From Little Miss Anon (Guest): "Can you make a reverse pines story? doesn't necessarily have to be about psychotic things..."

Ooh, this one's new... I'll give it a try! (I love your name by the way :D) I won't give a long explanation about the au because most of the fandom knows what the Reverse Pines au is, but for those who don't, it is basically where Dipper and Mabel take on the role of the Gleeful twins (basically Gideon but doubled) and Gideon and Pacifica are either friends or siblings (I'm more partial to the former) in Mabel and Dipper's roles. Everyone's role is essentially the opposite of another's.

Where Tangled Paths Go

Gideon Pines always ended up running from some sort of monster this summer. Not that he went looking for trouble, of course, but trouble always seemed to find him. It usually decided that he needed to run for his life through the forest, wishing he hadn't eaten so many pancakes that morning.

This time however, he had the great pleasure of dragging Pacifica into the chase as well. As much as he appreciated his best friend tagging along to explore, she was a pain in the butt when they were under pressure - meaning that she tended to talk a lot.

"You just had to go looking for Bigfoot, didn't you? You couldn't have decided to hunt down - oh, I don't know - a couple of fairies?! Anything but a gigantic hairy monster, please!" She stumbled over a tree root and Gideon grabbed onto her arm to lead her along. "Seriously, what made you think that trying to sneak up on it was a good idea, Gideon?"

At times, he wondered what the heck his summer vacation had become - and if times like this were worth it.

"I thought it was sleeping!" He tried not to look back as the sound of thundering footsteps grew louder. "Besides, I believe it was you who said that Bigfoot was likely to be more friendly than those pixies we found last Wednesday."

Pacifica winced at the memory. "Who knew pixies had such nasty tempers?"

"Ever watched Peter Pan?"

She punched him in the shoulder lightly but it was only half-hearted due to their frantic running. Gideon could already feel his sides aching; he really wasn't cut out for sprinting long distances, especially not when they ended up occurring every other day. Stupid monsters.

Pacifica pulled him behind a tall pine tree and shushed him when he tried to protest. They remained quiet as mice as the sound of echoing footsteps faded away, a low bellow reaching their ears. Breathing hard, Gideon shut his eyes and felt in his vest pocket for the journal, sighing in relief when he found the spine under his fingertips. He couldn't help but be grateful that it hadn't fallen out while he was running. What would the blond have done if he had lost his most prized possession?

"Is it gone?" His friend's inquiry drove him out of his thoughts, and Gideon peered around the edge of the wide tree to look for the monster.

"I think so. I don't see anything and I don't really hear anything."

The girl smiled and adjusted her ponytail. "Oh, good. For a second there, I thought we were going to get eaten!"

"Me too," he admitted. "That would have been a good way to lose him a long time ago. Thanks."

"No problem!"

Unfortunately their relief was short-lived once the preteen children realized something frightening: they had no clue where they were.

"I don't remember this part of the forest," Gideon said after a few minutes with a soft sigh. "I think we're lost."

"Isn't there a map inside of the journal?"

"I don't know if it shows where we currently are, though." Nonetheless, the boy withdrew the worn journal and began to frantically flip the pages (not that he would ever admit that he was acting panicked, no, he was perfectly fine!). He soon came across the map of the woods he'd found a few days prior to now and studied it carefully.

"If I'm correct... I think we need to go left after three minutes and keep going straight until we get to this creek see?" Gideon showed Pacifica the map and she leaned over his shoulder to look too. She frowned and asked, "What about from there? I don't see the Shack on the map."

He hesitated for a couple moments, struggling to picture where the Mystery Shack would be in his head. "Um, perhaps a sharp right? I think..."

"You think?" Pacifica's not-so-subtle groan was definitely not helpful to the boy. "Awesome."

"Shut up, Paz. I'm trying to think."

"Why don't we just go on and try to find the path ourselves?"

Gideon sighed heavily. "I told you this yesterday: the path tends to disappear in these woods. I don't know why, but it just does. We can't try and trust that we'll discover the path out of these woods."

"Great."

Pacifica walked over to a rock and sat down with a dramatic moan, resting her head on her hands as her friend poured over the journal. The brim of his trucker hat hid his eyes, casting a shadow over his face. He muttered to himself for a couple minutes, clearly trying to think of a way to get out safely. Gideon was always better with the more intellectual aspects of the mysteries. Pacifica wasn't dumb or anything though, she just didn't come up with the answer to a problem as fast as he could. However, she was definitely more creative than the boy and had been responsible for thinking quick on her feet to get them out of a sticky situation on more than a few occasions. It was moments like this, where she wasn't entirely needed to solve a problem, that she felt a little... well, useless.

"I think I was right. We need to go right at the creek and that should lead us to the Shack. Follow me," she nodded as her best friend began to walk off in the opposite direction and hurried to follow. She trusted Gideon to get them both out of the woods; they'd been in more than one situation where they had been forced to depend on one another to get out of a dilemma involving some kind of supernatural creature. Ever since she had been kidnapped by gnomes near the beginning of June and he had helped her escape, they'd become the best of friends (despite how different they were just by personalities alone).

If anyone could get them out of the woods, it was Gideon Pines.

WHERETANGLEDPATHSGOWHERETANGLEDPATHSGOWHERETANGLEDPATHSGOWHERETANGLEDPATHSGO

"See something you like?" Mabel Gleeful rolled her eyes at the lame attempt at a joke (honestly, what was he? Nine?) and turned away from where she stood on the hill overlooking the two figures below. Her brother's raised eyebrow only made the sad excuse for a joke lamer.

"You're impossible."

"I'm not the one stalking two kids in the woods," Dipper pointed out with a smirk. His brown eyes flashed some strange emotion before they became vacant again. He always had the best poker face of the Gleeful twins. "Are they really that interesting?"

She snorted. "Just because you dislike them doesn't mean I can't try and see what they're up to."

Dipper's smirk vanished. "They know too much. And the Pines twerp humiliated you - in public! Stay away from them, sister mine."

Mabel couldn't help but snort again, turning away to focus on the boy below. I never was very good at listening, she mused with a nasty smirk on her face.

The Gleeful twins are much darker than Gideon is in the canon universe whenever I write them. I can't help it.