sinking into the leg of lizard man. After giving the line a shriek inducing tug to test that it holds, Mabel severed the rope using a pocket knife and tied the new free end around a heavy stone, which she then picked up and ran for the lake edge with. "DO IT NOW!" she screamed out.
Up above, the mothman had grappled with his adversary while trying to fly sideways to place him over as deep as possible water. When Mabel gave the signal, he released his captive, who plummeted towards the surface, soon to join the rock he was tied to in sinking below the water, as Mabel hurled it in. At the last second however, the lizard man sank his teeth into the mothman's leg, dragging him into the water as well.
Mabel stood tense on the lakeside, watching the patch of bubbles fade, until a moment later, the mothman alone surfaced, flailing his arms about. "My... wings!" The wind chattered, the projected speech getting weak and heavy. "They're too wet for me to fly, and I can't swim!"
"I'll save you!" The human cried out, throwing off her shoes for better swimming. "The heroine jumps to the water to save the love-struck loner, to ensure his egg quest succeeds!" she thought to herself, the idea of finally saving a life and doing a good deed hitting her like warm waves that would sustain her in the cold water.
Then she realized what that would mean: the mothman would take the eggs and guard them until the flying silverfish hatched and mindlessly fly to the sky. He'd fought so hard to protect this find from the lizard hunter, he'd do the same to keep it away from Dipper. Mabel could save a life and remove some of the blood off her hands along with completing a romance quest, but she'd have nothing to give to her brother. She took a long gaze out at the flailing mothman, slowly loosing energy, his damp wings unable to support him.
In a stark moment, Mabel realized she was in a position where she could either make herself happy, or make her twin happy.
As expressionless as his glowing red eyes were, Mabel thought she could she hope and desperation inside the eyes of her makeshift ally, a quiet confidence he'd quickly be saved and his quest would succeed.
With her eyes cast to the dirt, without a further word or fleeting thought, Mabel Pines slipped her shoes back on and began the haul back to the Mystery Shack, as another secret sank to the depths of Gravity Falls' lake.