"Sorry, bro," Pacifica shrugged, hanging up the old cord phone belonging to the Mystery Shack. The buzz of the dial tone was suffocated and snuffed out.
The white-haired boy sighed pathetically and slumped against the paneled wood of the wall. His parents had not picked up the phone, to his dismay.
"Hey, hey," comforted Paz. "It's okay. Look; you can stay with me in the Mystery Shack! Isn't that great?"
Her guest's attitude did not noticeably improve.
"Umm..." Paz stood, puzzled. Usually her upbeat presence and unfaltering optimism was enough to put people in a good mood, but this boy seemed to have a critical case of negative energy infecting his system and screwing with his inner chi, as her mother would say. "What's your name," she asked, not knowing where to lead the practically one-sided conversation. Also, knowing someone's name is somewhat useful in these types of situations.
The boy mumbled something.
"I can't hear you, honey," Paz cooed. "Maybe if you lifted your chin up."
"Gideon," he said.
"Gideon," she repeated. "Oh, that's a nice name," she insisted. Her mind quickly surfed her options - what would her mother do? Say something comforting - no, that didn't seem to work on Gideon. Hug him? Paz wished he would allow her to; hugs were her specialty. What else could lighten his mood? Let's see...
Paz plucked a blue and white trucker hat from one of the many merch shelves of the tent and placed it on Gideon's head. She smiled. "Free stuff!"
Gideon touched the hat with a pine tree insignia embroidered on it.
"Wanna go into town?" she asked.
Gideon looked up from the floor. "Really?"
"Yeah!" Pacifica's face split into a grin as she slung an arm around her new friend. Now she was getting somewhere! "There's a ton of stuff to see in Gravity Falls! There's a museum and a neat graveyard and this one really good fro-yo place - "
Gideon piped up, "Is there a library?"
"Yeah! Of course!"
"I'd like to go to the library," Gideon responded, shyly.
"Absolutely no problem!" Paz, still smiling, ruffled Gideon's hair.
She quickly ran across the floor of the Mystery Shack like a hot-pink bolt of lightning to the doorframe separating the gift shop from living quarters. "Dad!" she shrieked. "I'm going out!" She darted past Gideon and out the front door, lingering just long enough to hold open the screen door for her acquaintance.
"If we're lucky," she giggled as the two walked along the dirt road from the Mystery Shack to the paved street that would lead them into downtown Gravity Falls. "We might see Robbie walking home from work! Promise me you'll help me sneak up on him?"
Gideon, who had no clue who Robbie was, laughed nervously. "Ha, ha. yeah."
Paz went on, "That dork really needs to lighten up."
The two crossed the bridge that separated the Mystery Shack from the rest of Gravity Falls, where the dirt and gravel road welded itself into a real street. The forest where the Mystery Shack was located dabbled out until pine trees only splattered the seeable world instead of engulfing it entirely.
The ceaseless sounds of the creek dimmed slowly behind them when they came across the tent.
Pacifica simply rolled her eyes and tugged at Gideon's sweaty hand, pulling him away from the alluring, almost magical, glow of the baby blue tent that guarded the entrance to the town.
The accursed tent was situated in a lot that acted as both a field and parking lot, the once-green grass faded with the dust kicked-up by patrons and starched dead and dry by the constant comings-and-goings of vehicles.
Breaking the atmosphere of a rural forest were numerous tacky billboards, some lit up by flickering bulbs, the same shade as the tent they advertised. "The Tent of Telepathy!" they read, in five-foot high letters. Gaping at the invisible camera with white smiles and brilliantly blue eyes were two teenagers either painted extraordinarily realistically or photoshopped to the extreme - no one, it was assumed, could look that perfect in the flesh.
If one were to continue reading, they would have learned the names of the adolescents gracing the billboards: Dipper and Mabel Gleeful ("Home of Psychic Twins, Dipper and Mabel Gleeful!").
The sight, although familiar, never ceased to make Pacifica feel quite nervous. Gideon, on the other hand, seemed to be intrigued by the colors and faded glamour of the Tent of Telepathy.
"We saw this place on the way in," he noted.
"Did you stop by?"
"No..."
Paz nodded curtly in approval. "Good."
"What's so bad about it?" Gideon asked, still marveling the magical lot that held the Tent of Telepathy.
Paz huffed. "Those - those crooks think that they can set up their little freak show directly across from the Mystery Shack! Do you know how much attendance has been down since they arrived? It's so stupid!"
Pacifica Southeast did not like to think of herself as a mean person, but if she were to hate anyone in the world it was most certainly be the twins, the golden children of Gravity Falls.
"And everyone loves them!" she shrieked on. "And they're horrible! Absolutely horrible! You hear that?" Paz shook her fist at the portraits looking, well, gleefully down on them. "You all are stupid buttheads!"
"You know," Gideon added meekly. "Our tour bus was supposed to stop by the Tent of Telepathy, but I missed it 'cause I got lost in the museum. I never got to see it."
"Consider yourself lucky," Paz huffed. "You don't want to be anywhere near those lying, cheating, thieves - ugh!" The girl took a few deep breaths and mouthed some soothing words to herself.
"Getting this riled up is really bad for my chi," she said, once her fists had unclenched and her face was less red. "Come on, Gideon, let's go to the library."
She began again to pull her new friend in the direction of downtown Gravity Falls. However, this time, she met some resistance from the normally-timid boy.
Gideon bit his lips nervously, still eyeing the Tent of Telepathy. "I - uh," he stuttered, not quite looking his friend in the eye. "I kinda don't wanna go to the library anymore."
And so somehow Pacifica Southeast ended up paying for two tickets to the Tent of Telepathy because pathetic twelve-year-olds are really hard to say no to.
They were tickets of medium quality and got the two some generic audience tickets. They sat on a cheap unfolded chair that faced a much more elaborate wooden stage. A multi-colored star watched over them, flickering blue lights dancing around the edges.
Paz wrinkled her nose in disgust. "This place seems to have gotten moresleazy since the last time I was here..."
Gideon quickly hushed his friend as he noticed the ambient stage lights dimming down and the audience's rattle fade into a murmur.
A mezzo-piano tune began to plink away on a piano hidden somewhere in the shadows of the tent, a decrepitly cheery song that wrapped itself around the patrons' heads, squirming into their bodies so that their entire attention was directed to the center stage.
Somewhere, a drum sounded and a disembodied voice announced,
"PRESENTING TO YOU THE PSYCHIC SIBLINGS OF GRAVITY FALLS, THE TWINS OF TELEPATHY, DIPPER AND MABEL GLEEFUL!"
Strutting onto the stage were two adolescents even more perfect in appearance than their billboard counterparts.
The female twin had a certain dramatic flair to her, like showmanship came naturally to her. Her strides were long and sexy and she radiated a genuine smile and approval of the audience.
Her brother, however, acted more stilted, but still just as pleasing. It was obvious that unlike his sister, this boy was not born with an aptitude for performance and instead had to learn his act. His movements were more mechanical, more precisely planned and thought-out.
"Ladies and gentlemen," the girl beamed. "Welcome to the Tent of Telepathy! My name is Mabel and this is my brother Dipper." She gestured to the stiff adolescent behind her, who nodded in acknowledgement of his introduction. "And we are the Gleeful twins!"
The audience, which seemed to have been suppressing its excitement before, now roared with thunderous applause.
Mabel continued her opening speech, charisma absolutely radiating off of her glittering white teeth. Although the spectators were nothing but polite to their dear Gleeful twins, the consistent hum of excitement they gave off never overpowered the girl's voice.
As far as the spectators could see, the twins lived up to their infamous hype.
There was an act where Mabel balanced on the top of a black rod en pointe while her brother tossed knives at her frame. The girl would pluck the weapons from thin air with less effort than it would take to pick an apple. It seemed that the flying blades slid themselves between her forefinger and thumb voluntarily, as if she were controlling them. Then she'd twirl the tip of the knife a bit on her index finger before throwing it sharply to the ground, where it embedded itself in the wooden floor with a hard thunk.
In another amazing feat, the twins levitated off of the earth and floated effortlessly over the audience. They witnessed the soles of their shoes closer to the ceiling than the floor.
These must be miracles, the crowd mused. No two children could be as talented, as clever as the Gleefuls to have orchestrated such spectacles of splendor. It was not the miracles the crowd came to see, though, no, it was the messiahs who performed them. Mabel, with her sexy stilettos and charming nature, and Dipper, with his stoic demeanor and handsome looks, had dominated the audience's imagination.
Twirling on the worn wooden stage in a cloud of blue and black, nothing less than the glittering make-up on their faces and the pacific smiles they gave the audience gave any indication that the twins were planning to give up their mystical secrets any time soon.
Oh, if you could have been there yourself. You would have loved it.
And so for their grand finale, there was hardly any shortage of volunteers who wished to be immortalized in the show.
Mabel casually scanned the audience, eyes unfazed – this was exactly how she pictured her life as a child; herself, on a stage, with dozens of people willing to sacrifice themselves to her. At random, she picked a member of the audience, a certain white-haired boy.
"Step right up, young man, yes, you, with the white h-" The showgirl was unable to finish her rehearsed lines when she got a closer look at the boy she was inviting up to the stage.
The boy shifted awkwardly in his seat, confused by the mixed signals Mabel was giving him.
"Not him," Mabel thought. "Not today, at least."
Instead, the Gleeful plucked another member of the audience – some random man she had never seen before, most definitely some kind of tourist. No one would miss him.
And so, the finale went on in its rehearsed fashion. The man was entombed in a black coffin, which was levitated in some magical way.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" Mabel cried. "For our final act, we will make this man disappear!"
The crowd roared.
The twins milked swords out of thin air, glossy and sharp and silver, and, with expert swordsmanship, sheathed the swords into the coffin. The tips of the weapons protruded from the other side, something that would have fatally maimed a person, had there been one inside.
But there was no person, for after the blades had been removed, the coffin was opened to reveal an empty interior. Yes, there may have been marks and scars from the swords, but the man inside had vanished.
The audience screeched in delight as the Gleeful twins bowed, the clanking tune of the piano being produced once again by a phantom player, and the curtains closed, shielding the twins away from the prying eyes of people who would might want to peek backstage.
xXx
In the background, a certain pair of twins distanced themselves from the crowd, preferring to fill the hazy shadows with their presence. They peaked from behind a powder blue curtain to spy on one white-haired boy in particular.
"It's him," the girl whispered to her brother. "It's the boy we've been waiting for!"
Dipper smiled at Mabel's breathless excitement - after all this time, their plan and prophecy years in the making was beginning to look less like a distant star.
"Patient, sister," he warned. "remember the rules of the game; the light side typically makes the first move."
Mabel gave a slasher-worthy smile. "Oh, but, brother dear, I just cannot wait to play!"