Hey, everyone! Welcome to my Gravity Falls fanfic! I'm a huge fan of the show and have loved it ever since it came out (when I myself was 12!) I never thought about writing a story for it but when I got this idea, I knew I had something good. With that being said, here are some notes: I de-aged Stan and Ford a little bit. They're 56 in this story. Secondly, this takes place from Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons all the way up until Weirdmageddon: Part 3. I will also include the stories from Lost Legends as chapters as well. So with that being said, enjoy it!

Don't Look Back

Chapter 1: Minton's Mysteries

Dipper Pines had his eyes glued to the television. It was the first time in almost a day that he had taken a break from playing Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons with his Great Uncle Stanford. The reason for his distraction? Another one of his enjoyments: his all-time favorite show Minton's Mysteries. He had been watching the show for about a year now and was hooked on it. It had everything he wanted. It had action, suspense, and more paranormal adventures than he could ever ask for. However, the thing that he loved most about the show was its host, Mallory Minton herself. Dipper absolutely adored and looked up to her. She was always cracking witty jokes, rushing headfirst into any adventure, and, of course, capturing groundbreaking proof of cryptids and other paranormal phenomenon. Sure, she wasn't all that well known yet, but Dipper was content with being her biggest fan anyway.

He stared with wide eyes as Mallory shone the beam of her flashlight over the stone-cold wall of the abandoned building she was investigating, camera in hand. The sound of distant footsteps followed by a loud door slam echoed through the speakers of the TV. She paused and flipped the camera around to film her face. She put a finger to her lips. "Did you guys hear that?" she asked the viewers as if they were there with her. She moved cautiously towards the door that slammed shut. She gasped in delight and shock. "This door was wide open when I walked through here earlier!" Then,on the screen, footage showed of Mallory walking through the same hall earlier in the episode. The door she was referring to was indeed open, validating the phenomenon. She flipped the camera back around and opened the door back up. Immediately a dark shadow figure darted past the camera. "Whoa, what was that?!" Mallory exclaimed. Dipper jumped as well but it didn't deter him from watching. The smile on his face grew even wider now that the action was ramping up. Mallory on screen switched her hand camera off and activated the one mounted to her head. "I'm going to try some EVP's and see if I can make contact." Dipper hardly breathed in case he missed something. Unfortunately for him, he did miss the brown and pink mass growing over his shoulder.

"HELLO!" a voice shouted right in his ear. This spooked Dipper so that he fell over on the arm of the chair and onto his back on the floor.

"AAHH! OOOF!" he yelled out. The sound of a familiar giggle then reached his ears. Dipper sat up on his elbows and looked up to meet the brown eyes and braces-clad smile of his twin sister, Mabel.

"Well, well, well," she teased. "Look who finally came out of the basement!"

"What do you want, Mabel?" Dipper was annoyed that he was missing Mallory on the TV. He probably had missed so much. He moved to get back up in the chair, only for Mabel to push him back off and grab the remote that was sitting on the side table.

"I'm going to watch reruns of Ducktective while I wait for the season finale on Friday." She turned the channel from Minton's Mysteries to her favorite cartoon featuring the Sherlock Holmes-esque duck.

"Hey!" Dipper exclaimed as he worked his way up next to his sister. "I was watching that!" He grabbed the remote from her and turned the channel back to where it was.

"Ugh, Minton's Mysteries?" groaned Mabel. "Again? You always watch this show! It's my turn!" She grabbed the remote from Dipper and turned it again.

"Come on, Mabel! You're always hogging the TV!" he protested. "Besides you've seen every single episode already! This is a brand-new Minton's Mysteries! Mallory's talking to a ghost!" He attempted to steal the remote back from his twin, but she held fast. In their struggle they ended up falling to the floor, rolling around trying to claim possession. Suddenly, the remote was ripped out of their flailing grasps.

"HEY!" they both shouted. They looked up to see their Grunkle Stanley settling down in the chair with the remote in hand. Without saying a word to his twin niece and nephew he clicked a button and the evening news was on screen.

"Grunkle Staaaan!" whined Mabel. "Why do you have to watch boring news stuff?"

"Hey, the news is important!" Stan replied in a matter-of-fact way, holding up his finger to amplify his point. "You never know what you might miss if you don't watch it, like the nightly lottery numbers." He then produced several lottery tickets from inside one of his pockets.

"No offense, Grunkle Stan," Dipper butted in. "but literally nothing ever happens in this town that qualifies as 'news'". Oh, how very wrong he was indeed.

"This just in," reported Shandra Jimenez on the screen. "Paranormal investigator, Mallory Minton of the show Minton's Mysteries, has announced that she will be filming a one-hour special episode in Gravity Falls." Dipper's head snapped back around to the TV, his eyes the size of dinner plates. A picture of Mallory in action flashed on the screen and he could hardly contain the gasp of excitement that escaped from him. He almost couldn't believe it. "Minton released in a statement that she's planning on staying in Gravity Falls for the rest of the summer to film what will be her season five finale." Shandra continued on the TV. "Although we don't know how much she'll find here I'm sure we'll all look forward to welcoming her with open arms. She will be arriving in town tomorrow morning."

"Oh my gosh, you guys, can you believe it?!" Dipper exclaimed. "Mallory Minton, THE Mallory Minton is coming to Gravity Falls!" He let out a shriek and fell onto his back from excitement. He quickly hopped back up and darted over to Stan in the chair. "Grunkle Stan, you have to take me into town tomorrow so I can meet Mallory! She's my idol! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!"

"Hey if it gets you to take a break from that nerd game and away from Ford, then it's fine with me." Stan replied with a shrug. But Dipper really only heard the last part. He let out a scream of delight and quickly said a thank you before rushing upstairs and immediately grabbing his notepad. Ford had taken back all of his journals so Dipper had been re-recording all of his adventures and research over the course of the summer in it. He grabbed a highlighter and circled anything important. He didn't just want to meet Mallory; he wanted to work with her. She would need someone to show her around both the town and the surrounding woods, as well as someone to teach her about everything in the town as well. And who better than him? Dipper looked up at the poster of Mallory he had plastered to his wall and smiled. He couldn't wait for tomorrow to come.

*Two Weeks Earlier*

"CUT!"

The lights came on in the sanitorium. Mallory shielded her eyes at the brightness of them. When they adjusted, she looked around the room. She found Alan, the director of her show, sitting in his chair with his head in his hands. The rest of the crew stood around, holding boom mics and other various equipment. Mallory turned off her camera and stood where she was, waiting for Alan to possibly change the direction of the episode for the fifth time. He hummed in thought. "Steve," he asked the prop guy. "Is there anyway you can move that thing a little faster?" The "thing" he was referring to was a dummy that was hooked up to a pulley system installed on the ceiling. The dummy was just a big black stuffed cloth but made to look like it had a head. It was the "shadow figure" that was supposed to move past the camera. "I want to really sell it," Alan said. "Its gotta just fly past Mallory's camera."

"Sure thing, boss," Steve replied.

"Alright, let's do this again and let's go from the entrance. Mallory, go back to where you were." Mallory rolled her eyes.

"You know this place is actually haunted…right?" she said. "There's no need for that thing." She pointed to the dummy she was referring to. "I could probably just go into a different part of the building and capture an actual apparition." Alan waved his hand in a dismissive manner.

"The key word is 'probably', hun," he said. "Why run the risk of not capturing anything when you're guaranteed something by use of the dummy?"

"Uh, because when I capture something, since this place is crawling with ghosts, it will actually be paranormal and not something we fake."

"And run the risk of ratings going down if not? I don't think so," Alan was unmoved. "Now, places." Mallory knew it was no use so she just nodded her head. She walked back to the door and closed it. She clenched her fists in her hands in frustration. It wasn't always like this. When she first started her show, everything she had ever captured was one hundred percent real. Of course, she didn't really have a lot of viewers then, either. When Alan took over the director's chair, he came up with the absolutely brilliant idea to start faking a bunch of paranormal phenomena on the show. Mallory protested the idea from the start. It was an insult to everything she had ever worked for and studied. Sure, she was allowed to keep some of the actual evidence she captured. But that was just to stop her from complaining all the time. The only positive was that ever since the faking started, the show's ratings had gone up exponentially. That still didn't mean Mallory didn't like it. However, even though she was the star, Alan was the director. Thus, he made the rules. Mallory just had to grin and bear it.

"Lights off!" Alan commanded. The building was plunged into darkness. Mallory took a deep breath while she waited for her cue. "Mallory is your camera on?" his voice echoed through her clear earpiece. Clear so the viewers wouldn't know she had one. She pressed the button on it.

"All good," she responded, this time with an actual eye roll. She turned her camera on and looked at her black and white night vision LCD screen.

"Ok," said Alan. "3…2…1…ACTION!"

"This door was wide open when I walked through here earlier!" Mallory recited her lines just like before. She opened the door and the shadow dummy flew past her camera, even faster than before. She had to admit, it was hard to tell it was a fake. "Whoa, what was that?!" she yelped, feigning shock. She continued to follow the script as normal for the rest of filming that day.

When the day was done and filming had wrapped, Mallory was sitting in her trailer outside the building. She had her laptop in front of her and was wearing headphones in order for her to do her voiceovers for the episode. Suddenly the door to her trailer opened. A blonde woman with a few wrinkles on her face and dressed in a crisp black and purple pantsuit stepped in holding two cups of iced coffee. It was Mallory's agent, Robyn. She greeted her with a sigh of relief. "Here you are, my sweet," Robyn said, handing her one of the cups. Mallory took a long sip of the beverage, feeling the coolness chase away the summer heat. "Alan being difficult again?"

"Ugh!" Mallory groaned, throwing her head back in frustration. "You have no idea. I just wish he would give me a chance and do things the way I want to do. Capture real evidence, put all my research to good use. I hate feeling like I'm just as fake as all the props and illusions. I miss the way the show was before." Robyn put a hand on Mallory's shoulder in understanding. She was going to say something but her eyes wandered to the American map Mallory had sat next to her laptop. There were several circles on it surrounding various cities and names of cryptids next to them. However, Robyn noticed that most of the circles were confined to one area of the map. Mallory followed her gaze and picked up the map, setting it in front of her.

"All of these circles are places I've researched," she explained. "The more circles there are in a certain place, the higher amount of activity there is. Now what's really weird is that most of them all seem to be concentrated in one place: here. And it's the highest level of phenomena I've ever seen." She pointed to the big cluster of circles. "I just wish I knew why. Why this area more than anywhere else? What's causing all of the activity? And what's even there in the first place?"

"Why don't you run it by Alan?" Robyn asked.

"Yeah, and have him reject me again?" Mallory replied. "Or worse, have him agree and then fake everything? No thank you."

"But…if the area is as active as you say it is, wouldn't it be really hard for him to fake anything?" Mallory didn't reply. Her eyes widened as an idea came to fruition in her mind and her head snapped up.

"Robyn, you're a genius!" she exclaimed. She gave the older woman a quick hug then dashed out of her trailer. She made a beeline back into the haunted sanitorium where Alan and the editing crew were going over the footage from the past two days. Alan forced a smile as she approached.

"Ah, Mallory," he said. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Alan, I have a challenge for you," she declared confidently, hands on her hips.

"Oh?" Alan asked quizzically, eyebrow raised. "And what sort of 'challenge' do you propose?"

"Let me travel somewhere with only Robyn to accompany me to do an investigation all on my own." Alan and the other crew members were silent before he let out a guffaw.

"And why would I let you do that?" he smirked.

"To see what's really best for the show." Mallory continued. "If my solo investigation does not get more views than the episode we're filming right now, then I'll never complain about faking everything again." Alan's smile turned into a frown.

"And what if in the unlikely event that it does?"

"If it does…" replied Mallory. "Then you have to stop with the hoaxing and allow everything in Minton's Mysteries to be real."

Alan thought for a long moment before his face turned into an oily smile. "Alright, little lady, you've got yourself a deal." He extended his hand and Mallory shook it firmly.

"So, where exactly will you be going on this 'solo investigation'?" He was still clearly mocking her.

"Somewhere that I've researched heavily and found it to have more supernatural activity than anywhere else I've ever seen. A small town in Oregon." They waited for her to continue.

"Gravity Falls."