VI
FALL BEFORE SPRING
Timeline Summary:
Chapter still takes place during Summerween. Events still fly in the face of canon.
Author's notes:
Rated 18+ for mildly suggestive humor.
SHOUT OUT to this story's favers/followers:
✨Car9723, CritterTheCryote, GunCon, johnnycatalina, LordStar8045, NVS Tobi, Obvious Ghost, Straightjacketed, Theory of Weirdness, William Easley✨
With one final blink to iron out his mental wrinkles, Gideonzilla springs into action, picking up King Hog's bottom-half and chucking the pig over the side of the fresh roof-crater. Waddles crushes Tambry's backyard, kicking the air furiously as he lays stuck on his fat back.
Mabel yanks the flashlight from Wendy, frantically switching the crystal's sides before a wall of Gideon's maraschino-scented breath smacks into the group of kids and the Summerween monster, sending them all smashing into various areas of the living room. The Trickster bursts into confetti. Dipper lives out Robbie Valentino's locker room dream as he cannon-balls headlong into Wendy's chest. Robbie's apparently lifeless form rolls across the floor like a paper bag.
Mabel is the first to recover, rubbing her probably concussed head, when a Belgium-sized hand sweeps down like a thunderbird, scooping her up by the flashlight. Mabel clings to the handle as Gideon rolls the flashlight's head in-between his silo-like fingers.
Gideon wraps his other hand around Mabel's middle and separates her from the device, which he daintily tucks into his massive pocket. He holds her up to his dilating eye, a gathering storm in its own right.
Mabel absolutely shrieks. "YOUR PORES ARE SO SMOOTH! Also, I'M IN DANGER!"
"Mabel!" calls Dipper, untangling himself from his accidental second base.
"THE DAY HAS COME, MARSHM'LLOW!" booms Gideon. "WHO NEEDS A DEED TO YOUR UNCLE'S RATTY SHACK WHEN I CAN HOLD IT IN TH' PALM OF MY HAND?!"
Dipper gapes in horror, as does a reawakening Wendy.
Waddles then rears up viciously, leaping over the roof-crater to maul Gideon-
-who uppercuts the pet in the face, sending the pig sprawling back into Tambry's backyard.
"Waddles!" sobs Mabel, before turning her teary glare towards her captor. "Y-you monster!"
"CALL ME ONE AGAIN," warns Gideon, stepping out of Tambry's house, "AND I MAY EVER-SO-CLUMSILY STEP ON SOME BYSTANDERS."
Mabel clamps her mouth shut at the same time that Gideon's threatening frown morphs into a confused one. An itch is forming on his shin. He glances down to see a red speck shimmying up his pant leg. Wendy looks up.
"Ah, dang," she mutters, flipping open her butterfly knife. Before she can even stab, he bends down and flicks her, sending her flying through Tambry's front door and colliding back into Dipper. They somersault together for no less than five rotations before collapsing in a heap. Dipper untangles himself and looks up at Gideon with defiance.
"AND THAT GOES DOUBLE FOR FIRE ANTS!" Gideon hisses, which, when you have lips as big as yachts, is more or less the sound of a blimp deflating. "YOU BOTH BEST SCUTTLE OFF BEFORE THINGS TURN PERSONAL!"
"Let her go, Gideon!" demands Dipper. "This is insane!"
"NO MORE INSANE THAN A KID LIKE YOU THINKIN' YA CAN WIN THIS!" counters Gideonzilla. "EVEN WITH US NORMAL SIZED, WHAT WOULD YOU DO, LITTLE DIPPER? NO MUSCLES, NO SPINE." The gargantuan stalks away, setting off car alarms. "THIS TOWN IS TOO BIG FOR YOU." A soft chuckle, almost casual. "ALWAYS HAS BEEN."
Dipper blinks, lips parting, unable to speak.
The car alarms turn on him, becoming ambulance sirens for his faith in himself.
"Dipper! Help!" begs an airborne Mabel, hands desperately outstretched as she's carried away.
Once again, those firm and deceptively soft hands are on him, turning his shoulders to look into a face of green pools and red hair, a jungle on fire. "Forget him," orders Wendy, and for the briefest of moments, her commanding fury makes Dipper feel like she should be in one of those old war movies his dad loves so much. "Just think of something!"
This jolts him back to the present. He looks around, scanning Tambry's destroyed house, before his eyes stop on... his puddled leather jacket, a corner of Journal 3 protruding from its inner pocket. He dashes over, yanking the book out from the clothing, before U-turning back towards Wendy. "G-Get me some light!" he squeaks.
With all light fixtures effectively destroyed, Wendy snags one of the handheld UV lamps, flipping it on and-
... discovering glowing notes and illustrations layering the pages of Journal 3's original secrets.
Trick-or-Treaters parade around the suburbs.
Li'l sandy-haired Charlie Jones has transformed himself into a terrifying T-Rex this evening, yet still finds it in his cold reptilian heart to hold claws with Mommy. Their hold doesn't break even as the asphalt SUDDENLY SHAKES, lurching them forward. They turn, along with the other families, in a flash-mob of adrenaline.
A murder of crows spring from the black horizon, almost unseen.
Then, the crowd beholds the true sight.
A modern-day Goliath looming into view.
And while he's not God, his expression promises Old Testament wrath.
"Mommy," croaks Charlie, starting to devolve into the T-Rex's chicken descendants, "is this part of Summerween?"
Mommy is unable to speak, tears clawing their way out of her unblinking eyes.
Journal 3's pages are turning faster than Dipper's guts.
"Breathe, dude," instructs Wendy, giving his shoulder a squeeze. "Is there an index?"
Suddenly, her phone rings. She slips it out of her back pocket and puts it on speaker.
"Status Update: STILL IN DANGER!" Mabel informs.
"Hang on, we'll think of something!" promises Dipper.
"NO! THINKING ISN'T GETTING US ANYWHERE!" declares Grenda, smashing a nightstand. "BRUTE FORCE IS THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE MABEL!"
"Grenda," beckons Candy, waving the larger girl over to the limp body of Robbie. "What if we use baguette-boy as battering ram against chubby-child's shins?"
"THAT IS WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!" agrees Grenda, hoisting the goth's head in an unintentional headlock. Candy props the teen's ankles onto each of her shoulders. The girls breathe deep, channeling Michael Jackson as they charge into the naked streets: "🎶KEEP ON WITH THE FORCE / DON'T STOP / DON'T STOP 'TIL YOU BREAK ENOUGH🎶"
... Dipper and Wendy share a look, silently communicating both a deep understanding of the idiocy witnessed and an abject incomprehension of it.
"Keep looking," Wendy orders.
"On it."
The consensus is in from Toby Determined's trick-or-treaters:
Every single one of them had thought his Summerween mask is more attractive than his actual face.
As such, the reporter is deliberating the most pivotal decision of his life. And he's doing it while drinking expired apple cider. Its glass mug gleams under his vomit-yellow kitchen light. The needles in his sewing kit gleam along with it.
The light is harsh on his eyes, but he needs it to be able to read the book he purchased from The Crawlspace black market... 'Facial Reassignment Surgery for Dummies Like You.'
The little eggroll of a man stares into his free-standing mirror, putting the Summerween mask back on. He runs his fingers over the costume piece longingly, even outfitting his glasses over it.
"Maaayyyybeeee..." he muses to himself. "Maaaayyyybbbeee..."
A HUGE THUMP knocks Toby off his feet and sends his mirror crashing to the floor (which doesn't exactly warp Toby's luck ratio.) Amidst the litter of broken glass, he manages to reach for his windowsill, pulling himself up and ripping his curtains open.
Right outside his house, he sees a baby-blue pant leg lifting its loafer out of a fresh crater in the road.
Toby rips off his mask, readjusting his glasses over his bulging eyes.
... Whatever this thing is, however this situation turns out...
... The Society must be notified, at once.
He fumbles for his landline-
Bud Gleeful's home phone SCREAMS.
Parents yank their children indoors, locking up their houses and shutting off the lights as Gideonzilla THUMPS down the street.
A predator's grin winds its way up his face, exactly like how Gopher Road winds around the familiar tree line he approaches. With a voice like honey-thunder, he bellows:
"OH STAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNFOOOOORRRRRDDDDD~"
Stan, dressed as Count Suckula, expertly leads a group of blindfolded tourists by a rope into a cul-de-sac of his Mirror Maze.
"Aaaaaannndddd-" Stan beckons, waving them forward despite them not seeing. "-stop. STOP!" They all bump into one another, but thankfully not into any of the strategically-placed mirrors. Stan slips into the crowd, deftly cross-positioning each and every one of the blind tourists. "Alright, alright. NOW... Prepare to glimpse into a universe not unlike our own, but totally not like it at all! Peer into salvaged interdimensional portals from Area Fifty-Uno and see your evil twins. Blindfolds off!"
The tourists comply, and are left gasping as they stare back into the marker-etched displays of bearded, buck-toothed and one-eyed reflections staring back at them. Though said many different ways, the consensus among them is 'HIDEOUS.'
"Yep, uh-uh," Stan nods. "Bet you're glad you're on this side of the glass."
Moonlight plays in Gomper's puddle, and he drinks deep. Peacefully so, until he gets a slap of water in his eyes. He lifts his head up, shaking his face free from the wetness, and notices ripples radiating out from his little pool.
Gompers looks up. In the tree line, he notices something blonde and bulbous bobbing above it, methodically swatting whole pines into the sky.
"NYGH! NYGH!" whines Gideonzilla, pausing to shake his tree-smacking hand. "THESE PINE NEEDLES BE STICKING TO MY PALM AND I HATE IT!"
"He's nearing the Shack!" Mabel screams, holding her cell so tight against her head she might break it. "Dipper! Wendy! Heck, even Trick'othy! Do something please!"
Dipper falls to his knees, resolve crashing with him. He hears Wendy telling him no and to get up over and over again, scooping a hand under his arm and trying to yank him to his feet. He sees Journal 3 - his strength, his compass - splayed open, useless. He's scanned every page of the seemingly endless tome at least thrice over, and even with the newly-discovered black light writing, there's nothing applicable. Nothing.
They can't stop him. They can't save the Shack. They can't save Mabel. No one. Not Wendy, not Candy and Grenda, not Trick'othy, certainly not him-
Wait.
Wut.
"Trick'othy?" he wonders aloud.
"It had to be you," rasps a voice like the plastic of a dollar store trick-or-treat bag.
Wendy spins around, trying to pinpoint the source. "Look, Monster Mash, I admit, last time we saw each other I was pretty uncool-"
"JUDAS!" howls the voice, a GIANT SLEDGEHAMMER of glistening, sticky ick striking both the pre-adolescent's and the teenager's bodies onto the floorboards.
Wendy instantly gets to her feet, flicking open her butterfly knife in a menacing helix. Dipper rubs his head, blearily registering the stray bits of... candy surrounding him?
"YOU BETRAYED ME!" proclaims the voice, no longer disembodied as the sledgehammer forms a tornado around the duo. The Trickster's buck-toothed smiley mask ripples across its inner sheets.
Said tornado blocks the front entrance, now the only exit. More than anything else tonight, the image of that featureless, ugly door smolders in the mind of the Trickster Saint of Summerween.
That door.
The Trickster had knocked only once this evening before launching his full-scale attack on the domicile. Normally, he would've knocked no less than three times. Given the apostates an intangible Holy Trinity of opportunities to answer, a chance for redemption should they bequeath the proper offering. A chance that they never afforded him. But he could barely look at this familiarly drab door for the first knock of this evening, before he allowed himself to give into the HATE HATE HATE and assault the roof.
The same exact door, yet so many conflicting feelings.
That door's undecorated sight was once what he was most grateful for in all the world...
He remembers rolling his claw into a fist, knocking. The little brunette mammal in the house had earlier stomped inside because she didn't 'feel' like helping her sire set up the evening's decorations.
It takes a few more knocks to rouse the brat, but she eventually answers, dressed like one of those telephones he had seen in so many of the dump's catalogues. He revels in the terror flashing in those big, round eyes. She trips as she backs away, half-scuttling like a roach.
"Wendy, help!" she calls. "Save me with your mad tree-ninja skillz!"
For a moment, he pretends it's real. That the Black Lagoon creature striding into view isn't a heap of stitches and fabric, that it's an abomination like himself. A kindred spirit. An outcast. But overwhelming that yearning is the appreciation of the imitation. Shop towels have been cut, wrapped, overlapped and painted for the scales. Foam has been sculpted and quadruple-layered with glue to form the bone ridges. Someone worked very hard on this.
"Uugggh," this scaly creature groans, "social interactions aren't hostile encounters, Tambers- HOLY OAKS!" The scaly creature spins towards him. "That's the most messed-up, hideous get-up EVER!"
He stares through the cracked visor of his salvaged welding mask, momentarily at a loss. "... You sayin' I'm uggo?"
She pops off her costume's head, revealing a pigtailed, metal-mouthed pre-adolescent with hair like hellfire. "Naw man, I'm saying your costume ROCKS! It's worth TWO jumbo-bars AND a bag of mini-Kilttles!" The redhead dumps said candy into his humble sack. "Thanks for making my Summerween, mister!"
The door slams.
He stays.
He can still remember digging out the li'l plaid-striped Kilttles bag. ("Kilttles! Taste the Scottish!")
He can still feel the plastic scrape against his palms, as he places his other claw over it reverently.
It's next Summerween. He knocks on the same, drab door.
He shouldn't feel this happy about it. But...
... he's been so lonely, for so long.
And herein this house, is someone who might not totally reject him.
The now-adolescent olive-skinned mammal opens the door, dressed in a black turtleneck and glued-on goatee with glasses under a bald cap. She no longer registers fear, only annoyance. "Wendy, your dad's here!"
A plastic scythe hobbles into view, deliberately smacking the back of Tambry's head and jostling the bald cap.
"You look like my dad even more," retorts a familiar voice, before the Trickster's met by a strangely unfamiliar-yet-familiar sight: the small fiery-haired mammal is cloaked in a stovepipe hat and a jacket of what looks like stitched-together kilts. Over her freckled face is a dollar store smiley mask. The shadow of the Trickster's own stovepipe blankets her.
As much of a foreigner as he is to the humans' culture, he's aware of some of the most cliched platitudes. 'Laughter is the best medicine.' 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.'
But until this moment, he never knew that imitation could be the best healing medicine.
She's him. She's dressed as him.
"Hey there, mister!" Wendy greets. "Guess who I am? I know, the mask is pretty dorky, but there's no topping yours, anyhow. Your costume is still wicked cool, dude!" She gives him a shovelful of candy and closes the door, waving goodbye.
Dipper's eyes sparkle (honestly sparkle) with awe at Wendy. "You... cosplayed?"
Trickster coagulates into a four-walled cage around the pair, face magnifying out of the wall directly before them. "But THEN..."
He remembers jauntily striding up to the little brunette brat's house, knock-knock-knockin' on Heaven's door.
Who knew having a friend could actually make you... happy?
The drab door, however, is not opened by his friend. Instead, it's opened by the Band-Boy from all those canary turd-stained fliers. Trickster doesn't even have real eyes and he knows men don't put mascara on them.
"Trick-or-Treating? When you're that tall?" Band-Boy snickers. "What, lose all your food stamps in YMCA poker?"
"Robbie, Tambry doesn't want you answering the door-OH."
It's Wendy. She's developing. Along with the baby fat, she's lost everything those humans have which makes them somewhat less hideous. No more carefree smile or wide eyes brimming with purity.
But above all-
"No costume?" he can remember asking in hesitant disbelief, as if his voice lost its footing down a flight of stairs.
Band-Boy scoffs before turning on Wendy. "This hobo-scarecrow a friend of yours?"
Wendy kicks his shin, which should've lifted Trickster's spirits, but didn't. "He's just some trick-or-treater, you jag," she claims. Avoiding Trickster's eye, she demurely puts a handful of candies in his sack. "Happy Summerween, sir."
And that drab door closes in his face.
And even through his helmet's cracked visor, he clearly sees his heart falling onto the stoop, smashing into a clump of loser candy.
"I should've ended you right then," admits Trickster. "But I wanted to make it personal."
She parks her bike against her cabin, fumbling in her pockets for her keys.
He tenses his perched legs, talons parting the leaves as he readies himself to spring on her as sudden and unrelentingly as a Rapture.
She swings her backpack off her shoulder, unzipping the top in her grumbling pursuit. Suddenly, she pauses. The moment swells, fades. She pulls out the plastic smiley face from last year's costume. Her back's to him and he can only imagine her expression. Contempt? Amusement? Remorse? All he sees is the mask's stupid buck-toothed grin... until she chooses to toss it into the garbage can beside her dwelling.
His divine cue. The finalization of her apostasy. Dispose of the bad apple, keep the bunch from spoiling.
Time is now. Strike, end her.
She's found her keys. End this. She's infected. She must be purged.
Yes, that's the reason he's doing this. There's no hurt feelings at all, no no no. It's simply his sacred duty to destroy the heretic. And if that heretic happens to the one person who offered him friendship only to pull the rug out from under him, well then, his obligation to end her existence is just one of life's little coincidences.
She's moving for the door handle.
Time is now. THE TIME IS NOW!
Or... it was.
Her door clicks shut with her behind it.
As swift as a blade, he leaps to the ground, before pivoting towards the garbage.
He picks up the mask.
He knows he can still right this. He need not be invited to enter the cabin; he's not bound by any threshold barriers like those pansy Vampies. (Though to be fair, most of them are European, and centuries-old inbred manners must be hard to shake.)
He can still end her.
The mask neither agrees nor disagrees with him, just continuing its happy stare.
"... You were my first friend. My only friend," admits the Trickster, tootsie-roll brows curving in as his peppermint eyes drop downwards. "And I couldn't bring myself to do it."
The antagonist of his tale of woe is still encased within her former friend. The grip on her knife remains as tight as her hold on Dipper's shoulder.
"But now..." begins the Trickster, returning their gazes, "... now I am strong enough."
Spikes burst out of the walls, which steadily enclose around them. A ceiling forms out of the top of the Trickster's brow, overlaying itself onto the rear wall and trapping the two kids like rats in a car compactor.
"Guys!" Mabel's voice rings out from Wendy's phone, discarded on the floor. "Help still wanted!"
"This is how it all ends?!" babbles Wendy. "We don't save ourselves or Mabel?!"
"🎶I need a hero~!🎶" sobs/sings aforementioned girl.
"Oh man," groans Wendy, "oh God, oh man!"
If you were to ask him to pinpoint the exact moment it happened, he wouldn't be able to say. But the tsunami of distress coming from the two people he loves more than anything pulls Dipper out of the clutches of Terror and slingshots him into the armor of Protective Rage. And with a voice that holds more power than anything he can summon consciously, he screams: "TRICKSTER, STOP! YOU'RE BETTER THAN THIS!"
The spikes pause.
"... What did you say?" demands the monster.
"You're not a loser because you're loser candy!" declares Dipper. "I get it, alright? You can't be what you want to be and-"
His voice catches in his throat as his eyes dart to the taller girl by his side, before refocusing themselves faster than lightning. "-And it kills you, 'cuz you want it more than anything."
"You cannot even BEGIN to understand-"
"Not belonging?" Dipper interrupts. "Feeling like you're less than because you don't meet the grade?"
Trickster's tootsie-roll eyebrows raise.
"You taste like paint shavings, I'm sorry," Dipper breaks it to him. "And I'm mistaken for a tree stump if I wear tan. But you still have value, er, Trick'othy. If not as food, then I promise, as my friend. And please dude, my sister needs a friend too. Right. NOW."
Trickster holds Dipper's gaze. Dipper doesn't let go.
... Trickster's been alone for so very, very long...
... Reviled, for so very, very long...
... And the last person he allowed into his heart stabbed him in the back...
... He can't risk it again. He can't...
... But the alternative?...
... Well... the alternative is to finish Wendy, like he should've done last year... and let Mabel be kidnapped, or killed, or whatever that fat-face kid has planned...
... And always wonder, what if Mabel had been different? What if she truly cared about him?...
... He'll forever wonder if he passed on the chance to be accepted for who and what he is.
... And so, the candy-cage around Dipper and Wendy dissolve, pooling together at their feet. And from it, rises an undulating, towering question mark. "How can I help?" prompts the monster.
Dipper and Wendy trade disbelieving, triumphant grins.
Like his monetary dreams, Stan's Maze of Mirrors is crashing down.
"SOOS!" he yells above the tourists' burbles of surprise, shoving the frozen mob towards the handyman. "EARTHQUAKE! GET THE LIABILITIES OFF THE PROPERTY!"
"I'm trying, Mr. Pines, but my reflection still won't let me pass!"
"THIS IS WHY YOU DON'T TEACH KIDS MANNERS!"
In about ten bumbling minutes, the tourists are herded out of the Shack's entrance by a supposedly-pro wrestler and Mr. Mystery. "Out! Out!" screams Stan. "But tell yer friends!"
"Heeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyy," exclaims an adorable button-nosed kiddo, pivoting to point over Stan's shoulder, "what's thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttttttttttttt?"
Stan's head whips, and his vampire fangs plop out of his dropped jaw.
A lumbering silo...?
No.
NoNoNoNONONONONO
That thing peek-a-boo'ing above the tree line is hair.
And between the pines periodically being tossed up into the sky, Stan catches glimpses of a very familiar pug butt-face.
"New attraction, not ready yet!" Stan informs the little puke, punting the kid. The old man's terrified eyes pulse with adrenaline as he whispers an obvious confession to himself: "So not ready."
"Gideon, please!" begs Mabel, seeing flashes of the Shack through the crosshatch of branches. "Stop! I'll..." Her eyes water. "I'll be your queen, just stop, OK?!"
"OH, YOU'LL BE MY QUEEN, ALRIGHT!" Gideonzilla concurs. "WHETHER YOU AGREE TO BE OR NOT! AHAHAHAHAHA!" His thunderous volume does little to improve the shrillness of his cackle. "CAN'T YOU SEE?! I... I HAVE IT! I. HAVE. EVERYTHING. NOW!"
"Except pants that fit."
The raspy voice cuts Gideonzilla's booming giggles dead. The fat boy's massive head spins, looking for the heretic that would dare defy his godliness.
Nothing stirs amidst the tree line, not even a bird. Nothing save for the wind rustling the pines.
Everything is at it should be.
DARKNESS. PAIN.
It's on him it's on him WHAT'S on him?!
His vision clears. The glistening thing rears its head from his face- what's it doing? What's it AAAAAHHHH!
Chocolate syrup! 100 MPH. Being spat in his face. IT'S LIKE A FIREHOSE UP HIS NOSE.
He shoves Mabel into his breast pocket and digs his fingers deep into the candy-carapace of what's on him.
Its stick-figure arms beat against the side of his skull like high-speed knitting needles. BAMBAMBAMBAMBAMBAM. A monster truck pile-up of pain.
His eyes are cocooned shut. He inhales the delicious death-liquid; it coats his throat.
He roars, a wild boar now, blindly trampling the forest. He desperately begins yanking his assassin's limbs off.
He feels a noose: his collar tightening. The thing's remaining talons grip it.
It howls, first right against his face before the ear-bomb mercifully moves away, snapping its head back before-
Reconnecting its forehead with his own forehead.
BAM!
PAIN.
The fresh lump on his brow warms, expands, throbs.
Consciousness blurs, tilts, shrinks, before fading entirely.
DARKNESS.
Good night, Sally.
INTERMISSION