We tried to resist the temptation, but the thought of Ford discovering shipping and bonding with Mabel over their nonexistent love lives was too much for us. And we might have turned it into a vague Portal reference, completely unintentionally until it became intentional. On the bright side, this is where the Dipifica starts.

"Shhiiiip..." Mabel hissed from her spot on the floor, where she had plopped down the moment the movie had caught her attention. Her current project, a plain white dress, lay half-forgotten beside her, the sleeves barely pinned together.

Stan, for all he might have done, was not even close to asking. There were a few things that crossed his mind, but he was not particularly interested in why his niece was saying things that had very little application to the film.

Ford was not so uncaring.

"Did you say something, Mabel?"

Mabel shrugged and stretched out on the floor. "Shipping," she said for explanation. "The process of pairing off two characters in a romantic context. Or, more specifically, him," she pointed to the man on screen, a rough-looking guy with a beard, "and her," she added, pointing to the small, thin redhead beside him.

Ford looked at the screen, then over at Stan, as if it were Stan's fault that he still had a lot to learn about modern culture after his thirty-year portal dive. "What does mailing packages have to do with fictional romance?"

"Nothing," Stan answered immediately. "It really comes from pirate ships. I don't know what they have to do with fictional romance, either, but I never claimed to be an expert."

"You're both wrong," Mabel complained. "It doesn't have anything to do with pirates or packages."

"Then why did you throw a book at a wall and scream about a cannon killing your ship?"

There was a moment of silence as Mabel slowly, very slowly, processed what Stan had said. Then there was another moment as she turned around to look him in the eye.

"You know," she said after finding her voice, "I won't hold this against you. You're both old and have spent the majority of your lives single, of course you wouldn't understand modern fan terms if they bit you on your wrinkly butts. That's why," she added, a wide smile spreading, "I'm going to prepare a proper Power Point presentation and puppet performance for you to process this propaganda called shipping."

There was another moment of awkward silence, this time on the part of the grunkles.

"There's no way you didn't choose those words on purpose," Stan finally said.

"Oh, I chose them on purpose, all right," Mabel agreed. "And I'll get to work on the presentation right after I finish my movie."

Stan put a finger gun to the side of his head. Ford, deeply regretting ever asking in the first place, retreated into the kitchen to get another cup of coffee before going back to the basement, wondering if he could just stay in there for the rest of the summer and come back up just in time to say goodbye to the twins.

He almost dropped the whole pot when hearing two sounds that did not come from Stan: music that made him think of a medieval joust and Mabel's groan of frustration. He'd never get used to her 'ringtone,' or mobile phones in general. Then, almost as if she hadn't been interrupted from her ship, or whatever it was, she cheered, "Pacifica, hi!"

Ford noticed Dipper's head poke around the corner, almost as if drawn to the sound of the name. The boy had learned to get along with the Northwest girl last time, after all, and from their brief encounter while he and his sister were taking their pet werewolf for a walk (all three kids came back to the Mystery Shack covered in cheese and carried by a mob of angry gnomes, not one of them bothering to give an explanation on what happened after they said goodbye to Pacifica) he and Mabel both seemed to be willing to pick that strange friendship up again.

So, it was almost funny when Mabel hopped into the room, found her brother digging for snacks, and said "I just set you up on a date with a really pretty girl. Don't worry, it's a movie, you won't have to talk."

"You set me up with Pacifica Northwest?" Dipper took a step back. "Look, I'll admit she's not the worst thing ever, but we're barely even friends, Mabel."

Mabel started humming a slow song, before starting to sing along. "Barely even friends, then somebody bends unexpectedly..."

Dipper shut her up quickly. "If I ask for the details, will you never do that again?"

"I won't do it in front of her," Mabel compromised. Seeing that this was as good as he was going to get, Dipper motioned for her to go on. Mabel was already searching something on the cell phone she'd gotten the previous winter. "You're going out to see that new vampire movie. You know, the one that's supposed to be this romantic horror musical?"

To show him what she meant, she shoved the phone in his face. Dipper leaned back to get a better look. It was the poster, such as it was, with a red background and a set of fangs holding the title in place. "Musical Fangs," he read off, "it sucks more than vampires."

"I already made plans to see it with Candy and Grenda," Mabel added as Dipper attempted to find other information. "I invited her to come along, but she said that I'm fine in small doses but my friends are a little too much. That's when I mentioned you liked bad horror movies, she said she liked making fun of bad romances, and we eventually came to the conclusion of you two checking it out together. No smooching required, she made me promise."

Ford held out his hand to study the picture. "It's not even accurately depicting vampire fangs," he noted, the second Mabel handed him her phone. "They do have longer canine teeth than humans, but they're not three inches long. It's how sharp they are that makes them a threat."

"The movie wasn't filmed in Gravity Falls, Grunkle Ford." Mabel took her phone back and switched it off. "What do you say, Dipper?"

Well, it wasn't as if it had to be a romantic date. "Do I have a choice?" Mabel shook her head. "Then why not? Dave's not giving any more explanations and the full moon's tonight. It's not like our investigation of real vampires is going anywhere."

Mabel grinned, before quickly running back for her project, barely calling that she'd missed the ending of the movie and had a slideshow to make. Her brother just sat down in an empty chair and stared at the table.

He had a date with Pacifica Northwest. What was he supposed to do now?

Girls weren't really something Dipper understood. He'd dealt with Mabel his entire life, but she was his sister. He'd never done the 'dating' thing before, his first kiss was from a game of Truth or Dare, and even though he'd done as much looking as any other fifteen-year-old boy (Mabel called it "Window shopping," and it was the reason she went to all of their school's home games) after Wendy he'd never really had a crush. He used to think it was because he was waiting to grow up and cut the importance of the age gap, but an almost-friend-date was a way to at least tell his favorite redhead that he'd moved on, right?

And it wasn't like Musical Fangs was supposed to be good.

He could totally do this. He just needed a man-to-man pep talk, and preferably not with Stan - he didn't want to know what kind of advice he'd get then. And at least one journal had made a direct reference to Ford having bad luck with girls, so there was really only one man he could talk to.

And now that he was here, he couldn't believe he was doing this.

"Hey, Soos? You had a girlfriend once, right? Melody, or whatever her name is?"

"Still do, dude." Soos didn't seem upset about the implication that Dipper thought it was over. He must still be amazed himself. "You need help with Pacifica?"

So Mabel had told him, too. Great. "Not for Pacifica herself. Just the whole 'date' thing in general. How does that work?"

Soos was quiet for a moment, and then he placed a hand on Dipper's shoulder. "You've come to the wrong man," he said, as if that itself were great advice.

"Yeah, I figured."

Soos, being the nice guy he was, didn't take that as offensive, either. "A 'date' for us is competing for a high score on Zombie Bones 3. This sounds like one of those girly high school drama movies."

"But I don't want to be the meat prize for the unpopular nerdy girl to win when she dethrones the head cheerleader, I just want a friendship with the spoiled alpha teen."

And he knew the plot of every teen drama film ever. The thought wasn't really pleasing.

"I need a ride, too. I don't know if I'm allowed to drive outside of California."

"So get your uncles," Soos suggested. "I got plans tonight, dude."

"My uncles?" That thought was even less pleasing. "Stan's dating advice probably shouldn't be followed by anyone, and I don't think Ford has ever been within three feet of a girl that wasn't his mother."

"You don't want to have a real date," Soos reminded him. "Just tune them out."

Just tune them out. Sounded like a good idea. That should have been the first clue that it wasn't.

"What's the point of this thing you're heading to?"

Dipper had tried to tune out his uncle. That had led to him unintentionally agreeing to let Stan come along - not just as a driver, but as the official third wheel. After that, he'd decided to deal with it and listen this time.

"I have no idea," Dipper admitted. "Mabel just told Pacifica that I like bad horror movies, Pacifica said she wanted to see if it was 'so bad it's good' or just plain bad, and the next thing either of us knew, we had a date to watch a singing vampire invasion."

"And you couldn't get more details than that? I'm third-wheeling this thing, I want to know what I'm getting into."

"You can just uninvite yourself."

Stan looked over at his nephew, a challenge in his eyes. "And whose car are you sitting in?"

Dipper groaned. "You actually want to see singing vampires falling in love and having a big laugh about it as they kill dozens of people?" He was starting to have second thoughts, and he loved bad horror movies. "I didn't think you would want to sit through that."

Stan tried to keep his face neutral, but Dipper could see the disgust. "You're going to sit through this one, kid. I have a backup plan."

"Sitting through Star 'Sploders 3 instead?" the boy suggested hopefully.

Stan didn't answer. That was yet another warning.

While Dipper and Stan were heading to 'their' date with Pacifica, Mabel was showing Ford the marvel of modern technology. In other words, they were trying to beat the other's high score on Vegetable Samurai.

"Who puts bombs in a salad?" Ford demanded, passing her the phone. "This game made more sense with the three-strikes rule."

"It means you beat the first level this time," Mabel insisted, looking at his new high score, a grand total of 70. Not even close to her 215. "You're doing better than Stan."

Ford chuckled. "Well, that does make me feel a little better. Where is Stan, anyway?"

"Oh. He's taking Dipper to his date." She looked up from her own game as Ford suddenly stood up, taking all three hits necessary to lose her game. "What's wrong with that?"

"Stan's chaperoning. Not that there's anything wrong with that, particularly," Ford admitted, "but I have seen the results, and they aren't good."

Mabel turned off her phone, not taking her eyes off of Ford's back. "What 'results,' Ford?"

He turned, his hands behind his back. "It's been quite a long time since I've witnessed such a thing. We may not have anything to worry about."

"And if we do have something to worry about?"

Ford stood still, debating exactly what to tell her. "How much do you value your brother continuing a relationship, platonic or otherwise, with Pacifica Northwest?"

So either they had nothing to worry about and Stan was coming along to keep the kids from being kidnapped or eaten by real vampires, or he was going to see Dipper freaking out over something potentially romantic and intervene on his behalf, possibly messing up any chance Mabel had of playing matchmaker this year.

Better safe than sorry.

"Grunkle Ford, I want to break into the movie theater."

He was on her side in a moment. "Come with me, Mabel. I've been -" he cleared his throat, "- modifying an old car I found in the dump. It needs a test run and you need driving practice, let's just kill two birds at once."

"Modifying?" Mabel repeated, her eyebrows scrunching. "What, were you trying to fit a DeLorean with a time machine or something?"

"No, but that sounds like a great idea."

Mabel laughed as she followed her uncle to the car itself. "It's been done, sorry. I was making a joke."

"Done?" Ford stopped in his tracks, looking at Mabel as if she was the source of it herself. "Somebody's cracked the mechanics of time travel?"

Her amusement vanished. "Not yet, but the movie made a couple billion dollars." He hadn't seen it in the three years he'd been home? She needed to schedule a family movie night immediately. "Real time machines are much smaller."

He didn't think he wanted to know where she got that knowledge from. He'd just have to invent time machines someday. "Never do that to me again, Mabel."

The car was in sight, and he handed over the keys with only the warning not to press the big blue button where the horn used to be - that was for the trip home. As they were putting on the seat belts, however, Mabel thought of something else.

"How do you know Stan's chaperoning would ruin it?" She pressed her hands to her mouth as she met her uncle's eyes, the key hanging limply in the ignition as it waited to be turned. "Did you have a date that he third-wheeled?"

That struck a memory, and she got to watch as the Author of the Journals, Dipper's idol, attempted to casually flip his coat collar up to hide himself.

"Yes," Ford said after a second of silence. "I had a date once. With a real girl who had actually met me, no matter what Stan tells you."

Mabel pressed the gas pedal just a little too hard, sending both her and Ford lurching back. "Tell me the story," she demanded, as a car blew across the intersection.

"If I do, you have to promise that you won't...what do you young people say? 'Ship it.' It was in high school over forty years ago, and I haven't seen her since graduation." Mabel made a weak sound, likely promising nothing of the sort, but Ford took it as a yes.

"Her name was Caroline," he began, not sounding bitter at all. They'd separated on mutual terms, Mabel could tell that much just from his voice. "I forget her last name, and it's likely changed by now. I do remember that she wasn't entirely repulsed by my hands, and that I've never seen a girl that involved in catching bugs."

"An insect biologist?" Mabel guessed.

"A botanist," Ford corrected, "with a special interest in carnivorous plants. I remember her saying that she wanted to watch them eat."

She should have known he'd go for brains over beauty. Personally, she liked guys who were good-looking and nice to her, but she definitely wouldn't complain if they were also smarter than a certain boy band's collective IQ. "So who made the first move?"

"Stan said I did, but I completely blacked out the incident in question. I just remember panic until my brother walked up and explained what had happened." He thought hard, trying to remember. "I think I may have attempted to flirt in Star Trek quotes, but that could be my mind playing tricks on me."

"So should I call you Grunkle Kirk from now on?" Mabel teased, and felt Ford's eyes on her.

"Do you want me to finish this story?"

As an answer, she slowed the car down as the speed limit changed. Ford, satisfied for the moment, went back to trying to sort through his dim memories.

"We were supposed to go as a group," he finally revealed, once he'd dug it up enough. "Then Stan's girlfriend got a message and cancelled. It didn't stop him. I ended up trying to get rid of him, but he was a sneak even back then. I didn't mind the moral support, but he was apparently trying to, as subtly as Stanley ever gets, convince me that we were the only hope 'nerdlings' like us would get to -"

He broke off with a horrified glance at his great-niece, and nervously cleared his throat. "Needless to say, Caroline and I were both uncomfortable with the idea of promising eternal love to each other at the age of seventeen."

Mabel snorted. "That's a way of putting it I hadn't heard before."

Ford ignored the commentary. "We decided to pretend the whole incident never happened, and went back to our set habit of pretending the other didn't exist unless acknowledging his or her hard work."

Mabel looked away from the road just long enough to give Ford a skeptical look. "You didn't hold things not working out with Caroline against Stan, did you?"

It sounded like she expected him to do so. Just how little trust did she have in him, really? "Only for a few days. I think he was trying to help."

"And you're over her, right?"

"Mabel, it's been over four decades. I only had those memories this long in case I needed to avoid a repeat of the incident in question, and it's a good thing I did." She grinned sheepishly, and he returned the smile. "Besides, I found my true love in studying anomalies. No women necessary."

Mabel's lips pinched together as she focused on the road. "So we're trying to save Pacifica from becoming Dipper's Caroline?" she asked after a moment of consideration.

"If we can make it in time. You're sure you know where we're going?" Mabel noded. "Then speed up, and try to avoid the police. I don't think they'll do anything, but you never know."

As she turned the corner, something moved in the bushes. Slowly, it stepped out into the road.

Pacifica had paid for Dipper's entry (with a stunned "You can afford your own ticket?" when he'd processed what she was doing and tried to suggest that they each buy their own way in) and had gotten sucked into it, pun very much intended, from the very first musical number.

It wasn't the way most people would be, though. While clearly entranced by the music, the opera-like voices, and the swirling of dozens of gowns in various colors, the real smile came when the first vampire claimed his first victim.

"He can't be drinking much," she'd noted, voice hushed, as the victim's screams faded into a gurgle. "Most of it is ruining her dress and making a big mess on the floor. It's a shame, the costumers were actually spot-on for the mid-nineteenth century...the décor could use work, though, it would be more in place with the early Depression era."

"Someone please fetch this fellow a napkin," Dipper had whispered back, in the best impression of a snobby, aristocratic vampire king he could, "before he can ruin our precious futuristic seating arrangements."

Pacifica had not been expecting that, or how much he had sounded like her father, and had covered her mouth with her hand to muffle the laughter.

Now, it was forty-five minutes into a two-hour film, and they were glad to be sitting in the back row of a near-empty room, as "napkins" was officially the inside joke. They were very sloppy vampires, and yet they seemed to be getting enough blood with every feeding to continue their takeover even into modern times.

And, better yet, after the first ten long, horrifying minutes, Stan had decided that switching off his hearing aid and taking a nap would be better than actual third-wheeling, with the added benefit of not waking up to one of Ford's experiments nearly blowing up the house. Nobody would demand to be let in on the joke, so the pair could die of silent laughter all they wanted.

"The fangs are wrong, you know," Dipper said casually, as the main male vampire showed off his three-inch-long teeth in what appeared to be a mating display, if the female vampire's reaction was anything to go on. "Real vampire fangs aren't that much longer than human canine teeth, they're just sharp enough to tear through flesh."

"It's a movie, loser," Pacifica hissed. "Leave your nerd knowledge at the door, Hollywood doesn't have real vampires. They don't do well on camera, you know."

"You knew enough about the history of clothing and furniture to classify that as nerd knowledge. Maybe you should leave that at the door."

"That's different. People could look that kind of thing up online, there are plenty of history nuts debating about this stuff. Some of it even survived to the present day."

"And why couldn't they look up real vampires?"

"Why should they, when they have all the resources that centuries of folklore gave us?"

Dipper's retaliation was cut off by Pacifica holding up one finger as the music of the token romantic duet played. 'Eternity' was a fitting title for the vampire love song. Yes, the effect was ruined by the pair in question proceeding to make out over the corpse of the man they'd just drained onto the ground, but the actual song and choreography weren't that bad.

Dipper was sure that a drunken gnome would have been worse, at least.

Mabel was panicking, saying words Ford hadn't been aware she knew as she blubbered through her tears. He had used one of them himself when he saw the streak of blood on the road, and then again when he'd noticed just what they'd hit.

Fortunately, the centaur seemed to be merely unconscious, and his wounds less than serious.

"What are we going to do, Ford?" Mabel complained, tears streaking down her face again. "This isn't just some pedestrian! This is a magical creature!"

Ford picked up the centaur's limp body and attempted to heave it onto the roof of the car. It took a few tries, as his age wasn't on his side, but he seemed to be willing to help. "If we want to help him, we're going to have to find his herd."

"But what about Dipper and Pacifica?"

Ford looked up at the unconscious centaur. "We have bigger priorities than restraining Stan. Which way did he come from?"

Mabel looked around, then pointed to the east. "He came from there. I think." Ford climbed into the driver's seat this time, but Mabel refused to get in. "I really don't think breaking more road safety laws will help him."

At least he was willing to let her call the shots now. That was a definite improvement.

And at least the centaur was kind of cute.

She didn't realize she'd said that part out loud until Ford had facepalmed, shaking his head slowly. "Mabel, he's a horse from the waist down."

"That doesn't matter." She thought about telling him that her first kiss was with a guy who was a fish from the waist down, but that just might make Ford ashamed to even be related to her. "Besides, I'm doing this for his health, not in the hopes of a rescue romance. How much do you know about centaurs?"

Ford propped their unintended victim against a tree. "Nothing. But trial and error is as good a method as any."

The centaur chose that moment to open his eyes, and he immediately struggled to get back on his hooves. Mabel was briefly distracted by the muscles of his bare human chest, but then his back legs gave out and he dropped back down.

"We're not here to hurt you," she promised, and he made an angry horse noise and attempted to back away. "No, you don't get it. That was an accident. We're not bad people."

The centaur gestured to the spot on his horse body, the place Mabel wanted to call a hip, where the car had hit him. She grimaced. "Yeah, that was an accident. We didn't mean it, honestly. Just let us find a giant Band-Aid or something, or maybe find other centaurs. Are there others like you here?"

The centaur blinked slowly. Did he speak English at all? "Ford, maybe we should call...never mind." It was the full moon, Phil would be more likely to attack those he didn't recognize. And she didn't know if werewolves had thumbs in their other forms. "Maybe Dave can give us medical advice?"

"I don't think Dave has a license to practice medicine on anything." Ford was completely at a loss, and he was terrified to admit it. There hadn't been centaurs in Gravity Falls thirty-some years ago. He would know, they were close enough to unicorns.

Wait.

It was risky. They didn't like to deal with humans, and were frustrating at best. But these were desperate times, and desperate measures were called for. They were close enough to the secret part of the forest, anyway.

"How do you feel about unicorns?"

It wouldn't be the first bad decision he made that night.

Dipper was enjoying himself more than he thought he would. From laughing at the over-the-top carnage to whispered, sarcasm-laced conversations with Pacifica that didn't always have to do with the movie, he was having fun.

Now he was just wondering how this had squeaked past with a PG-13 rating when it was a bloodbath from the start.

"Maybe the censors just didn't care," Pacifica suggested when he asked. "It's supposed to be a horror movie, not just a comedy."

The two fell silent once again, this time as they heard footsteps going down the aisle. They watched as a young man moved past their row, telling a woman with a rather obnoxious laugh to quiet down.

The rest of the movie was more comedy than horror or even romance, almost as if the writers had forgotten what they were supposed to be doing. There weren't jump scares, but when the 'hero antagonist' Diana Van Helsing (yes, that was her name, as they'd also forgotten that other vampire hunters could exist) lost her brother to the vampires, she'd led a rebellion through another catchy song.

All in all, a very unique film. Dipper would have to warn Mabel that everyone died at the end, though. She hated being caught off guard like that.

"I'm buying that thing when I can," Pacifica stated as they left the room, Dipper half-dragging Stan after he'd forgotten to turn his hearing aid back on. "It was horrible, I loved it."

"It was horrible," Dipper agreed. "I think that must have been what they were going for."

"It better be. I'm telling everyone that it was, it's self-justification." One look out the doors, and she froze completely. "Is that your sister standing outside and staring like a creepy hallway twin?"

Dipper followed her stare, and instantly wished he hadn't.

Mabel waved. "Hi, Dipper!" she mouthed. "I brought Ford!"

"So you're telling me that we did all of this for nothing?" Ford asked once everything was cleared up. "I told Mabel an embarrassing backstory only to find that Stan slept through the whole thing?"

"Love is never embarrassing," Mabel contradicted him. "And I did get some parking lot practice in, and we managed to save that hot centaur guy I accidentally hit with the car. Even if, you know, pawning him off on the unicorns wasn't the best idea. It wasn't a total waste."

"You hit a centaur with a car." Pacifica didn't sound surprised. "And then you pawned him off on unicorns."

"They understood his injury more than we did." Mabel sighed in clear disappointment. "All we needed to do was give him a nice set of horse bandages. Centaurs are surprisingly durable. Anyway," she added with a forced smile, "how did your date go?"

"I want to hear more about the centaur," Dipper said, looking at the rather noticeable dent in Ford's car. "You dropped him off with a bunch of unicorns?"

"To save his life. Now tell me how your date went."

"Mabel -"

"You'll get the full story at home," she promised. "And you didn't miss much, centaurs only speak horse and Russian."

"It wasn't a romance date," Pacifica answered for the both of them. "Now, about that centaur."

"Of course it wasn't a romance date," Mabel said, attempting to avoid the question. "That's why you told me to ask him if he wanted to see this thing with you."

Pacifica's pale face turned slightly pink as her date's head turned. "I didn't want to go alone."

"And I'm sure that's also why you used the phrase 'puberty smacked him with a hammer,' right?" Mabel wasn't about to let it go, unfortunately.

Pacifica squirmed a little at the way Dipper was looking at her. It was as if he was saving it all for the perfect blackmail opportunity. "That was taken completely out of context," she hissed. "It wasn't even referring to -"

"Wait," Dipper said, his evil smile spreading. "You actually wanted to go on a date with me, and asked me out through my sister? Everything's taken a turn for the weird this time, hasn't it?"

"It wasn't a date," Pacifica insisted. "I was bored, you didn't give me your number so I couldn't call you directly, and she gave me the option of either asking you or coming along with her and her friends. I chose the less annoying option."

Dipper still didn't let up. "You actually asked me out through my sister?"

Pacifica stared blankly, slowly shifting her eyes from one Pines to another. "Yes," she finally said, voice empty of all emotion. "Yes, I guess I did, in a way. In a very loose interpretation of asking you out, I did. Are you happy now?"

"I agreed to it, didn't I?" Dipper started on his way to Stan's car, waiting for him to follow. "Do you want us to drop you off at your place, or not?"

"I've called my chauffeur. I wouldn't want my parents to know I was hanging out with a Pines, after all. Not unless I'm dating one romantically." Her own evil grin would have made Dave proud. "I'd love to see what would happen if they found out my boyfriend was 'like you.' They'd probably cut me off..."

Her tone implied that she wasn't sure if she'd like that or not. So she hadn't done a complete turnaround yet.

"So you'll tell them he's your boyfriend, eventually?" Mabel was shushed by both of her grunkles at once, but Pacifica didn't answer immediately.

Dipper spoke for her. "Stop talking, Mabel."

Mabel smiled innocently, but wisely got Ford back into the car as Stan waved Dipper back into the passenger seat of his.

They left Pacifica standing there, but she was more at peace than she had been for the past three years. There was no doubt in her mind now - she was meant to be friends with Dipper and Mabel. In a loose kind of way.

And at least she'd gotten Dipper's cell phone number out of it. Even if she did put it under 'Lord Princeton,' just in case her parents skimmed over her contact list.

"...And when the green puppet," Mabel was saying from her place behind the kitchen table, "wants the red puppet and the blue puppet to make out," she pressed her two puppet-topped fingers together, while the large green hand puppet was moved around in a way suggesting excitement, "then that makes the green puppet a shipper. Shippers, on occasion, name their ships. This could happen in different ways, including combining the names of the people being shipped, finding something from each and adding the word 'shipping' to it, or any other method that they think fits. For example, if I take Dipper and Pacifica's names - no offense, Dipper, I just want to clear things up and using real people is the easiest method - and combine them, I'd get Dipcifica, Dipifica, Padipica, or other variations." She got to her feet and called her partner in crime forward. "Now time for a different example. Soos, back in the late sixties or early seventies, when Stan third-wheeled Ford and Caroline..."

"He became a shipper of..." Soos thought for a moment, then added, "Fordline? I dunno, I just came up with that one."

"So alternatives could be PlantScienceshipping, since that's what they had in common. Or Cryptobotanyshipping." She made the green puppet slump as a thoughtful look crossed her own face. "That one actually sounds pretty cool. We should make a claim for a fictional character ship with that one."

"But what fictional character would want to deal with plants?" Soos asked, not seeming to notice that Stan, Ford and Dipper were all staring in unconcealed horror. "How could we do this?"

Mabel looked back at the puppets, then up at Soos. "Movie night?" she suggested, wiggling all three puppets as if they were casting their own votes. "Ford does need to see a certain one with a time machine DeLorean, maybe we could throw a few superhero movies in. Somebody's got to have the power of plant control."

And, the puppet show abandoned just before the conclusion, they went to search the internet for illegal movie downloads.

Ford removed his glasses, wiped them on his sleeve, and returned them to his face. It was no good, he could still see the papers of her explanation. "And I thought Bill was horrifying," he commented, heaving himself out of the chair. "I never should have told her that story."

"At least she knows that ship is sunk." Dipper picked the script off the floor, tucking it under one arm so she could use it again. The thought scared him, but she might want to use them as background pages in a scrapbook or something. "Pacifica and I never really got to talk, that was a 'get used to their presence' experience after we decided we'd try to take the awkward out of our awkward friendship." Well, they'd talked through the film, and only about half of it was commentary, but he really didn't see the point in mentioning that.

"And yet you're...what was it?" Stan grinned. "Right. Padipperca, or something like that. Heh."

Dipper patted the paper stack. "All for pretending this horrifying experience never happened?" Both grunkles voiced their agreement instantly. "Good. Then it never happened, and anyone who says otherwise gets pushed into the bottomless pit."

And, to prove his point, he carried the papers into the kitchen. There was the sound of something glass being placed on a countertop, and then the sound of a boy striking a match.

He couldn't bring himself to burn the papers. Instead, he just watched the stick turn to ash.

Being shipped with Pacifica didn't sound like the worst thing ever. And that thought was the thought that was the scariest of them all.