Mabel and Teek's Excellent Adventure
(July 4, 2014)
Chapter 7
From the Journals of Dipper Pines: It's about ten-thirty. Ten thirty-two, I see from my phone. Well, I'm finished for a while! We've got the tables and all the chairs set up, I carried out boxes of paper plates and cups, the Willets just arrived to supervise the cooking (they're going to grill chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers, and some veggie patties in case any vegetarians show up—they're rare in Gravity Falls. I mean, Wendy's an occasional vegetarian, but she says that's just when she starts to feel heavy and wants to drop a pound. I wish she was here).
Got sidetracked there for a minute. But anyhow, I've got some time to myself. I'm up in my room, Journal on my knees, no problem to solve, no mystery to unravel, no freak of nature to pursue.
And. . . .I'm bored. Which is not often possible in Gravity Falls.
What I ought to do is go find Mabel. There's always something going on with Mabel!
Huh. It's about fifteen minutes later, and I can't find Mabel and/or Teek anywhere. I like Teek and all, but I'd be pretty upset if I didn't know they were babysitting Little Soos. They wouldn't get up to any funny business with him around.
Weird thing—out in the front yard there was one tablecloth already spread out on the lawn (the others are stacked up on the porch with a rock to hold them down in case of wind, which so far we haven't had). There was a crystal ball, I guess, on the tablecloth. It's not a fancy one. It's probably some kind of Lucite or other polycarbonate, and it looks like it's contaminated, because it's all yellow. Or maybe it's some kind of natural crystal that happens to be yellow.
Anyway, I picked it up and brought it inside, so nobody would take it. It's over on my desk right now. I have no idea where it came from, but it's probably Mabel's or Teek's. I'm going to check Mabel's room. I knocked on the door earlier and nobody answered, and I didn't look in, but Mabel would come busting right in on me, so I'm going to look just to make sure she (and Teek, I guess) aren't in there being real quiet.
Back again. They weren't. I went into the room and even opened both closets. That was a mistake. In her craft closet, Mabel has both of her sewing machines, both in their cases, stacked up one on the other, and on top of them stood a big conical spool of heavy twine—she uses it in crafts, I guess—but stuck over that was a Dipper sock puppet. It was staring up at me with its weird googly eyes, and it scared the dickens out of me!
I mean, for just a weird second I was sure that somehow Bill had come back to possess the puppet and was about to tell me he wasn't going to honor his promise to get out of this dimension for good. It also made me flash back to that horrible time when Bill possessed my body and I briefly possessed Mabel's first Dipper puppet, which got destroyed in a fireworks explosion. See my section of Grunkle Ford's Journal 3 for details.
Uggh! I haven't confessed this to Mabel, and I've tried to hide it, but now puppets freak me out! I even felt creepy-crawly last year when we had a funeral for Mr. Stringfellow, one of her marionettes. Anyway, I got up my nerve and yanked the puppet up and saw it was just stuck on the spool of twine, no Bill in it at all and it was totally inert, so I put it back and left it and hurried back up here to the attic.
Oh, man, I sure wish Wendy was back!
I'd get out my box of pictures and just lie on my bed and look at them and dream about her, but that's probably not a great idea. Maybe I'll examine that crystal globe and see what I can find out about it.
I'm missing Wendy so much! Now I almost wish we had that telepathy thing going full blast again. I'd call her, but Manly Dan . . . well, better not to phone her when it might bother him.
And that reminds me! Last month, Wendy and I had breakfast one morning together at Greasy's Diner, and she noticed the manliness tester had been fixed. She dared me to try it again, and I asked,"Why should I humiliate myself all over?"
And she said, "Dipper! C'mon, man! You're not the same guy you were two years ago. Do it for me."
So . . . I did.
And I did not win us free pancakes.
On the other hand, I didn't wind up as a wimp! I got a solid score of "MAN," just one notch below "MANLY MAN," the top score possible.
"Proud of you, dude!" Wendy said. And then she tried it and got the same score I did. We laughed about that.
Tambry and Robbie came in as she was trying and saw her, and Tambry tried and got "BARELY PASSABLE," and Robbie wouldn't try at all because he said he had to take care of his guitar-playing hand. But Tambry posted about it on her blog. She had me pose with the machine for a photo, but my hand was aching and I didn't really try the tester a second time.
Anyway . . . as we strolled back to the Shack that morning, Wendy put her arm around me and said, "Dipper! My main man! Certified now!"
I am missing her so bad right now!
Especially . . . well, this is hard to write, but I'm going to. Especially since Mabel and I haven't been as close this summer as normal. I mean, I have Wendy, she has Teek, and somehow we're just not the old Mystery Twins lately.
I know what I ought to do. I ought to snoop around and find some anomaly that needs investigating and talk Mabel into helping. She and I need to have a good adventure together. And not involve Teek.
Or . . . Wendy, either, I guess.
What I'm saying is, I don't want Mabel and me to drift apart. I don't think we'd ever hate each other, or get mad at each other, the way Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford did. But I miss her teasing me.
That stupid puppet! I don't know what she's going to do with it, but I'll bet it's some surprise she's planning just for me, and that makes me feel guilty for not always being there for her. I wonder where she is. I hope she's not off getting herself into trouble.
Nah, not possible, not when Teek's with her. He's dull and predictable, but he's real reliable. He'll keep her from anything too silly or dangerous.
I hope.
Oh, well. Guess I'll put the Journal away and see if there's anything to be deduced from the crystal ball.
At that same moment, Teek and Mabel were preoccupied fighting a half-dozen goblins.
It was not as though they had a choice. He and Mabel should have realized that the mirror would somehow send the alarm up. When the elevator door opened, six grinning goblins sprang forward. One of them, lingering behind the others, drew a short bronze-bladed sword from its scabbard and yelled, "Give up, puny humans! You have no chance!"
But Mabel grabbed a spear right out from one astonished goblin's grasp, smacked a second goblin over the head with it, then did the same to the first, and when the three others in the front line turned to try to help him, Teek waded in, punching them one-two-three right between the eyes.
They dropped their weapons and struck back, but despite their goblin strength, their blows made little impression on Teek, who'd stored up a considerable amount of resentment against these creatures who had depantsed him and then indirectly subjected him to a long series of boring lectures from a barely-dressed seductive-looking woman whose very figure intimidated him. Also, they had trained only with spears and crossbows, their short arms didn't reach very far, and they didn't fight with much forethought—instead of concentrating on Teek's torso (or lower), where they might have hurt or slowed him, they all aimed upward at his head, so their fists lost most of their momentum before connecting.
On the other hand, goblin skulls are thick, and normally it takes more than Teek had to knock one out. However, this skinny human boy dressed in strangely colorful clothing who boxed inexpertly but with the strength of a maniac frankly dismayed them.
Anyway, the creatures were not very good at hand-to-hand fighting in the first place—as just hinted, goblins don't train in that at all, and they rely on their ugliness as the first-line weapon, because that usually intimidates anything with more brains than a three-toed sloth—and in their surprise and panic at this fearless hero, dressed in scarlet and saffron like a warrior prince out of legend, except for their leader, every one of the goblin guards had dropped his weapon and flailed at Teek with knobby fists but without significant effect, though at least one of their blows landed on his nose, not breaking it but making it bleed.
Fortunately, goblins are also notoriously squeamish about the sight of blood. And as is well known, the penalty for drawing blood in any fight with a heroic prince out of legend is hanging, disemboweling, quartering, burning alive, and then—well, then it begins to become unpleasant.
The goblin leader, standing behind the others, becoming aware that his troops were losing to a teen-ager and a mere boy, and holding a short sword in one trembling hand, stared at the berserk teen with wide eyes and mouth. Trying to make his voice deep, but succeeding only in sounding like a chipmunk on helium, he shouted, "Stop that! You're not supposed to do that!"
The others having backed or crawled away, Teek stooped and came up with a dropped crossbow, cocked and ready. "What's your name!" he snapped.
Standing as straight as a globe possibly could and staring at the arrowhead with undisguised horror, the leader squeaked, "Funk! I'm Funk Grubgrabber! Please don't hurt me!"
Teek took two steps forward and leveled the crossbow and grinned, his hair falling over his forehead. A little blood from his nose leaked over his lip and stained his teeth. The leader couldn't even make a sound, but he mouthed the words, "Don't eat me!"
Teek ignored that. "You've got a sword, but I've got you dead in my sights. You make one move, I send an arrow right through your head before you can make a second one. Now, I know what you're thinking: You're thinking that I'm a human, I've never held a goblin crossbow, I might not know how to use one. But it's a simple pull of the trigger, isn't it? And I'm within inches of you. So, considering this is a top-of-the-line goblin weapon and the pull is strong enough not only to shoot an arrow that will both penetrate your head but also throw you clean across the room and pin you to the wall, there's one question you gotta ask yourself. Do I feel lucky? Well, do you—Funk?"
The goblin's eyes crossed, so focused was he on the deadly black arrowhead aimed at his nose from a bare hand-span away. He shook his head.
In a purr that somehow sounded more dangerous than a shout, Teek said, "Then drop that freakin' sword and get out!"
The sword clanged to the stone floor. And for good measure, just as the goblin stepped backwards toward her, Mabel, who had discovered that a heavy ashwood spear haft, when smacked sharply on the head of a goblin, creates a satisfying, deep, rather pleasant, resonant sustained note, like a low G played on a kalimba, struck him very hard.
At the exact same moment, mistakenly thinking that the goblin leader was going to grab Mabel and snarl, "Put down the bow or the girl gets it," Teek swung his right leg forward and his foot, shod in a heavy goblin boot, made firm contact with the creature's groinal area, thus making him produce a groan very much like a digeridoo hitting a harmonious note with the kalimba—a virtual international music festival—and he gained the distinction of being the last goblin to fall.
(This is just by the way, but in later years Funk Grubgrabber became famous among the goblins for his bravery in the conflict, and they made several folk songs—or goblin songs, I suppose—about the battle. One wound up,
"Funk should've been dead,
Struck on the head
And kicked in the family gems,
But Funk, he stood fast,
And got a boot in the ass
And the fight all went out of him,
But he was the last goblin to fall!
The very last goblin to fall! Hurrah!"
Funk would sit there listening and pretending modesty. The others would always quaff a toast to him and usually shed a tear. [That might not be from sentiment, though. Goblin ale is a little stronger than jet fuel.]
Anyhow, it was a lovely song, as goblin songs go. Don't tell me goblins have no soul!)
Teek, holding the crossbow in his left hand and making a fist of his right, his chest heaving, his nose bloody and his right eye turning purple, glared around at the others and panted, "Anybody else want some of this?"
The two goblins who were still able to walk fled, crowding through a narrow door leading into the stairwell and tumbling downstairs. The others crawled after them, croaking, "Don't leave me!" Mabel graciously held the door and when the last one, the leader, had dragged himself through, helpfully directed him to the steep stairway by kicking him in the rear. He rolled onto the stair and downward, and from some floors below came a sound remarkably like a bowling ball making a strike.
"Yes!" she said, pumping her fist in the air. "So much for the palace guard!" She ran to Teek, threw her arms around him, and kissed him, bloody nose and all, and then she pulled his handkerchief from his jeans pocket and dabbed at the trickle. "My hero!"
"Really?" Teek asked, dropping the crossbow, which went off—in actual practice, pistols, crossbows, and the like almost never go off when dropped, having been engineered to prevent such an inconvenience, but in stories and movies, it always happens. It's like a car shooting over a cliff. Upon impact, it will explode, every single time. And the same is true of a horse-drawn wagon. Or possibly even of a horse—a startled neigh, a drop over a steep cliff, a boom, and a rising cloud of red flame and black smoke. Narrative convention.
"Come on," Teek said, holding Mabel tight. "We've got a baby to rescue."
"Oh, really?" came a sarcastic voice from someone who had just materialized in the room.
Mabel instantly realized they were in trouble.
Because the voice had a British accent.