"Are you sure you got a PhD in physics?"
"Har har. This isn't as easy as it looks you know."
"Soos has already set up four of them." She pointed out before adding with a furrowed brow. "And he took a break to feed a squirrel."
"Then obviously he didn't get one with a rusted leg."
"I thought rust was supposed to look… well, rusty," Mabel commented, scrutinizing the smooth metal leg of the foldable table that Dipper had failed to set up for the last five minutes. Reeling back when her brother finally seemed to figure out what he needed to do after staring at the uncooperative table, she took a cursory glance around the before snapping her head back to him.
"It's rusty in between the joints from sitting around for years. You just can't see it," Dipper grumbled as he placed his foot on the underside of the table. It was flipped to lie on its top, exposing the foldable legs. Gritting his teeth, he tried to pull one up by force while his sister watched with a raised brow.
"You're gonna pull a muscle." Mabel crossed her arms as her brother struggled.
"I'm not… gonna… pull…" The taller twin's reply was lost as he strained to pull at the metal bar. Seconds ticked by and, just when Mabel was about to speak up again, the leg popped out and sent Dipper flying onto his back in the dirt with a grunt.
"See?" He panted. "I can-AH! Charley horse!" He held his calf in pain as writhed on the ground, falling onto his side while his eyes began to tear up in pain. "Oooh my god! Uuuhh! This is the worst!" He hissed, taking quick deliberate breaths to work through the agony of the muscle spasm.
"Congratulations, bro! You did it!" Mabel clapped with a bright smile, praising his accomplishment. "Now do the other leg," she challenged him, pointing to the half-unfolded table.
"Oh! I didn't know there were more tables," Soos observed as he approached the twins. "Let me get that for you dudes." With ease, the handyman popped the last leg out and turned the table right side up the next moment. "All done." He glanced around the front of the Mystery Shack littered with tables, his hands on his waist. There was a small smile of pride on his face until he looked down and noticed Dipper.
"Uh, you okay, dude?"
"Peachy," Dipper squeaked out as he rubbed his leg in order to soothe his protesting muscles.
"Thanks so much for coming by to help, Soos," Mabel spoke brightly as she laid a table cloth over the table and secured it. "We really needed it." She grew somber as she took an inconspicuous glance at Dipper. With Ford in the basement, Stan working on just clearing out the interior of the Shack and Dipper being… Dipper, there was a lot to get done before the reunion party tomorrow and not a lot of capable hands to do it.
"No problem. I may run the Shack now, but I'll always see Stan as my boss. So if he calls and tells me to "drop whatever you're doing and get over here and help!" then that's what I'll do," Soos declared.
Mabel smiled. Same old Soos. The dark skinned man hadn't really changed that much over the years physically. Sure, he looked older like anyone would, but maybe it was just his same old attitude that made Mabel feel like he'd hardly aged at all. The only real difference was that he dressed up like Stan had for the tours and, instead of his old cap, he now always wore the fez that Stan had given him.
"I think we're about good out here," Dipper commented when he finally recovered from his pulled muscle. "And due for a lunch break." The manual labor, such as putting the decorations up and setting the stage in the rec room, was practically done at this point. All they needed to do tomorrow was set out the food.
"Sounds great!" Soos cheered at the prospect of food. "By the way, I haven't seen Libby since you first got here. Is she in the Shack?" Soos asked then, thinking that they should go get her as well.
The twins paused in their walk to the front door, looking at one another, and it took Soos a moment to realize that they had lagged behind.
"Uh, is everything okay?" He stopped to glance back at them with worry.
"I guess we forgot to tell you." Mabel looked over to Dipper with an uncertain frown.
He took the cue and continued. "Actually, Libby had to leave." He rubbed the back of his neck with a sigh.
"What? But you and she just got here. How come?" Soos turned to face them.
"This morning she got a call from her mom. It was kind of sudden, but her dad has to get this surgery," Dipper began.
Soos' surprise matched Mabel's when she had come back from her coffee run and seen Dipper's girlfriend leaving with her luggage in the car.
Seeing this, Dipper quickly added, "It's pretty standards stuff, but the recovery period is rough and with her mom already gone on a cruise with some friends, even if she leaves today, she won't get there before Libby's dad has to get the surgery. Until then, someone needs to take care of him, so Libby elected herself to go."
Dipper had offered to come with, but Libby had refused and insisted that he stay to attend Wendy's wedding. As she'd explained, it wasn't life threatening, so he couldn't use it as an excuse to get out of the formal event. Her joking to lighten the mood hadn't gone over well with him, but he'd relented, knowing what a fit she'd throw if he forced her to take him with.
"Oh? Well, when will she be back?" Soos' shoulders sagged with slight relief.
"Probably not until after the wedding," Mabel answered with a frown. She had been looking forward to going with her possible future sister-in-law to the bachelorette party too.
"Yeah. So me and her agreed we'd just meet up back home," Dipper told Soos. "It sucks, but at least she'll be able to hang out with her dad for a while." Without him. He was fairly certain the father had accepted Dipper as his daughter's boyfriend, but he could swear he still felt watchful eyes on his back whenever the man was cleaning his shotgun.
Soos nodded with a sympathetic smile. "It'll probably be boring around here until the wedding anyway," he reasoned. "It's not like anything exciting ever happen-"
A loud yowl, beeping and a scratching noise cut the handyman off and all three swung their head towards the source. The sound was coming from inside the Shack and, cautiously, Dipper reached forward and opened the door. A greyish blur immediately ran past them and ducked under the planks of the Shack just as a blast of smoke hit their faces, causing them all to cough.
"Chibi-chan?" Soos cried out, glancing at the hiding feline. A few months ago, he and Melody had found the cat wandering the property and taken it in, but since no pets were allowed in their apartment, Stan had reluctantly taken in the grey tabby cat at Soos' begging request.
Further inside, they could hear disgruntled swears and yelling and the twins quickly ran inside, Soos following behind. Tracing the smoke to the kitchen, they were met with the scene of Stanley assaulting a large fire ablaze on the stove with an oven mitt while a thick layer of black smoke obscured the ceiling completely. Other than the fact that he was literally only fanning the flames, his attempts to contain the fire were even more futile since the oven mitt he was using was also on fire.
"Oh my god!" Dipper exclaimed before nearly tackling his grunkle to get him out of the way. "Stan! Stop!" he shouted, gritting his teeth at the intense heat radiating from the flames.
"Mabel, the fire extinguisher! Soos, get the windows open!" He directed the other two who each worked quickly to save the Shack from burning down. Soos opened the windows to let out the smoke just as Mabel found the extinguisher and began to fight back the flames.
After ten minutes, the fire was out, the kitchen was covered in white from the fire extinguisher and black from the char that remained a foot in every direction of the stove and everyone was laid out on the floor, covered in soot, some of their hair a bit singed.
"Man, talk about intense. How did this happen?" Soos asked tiredly, panting.
They all turned their heads to Stan who shifted his gaze left to right nervously before letting out a defeated sigh.
"Look, the meat wasn't cooking very fast, so I thought I'd turn up the heat," he explained simply.
"Aaaand?" Dipper knew that couldn't be all.
"Well, it still wasn't cooking fast enough and there was this documentary on "The Duchess Apr-" I mean… football. Yeah." Stan paused as if to let the correction to his Freudian slip sink in. "Anyway, all I did was step away for a minute or two and-"
"It caught fire." Mabel sighed while Dipper rubbed at his temples in frustration.
"Yeah, but then all I had to put it out with was the cat's water dish," Stan admitted gruffly. "So I threw that at the fire, but it only got bigger. Water makes grease fires worse, who knew?" He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, but immediately recoiled with a yelp.
"Are you okay?" Mabel immediately crawled over to the conman and winced at the sight of the angry red welts on his hand.
"Crap. Does he need to go to the hospital?" Dipper asked, leaning over to try and get a look at the damage.
After a moment of careful inspection, Mabel replied definitively. "No, but he's gonna have to be careful for a while." With the help of Soos, they got Stan on his feet.
"Would you guys calm down?" Stan groused, shrugging the two of them off. "This hand has punched a pterodactyl, a giant squid and a demon. I'm not some baby that needs-AH! FLYING MONKEYS!"
Stan swiped his hand away protectively after Dipper poured a bottle of water over the burned hand. It was cool on his skin, but only aggravated the burn even more. Stan clenched his teeth with a groan as he cradled his shaking limb.
"Just get him taken care of." Dipper turned to Mabel, crossing his arms. "Me and Soos'll clean this all up-"
"WHAT'S HAPPENING!? Did the fire wasps get in here again!?" Ford slid into the kitchen with his laser gun at the ready. When he saw the owlish eyes of his family staring at him (or more specifically his weapon), he slowly lowered the gun and squinted at Stanley suspiciously. "Or a grooming incident gone wrong?" he pondered. He opted to burn away his facial hair as such, lighting it on fire rather than shaving as it was much faster and efficient, but he admitted that it did take a certain trick or two to get it right.
"Neither, Poindexter. I burned lunch," Stanley deadpanned.
"Oh… what a shame…" Ford mumbled in monotone under his breath, noting the burned stove. It was a sacrifice he would gladly make to avoid his brother's cooking.
"Ya know, if you stuck your head out of the basement once in a while you'd know if it was fire wasps, shaving or whatever. It took you like, what? Fifteen minutes to notice the house nearly got burned down," Stanley pointed out bluntly.
Ford held his chin thoughtfully. "To be fair, the house from ground level down is fire proof, so if the house actually did burn to the ground, I'd still be just fine downstair-"
"Okay, okay, enough!" Mabel shouted before pointing to Ford. "You help clean and you," she began to push Stan towards the doorway, "come to the bathroom with me before your burns get infected and you lose your hands again."
The identical twins grumbled under their breath, but did as they were told and soon Mabel was running cool water over Stan's red hand. He sat on the toilet while his niece began to comb the bathroom for the first aid kit.
"And you wonder why Ford stopped letting you cook on the boat," Mabel teased lightly, trying to distract Stan from the pain of his hand.
"Hey, when it comes to seafood, overcooking is worth it. You wanna get sick from eating raw fish?" Stan groused, doing his best not to flinch at the throbbing pangs in his hand.
"The two of you did get sick," Mabel pointed out, trying to contain her amused smile. "From your cooking. Which is when Ford stopped letting you cook."
"Meh." Stan waved his good hand dismissively. "It's all in that guy's head. I cooked for you kids all summer before he came and you were just fine."
Mabel decided not to mention how they would be writhing in pain from stomach aches after a meal Stan had cooked, even when they hardly ate anything. The twins' only solace was that Stan was more often than not too lazy to cook. Back then, they had mostly persisted off of take-out and leftovers.
"I swear, ever since we got back, that knuckle head has been closer and closer to going off the deep end." Stan sighed. Sometimes when he walked around the quiet house he almost forgot himself and could think that he was still brotherless and trying to find a way to open the apocalypse-inducing portal to bring him back.
Mabel frowned as she found what she was looking for and reached under the sink to retrieve the first aid kit. "Have you tried talking to him about it?" Though their relationship was worlds away from what it had been before, it wasn't perfect. Ten years on a boat together and they still had communication problems.
Plus, once they'd gotten back, Stan had taken up managing the Mystery Shack again while Ford had found that the mysteries of Gravity Falls had only grown while he was away and that he had some major catching up to do. The brothers had tried to stick together as a team in the beginning, but Stan couldn't handle the incessant adventures while Ford had thrived on them. Spending thirty years in the portal, Mabel supposed that it was do or die when dealing with the anomalies. Getting Ford out of the habit of constantly learning wasn't easy when it had taken over his life even before he'd been pulled into the portal and been his means of surviving while inside.
"Yeah, but it's in one ear and out the other. He says he'll stop, but the next day he's down there or out on monster hunts. I mean, I'm a fun guy. I'm up for a death-defying adventure now and then, but Ford brings it to a whole new level," Stan explained with a scowl. "I thought maybe you guys coming would break him out of it. Make him realize that he still has family and that he's not on his own. But I don't know anymore."
Stan wasn't blind to the loneliness that gripped Ford. Hell, it was a miracle his brother wasn't insane from spending decades in the portal. He wasn't exactly stable when he'd called Stan all those years ago with the intent to dump the third journal on him and even now, Ford still woke up some nights screaming. But instead of embracing what he had back, he almost seemed to recoil from it at times, like it was almost too much for him to handle.
"Look, I know you're getting antsy about Ford becoming a moleman downstairs, but I'm working on it," Mabel confessed to her great uncle as she pulled his hand out from under the water and sprayed disinfectant on. She'd noticed it too, though she didn't realize just how bad it was. At the very least, it was setting off alarms for Stan and could be the start of another rift between the brothers if it wasn't nipped in the bud.
"I'm not worried," Stan rebuked firmly before his tough façade waned. "But… I mean, I thought that ten years of this stuff would have gotten it out of his system. But when we got back, he just threw himself into the mysteries and anomalies again."
Mabel nodded, knowing the fear of being pushed aside for the strange. "Ford will come around. He just needs the right… push." She began to wrap his hand in the gauze. "And when it comes to pushing, I know how to do it the hardest." She gave him a bright grin and lightly punched his arm. "Just trust me."
Stan playfully rubbed his arm and looked up at Mabel with a small smile. "If anyone can do it, it'd be you, pumpkin." Once Mabel was done, Stan stood and announced blandly, "Welp, I've had my fill of combustion related injuries for the day. I'm gonna go grab Ford's wallet and order us a pizza."
Before he left the bathroom, Mabel giggled and yelled, "Can I get sardines on mine?"
"Eugh!" She laughed at his audible disgust. "Only if you want me to disown you!" Stan shouted back. He'd gotten really sick of fish during their ten year trip and could now hardly stand the stuff.
Grinning, Mabel put the med kit away and stood just before she spotted something out of the corner of her eye.
"Look who's back," Mabel murmured with a smile as she spotted the cat. However, when she crouched and leaned forward to pet the tabby, it only retreated backwards, dashing out the door before leaning in to peek around the corner at her once more.
"Still being difficult, huh?" Chibi-chan had done this ever since she'd been found by Soos and Melody. Mabel would think the cat was afraid of her if not for the playfully expectant look on her face and how her tail slithered happily when Mabel made eye contact.
The only people she really let pet her were Soos, Melody and, oddly enough, Ford. However, Mabel suspected that the kitty liked Stan and simply loved to mess with him, like lying on his lap only to leap away the moment he moved in hopes to pet her.
"Come on, Chi. I wanna be your friend," Mabel cooed at the cat. Though Soos had decided to name her Chibi-chan in honor of his love for anime, manga and the Japanese, he often called her Chicha or Chica as if he couldn't decide which nickname he wanted to call her. Since he tended to call her one of the three names at any given time, it had become too confusing for everyone else, so they simply tended to call her Chi.
She was a pretty thing, with dark, grey fur, black stripes and most interesting of all, different colored eyes. One was green while the other was blue with a strange hue that almost looked violet in the right light. Given what Mabel had seen of the anime Soos watched, it was no wonder that he named her with anime in mind. The eye and hair colors on those characters were crazy.
"Fine." Mabel stood with a huff when the cat maintained their distance. She'd even tried to use a cat toy to entice the tabby. "Be that way. Just know one thing, Chi," she remarked with a devious smile, receiving a meow in response. "There's more than one way to befriend a cat."
Author's Note: I was a little surprised at how many people mentioned the ski mask guy, but I was glad to know people are intrigued. I'm no Alex Hirsch (far from him), but with this story and other things I am trying to recapture some of the things that they did like leaving clues and hints to the story and putting forth some degree of symbolism, so keep your eyes peeled as you read! I don't promise some grand twist that could really be concluded to like Ford's reveal of course, but at some point, if you read back, you'll find that I left a tell or two behind. ;) See? I can plan some things! XD
However, I'd still love to hear suggestions from you guys if you have any.