AUTHORS NOTE
Warning ahead of time: The Dipper section of this chapter is heavily suggestive, but nothing explicit actually occurs. If you do not desire to read an excerpt from a boy's struggles with puberty, skip the section where it first cuts back to the Mystery Shack, and resume reading when the focus goes to Grunkle Stan. From there out, there's nothing else of a similar nature. I hope you enjoy the chapter.
The unassuming white van used by the residents of the Mystery Shack glided softly through downtown traffic, Pacifica Northwest at the wheel with a sustained look of mortification on her face while Mabel Pines sat in the passenger seat, arms crossed and observing the passing town. They hadn't been driving for very long and hadn't said anything to each other so far. While stopped at a red light however, Pacifica took a deep breath in, and decided to break the silence between them.
"Mabel, could you please check the list and see where we're going first?" She asked the girl next to her, in a mildly distracted but otherwise normal tone of voice.
Looking away from the window towards the driver, Mabel remarked "What, little miss perfect doesn't have the whole list memorized?" in an unusually snide voice for her.
Pacifica scowled a little at this, but kept her eyes on the road and stayed calm. "Well Mabel, I just want to make sure we're going the right way, and a safe driver always keeps their eyes on the road and doesn't let her attention slip towards distractions." she explained in a measured tone, though the jab put in the words was not lost on the Pines Twin. "So please, help us both and check the list."
"Ugh, fine." Mabel snorted, before pulling the slightly crumpled shopping list out of the cup holder where it had been stored. "Let's see, item number one on Dipper's big list of science knick knacks is... Her somewhat bored reading of the list became more surprised as her widening eyes actually processed the first item on the list. "...A gallon of animal blood!?"
"Oh good, we're right by the butcher's shop on Woodpecker Street." Pacifica remarked with exaggerated casualness, getting a little grin at Mabel's grossed out reaction. The van began changing course for the mentioned business, making an abrupt but non-dangerous turn out of a lane Pacifica had originally intended to keep driving down. "There's a alley we can park in there, you can stay with the van while I go talk to the guy in front."
The casual reaction of the blond girl to the first item on the list only left Mabel more baffled. "Wha... wait, WHAT!? WHY DOES DIPPER NEED THIS MUCH BLOOD!?" She sputtered out, finding this a weird direction for Ford's apprenticeship to have taken. "Are you people, pa...painting hopscotch trains in animal blood to summon even more demons from hell!?" Then, a sudden, horrible realization crossed her face, and Mabel yelled out "IS THIS WHY I HAVEN'T SEEN GOMPERS ALL TRIP!?"
"Mabel, don't be stupid." Pacifica responded, shifting her hands so she was steering with one while the other raised fingers to count out the points she soon explained, all while keeping her eyes on the road and not even looking at the girl she was talking to. "One: You summon DEVILS from Hell, that's just basic knowledge. Second: Gompers got eaten by a Chupacabra, like, two years ago. I didn't even know you guys had a goat until it happened actually, he never did much." Mabel recoiled a little at this unexpected revelation, but the majority of her distress was caused by a mental flash of the same fate befalling her beloved Waddles.
"Third: This animals blood has a lot of potential uses in bioscience, and this butcher would just throw the stuff out normally, we're not killing and extra animals for it." Pacifica explained. "It's used as a component of the nutrient beds in the petri dishes test bacteria are grown on, it works as a fertilizer for botanical projects, it can be processed into meal pellets for carnivorous aquatic specimens, plasma protein works as an emulsifier, and of course it's just good planing to have some bags of it around in case you need vampire bait."
Mabel was about to respond to this lengthy explanation when Pacifica cut her off with "We're here." and began exiting the car without a moment's wait. Still buckled into her seat, Mabel quietly muttered "Yeah, well... YOU'RE an emulsifier..." before getting out herself.
The van had been driven into a fairly wide alley between to buildings that exited onto another street on the other end, allowing them to come and go without backing into a busy street. The butchery the two were here to visit had a study iron door atop a few steps that would open into the alleyway, but Pacifica had already walked towards the street to enter the establishment from the front, leaving Mabel behind, standing by a large dumpster that smelled exactly how you'd expect the dumpster outside a butcher shop to smell like.
After about a minute Mabel was ready to ignore Pacifica's demand she stay with the van and enter the front of the business herself, but a sudden rattling from the dumpster spooked her. At first, Mabel looked mildly embarrassed, catching her breath right away and remarking "Calm down Mabes, probably just a stray cat." she said to herself to calm down, but very quickly, an eyebrow creasing look of worry got on her face. "Then again, I am back in Gravity Falls. That could very well be the noise of hundreds of animal entrails winding themselves together to rise up and take revenge on the humans who butchered them!" she spoke to herself, each word spilling out as soon as the idea it represented came into her head.
After a moment of holding her muscles absolutely tense to not make any noise that could alert the potential creature, Mabel's eyes widened in realization. "Oh my god is this what it's like to be Dipper all the time!?"
Soon enough though, both of her hypotheticals were proven false, when an adult man stood up inside the dumpster, revealing himself to be the source of the noise. His eyes, which held incredibly shrunken pupils, looked at Mabel like he hadn't expected her to be there, all while his body slowly uncurled itself from dumpster diving position to a more upright, though still somewhat crooked, posture. Every inch of the change of position was slow and heavy, and every creek of the muscles sent a noticeable jolt of pain through the man's body.
Mabel, for her part, simply stared at the dumpster diver with more surprise than anything else. The first thing she noticed about him was that he was incredibly sweaty, but for someone rooting around in trash he wasn't badly dressed. His outfit was rugged, a little worn and stained with blood and viscera of course, but underneath all that it looked to be in okay shape: An older set of more rugged clothes someone would put on to do hard work, rather than the worn down rags you'd see on someone who only owned one outfit and lived on the street in it.
Confused, surprised silence reigned between the two of them, Mabel not being sure what to say while the man in the dumpster was rolling his tightly closed mouth together with chewing motions, as if he had something to say but physically couldn't get the words out. After waiting for the stranger to speak a little longer than was comfortable, Mabel took the initiative. "Hello there! How are you doing today?" she asked, flashing her still new feeling braces-free smile.
The man in the dumpster smiled back at her, seemingly reflexively. This revealed the fact he was short a few teeth, and upon closer examination Mabel noticed a few lesions on the man's face, as well as an odd, sluggish limpness to his facial muscles. Finally, he spoke, slurring out a short series of words: "Going alright little missy. I seem to have misplaced my... my wallet though, and can't pay the bus to go home. Could you help a guy out?"
Mabel froze in place as she processed the man's request. The only money she had on her right now was what Dipper gave her and Pacifica to pick up supplies for him and Ford and Mabel really wanted to do a good job for them this time, but at the same time she was struck by how much this dumpster diver seemed to be in need of help, scrounging around in the trash for bus fare...
Her decision ended up being made for her however, as the side door to the butcher's shop opened up, Pacifica stepping out with a gallon sized bleach bottle that had been refilled with thick red liquid, followed by the butcher himself, a mildly portly , sweaty man in a stripped outfit beneath a wide white apron, though the most noticeable thing about him was the black eye-patch he had over his left eye. They seemed to be chatting amicably, but upon sighting the man inside his dumpster, the business owner began yelling at and attempting to chase the dumpster diver off.
Mabel found herself involuntarily flinching as the filthy man climbed out of the dumpster in her direction, but he ultimately ignored her completely to flee the alley, running with a heavy, shambling gait. For his part, the butcher didn't have any intention of pursuing, simply looking to scare him off. Once he was gone, he resumed speaking to Pacifica.
"I'm sorry about this Miss Northwest, I'm planning to put some locks on the dumpsters out here. This won't happen again, I promise." The butcher apologized, but Pacifica didn't seem too concerned with him. Then, the meat worker turned his attention to Mabel, looking at her with concern in his one visible eye. "You are, uh, unharmed, right?"
"I didn't realize Grunkle Stan's 'dashing eye-patch' thing was catching on around here." Mabel blurted out thoughtlessly. She'd found herself staring intently at the business owner, noticing that his one visible eye was similarly shrunken, and he had his own clumsy gait about him that couldn't be solely attributed to his weight.
Pacifica seemed mortified by Mabel's comment, while the butcher was more surprised, but after a moment realization dawned on his face. "You must be Mabel Pines, right? Dipper and that old rascal Stan talk about you a lot, welcome back to Gravity Falls. Your great uncle sold me this eye-patch as a matter of fact, kept me from needing to go to a doctor and get a bunch of questioned ask. After all, this would be a little tricky to explain to a medical professional..."
Then, without prompting, the butcher peeled the eye-patch back to reveal what's underneath: A fully formed human eyeball, fitted snug into its socket, but completely turned to stone, and presumably useless. Mabel gasped a little while Pacifica just tried subtly look away. "Yeah, after I got let out of the whole "throne of human suffering" thing, damn eyeball didn't change back from stone like the rest of me. It's easy to ignore most of the time, but sometimes it bounces around if I move my head too fast and a pointy bit catches on the inside. Gives me a migraine, but it could be worse! I know I guy three blocks down who got the mother of all kidney stones from that... in the sense one of his kidneys literally didn't turn back from stone, hehe." Despite the cheery air the butcher was expressing, there was something distinctly nervous and forced about his laugh at the end. His chattering came to an abrupt end as his brain seemed to catch up to his mouth, and the man quickly flipped the eye-patch back into place. "...I, uh, may have said too much there, I'm sorry. Please don't spread any of this around, okay?"
"It's no problem, thank you again for bottling this stuff for us. Dipper or I will probably be coming around for more sooner than usual, thank you again." she replied dismissively, and soon enough the two girls were alone in the alley again, putting the container of blood into the back of the vehicle and getting back in.
"What was that all about?" Mabel wondered aloud in confusion, thinking about the two strange men she'd encountered, casting her thoughts back to the dumpster diver. "I hope that guy finds enough bus money..."
"Mabel, that guy wanted money to buy drugs." Pacifica remarked bluntly before shutting the back doors to the van.
"Pacifica, that's a terrible thing to say! Not all poor people are drug addicts you snob!" Mabel shot back, crossing her arms and scowling at the rich girl's judgmental tone.
Pacifica raised a finger to argue back with Mabel, but stopped for a moment as she realized she had just sounded pretty insensitive out of context. Instead, the blond put her hand up to her face and sighed with annoyance, before trying to explain things. "Alright, look, no, I mean yes, not all poor people who ask for money are going to spend it on drugs. But, here in Gravity Falls, the odds are likely that they are, what with the opioid epidemic that's going on." When Mabel tilted her head in confusion at this statement, Pacifica sighed before mentally formulating an explanation. They were both inside the van and buckled up now, though the vehicle hadn't started yet.
"Well Mabel, because Mayor Cutebiker, in all his brilliance and capacity for forward planning..." Pacifica explained, sounding intensely grouchy and sarcastic while describing the honorable mayor, "...decided that we all just shouldn't talk about the time a mind demon entered the physical world and used it as toybox to fuel his own sadism, very few people in this town are receiving any kind of professional therapy for the trauma they've endured or sufficient medical attention for injuries they sustained. Most of them don't even talk about it with their family, and of course, we don't have the Society of the Blind Eye around to just, take the memories away anymore. So, in response to the deep rooted physical and emotional pain they're dealing with, they turn to pain medication, most of which they work to get without a prescription, since that would require answering questions. Then, well, things spiral out of control and most people end up dependent on the stuff."
Pacifica took a moment to let her contempt filled voice fade, and when she spoke again it was in a more morose tone of voice. "Be glad he only asked you for money though. It's getting more and more common for people like that to get found after they've overdosed."
Silence reigned in the cabin of the van, lasting some time as Pacifica waited for some kind of response from Mabel. After a long few minutes of though, which involved a bit of hair chewing, the female twin said her response, having chosen her words very carefully. "Does Dipper have these kinds of problems?" she asked gingerly, a lot of regret coloring her tone.
"More than you could ever imagine." Pacifica responded to her, a cold tone to her voice. After a moment though, she added on that "Not, not with drugs though, he's not on anything, if you meant it that way. Honestly I think Dipper is in a better position than a lot of people here, he has a pretty wide circle of people he can just... talk about things with, and that helps a lot. Your great uncles, Wendy, Soos of all people turned out to be an incredibly supportive conversationalist..."
Mabel involuntarily smiled at the description of the handyman, she could have told Pacifica that for free even! However, she was also sensing something going unsaid within Pacifica's listing. "...What about you? Does Dipper talk about his problems with you?" she asked, on the cusp of a revelation. Sure, Pacifica had mentioned she and the boy had conversations about his original adventures in Gravity Falls, and that they'd had a fairly emotionally charged one after the Cipher graffiti scare that ended with Dipper beating a mentally disturbed man with a shovel, but Pacifica was making it sound like they were... long term emotional confidants or something.
Mabel, as wrong as she knew this feeling was, found that prospect incredibly disturbing, because as far as her emails and phone calls with Dipper had told her, her twin had been having the time of his life out in Gravity Falls, not expressing an ounce of his mental trauma to his twin during their correspondence. "Or maybe he did Mabel." The girl's inner voice expressed, a harsh tone ringing in her head. "Maybe Dipper's always been crying for help and you've been too dense to listen to him."
Pacifica was quiet for awhile before expressing herself, simply stating that "Yes. We talk about things. A lot." The unspoken information there, that Pacifica discussed her problems with Dipper just as much as he did with her, was easily picked up on by Mabel. The brunette couldn't help but sink into her seat, deflating somewhat as the words sunk in.
The first cognizant thought she was able to forge with this information "No wonder they're so crazy for each other."
The blond driver of the car, on the other, had leaned over the wheel of the vehicle, tapping her fingers against it with a sudden annoyed expression on her face. Pacifica was absolutely certain Mabel was going to respond to her extreme moment of emotional vulnerability with some kind of childish non-sequitur or pouty mockery, and was fully prepared to bring out some venom in response. As such, she was utterly surprised when Mabel simply responded with "Thank you Pacifica. For taking care of my brother."
Blinking several times with a look of surprise on her face, the blond stuttered out "Oh... You're welcome." in a confused but completely non-malicious tone. After a few moments of awkward silence, shades of her usual attitude slipped on and she stated "Alright, enough with the sappy stuff, we've sat here doing nothing for long enough. We have supplies to collect after all! Mabel, what's the next item on the list?"
The girl in the passenger seat ended grinning a little at Pacifica's desire to change the subject, and at the fact that her dialogue towards herself was less loaded with disdain than normal. "Right, next item on the list is, uh... I had it around here somewhere..." This joy turned to distress quickly enough, as Mabel rapidly patted herself down to try and find the shopping list, quickly realizing she'd misplaced it.
Pacifica rolled her eyes at this, but it was a gentler roll than usual. She quickly reached into her own pocket and produced a second shopping list. "Don't worry, I made a few copies." Mabel took the list with a mild flush of embarrassment, but quickly read out the next goal.
"Next we need... Five bottles of industrial soap. The cheap ones, specifically."
"Right, we can get that at the nearest bulk goods store. Read the rest of the list and figure out what else we can get there."
Back at the Mystery Shack, the preliminary round of tests had been completed, and further progress into the origins of the assassin would have to wait until the supplies returned. With nothing better to do, both scientists decided it was time to clean themselves free of the general stench of dissection. It was an odd smell, subtle but pungent, and always stuck to a dissection worker no matter how well their protective clothing shielded them from blood splatter and residue.
Ford, perpetual workaholic that he was, had volunteered to clean himself off with the emergency shower down in the lab so that he could begin inputting existing data into the interdimensional scanner as soon as possible. Their data profile was far from complete, but as long as the machine was running they might get lucky. This would allow Dipper to go upstairs and use the Shack's actual bathroom to clean up, something he was in desperate need of, seeing as he was the only member of the underground spring expedition who hadn't taken a shower since returning from that, and the odor of dried sweat mixed pungently with the stench of death.
This was an offer Dipper was happy to accept, as the boy's adventures had left him filthy at a level even he was beginning to have trouble tolerating, but he also had more... personal reasons to look forward to a long, private shower.
He was, after all, a 16 year old teenager, grappling with the grueling endgame stages of puberty.
As the hot water relaxed Dipper's slowly developing muscles, and the sturdy lock on the bathroom door isolated him from the world, the young man could finally relax, and de-stress himself. Unlike most boys his age, Dipper did not enjoy the process. That is to say, while he experiences the expected pleasant rush that comes with release, he always felt dirty afterwards. It's why he preferred taking care of this in the shower.
"Alright, let's get this over with." Dipper thought to himself, closing his eyes and beginning to formulate mental images. "Time to pay a visit to my legally distinct, original character: Vendy the crimson haired fur trapper." Even when thinking to himself about such matters, Dipper's voice was tinged with sarcasm, albeit in this case growing from his disgust with himself.
With a groan, Dipper set to work, able to picture a well practiced visualization of himself speaking to Vendy with uncharacteristic confidence and charm, her being taken with him, and then things escalating. For most boys Dipper's age, it would not have been enough, but it had been some time since he had last un-stressed himself like this, leading to a fairly extreme, quick response by his body.
"Even though all my previous practical experience with girls taught me this is wrong, I CANNOT let these feelings build up to the point they interfere with my work." Dipper's thoughts trailed away as he justified himself. "If I need to act like a sweaty creep to keep a clear, scientific head, then I'll act like a sweaty creep in the confines of my bathroom!"
Trying to get back on track from his mental distraction, Dipper returned to his fantasy, letting his feelings resume flowing for a moment, only to attempt to slam down on the brakes and throw his eyes open with a shocked, panicked tinge to his pupils. Things had been going simple enough, he was imagining a finger trailing gently along his shoulder as the object of his dreams walked around his back to face the boy, but when she entered Dipper's frame of view, the imagined female form had changed, having lost all her red hair.
Instead, it was a long, flowing waterfall of bright blond.
The spell was broken, Dipper's eyes were wide open with a sudden shot of panic, and he needed both hands to steady himself as his legs quivered with weakness against a slick, wet floor. The feeling of surprised passed shortly enough however, leaving Dipper with a worried expression. "Oh no. It's getting more frequent." The boy moaned in a defeated tone to himself, new, conflicting feelings wrestling around inside of him. "I shouldn't do that again, this is going to make me things weird and I can't ruin my friendship with Pacifica!" Inside his brain, Dipper was pouring over his relationship with the blond girl against his will, and how it had developed over his years working as Ford's apprentice. Outside of his sister, she was the first true friend he had ever made that was his own age, who respected and even shared many of his interests. He couldn't imagine losing her now, and to his own stupidity as well.
"Wendy was amazingly cool for still being willing to hang out and be friends with my after my... less than ideal behavior towards her." Dipper was contemplating now. "Would Pacifica be as forgiving, if she found out about... all this?"
Silence ran through Dipper's head for a long couple of moments, and to his disgust finally formatted itself into a coherent thought. "Pacifica is really, really pretty though, right?" After a frustrated sigh and a pinch to his brow of annoyance, the boy finally trailed his hand away from his face and resigned himself to the matter at hand. "If that's what it needs today, that's what it gets. C'mon Dipper, let's get this over with."
After a lot of thought on this subject and others, strength returned to Dipper's legs and he was able to stand up straight and step out of the shower, dreams of a long session forgotten. "Well, as long as Pacifica doesn't find out, I'll never have to learn how she'd react, will I?" he thought to himself, and soon enough Dipper was dried off, all clean, and ready to return to work in the laboratory. "All I need to do is keep this up for the rest of my life!"
Meanwhile, Stanley Pines had unexpectedly found himself out on the town, having left the Mystery Shack a little bit after the two girls had. During a final overview of the laboratory and its supplies, Ford and Dipper had realized they'd neglected to add one more item to the list: Some manner of inorganic object "imbued" with Bill's presence, whatever that means. Stan was down in the lab helping them move things and get equipment out of storage while they were discussing it, and while the talk about using a resonance echo to compare the spiritual vibrations of the subject with Bill's own arcane wavelengths had gone over the con man's head, their mention of just what they needed to run that test caught his attention, and Stan quickly volunteered to go out and fetch it rather than give Mabel and Pacifica another thing to do.
"Of course, I wasn't being completely honest with them. I guess I just never am." Stan thought to himself, with a sort of muttering tone inside his head, as his beat up old car drove away from the Mystery Shack in a reckless fashion. "I mean, I do want to help Mabel out, but all their nerd talk was getting a little overwhelming."
Despite his desire to get away from it however, Stan's mind found itself naturally drifting back to the dynamic between his twin brother and great nephew, how easily they worked with each-other, and how casual they were despite the fact that they were surrounded on all sides by a living thing they'd meticulously disassembled and stored in jars. The younger boy had even cracked a joke about the monster needing "a leg up in life" while feeding its rough equivalent to a femur into a grinder.
"Gee Stan, someone threatens his family, so the kid does something crazy that's probably illegal. I wonder where he gets that from?" The old man said sarcastically to himself as realization struck him. With a sigh, he began to wonder. "Maybe I was too hard on him, back then. Maybe I ended up making the kid a little too tough..."
However, as this train of thought led to its logical destination, Stan slammed the breaks on it and backpedaled. "No, I did what I had to, toughening him up just like my dad toughened me up!" He yelled with put upon pride inside the otherwise empty care, then hit a bit of a depressed slump. "Besides, he really needed it. I'd rather have him like this then have turned up dead at some point." He said, with genuine sadness to his voice.
Stan drove his car silently for a few minutes, navigating the streets of Gravity Falls with unusual caution. His thoughts continually drifted in the direction of his long dead father, and the brutal life lessons he had inflicted on his children. "He... he wasn't the nicest guy, yeah, but he made me what I am! Made me strong enough to fight back against this rotten world!" Stan grappled in his head, trying to push down wordless, emotional resentment with arguments he used on himself hundreds of times. "He was right to throw me out of home, I deserved it! And I needed to pass those lessons onto Dipper!"
His inner conflict now on the verge of tearing down a significant portion of his internalized world view, Stan abruptly threw his thoughts towards his twin brother and away from their father, crossing three lanes of traffic unannounced in the real world. "I gotta get Ford to give the kid a vacation at some point." he said grumpily, but then snorted "As if Dipper would even take it! He loves this messed up world of hunting mummies and busting pixie drug dealers..."
Further ruminations would have to wait however, as Stan had arrived at his destination: The burned out remains of the city pool. During Weirdmageddon, Bill had evaporated the contents of the pool so it could serve as a giant bowl for whatever alien booze he and his friends were getting wasted on. The fireball he'd dropped to do so had leveled the life guard posts and supply shed, and while the evaporated Oxygen and Hydrogen weren't too bad, the cloud of cleaning Chlorine that had come out of the pool had become an intelligent, hateful cloud that flew into town to reenact the Second Battle of Ypres.
After that, a pool full of alien liquor was one of the least crazy things about Weirdmageddon, at least until Bill and his friends decided to spice things up by serving up flaming drinks. Of course, as per their nature, they figured it'd make things more interesting to set the drinks on fire all the way at the source, and to get yourself a cup you had risk your hand to the green burning flames. And of course, to make it more interesting they threw some humans into the inferno mix.
Stan to this day believed the ones who didn't come out of that pool were the lucky ones.
The abandoned property had the front gate locked of course, but Stan had yet to meet a lock that he, a little elbow grease, and a big crowbar couldn't get past. Despite performing this break in during the middle of the day out in public, Stan made no attempt to be subtle. The Pines family had a lot of leeway in this town these days.
As he stepped onto the charred poolside, the old man took a minute to remember, thinking back to when he and the twins had come here for a relaxing day out. "To think that little snot Gideon was the worst we had to deal with back then..." he mused with a little grin to his face. Then, it was time to get to work.
During the cleanup of the town, it had been discovered that a giant shot glass had been dropped in this pool and shattered at some point during the end of the world party, and attempts to clean it up had been non-starters so far, workers claiming to see strange and frightening things in the reflection. Ford and Dipper had surveyed the area, and had detected a significant mana presence in the area, and decided to simply close the place off and ward it with runestones until the levels had dropped to safer levels and could be moved without paranormal occurrences. A piece of glass from the bottom of the pool, regardless of size, would fit their needs perfectly, and as long as Stan was in and out quickly, he should have nothing to worry about.
That didn't stop him from accepting the metallic tasting tablets Ford had offered his brother before leaving, of course.
After making sure it would hold, and work as a way out, Stan climbed down a slightly melted metal ladder into the bottom of the pool, complaining about his back all the while. Instantly, he was suspicious. Even with his cataracts, Stan could tell there was more sitting on the bottom of this drained pool than broken glass, massive amounts of scattered trash, the kind that builds up with homeless habitation. In addition, the walls of the pool had been covered with multi-colored graffiti.
His suspicions were confirmed moments later when human figures rose from the trash heaps in response to Stan's shoes clattering against the pool bottom. Stan tensed up, but didn't back down. "Alright you otherworldly freaks, come and get some! I'm gonna send you back to whatever hell you crawled out of, then after you die from your internal bleeding there, you'll die and get sent to whatever super hell is waiting underneath that!" He threatened while slipping on his reliable pair of brass knuckles. Then, as the number of shapes got bigger, he discreetly began feeling for the handgun he'd holstered behind his back.
When the entire population of trash covered, lanky humanoids had stood up and directed their attention to the intruder, one of them spoke. "Wait, dude, are you Stan Pines?"
The squeaky, nasally tone of voice the question was asked in set Stan back, and after a moment of looking closer at the figures, who were shedding more and more of the trash they'd been sleeping in, he realized they were just a bunch of skinny, dirty looking teenagers.
"Yeah, whose asking zitface?" Stan responded aggressively, taking note of the deep acne scars the teenage boy had on his face, hidden by long, stringy blond hair that covered his face. However, the boy barely seemed to register the insult.
"Yooooooo! It's Stan Pines my dudes!" He remarked, admiration dripping from every word. In a moment, he surged forward and threw a hand on Stan's shoulder. "Stan the man! Yo I've heard all about you man, I mean, the entire town has heard all about the famous Pines family, but I always thought you sounded the dopest!"
"Uh... really?" Stan asked, a little confused but definitely flattered. Feeling it a little, he added on "Well, I always was the one with all the personality between me and Stanford."
"Yeah dude, your thuggery is off the charts!" He complimented, and this caught Stan off guard again. "You shoplift, you counterfeit money, you flee the cops, you drive wherever you want and some people even say you beat up a bunch of CIA pigs with your bare hands!"
"I mean, well, I suppose most of that is true, but, uh..." Stan was very unused to being praised for his criminal activities, and cast his eyes around the group to see if the praise was universal, and to a strange sense of alarm inside him, it seemed it was. All around him were filthy, rail thin teenagers with glossy expressions, limp muscles, and an expression of admiration aimed right at him. Before he could respond though, his tour guide shoved an open palm under his nose.
"You want some pop man? This is the real good stuff, I promise! Straight from the pharmacy, no cut down or homebrew!" He explained, and Stan noticed he was being offered a handful of pills. "You can mix this with, uh, whatever we've got to smoke at the moment, then you look into the glass around here, and you can see forever man! You can see other worlds man!"
Gently pushing the hand away, Stan stepped back from the teenager and made a show of scanning the ground for a usable piece of glass. "I've had enough of other worlds to last me a second lifetime kid. I just need a piece of glass and then I'm out of here."
The teenager let out a low whistle at this. "Oh, I getcha! Don't get high on your own supply! That's why you're so cool old man! You're smart! You've been in this game so long you know ALL the tricks!" he praised, then looked side to side while seemingly not noticing all the others were still there. "Look man, if you're selling, I've got a fresh thirty or something bucks over in my sleeping bag over there."
Stan was beginning to get uncomfortable now. He'd left this kind of business behind decades ago. "Look, kid, if you think I'm so cool, take some advice from me: Go home, and take a shower! You keep laying around like this you'll all end up with mullets!"
At this point, the laid back teenager seemed to become agitated, shivering with limp, heavy muscles. "I ain't got no home man, I ain't got no home! Rules suck and homework's whack, and mom just spends all day screaming at the walls man! This place ain't home any more, my home is in hell!"
Every muscle in Stan's body was telling him to deck the increasingly jittery junkie and take off, but something about his young face, buried beneath layers of grime and stringy hair, stayed his knuckles. Instead, the old con artist cracked his back to bend down and grab a glass shard, then took off running for the ladder out.
The pool dwellers were growing increasingly loud and agitated, but their weary, heavy muscles were no match for Stan's old man agility and they didn't seem to be actively chasing him yet. However, Stan quickly realized one had been standing behind him all along, and the filth crusted man was blocking the way to the ladder. Acting on instinct, Stan let loose a haymaker, feeling his fist sink into the crackling skin of the teen's face
The strung out boy collapsed to the ground, spurting blood from several locations on his face, and Stan looked down at his fists with horror. "I forgot I put the knuckles on!" He cursed himself, and while a pang of remorse flowed over the old man's body, it was drowned out by his survival instincts, honed over almost a complete lifetime of shady living, which were screaming at him to escape. The one obstacle out of his way, Stan was easily able to climb the ladder and escape the pool, leaving the strange gang of youths behind.
He fumbled his way back inside his car and hit the gas, driving a few blocks away from the pool before coming to a stop and trying to calm down. Finally exhaling a long sigh, Stan's head collapsed onto the steering wheel. His car horn would be blaring right now if it hadn't been broken for at least two years. After a bit of depressed waiting, Stan abruptly checked his pockets to make sure he didn't have to go back to the pool: fortunately, a glass shard sat inside his suit pocket, safe and secure. The old man briefly caught sight of his face in the reflection, and wished he hadn't, quickly changing his view towards the picture of Dipper and Mabel her kept in the car.
"What are you doing to these kids Stanley?" He asked himself in a daze.
"And if you look to your left, dudes and dudettes, you can see the famous Gravity Falls face rock. Is it a rock, or is it a face? These are important questions!"
Outside the Mystery Shack, Soos was performing his duties as Mr. Mystery with aplomb, leading a thoroughly entranced crowd through the outside exhibits as the last leg of a tour. Once interest in the current attraction had faded, it was time to wrap things up. "That's the last of the attractions for today folks, but we're always uncovering new secrets here at the Mystery Shack! Make a second stop on your way back home and maybe you'll see something new! Or you might not..."
With the crowd dispersing back to either their cars of the gift shop, Soos didn't notice one man walking towards him instead until the group had mostly cleared away. "Oh, hello Mister Pines... uh, 2? Is it okay if I call you that, cause I've been calling your brother Mister Pines for a large section of my adult life..."
"You can call me Ford, if that makes things any easier." The old researcher replied, sounding a little formal in his conversation with the handyman, but still friendly enough. His professional demeanor did break for a moment though, as thoughts rushed behind Stanford's eyes, leading him to distractedly mention that "You know I don't think I've actually interacted with you before now. How has that not happened yet...?" In a tone of voice that implied he hadn't been asking anyone in particular.
"Don't worry about that Mister Pines, I understand you and Dipper are really bust, uh, "paving the way to tomorrow" as he said once." Soos replied dismissively. "I just run the front desk."
"You sell yourself short Soos." Ford returned, an unexpectedly warm compliment coming from him. "Stanley explained to me you worked as a general purpose repairman around the Shack, and during the additions I've made to the building I've been able to observe your workmanship first hand." His voice suddenly became more clinical and analytic. "It all obviously still shows signs of its amateur nature of course, lacking the application of more advanced engineering or architectural principals, and the quality of the materials you had access to goes without saying, but despite all that your repairs to the building show a large amount creative thinking, problem solving capacity and all possess an enduring durability you wouldn't have guessed from cursory examination." Ford's eyebrows creased a little as his view got a little distant. "It's a shame this was the only outlet you've had for your talents all your life, you would benefit greatly from formal education as an engineer I think..."
Soos seemed like he was mustering a response, but Ford had a quick response to his own question he cut him off with. "Still, Dipper thinks very highly of you, and Dipper's seal of approval is the only one a person needs in my book. How are things going up here? Is the front business finding success?"
"It's pretty good dude." Soos replied, easing into the conversation despite his unfamiliarity with the othe twin. "I mean, general numbers have been dropping off for awhile now, but the people who do come are still buying merch. The new Mystery Shack question mark brand umbrellas we put in recently are a big seller, it rains way more often up here than the TV shows would have people believe."
"Yes, I had hypothesized something like this might happen. This town was bound to amass a reputation after Bill's invasion, as much as the people try to fight it. The ugly scars spoil that scenic tourist amusement aesthetic, even when they're beneath the surface." Ford replied somewhat spaciously, having clearly not listened to Soos' complete sentence, though the second generation Mister Mystery didn't mind. After a moment of brooding, which Soos let him have, recognizing it as a behavior Dipper had displayed even before meeting his other great uncle, Ford snapped back to reality. "Yes, well, anyways I've come to help with that. I have a new tourist attraction for you!"
Soos lite up at this announcement, genuinely pleased at the prospect of a gift from the other Pines brother. "That's great Mister Pines, is it some kind of super science gadget that the kids can ride for a quarter?"
"Even better!" Ford announced, twisted around so he could remove the object from his coat without Soos seeing it early. With a theatrical, GM mode voice, he stated "BEHOLD!" while twisting around and revealing he had a blue colored, reptilian eyeball in his hand, about twice the size of a human eye and with the optical nerves still attached. "The prophetic eye of the dream warlock!" he announced with gravitas. Waiting for a reply with a cheesy smile on his face, Ford finally noticed Soos looked mildly disgusted and confused at the object, prompting him to hastily add "Don't worry, it was gouged out when I found it!"
"Oh, well, that makes it okay, I think." Soos responded, taking a much more relaxed tone. "You, uh, think it'll bring in tourists?"
"I'm certain of it!" Ford announced, turning the eyeball around to show Soos the individual nerve endings, not noticing his mild squirming at the sensitive tissue being handled by Ford's six calloused fingers. "I had discovered that, if you stimulate the nerve endings here with, oh, an 18 volt battery will do, it projects dimensional energy rays that let you create windows into other dimensions, if you project the wavelengths onto a specially treated canvas screen!" He explained excitedly, then frowned after a moment. "Well, it did. All the cones in this are burned out, so now all it does is X-ray anyone caught in the projection. I figured the kids could pay a dollar or so to get a picture with their skeleton visible."
At this point, Ford was offering the gouged eyeball for Soos to take, and it was obvious to everyone but Ford the former handyman didn't really want to touch it. "Uh, this is a great gift dude, that sounds awesome, but don't you need this for your research?"
"Think nothing of it my dear boy." He replied dismissively. "You'd be helping us by taking it, honestly. The recent necrotic analysis of our mystery attacker requires us to clear a lot of space out of the basement, so we're getting rid of a lot of exhausted samples, dead end research, failed prototypes, etc. I'm sure this will generate a little extra money around the Shack."
At this point, Soos felt privately obligated to take the eyeball, and while it wasn't as slimy to touch as he expected, holding it between his fingers generated a discomforting feelings of pressure on his own eyeballs, of which Soos was very protective. "I... appreciate the gesture, Mister Pines."
"Like I said, it's no problem." Ford dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Dipper got together everything else you'd need to make it a proper exhibit, so, if you'd like, you can show us exactly where to set things up."
"Oh okay. Thanks again." He responded while following Ford back into the building. "How's he doing, by the way? Dipper I mean."
"Prodigiously." Ford responded, voice brimming to full with pride in his student. "During out series of tests this afternoon, he conducted them to perfection with far less explanation than I had projected, and as a matter of fact, managed to refine as few of my ideas. You see, to look for comparative isotope levels, we normally..."
"That's great to hear, I mean, Dipper was always a smart dude, so no surprise there." Soos gently interrupted. "But I meant more like, how's he doing? Like, up here man." He elaborated, while poking his own head.
"Ah, yes. I see what you mean." Ford replied, with a bit of shuffle to his tone of voice. "Your concern is touching, thank you." he replied sincerely, before elaborating "We all undergo deep cortex mental scans upon returning through the portal, and Dipper's mind is completely free of Bill's influence every time. In addition, the psychic scrambler I've built into the Mystery Shack is active 24/7 until the battle against Bill is over."
"Is that why I feel fuzz inside my ear when I do this?" Soos asked absentmindedly in response to the mention of the psychic scrambler, before attempting to lick his own elbow.
"...No, I think that sensation might be purely psychosomatic." Ford responded slowly, genuinely puzzled at this.
"Right, I'll keep that in mind, thanks dude." The second Mister Mystery responded with idle content, before getting a little more serious again. "But, didn't Dipper, like kill someone recently? I hear Mabel mention that, but she once also said Dipper was going to kill her when he was threatening to take away her sewing needles after one landed in his arm."
At this point, Ford came to a stop in front of a door, taking off his glasses and rubbing the inside clean. "Yes, well, in this case you heard correctly. Dipper did recently dispatch an interdimensional assassin with lethal force. Purely self-defense, I assure you. More than self-defense even, as he protected his sister and Miss Northwest in the process."
Soos felt his feelings about this matter, and Ford's stark manner of speaking about it, roll around inside him, but before he spoke up again, the scientist had another thing to say. "I understand it's not the easiest thing to come to terms to, but make no mistake, we are at war will Bill Cipher. If he is successful, he'll kill us, and sooner or later everyone on earth. We have no other real choice in this matter, if I may be frank."
Soos was quiet for a minute, thinking back to his days as a wandering folk her during the end of the world. "I saw what Bill did to the world Mister Pines, what he did to people." The wise handyman remarked after breathing out a deep breath. "If there's anyone in this world I won't mourn, it's him and his cronies."
"Good man Soos." Ford replied, placing a firm hand on his shoulder. It was a rare gesture that Soos had always prized when Stan gave it to him, but the other twin's grip felt different, beyond just his extra finger. Ford, however, had cracked an earnest little smile now. "Now, let's get this object of interdimensional knowledge and power set up as a cheap tourist attraction!" The door was open now, and Ford was walking through. "Dipper, is everything set up?"
Following him through, Soos felt his doubts begin to recede but never vanish as he took in Dipper working alongside Ford, carrying the electrical wires, hanging up the screen and positioning the large batteries, looking so happy and content the entire time. "I once told Stan my only mission in life is protecting these kids..." he thought to himself. "...But where does that leave me when they stop being kids? Or stop wanting to be protected?"
It was much later in the day now, and the supply run was long over. Mabel had helped everyone unload the contents of the van and headed off to her upstairs bedroom, claiming she was worn out, while Dipper and Ford stayed underground to continue testing. Sitting flat on her bed, wide awake, the girl attempted to sort out her own thoughts.
She was trying to figure out her brother, specifically. "I never knew he takes all this stuff so hard..." Mabel muttered to herself, throwing her memories back to the first summer in Gravity Falls. Almost all of the ones she revisited brought a smile to her face, or at the very least she was indifferent to. Sure, the final battle against Bill had been kinda scary, but for the most part her memories of that incident were colored by her overwhelming dread that Bill would reveal she had given him the rift. She even chuckled a little while remembering how she tossed glitter in his big, stupid eye. "Hehe, guess he wasn't that tough after all." She said after a little more thought. "Couldn't even kill the Shack-tron with a muda barrage..."
"No, I think Bill was at his scariest when he had possessed Dipper..." Mabel's mind had wandered, and now she was frowning. She'd tried very hard to put that incident, and the note she's discovered afterwards, out of her mind. It was one of the few times from that summer Mabel could remember being genuinely frightened and guilt stricken, and even now, this many years later, she could feel her well buried regret and fear from the incident boiling up inside her, threatening to flood every nerve ending and strike them hot with emotional pain...
"Stupid Pacifica! Why does she gotta be picking at that!?" Mabel shouted abruptly, flushing the building feelings of hurt out of her with a white hot flash of anger towards the blond girl, and the dressing down she'd given her days ago about her treatment of her brother. At this point, the brunette sprung out of bed, beginning to pace around the room with a flustered gait to release some of the energy she felt building in her. "She has no right to make fun of me for that incident! She's part of the reason Dipper stays here, in this whack land of drug addicts and scary monsters!"
At that point, Mabel stopped talking because she felt an overwhelming need to breathe come over her. The anger inside her had built up to the point she felt like she was physically burning up at that point. With panting breath, Mabel walked over to an ice cold glass of lemonade she'd brought up with her and chugged it down, before reaching for a bag of gummy worms and swallowing a handful. Instantly, she felt the cool waves radiate across her body and the sugar sweetness explode in her mouth, overwhelming her as she chewed the candy into a rainbow paste.
Calmer now, Mabel sat back down on the bed, collapsing sideways on it this time. The anger had flushed out of her at this point, the tingling joy of her sweets filling in every nerve ending, giving her a gentle, enjoyable feeling of wholeness. "Good old sugar, I can always count on you when the blue feelings get a little too smothering!"
"Okay, right, got all that over with. Right, what was I thinking about again?" Mabel was musing to herself, trying to figure out where her train of thought had derailed. "Pacifica, yeah! She and Dipper apparently 'talk' about all their problems. Why do they bother doing that!? That just keeps the pain fresh!" She figured. While Mabel did look back at her memories of the summer with mostly joy, she did have a few points of sorrow, with the potential loss of Waddles and both times she'd lost Mermando, ("Oh god I haven't thought about him for YEARS!" Mabel realized with a jolt) ranking highest, though both of them ended up paling in comparison to the loss she'd felt these last three years, at the absence of her twin brother.
Sitting in bed, the girl struggled against her painful memories, trying to push them back into the part of her brain that didn't think about things, but this time it was different. Instead of sliding into the closet so she could slam the door shut and lock it, Mabel's memories stuck fast and squirmed against her. Trying to push them down with her hands only resulted in the digits getting stuck and the bubbling, sticky material she internalized bad memories as crawling up arms.
A rare moment of self-reflection overwhelmed the twin, painful memories now demanding to be see and reviewed, like the sprout of a flower fighting against the dirt to reach the sun. As hard as Mabel tried to push them away and hide in sweater town, they broke through to her, replaying in front of her eyes over and over. Every moment where she felt bad about something overwhelming her. Then, as if the memories were content that they'd gotten to say what they wanted, they abruptly stopped sticking and fell back into Mabel's Mental Closet without resistance, and she slammed the door shut and locked it.
The girl had collapsed back on her own bed at this point, eyes widened and even sweating a little. "That was the most intense emotional rush of my life." Mabel thought to herself. "That strongest sadness was stronger than the happiest happiness I'd ever felt, which was... what is my happiest memory?" She found herself wondering. "Was it all the way back when Dipper shaved his head to be alongside me...? NO! That memory hurt, I've never thought back to that memory before and I'm not doing it again!" Mabel scolded herself, adding an iron bar to her memory closet. "Was it when I saw a unicorn for the first time? Such a bright rush overwhelming me... but no, that moment is retroactively ruined."
Mabel frowned, sorting through her memories. All her moments of great, overwhelming happiness were inevitably tinged with some kind of sadness, either in the moment or some later spoiling of it. "I think if you'd asked me this before I'd have said the day I got Waddles, but now I can't help but feel a little bit bad for Dipper at the time."
As she ran through her memories, the revelation gradually dawned on Mabel that there were times of pure emotional happiness, the ones she'd always reflect upon, purely good memories without any sad sting to poison them with. Material moments, like drinking Mabel Juice, winning a poker game against Grunkle Stan, hanging out with Grenda and Candy, teasing Dipper about his voice...
But, there was an edge to those memories now, Mabel realized. The happiness she felt when recalling those was different than the happiness that came intertwined with pain. That happiness, for the brief, glorious moment Mabel could feel it before the pain drowned it, was a boiling inner light that left her feeling glowing and alive, before the sharp dagger of unhappiness carved holes in her body the light shined out of and escaped through, leaving in her in awful memories. This unambiguous happiness, the one with no strings attached, was a pleasant numb that fell upon her body from the outside, blocking out everything cold and hurtful from reality so her natural inner flame, healthy but reasonable, could be all she felt.
"That's what the bubble did to me..." she breathed involuntarily, the revelation overtaking her. Mabel's eyes widened, and she began to flail about against nothing. "No wait! Don't think about that, back inside thoughts!" But it was too late, understanding was overtaking her. Every good, unambiguous memory, where she got everything she wanted and enjoyed herself without any personal drawbacks, was poisoned by her newfound, self-reflective discovery about the illusion bubble and the true depth, the true depravity of Bill Cipher's ultimate trap for her.
"I've been in that bubble my whole life." Mabel thought to herself, a sobering realization settling into her bones. "That bubble, that trap, was truly perfect. A tailor made, perfect reflection of my life. I NEVER would have escaped from it on my own, that thing could have held me prisoner until the sun exploded, if Dipper hadn't thought I was worth saving..."
Mabel's body language was becoming morose and despondent as she sunk into the bed. "Dipper..." she breathed out, taking a long moment to really think about her brother. "'Is this what he's like all the time?" she wondered. As Mabel reviewed everything she had on her twin, she realized that while she had a lot of knowledge of his habits, his history and his actions, she actually knew very little about who he was inside, what made him tic. She had never expected him to stay in Gravity Falls, after all.
"No, I know my own brother perfectly well! Let's count his deep personal traits out!" Mabel thought to herself, defiant look on her face. "He's smart, and that's because... uh, because he is! He doesn't like to talk to people, somehow? I mean it's super easy, why does he gotta be so rude about it!? Dipper is, well, he's always wanted to grow up super fast, I guess because he just hates fun? ...He certainly got that wish..."
Try as she might, Mabel was gradually learning she had very little insight into who Dipper actually was, even before their separation.
"Mom and dad always told me that as long as I was happy, Dipper would be happy." She said to herself, and like a pile of bricks the absurdity of that statement came crashing down on her. "What have I done? What have I done?" Mabel breathed out, with far more confusion than most people who use that line carry. "I had the greatest, most supportive brother in the world and I never even tried to understand him. I... I don't know the first thing about who Dipper is!" she admitted with a tone of despair, before being overcome with a feeling of determination and jumping off her bed.
"Well, that changes today!" Mabel challenged, standing up tall. "From this day forward I'm going to be the most supportive, most loving twin sister on the planet!" She took one step towards the door, and stopped. As much as it was just a figure of speech, Mabel suddenly felt like every step of her ways weighed down by the pain that now infested all of her memories. The girl took a deep breath, and thought to herself "Maybe I'll even learn to live like this in the process." before taking another step forward.
"This is the key, I'm certain! If I can do this, I'll get my brother back!"
It was evening now, the last quarter of the sun barely peeking over the horizon. Dipper and Ford had gone below ground with their supplies to continue their work, while Soos had gone home with Melody, Stan had sat down to watch TV, Pacifica was reviewing the field supplies they had above ground, and Mabel had thrown herself into a flurry of activity, the first step in her self-proclaimed journey of re-integration to Dipper's life: She was attempting to make him and Ford some surprise dinner.
The idea had come to her during a chance encounter with Grunkle Stan, the two passing each other on the stairs. "Mabel..." the old man had brought her to a stop, tone of concern in his voice. "I... geez, this isn't easy to say, but I'm worried about your brother..."
Mabel let out a sharp, surprised gasp, putting her hands to the bottom of her mouth in shock. "Grunkle Stan, that's amazing! I'm worried about Dipper too!"
Stan seemed relieved to hear that, but he kept on a grim, troubled look about the subject while Mabel seemed eager and cheerful. "Look, I know the whole thing with Bill Cipher is a real threat or whatever, but do you think it would kill them to come up and eat dinner with us, as a family for one night?" he asked. "I'm not being unreasonable there, am I?"
"Does Dipper typically eat his dinner down in the lab?" Mabel asked, genuine curiosity on her face.
"I hope so, since I rarely see him eating up here..." Stan remarked sarcastically. "Look, do you think you could..."
"Way ahead of you Grunkle Stan!" Mabel bubbled over, able to reach up and place a finger on Stan's lips to quiet him after her growth spurt. "I'll do you one better even, and make sure Dipper gets something to eat tonight!" she declared, before taking off down the stairs.
And so, a little over an hour, as night was falling on the town, Mabel's masterpiece was complete, a three-course culinary construction created from the mismatched scraps and ends accumulated by three people who barely knew how to take care of themselves under one roof, and then to make it better, she'd created a second plate of food to feed Grunkle Ford as well. Each dish centered around an impromptu hamburger, make by pressing ground up beef and turkey into a patty squeezed between two slices of toast and topped with the remains of an apple, a banana, some cheese and few bacon strips Mabel had sent through a cheese grater. Added as sides were a scrambled egg to each plate, as well as a small pile of frosted cookies she'd flash cooked by turning the oven way past the recommended safety levels and putting in small cups of pancake batter. The kitchen had been left a dirty mess, but Mabel was satisfied with her creation.
The vending machine elevator dinged and Mabel stepped out, balancing one plate in her left hand while the other sat on her head. "Hey guys! I figured you might be hungry so I brought some dinner down!"
"Mabel, it that you!?" She could hear Dipper call from deeper in the basement. "Set it down in the DD&MD room, I'll be right with you!" Mabel giggled and did so, laying both plates down, and abruptly realized, as she heard Dipper's footsteps approach her, that they had expanded down here over the years.
"Wow, I hadn't noticed how much space they've added down here the last few times I came here." She muttered to herself, only to brighten up and put a smile on when Dipper appeared in the doorway.
"Hey Mabel." he remarked somewhat uncertainly. "You made us dinner then? Uh, thank you, did Great Uncle Ford ask you to do this because I don't really remember asking..." Dipper rambled, keeping his distance to the entrance of the game room.
"NOPE!" Mabel cut off, closing the distance between them by herself to give her brother a hug, which he subtly stiffened at. "I decided to do this entirely on my own, as a gift for you two! It's almost 8 PM you know, surely you guys can take a little dinner break?"
Dipper's rumbling stomach ended up betraying him, and after carefully extracting himself from Mabel's grip, was able to talk Ford into taking a break from active experimentation to running data entry while they all ate. Soon enough, the two scientists were seated at the game table, laptop computer and two plates spread out in front of them while various piles of paper stacked here and there.
"So, what do you guys think?" Mabel asked hopefully after they'd both taken a bite.
"It's quite good actually." Ford remarked, speaking with his mouth full. "But if I'm being fully honest with you Mabel, everything on earth tastes good to me. Surviving on downed star spawn you'd shot down with acid blasters and the fungus scrapping to life on a chunk of rock floating through the ethereal plane will give you quite the appreciation for earth food." He hadn't meant it as an insult to what he was eating, it was simply the old scientist's nature to give someone all the relevant information when answering a question.
"Well, I've never done any of that, and I agree it's very good." Dipper added on, chewing and swallowing before he spoke. "Thank you Mabel." he added, but after a somewhat awkward moment of the two twins starting at each other while Ford simply typed away at the laptop while sometimes reaching for a fresh bite, he added "...Uh, you can go now, if you'd like? I'll bring the plates up when we're done."
"Can I stay and watch?" she asked unexpectedly. "Whatever you guys are doing, it looks interesting!"
Dipper responded to his twin with visual skepticism, but Ford simply beckoned the other twin over to take a seat. "You're quite right, it is! This singular portable computer is fully capable of operating the portal control systems, letting us run and program it from anywhere in the house! Amazing where computers have gone while I was away..."
"And so that is what let's us find Bill Cipher and hunt him down?" Mabel asked.
"Exactly!" Ford answered. "However, given that the multiverse is functionally infinite, we need some kind of trace to start narrowing down results by to look for him. The fragment of him we erased from your mind recently was a good lead on the first Bill fragment, but with that gone, it's fortunate we have a new sample to analyze. Otherwise, with all the recent interference, it could take us some time to lock onto him. You see, all energy flow in the multiverse..." While he was talking, Ford had reached for another charts result to type into the computer, only to realize it was the last one. "Dipper, please take over for a moment, I'm going to get more of our results."
Soon, Ford was out of the room, leaving Dipper to type away on the keyboard as Mabel scooted her seat a little closer to his. "So, what's this about interference Grunkle Ford mentioned?"
Dipper stopped typing for a second to compose his explanation before he began talking to his sister. "Well, you see Mabel, as we've researched things here, we've discovered that Great Uncle Ford's initial hypothesis was mostly correct, once we'd sorted out the lies Bill had initially told him. As it turns out, there is another dimension out there that is the source of all of the weirdness in Gravity Falls! But, it's more than that, as we've researched, we figured out it's the source of all the weirdness in the multiverse! Well, weirdness isn't quite the right word, more like it's a source of energy..."
"What does this have to do with finding Bill?" Mabel asked, genuinely confused.
"Mabel, let me explain everything or things won't make sense." Dipper answered her curtly. "So, like I said, there's something at the... center, is more or less the best way to describe it. An extremely alternate dimension that seemingly "flows" into every other, feeding them arcane psyco-radiation..." Dipper stopped, realizing he'd dropped a fairly technical term on Mabel. "...Which is magic. Basically there's one world where all the magic comes from, and it has... pipes, more or less going off of it that deliver magic to everywhere else in the multiverse. We can't actually see or travel to this "Arcane Dynamo" as Ford has named it, but all our readings know it's there, like how you can tell if something's underwater even if you can't see it."
The longer he spoke for, the more excited and invested Dipper seemed to get, Mabel noticed. "So, this center world is what makes Gravity Falls weird?" she asked. "Didn't Grunkle Ford talk about things being drawn here?"
"Yes, but that was an earlier hypothesis. Nowadays, we believe that anomalies develop here in Gravity Falls, and then a very limited number of them adapt to be able to survive outside and find environments in the rest of the world. The spell lattice of the planet Earth is wrong compared to the other dimensions and planets we've observed Mabel. For some reason, instead of flowing to the entire world, magic only flows here to Gravity Falls, making it the only place most "weird" beings could survive. Bill wasn't trapped by some kind of barrier, he was contained because his own power could not expand further beyond the source without exhausting itself." Dipper explained succinctly, fingers flying across the keyboard all the while.
Mabel blinker at her brother a few times, trying to process things. "So... earth has a magic pipe going to it, but someone put a manhole cover on top of it, but the manhole cover has a little loose spot where magic comes to Gravity Falls from?" she asked herself just as much as she was asking Dipper.
The question actually gave the boy pause, and he stopped typing to answer it. "You've... got the gist of it, essentially Mabel. Though in all our projections the system is significantly less euclidean than what you described."
Not understanding what that actually meant, Mabel pressed forward and asked "So what's with these disruptions you mentioned?"
"Something happened awhile ago on all our scanners, weird fluxes across the multiverse." Dipper answered, a dark look of contemplation settling across his face. "It was impossible for us to tell, since we can't actually see the source, but based on the readings we had from regularly observed dimensions, something was going on there, some kind of... decay or sublimation." He guessed with a frustrated sigh. "None of our equipment was calibrated to work with those settings, and it severely set back our search efforts. Whatever it was though, it seems to have passed. Luckily we have all this data to hunt Bill down with..."
Mabel was quiet for a long while as Dipper kept working, hoping he'd resume the conversation with her. He never did, and just as she was about to open her mouth to get them talking again, Ford came back into the room, a full batch of test results they could enter into the computer. Dipper instantly seemed to brighten up, engaging in vigorous conversation with Ford that Mabel could barely keep up with. Eventually, she excused herself from the room, and while the two did take the time to thank her again for bringing dinner in, she felt a bit of a hole in her heart.
"Tomorrow." Mabel thought with certainty, mopping around the vending machine and realizing how late it was right now. "Tomorrow, I'll figure something out to get some time with Dipper. Maybe I can convince everyone to take a trip to the city pool, then work out some kind of "distraction" for Pacifica after she "motivates" him to come along..."
But the twin's new, still formulating plan would never come to pass. Not because of the abandoned state of the city pool, which she was so far unaware of, but because by morning, she would discover the Mystery Shack was once again absent three people.
Early in the morning, the automated scanning equipment found a 100% match, and the three travelers were through the portal before Mabel woke up.
AUTHORS NOTE
This was, from my experience writing it at least, a fairly heavy chapter, so in an unusual turn of events I feel the need to explain myself and some of the ideas I am putting into this fanfiction.
First, bringing a drug angle into this story. I understand it might seem like a sudden bit of cheap sensationalism to bring into the story, but ever since the show's finale I disliked the idea of the townsfolk simply attempting to cover up and not discuss the horrifying hell on earth they'd all gone through, viewing it as an insultingly comical ignoring of the real damage trying to suppress trauma and just "get over it" can do to people. It's a horrible thing to encourage people to do and should provoke appropriately horrible consequences.
Secondly, Dipper's alone section here. This scene was not written for titillation, instead meant to explore more of his psychology, but if the moderators of this website believe that scene should push this story to M rating, I will not contest this decision. A large part of my intent with this story is to explore the damage the events of Gravity Falls would inflict on people, and this was meant to explore one of Dipper's many, many issues. While not as flashy or traumatic as his brushes with death or his unhealthy relationship with his sister, I do believe Dipper had a number of unfortunate incidents relating to his exploration of his developing feelings towards the opposite sex, that could have left him with an unhealthy view of relationships and his role in them. Chief among these is a certain waste of airtime from Season 2B, but little moments exist all over the show. Also, it helps explain how they aren't already dating.
Finally, Mabel's mental exploration. This was my attempt to get inside her head a little, and provide a reasonable explanation (not an excuse) for her many questionable actions over the show and her lack of any real character growth, while still leaving her at least a little sympathetic and open to development. Mabel experiences EVERYTHING incredibly strongly, so when she's happy, she's a creative little ball of energy that generates endless internet memes, but becomes completely morose and despondent when experiencing sadness, for which I cite "Time Traveler's Pig." As a result of this, whenever Mabel is upset, she instantly goes to work suppressing this feelings and getting her joy back, and this is why she canonically has no self-reflection and can't learn any lessons from her experiences: Her character development in "Sock Opera" didn't stick because she refused to think about the events of that episode after it happened. Of course, this lack of self-reflection is not helped by the fact that no one in-universe ever puts her to task for her behavior. This was the most sympathetic explanation I could think of for Mabel's numerous emotionally hurtful actions and poor character development.
Anyways, I hope you have all enjoyed this chapter despite, or perhaps because of, these heavy elements, and I welcome any feedback you may have on them.