The next morning, Dipper and Mabel packed lunches in their backpacks.
"You sure you won't be needing us, Soos?" Mabel asked as she put her backpack on.
"Melody and I'll be good here, dudes. I'm glad that you're hangin' out with Doctor McGucket. He's all alone in that big house when his son's at work. "
Dipper and Mabel looked at each other a bit sadly. "Okay, have a great day, Soos, we'll see you later!"
The twins stepped out onto the porch. "Where are we going again? "Mabel asked, adjusting the strap of her backpack.
Dipper got the note he'd gotten from Dr. McGucket out of his pocket. "To—the junkyard?"
Mabel's eyebrows shot up as she went down the steps. "I wouldn't think McGucket would want to see that place again. "
"Well, at least we know where it is." Dipper said, although he wondered if the place wouldn't bring back bad memories for McGucket, too.
The twins headed down the dirt road that led into town. When they reached the junkyard, Dipper looked around.
"I don't see him. "
"Hey, there, kids !"
The twins looked over to see the older gentleman at the door of the corrugated tin sheet shack that used to be his home.
Mabel tilted her head. "McGucket? What are you doing here? "
Dipper noted the rectangular metal box in McGucket's hand. Before he could ask about it the older man said,
"Well, I was lookin' for a part to put on my new little do-hickey here. I figgered it'd be here at the old place 'r in the junkyard somewhere, an' sure 'nuff, I found it. "
"Eh—what is it? "Mabel asked.
"Well, honey, it's a device fer detectin' radiation." McGucket explained as he headed out of the junkyard and back to the street.
Dipper blinked as he and Mabel followed. "Radiation? "
"Yep. When this starts goin' off, we should be near whatever landed last night. "
Dipper was silent a moment. Whatever landed…
McGucket pulled a compass out of his pocket, looked at it, and turned a corner. "Okay, kids. It's out to the forest, and we'll start lookin'!"
Dipper looked over his shoulder. "Uh—does your son know what you're doing? "
The twins' companion chuckled. "Well, I told 'im that I was gonna hang out with you two today. I'm sure he has the sneakin' suspicion what I'm doin', 'cause I told him about what I saw last night, but he doesn't know we think it's a –"
McGucket lowered his voice, though there was no one around to hear—"—spaceship. "
Dipper bit his lower lip. A spaceship—that's definitely what that object looked like in the recorded video McGucket had shown them the other day. If it was—and they hadn't just been imagining things—what sort of creatures had been in it? Had they survived the crash?
As they walked, Dipper thought about what they might find. Aliens? Would they be intelligent? Would they be friendly? Would they be…?
Feeling that he was being stared at, Dipper looked over at his sister to see her smiling at him knowingly.
"What?"
"Oh, it's just nice to see you in your 'element' again."
Dipper raised an eyebrow. "My—element?"
"Yeah. You get this look on your face that tells me you're looking for mysteries." Mabel squinted hard and set her jaw. "You're all serious and laser-focused-y."
Her brother rolled his eyes. "I am not."
Dipper looked ahead of them, and realized that they had entered the forest, which he hadn't noticed until that second (okay, maybe Mabel had been right—a little). There was the occasional bird chirping, a squirrel ran up a tree, and leaves crunched under their feet, but—something—didn't seem right.
"Uh—Doctor McGucket, does something seem strange to you? "
The older man nodded, looking up into the trees. "Yep. I've walked all through these woods, and it seems—quieter, somehow. Like somethin's missin'. "
Suddenly McGucket's "do-hickey" started making a static-y noise.
"We're comin' close, kids." He said in a whisper.
"Oh, man—uh—Doctor McGucket—"
"Hush, son. Listen. Ya hear that?"
Dipper stopped. Ahead of them, and off to their left, he could hear voices.
"Trust me, this is the place."
"Trust you? Quill, you're an idiot. Why in the galaxy would the Collector come to this place? There's nothin' but trees everywhere you look!"
"I have to agree will Rocket this time. "
"Aw, you always agree with Rocket. "
"I am Groot. "
"All right, look, we followed the Collector's trail and it led us here, okay? How was I supposed to know that the guy was going to go back in time?"
Someone sighed. "Okay, fine—but you'd better figure out a way to get us back, Quill."
The twins and McGucket ducked behind some bushes. Dipper looked through some spaces in the branches.
In the clearing, sure enough, was the spaceship they'd seen on McGucket's recording the other day. From what he could tell, there was some damage to its wing. Near the front nose of the craft, a young man in a thick brown-red leather jacket stood facing a small group of—well…
In the foreground of the group was a woman, with long dark hair and a green tint to her skin. Beside her, on its hind legs, was a—raccoon?—wearing an orange bodysuit of some sort. Behind him stood—sat?-a—tree with arms and legs?
The raccoon creature threw up its paws and walked closer to the young man in the leather jacket. "Well, we should check out if the Collector is actually here, anyway."
It looked up at the young man. "But Quill, you're still an idiot."
Dipper was surprised to see eyes on the tree-creature blink, and a mouth move. "I am Groot." it said.
The raccoon turned to the tree-creature. "No, Groot, I'm not being hard on him! Who knows if we'll be able to get out of here?"
The green-skinned woman closed her eyes and sighed. "Okay, fine. Bickering is going to get us nowhere. Once we find the Collector, we'll figure out a way to get out of here."
She opened her eyes and looked around. "Where's Drax?"
The young man they called "Quill" shrugged. "Ah, he went to ;search the perimeter for hostiles' or some such thing. "
Dipper looked around McGucket at his sister, who was looking back at him.
"We'd best get outta here, kids—" McGucket was saying, when they heard footsteps behind them. Dipper started to turn, when something grabbed the back of his shirt and lifted him into the air!