Disclaimer: Gravity Falls belongs Alex Hirsch and Disney.
Chapter 5: Time Traveler Trapped? Part 1
After the twins arrival, Wendy decided to wait a couple of days before asking her boss about babysitting Mabel and Dipper.
"So, Mr. Pines, I was noticing that sometimes you're quite busy around the Shack." Wendy drawled as she dusted some of the shelves while Stan was busy counting the till.
"I'm not hiring one of your loser friends to work at the shack." Stan stated, never bothering to look up from the cash in his hands. Wendy ignored commentary on her friends.
"Never thought of making the suggestion. I was just commenting that you might need some help that is present around the shack more." This made Stan stop his count.
"Soos already works full time and then some." Wendy groaned.
"I was referring to me. I could work around here more."
"What? Pay you to spend more time doing nothing? Absolutely not." The cantankerous man replied.
"Well what about watching after the twins? You could probably use some help keeping them from getting into trouble." Wendy countered.
"They're twelve years old, I didn't need a minder at that age, and neither do they." Stan shot back. It was at this point that Dipper and Mabel walked in.
"Hey, what's up?" Dipper inquired. Stan looked at them, before pointing back at Wendy.
"Miss lazy-bones over here wants to be your babysitter." A look of terror came over the twins faces.
"Babysitter, we don't need a babysitter. I mean, we're twelve years old, why would we need a sitter?" Dipper pointed out. Stan rubbed his chin in thought.
"Normally I'd say you wouldn't need one, but she makes several good points about you two not being prepared for the dangers of the forest. What kind of responsible guardian would I be if I didn't think about your safety?"
Dipper shook his head, "Grunkle Stan, we're not idiots, we don't need someone to watch us."
"I never said you were idiots, I just think that a couple of city-raised children could easily get lost in the forest." Stan replied. Dipper's face was turning red with anger.
"Look, we're twelve years old, we don't need a minder, especially someone like her, and that's it." Dipper spat. Stan stared at his grand-niece and grand-nephew with suspicion.
"You're being awfully loud about having a babysitter. Are you hiding something? I think you're hiding something, only people with something to hide complain so much." Stan asked. Dipper's face turned a puce color; Wendy stared at the blood vessel in his temple that was bulging from his skin, idly wondering if it was going to pop. Mabel stood off to the side, pale and worried as she picked at some pilling on her sweater. There was something else going on here that Wendy didn't know about, but if it was upsetting the twins this much, then clearly it was important to them. Wendy stepped forward, intending on withdrawing her offer and ending the argument.
"Look, Mr. Pines, obviously Dipper and Mabel don't want a sitter, so how about we just set this aside and go back to work." Wendy offered. Stan shook his head.
"No, you made a good point. This is a strange town in the middle of nowhere, the kids need someone to watch over them until they get more familiar with the area. So I'm going to hire you at quarter pay." Stan replied.
"Quarter pay?" Wendy answered angrily. Stan waved his hands in a placating manner.
"You're right, I'm asking you to watch two kids; so I'll make it half pay. That's my final offer." Stan countered. Wendy stared at him in disbelief for several moments before nodding her head.
"Fine, I'll take it." Wendy answered. Dipper gave raspy growling noise as he glared at Wendy with such venom, that she was certain if he would have stricken her dead on the spot if he could. He turned and stomped out of the room before retreating to his bedroom. Mabel looked at Wendy with uncertainty before she turned to follow Dipper. Wendy's stomach churned as she contemplated telling her boss that she was no longer interested, but then she remembered the mangled bodies of her friends and family, steeling her resolve.
The next few days seemed to leave Wendy in a bit of a rut. She would show up early in the morning for a company breakfast, complete with Dipper treating her with suspicion while she ate with one hand, the other hand was busy slapping Mabel's away from her. Then she would man the cash register, and try to strike up conversation with her younger co-workers. Mabel seemed amicable enough outside of the breakfast table, and for the most part calmed down. Except when a cute boy walked into the Shack, then she reverted to what Wendy called, "Old Mabel", the boy crazy Mabel that Wendy remembered from before her trip through time. Dipper on the other hand, did his best to avoid Wendy and watched her wearily. It hurt that one of her best friends gazed upon her with such looks; she wasn't certain what she needed to do in order to overcome the barrier that for some reason had come between them. Though she was pretty certain Bill knew what was going on, he had that look about him when it seemed like no one was watching that screamed, "I know something you don't."
After hours work was spent minding the twins until their bedtime. Mabel would run around being, Mabel, for lack of a better word. She was always working on some sort of project, whether it was trying to find a boy to go on a date with, making "Mabel Juice", knitting a sweater, or simply acting rambunctious. But whatever Mabel was working on, she made sure to include Wendy. Dipper on the other hand would take the opportunity to get as far away from Wendy as possible, squirrelling himself away to some dark corner of the Shack or outside.
So she was stuck waiting for something to happen that she could use to get closer to Dipper. Today seemed a little bit different, as from behind her magazine that she was reading, she saw that Mabel and Dipper were off in corner arguing about something. She heard a couple of words, "not like her", but the rest of it was garble. But whatever it was, Mabel was really worked up about it, waving her arms while her face got progressively redder as the twins chatted.
Bringing the magazine down so that she could get a clear look at them, "Hey, something the matter over there?"
Dipper fiercely shook his head while Mabel waved her hands, "Who said we were arguing? We're not arguing, we were just talking about," Mabel paused her, clearly grasping for what to say next, before pointing at the museum exit, "how the love of my life could be the next person to come out that door."
There was moment of silence before Stanford strode through the doorway, pausing to belch.
"Ew, gross." Mabel groaned, Wendy couldn't keep herself from laughing along with Dipper at Mabel's 'love of her life.' But the moment that Dipper saw that they were laughing together, he slammed his lips shut, all humor gone from his face. Wendy felt her heart twist as her good mood dissipated.
"Alright, I need someone to go into the spooky part of the forest and put up some more signs for the Shack." Stanford ordered. There was a quick round of the not it game before Soos offered to take job, only to be rebuffed by Stan. Wendy readied herself to deny being able to reach for the signs, but Stan turned to the twins.
"Right. So, eenie, meenie, minie, you." Stan stated, pointing at Dipper.
"Aw, Grunkle Stan, whenever I'm in those woods I feel like I'm being watched."
"Ugh, look kid, the whole creepy crawly monsters in the forest thing is thought up by guys like me, to sell merchandise to guys like him." Stanford explained, pointing at a sweaty, overweight man giggling at one of the Mr. Mystery Bobble heads.
"Stan, I'm serious, there's something up about this town. Just this morning my mosquito bites spelled out 'Beware'" Dipper said, pulling up his sleeve to show the con man.
Stan narrowed his eyes at the mosquito bites, "That spells out 'Bewarb'. Dipper, I'm going to make you an offer. You can either walk out that door and put up those signs," Pausing as he reached into the museum area to pull out a broom, "or I'll push you out with this broom."
Dipper balked, "You can't just do that."
Stanford waved the broom in Dipper's direction, making as though he was about to sweep Dipper out the door, before Dipper sighed and headed towards the door. Wendy pulled out her cellphone.
"Hey, wait up dude. Take this with you just in case you run into trouble." She stated, passing Dipper her cellphone. He looked at the cellphone in confusion for a moment, carefully turning it in his hand, before turning and striding out the door. Wendy raised the magazine back up to give the appearance that she was busy reading, but it was actually a tactic her Stan had taught her shortly after he had gotten the Mystery Shack back from Gideon. Make the people in the shop think you are too busy to be watching them, when in reality you are observing them like a hawk.
She stayed like that for about twenty minutes, sitting with an air of non-attention, watching as one of the teenagers that came with his family casually stuff a Mr. Mystery Bobble Head into the crotch of his pants before walking off as though having a huge and misshapen bulge was completely natural. When the family walked up to pay for the other merchandise that they had grabbed, Wendy bumped up the price of the various items to cover the stolen bobble head, content to let him leave with the merchandise unmolested, but the matriarch of the party had a sharp eye and an even shriller voice.
"What's with those prices, those aren't the prices listed on these." The woman screeched, Wendy grimaced as her ears rang from the woman's voice.
"Is that the sound of an upset customer I hear?" Mr. Pines stated as he walked into the shop, "Surely one of my employees would not dare upset a paying customer?"
The woman shrieked, "This girl just tried to overcharge us and I find it sickening that you would allow such criminals to work here!"
Stan turned towards Wendy, "Is this true?"
Wendy simply shrugged, "The register's giving me a SMG error, so I'll have to ring it back up to the correct price manually."
Stan nodded, giving a slight grunt as his eyes swept over the family. Wendy felt nervous as she didn't remember if she had learned Stan's private codes for alerting him about customer behavior by this time last time. 'Still as weird as the first time I thought it.' She pondered.
Stan turned his gaze to the face of the teen before he spoke again.
"You know what's nice about being a part of a small business that was established before the 1980s? You get grandfathered into the extension on restrictions for the use of lead-based paints." Stanford noted. The teen snorted.
"So what?"
Stan leaned in close to the teen, "What do you think I paint my bobble heads with."
There was a pregnant pause as the teen realized what that meant before he started freaking out, frantically trying to get his pants off and pull the bobble head out of his boxers. The boy was not the only one to start to a freak out. The mother started to cry about her darling child being sterile for life, never to give her grandchildren while Stan scrambled back away stammering something about keeping the bobble head free of charge.
Wendy brought her magazine up to cover her eyes, "Whoa, do not need to see that." She almost wished that she had simply ignored the boy stealing the bobble head. Though now that she thought about it, she was pretty certain that's what she had done last time.
After everyone calmed down and clothes were back where they belonged, Stan glared at the family standing before him. He pointed at the mother, "Quit your crying; your thief of a son is perfectly fine."
"But what about the paint?" she sobbed, on the verge of wailing once again. For the sake of her ears, Wendy hoped that Stan would stop the woman.
Stan snorted, "That was a lie I told you to get your son to admit to trying to steal merchandise, in case you haven't noticed, I work with a man-child who can't stop licking things. Having lead-based paint would be a liability. Speaking of which, Soos!"
Soos stood up from behind the bobble head stand, saliva covered Mr. Mystery in his hands. "What's up, Mr. Pines?"
"Shouldn't you be replacing the lightbulbs?" Stanford waved about.
"Of course, Mr. Pines." With that, the handyman wandered off to look for lightbulbs to replace. When he turned back to the family, he learned that they had slipped out the door. He turned to yell at Wendy for letting them leave, only to shut up when she held up a wad of cash.
"They paid, with some extra on top as well." She noted warily, Stan never let a good yelling slip by him without just cause. She was pleasantly surprised when he simply grunted, eyeballing the money instead.
"Fifty dollars extra, not too shabby. Take half of the extra for yourself for a job well done. Keep up the good work." With that, Stan turned around and headed to other parts of the Mystery Shack. Wendy gaped after him in surprise, as convincing him to let her keep tips was like pulling teeth from a crocodile, if the crocodile was armed with smoke bombs and a thousand hiding spots to flee to.
'This Stan can treat me like crap all he wants if he's going to actually pay me in money this time.' Wendy thought to herself, remembering the struggle it had been to get the man of mystery to pay her at the end of every week. One time he had tried to pay her in actual peanuts, claiming that he only had peanuts to pay her with.
Dipper and Mabel came bursting through the door in that moment, darting off to the front room of the shack. She narrowed her eyes as she stared at the doorway, there was something different about them from earlier, which was strange because it was only thirty minutes ago that Dipper had left to put up the signs in the woods. Wendy shrugged her shoulders as she resumed her post. She'd find out what was different in a few hours when she got off from work.
The hours crawled by with little interruption; the only thing of interest was when Dipper ran outside with a camera, probably to record Mabel's day with Norman.
"Norman, that sounds familiar." Wendy pondered, she remembered that Dipper and Mabel had a story about him, but the details were just out of reach. Something about him being a zombie? Wendy closed her magazine with a crisp snap. She remembered now, this was the first day that Dipper had gotten the journal, and the first day that they had a paranormal encounter with one of the creatures of Gravity Falls. Wendy stood up, ready to go out and save the twins by taking out Norman, when she felt a hand clasp her shoulder.
"You seem to be in a real go-getting mood today." Stan noted, surprising her. Wendy whirled around to look at her boss.
"You could say that." She replied, not certain where this was going. He handed her the keys to the golf-cart and a fifty dollar bill.
"Will says that his Mutant Cowburgers are selling like crazy, and he needs someone to pick up some extra for tomorrow. Fortunately the grocery store's about to put all of the old meat on sale for seventy-five percent off, so I need you to go pick up as much as that fifty will buy you, and bring it back here. I'd do it myself, but somebody's gotta milk these tourists for their money."
Wendy nodded, darting off. If she got it done quickly enough, she could be back in time to stop Mabel from going on her afternoon date with Norman.
AN: As you can tell, I have made the executive decision to break up some of the chapters into smaller chapters. This is so that I can buy myself a little writing time as I find it difficult to find time to sit down and write out sections of this story due to the various responsibilities most of us have in life.
On another note, I have decided to hold a little contest for my readers, see if you guys can figure out the mysteries of my story before they are revealed. There will of course be time limits on when you can put in your answer. The mysteries are as follows: What big secret are Dipper and Mabel hiding? What is Wendy's past in Gravity Falls? Why did Cipher start this game of theirs? And Finally, the most difficult mystery to solve, How can Wendy win the game?
The prize for the closest correct answer is that I will write a one-shot of your choosing (except sex, not entirely comfortable writing that).
All entries must be made via PM, as I don't want you guys to lose the opportunity to win because someone else saw your entry, and put a spin on it that happened to make it a better answer.
The first mystery, Dipper and Mabel's Secret, time ends at chapter 20, so you have plenty of time to wrack your brains and come up with some crazy and not-so-crazy theories. Nearly every chapter has hints to the mysteries, and some require a little puzzle-solving and reading between the lines to figure it out.