Out of the Bunker

Mable

Mabel found herself staring at Dipper as he lay in bed across the attic from her. He was staring at the roof, probably worrying himself half to death over what could have happened and the shapeshifter's last words. Normally she'd wait until he drifted off and tie him down so she could 'interrogate' him to make him 'prove' he was actually Dipper, breaking him out of his downward spiral and annoying him greatly in the process, but the shapeshifter's last words had hit her hard as well.

Sighing, Mabel got up, grabbed her pillow and walked over to Dipper's bed. "Budge over," she ordered.

"What?" Dipper responded, still tangled in his own fears as he automatically made room for her.

Mabel climbed into bed and wrapped her arms around him. "You aren't going anywhere. The things he said were just to scare you."

"B-but it could happen," Dipper said quietly, wrapping his arms around her and whispering his greatest fears to her, "or worse, I could get you or one of the others killed."

"You won't," Mabel said as if she was saying the sky was blue. "And we make our own decisions and that includes following you into some dark and dangerous places, so you aren't responsible."

"I know, I'm just worried one of us will get hurt or killed, possibly mutated," he explained. "And since I'm the one that wants to go poking around looking for answers, it kinda will be my fault. Maybe I should do this stuff alone."

Mabel's grip on him tightened. "We are safe because we watch each other's backs. I'm ordering you not to be a butt head and do something stupid, like search for answers alone and end up needing to be rescued."

"Ok," Dipper agreed.

Mabel growled, knowing from his tone he wasn't being honest with her. "The last guy who looked like you that dared to cross me is frozen in a tube," she pointed out. "I got four more empty tubes to use. Do you really want to push me?"

Dipper laughed despite himself as he knew she wasn't entirely joking. "Ok, no adventuring alone."

"Good," Mabel said relieved. "Night, Dipper."

"Night, Mabel," he said, no longer worried about what the future held, knowing he wouldn't be facing it alone.

Wendy

Wendy ran a finger over the bandage Dipper had wrapped around her leg as she thought about the day's events. Working at the Mystery Shack for Stan had exposed her to some pretty gnarly things, but they were mostly fake - or at least she had thought they were. She'd definitely be going over the exhibits again considering what she'd seen recently.

She smiled as she thought of Dipper. He was pretty awesome. When everything was going loco he'd come through, and man could he swing an axe!

If he'd been just a year older she'd give him a shot, though that was a bit outside her comfort range. Fortunately, he seemed to agree that the age difference was too large for being more than friends, and that being friends was still cool, unlike Robbie who was being a complete jerk.

The whole thing with the record and her being such a woman over breaking up with Robbie still weighed on her mind a bit. She wasn't sure why she had been so emotional and was glad Dipper wasn't holding it against her.

She made a mental note to give Dipper the axe she'd had from when she was twelve before she out grew it. Considering the things he faced, he could use a bit of an edge.

Soos

Soos yawned and slowly fell asleep, a partially disassembled laptop on the table in front of him. It looked ancient, but bits of it were far more advanced than what you could buy today. The screen was pretty primitive for instance, which also made it far more robust in this case, but the small block that was the system's RAM had a crack in it, and he'd had to use all the RAM from his computer to try to replace it and it was obvious he was going to need still more to get it running.

As the Mystery Shack's handyman slept there was a flash of golden light that heralded the arrival of a demonic being. "Hey, Mr. Question Mark. Let's see what answers I can get from your dreaming mind."

The demon vanished in a burst of light only to reappear less than a minute later and flee screaming from the room.

Soos awoke with a start and wiped the drool off the side of his face. "Huh?"

Seeing nothing out of the ordinary, Soos laid his head back down and returned to his dream of being a Chippendale dancer after beating Patrick Swayze in a dance off; while sections of his brain continued fitting pieces of various puzzles together far below his dreaming mind.

The shapeshifter

Having adapted to the cold in the tube, it waited for one of the intermittent power failures to free it while it considered its next move. It had tried acting as a combination of the shapeshifters from The Thing and Phantasms and that seemed to have worked well, but it hadn't been... satisfying. Something was missing.

Maybe it should try acting like the shapeshifter in Species. It had enjoyed using Wendy's form and Dipper was certainly an interesting creature who was fiercely protective of his mate.

Mind made up, the creature dozed off, deciding to refresh its memory on human mating rituals when it next awoke as it couldn't remember if they were like spiders, where the female ate the male after sex - though the size difference between Dipper and Wendy did point that way.

Things would have been a lot simpler if there was another of its kind to learn from, rather than what it could pick up from the movie collection in the bunker.

Typing by: Ordieth