I am happy to announce that I will now be broadening my horizons as a writer by writing fanfiction stories for the Gravity Falls fandom! After watching the series (One of the best cartoons Disney has and probably will ever make by far), I couldn't resist the opportunity to do this. As such, viewers who've been with me from before can now expect works form GF, and viewers from GF can see my older works.
Now, as going into this new fandom it seems to come with different rules, such as a very close attention to series continuity, which I will respect. Other than that, from reading multiple stories before publishing this I have heard that Mabel is the most difficult character to write and I am taking that to heart. If there are any suggestions for the improvement of her character for future works, or any other character for that matter, please feel free to leave something in the reviews.
With all that being said, I hope you enjoy my flagship one-shot into this amazing seires, Too many Mabels!
"Could you pass the syrup?"
"Yeah, here you go."
Dipper slid the jug of maple syrup over to Mabel to feed her insatiable sweet tooth. She poured a generous amount onto her pancakes, the regular kind and not the ones shaped like the face of their caretaker. Speaking of which…
"Have you seen Grunkle Stan yet?" she asked.
"Nope," Dipper answered. "He's probably still sleeping off whatever was slipped into the punch."
They both laughed at Dipper's witty barb, though they went silent when they heard a third person laughing along with them. It was the man in question, Grunkle Stan. After laughing for longer than necessary he addressed Dipper, "Well good morning to you too."
"Grunkle Stan!" Dipper said, looking somewhat nervous that the butt of his joke was now towering above right next to him. Grunkle Stan didn't seem that interested in revenge, instead moving past him and grabbing a can of diet pitt.
With Dipper now not wanting to draw any attention to himself, Mabel took the opportunity to ask about the day. "What are we doing today? Going back to the lake? A relaxing hike in the woods?"
"Nope! I got something better for you two," was all Grunkle Stan said. He cracked open the soda can and walked off to somewhere else in the shack without elaborating. Once he was sure that Stan was out of hearing he let out a sigh of relief.
"Man, I thought I was a goner for a second," he said as he wiped a thin veil of nervous sweat off his brow.
Mabel kept eating her overly sugar saturated breakfast. "I wonder what he's got planned for us," she thought aloud as she shoveled in some more sweet, fluffy goodness.
When they had finished their breakfast they followed Stan, now in his Mr. Mystery attire, through the convoluted hallways of the shack. Mabel's hopeful curiosity continued to grow as they traversed the wood board planks, while Dipper remained somewhat wary of what their Grunkle had in store for them.
"Okay kids, here it is!" They came to the end of the hallway and he opened the door to reveal the floor room where the party was held last night. The decorations were still up, along with the stained plastic cups littering the floor.
"Another party?" Mabel squealed.
"Yep!" Stan nodded. He reached into the corner, grabbed two mops and put one in the hands of each. "Clean up party!"
"What?" They both cried out.
"You heard me; a clean up party. Now get to it, this place ain't gonna clean itself up."
"But Grunkle Stan, we're going to be here all day!" Dipper complained.
"And you're going to be staying here all day if it doesn't get done," he retorted. "There's chairs to be put away, silly string to be wiped off the couch, and this weird papery goop on the floor in the bathroom hallway."
"Can't we get some help?" Mabel pleaded.
"No can do. I still need Wendy and Soos to stay at the gift shop to keep the money flowing from tourist wallets into my pocket. Well, you two gremlins have a good time." Stan turned to leave.
"What about you?" Dipper asked. "It's not like you have anything better to do."
"Actually, there is. The water company charged me a crazy amount of money, so I'm off to haggle the money back." And with that he stepped out, leaving the twins with a literal mess in their hands. Both twins let out a groan at their predicament.
"Okay, let's just divide this up into smaller tasks," Dipper began, "I'll take the sound equipment and the balloons, you can take the chairs and tables, and we'll figure it out from there."
They split up to do their respective tasks. Mabel went around collecting the plastic chairs, stacking them up and then forcing them into the overstuffed storage room. After much pushing and kicking she finally forced the chairs into place. She turned around to look at the results of her effort…
… and found the room to look almost exactly the same as before, with Dipper in the background struggling to carry one of the speakers by himself. Mabel slid down to the floor in defeat. They were really going to be here all day! They had this whole sleepy, weird and wonderful town to explore, friends to be with and new friends to make, and they were stuck cleaning.
"If only we had another person to help," she thought sadly to herself. Almost as soon as she formulated the thought, an idea came to her. She stood up and passed by Dipper who was exerting all his strength to get the speaker to move a few inches at a time.
"A little bit of help?" Dipper grunted as she went.
"Uh, sorry, I gotta use the bathroom and totally not anything else," she blurted out.
"Okay, just don't slip on that goop," he said, either ignoring or not noticing Mabel's lie. She left and went to Stan's office. Opening the door there was a small pile of paper with human shaped cutouts in them. Ignoring them she kicked it out of her way and got to where she wanted.
She examined the copy machine. If it copied Dipper's arm… could it copy her?
"Only one way to find out," she said aloud to herself. She wiped the cobwebs off and laid down on her back on the cold glass. The machine hummed to life and she was enveloped in a neon green glow.
The light faded away and the machine started rumbling. Mabel flipped over as the machine started printing and watched the paper slide out and fall onto the floor. There was an image of her and she smiled incredulous as the paper rippled. Her copy quite literally popped out of the paper and into existence.
Copy Mabel got to her feet and turned to look at the original. Mabel let out a small whoa at Copy Mabel's accuracy. Same hair, same eye color, even identical braces. The only inconsistencies was that she was a shade paler, and the shooting star on Copy Mabel's sweater was missing. She hopped off the copier and stood face to face with Copy Mabel. She held out her and her clone did likewise, so that one looked like a reflection of the other.
"This is freaky," they both said simultaneously. They then laughed a bit before Mabel introduced herself.
"Hello, my name is Mabel."
"My names Mabel too," her clone said.
"Well, there can't be two Mabels," Mabel stated. "Let me think of a new name for you." She put a hand on her hip to come up with something. She felt a sticky patch and looked to see what it was. Syrup from breakfast. She lit up and decided what to name her clone.
"Henceforth, you shall be known as… Maple," Mabel said, playfully dramatic.
"Cause I'm sweet like the syrup?"
"Exactly! Now you need just one more thing," Mabel said as she eyed Maples' bare sweater. She grabbed a piece of paper, cut it out in the shape of a maple tree leaf, colored it in red and taped it on the front of her doppelgangers sweater.
"There! Now we can tell each other apart."
"I can't wait to see the look on Dipper's face when he sees there's two of us!"
They both giggled before leaving the office to clean up the floor room.
Dipper had finally managed to get one of the two speakers into the storage room and was now at work on the second. He had taxed almost all his strength on the first, turning an already herculean task into a nightmare.
"Hey bro-bro, need some help?" He heard Mabel ask from behind the speaker.
"Uh, yeah, just a little," Dipper said, hoping he hadn't let her know how exhausted he was.
"Great! How about we push, instead of pulling?"
"Oh. Uh, yeah, of course!" He silently berated himself for not thinking of that before joining Mabel in pushing the speaker. Moving exponentially faster than he had pulling the speaker, they moved it into the closet.
"Thanks Mabel, but shouldn't you be taking the chairs."
"Oh, I am," she said with a grin and a smug tone that was out of place for talking about chores.
"But you're-,"
"Excuse me," someone said from behind. Without taking the time to think of who it might be or recognize the voice, he spun around to address the person. "Sorry-,"
He blanched and did a double take. It was Mabel. But no, that was impossible. Mabel was behind him! But also in front of him! Stuttering half formed questions he took wobbly steps back from the both. The two Mabels stood shoulder to shoulder looking very much amused at Dipper's extreme confusion. They were identical, the only distinguishing trait was their sweaters, one with her iconic shooting star, the other a red maple leaf.
"Who- what- a triplet? But how?" he spluttered.
"This is Maple!" Mabel beamed as she gestured to her clone.
"Hi Dipper!" Maple waved.
Further weirded out by having a copy of his twin introducing herself his mind went faster before instantly stopping on the only plausible answer.
"You used-," he started.
"I used the copier machine," Mabel confirmed.
"The copier machine," Dipper finished exasperated. She had found the same use for it as he had. He was going to have to warn her of the dangers of doing such.
"Could you come over here for a second, Mabel?"
Both Mabel and Maple started to walk towards him and he quickly threw his hands up in a stopping gesture, wary of Mabel's paper replica.
"Not you Mable, I mean Maple! Mabel, you come here. This is so weird…"
Maple remained where she was while Mable went to Dipper. Once she was by his side he pulled her head next to his and started to whisper. "Why did you make a copy of yourself?"
"Because we had all this work to do," she whispered back. "The thought of being here all day made me feel all blargh, so I made Maple to help us out."
"Don't you think that something will go wrong?"
Mabel rolled her eyes. "What could possibly go wrong Broseph?"
"A lot of things, actually," he informed her. "I made like ten clones last night and they all turned against me."
"Wait, what?" Mabels interest piqued. "What for?"
Not wanting to give Mabel more taunting material over his crush on Wendy he decided to skim over that. "That's not important. What's important is that Maple over there may turn on us."
"But if your clones turned against you, where are they?"
"I accidentally set off the fire alarm in the bathroom hallway. And, you know…"
"Oh," she said, realizing what the stuff on the hallway floor was. "Eww. You can mop that stuff."
"Point is, be careful. Don't give her something to disagree about, and don't make more clones."
"Why are we whispering?"
The Pine twins both jumped with an eek at Maples intrusion. Dipper spun around and pointed a finger accusingly. "How much did you hear?!"
"Everything after blargh," Maple cheerily confessed. "But I won't turn against you guys! This is Mabel we're talking about here; sweet, innocent and cute!"
"I fully agree with her," Mabel nodded. "It is me we're talking about."
"Fine," Dipper conceded. "Let's just get this place cleaned up."
When they were done with their labors all three of them sat down on the couch, after it was painstakingly cleansed of the silly string, of course. The walls were now bare, the floors empty and the remains of the Dipper clones swept off the hallway floor. Grunkle Stan had yet to return and they still had the whole afternoon to themselves.
"So," Mabel broke the silence, "What do we want to do?"
"How about visiting Candy and Grenda?" Maple suggested.
"Or go to the golf course?" Mable added.
"Or find some stray cats?" Maple went on.
As his twin sister and her clone kept talking to themselves, making more silly and grandiose ideas as the conversation progressed, Dipper slipped off the coach and snuck away. Mable and Maple kept talking, oblivious of Dipper's absence.
"Or make a human sized hamster ball?"
"Or make two human sized hamster balls?"
"Or do everything?" Maple finished, both of them laughing.
"How about you Dipper?" Mabel looked to Dipper and saw that he was gone.
"Hey, where'd he go?"
The girls got off the coach and searched the house for him. When they didn't find them in the residential parts they went to look in the museum. After failing to find him among the attractions they went to the last place he could be.
Peeking through the door from the living room they saw Dipper leaning on the counter, and sitting behind it was Wendy, nonchalantly twisting a strand of her red hair. They were in a conversation but Mabel and Maple could only hear snippets.
"... about the weather?"
"...Love the weather…"
"... Guess I love the weather…"
"... Nice that we both love the weather…"
Even with only fragments of their conversation Dipper's mannerisms gave everything away; the slight blush, the imitation of the way a teen three years his senior would lean, the overly enthusiastic small talk on his part. Dipper really did have a massive crush on Wendy!
It now became very obvious how the two of them would be spending the afternoon. They pulled their heads back into the living room and looked at each other with a knowing smile.
"You thinking of what I'm thinking?" Maple asked.
"I'm thinking of what you're thinking," Mabel answered. "To my room!" The girls bounded up the stairs and into the attic bedroom to plot and plan the perfect afternoon for Dipper to reveal his crush on Wendy.
Maple went through Mabel's extensive collection of romance novels while Mabel reflected on what had gone wrong with her previous crushes.
"So we know that Wendy is an actual person and not gnomes in plaid, and that she's not a psycho path, so we don't have anything to worry about her," Mabel informed.
"Good, good. But now we need to make sure nothing ruins it," Maple pointed out. "Tourists need to be kept away, it needs to just be him and Wendy."
"That's going to be a bit tricky for just us two." Mabel said.
"But… what if we made more Mabels?" Maple asked.
"Uh, I don't know about that," Mabel countered. "Dipper seemed pretty sure on not making more clones."
"But they won't turn on you. They're you! You can't turn on yourself!"
"Yeah…," Mabel said, still not totally convinced.
"Besides, we're going to need a lot more help if we're going to have this work out for Dipper."
That was enough for Mabel. "Okay. How many should we make?"
"As many sweaters as you've got!"
After a lot of copying Mabel had a sizable group of clones, each donning a sweater taken from her massive collection. They had assembled in the attic, a mass of the same person in different colors all excitedly chattering.
Mabel stood on her bed to get the attention of her clones. They kept on chattering and threatening to spill out into the house. She reached into her sweater and pulled out her trusty grappling hook and shot it up. It punched through the ceiling and shards of tile and wood rained down getting the attention of everyone.
"Okay ladies, Operation Matchmaker is about to begin!" She started pointing out into the crowd assigning jobs.
"Maple, you keep tourists away from the gift shop!"
"On it!"
"Floppy Disk Mabel, you train some beavers for a dance routine!"
"They'll make Broadway!"
"Strawberry Mabel, you distract Soos!"
"You got it!"
"And the rest of you! I'll figure it out as we go!"
They cheered and rushed out of the bedroom to make magic happen.
Dipper looked up at the ceiling, sure that he had heard something but not knowing what. Wendy seemed to have heard it too as she looked up from her magazine.
"Did you hear that?" Wendy asked no one in particular.
"Yeah," Dipper said.
"It sounded like a boy band mob," Wendy cracked. Dipper chuckled, thinking of Mabel's obsession with Sev'ral Timez. The amusement soon gave way to worry about her and Maple.
"Something wrong Dipper?" Wendy inquired.
"Oh, it's nothing," he played it off. "Just wondering what Mabel might be up to."
"No kidding," Wendy agreed. "Knowing her she'll make a circus act out of the animals here."
They both shared a laugh, Dipper enjoying every moment of it. It was just them (And Soos in the back), with no customers to take her attention off him.
"Oh, there's Mabel," Wendy said. He glanced at the door to the living room and knew that it wasn't Mabel. The sweater alone was a dead give away, neither Mabel's shooting star nor Maples leaf, instead a strawberry on a pink background. He realized that Mabel had gone and made more clones of herself. He suppressed an annoyed groan that she had disregarded his warning.
The Mabel clone went over to Soos and said something to him. He stopped what he was doing and looked out the window. He said something back before going outside. Then in turn Maple came inside, locked the door behind her and high fived the Mabel clone. He looked to see if Wendy had seen it. She hadn't, being too engrossed in her magazines.
When he looked back Maple and the other clone were gone. He tensed up wondering what was going on. The overhead sound system softly cackled and the both of them looked up. There was more faint static for a few seconds until music started playing. It sounded like the stuff you would slow dance to.
"Yeesh, this is so last century," Wendy commented before cracking her magazine back open. Dipper, however, knew something was up and that Mabel was behind it. Not disturbing Wendy's reading he left to go find Mabel. He barged through the door to the living room and caught Mabel and Maple sitting side by side on the couch watching the television with a live feed of the giftshop.
"Dipper!" Mabel yelled in surprise as Maple turned off the TV and chucked the remote away.
"What are you two doing?"
"Uh, me and Maple were watching duck-tective-," Mabel started fibbing.
"You can drop the act. I saw Maple and another clone in the giftshop."
"I can explain-,"
"Why'd you make more clones? What are you up to?"
"I was making the perfect afternoon for you to let Wendy know your feelings for her."
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah, Floppy Disk Mabel made a circus with some critters to distract-,"
"No, no, not that! Why did you-,"
The door opened and Dippers spun around to see Wendy coming in. "Hey Dipper, just wanted to know where you went-," she froze when she saw Mabel and Maple on the couch.
"Why am I seeing double for only Mabel?"
"Wendy!" Dipper exclaimed. "Uh, it's a long story-,"
"I've got popcorn!" A Mabel clone said as she walked in, plopping down right next to Mabel and Maple oblivious of the situation. She ate a handful of popcorn before noticing Wendy. "Hi Wendy," she greeted, her voice being muffled by the popcorn, "Want some?"
"What is going on?"
"Well there's this copier in Grunkle Stan's office that can actually make clones-," Mabel started to explain.
"Aanndd there's nothing to see here," Dipper cut her off, pushing Wendy out of the living room. "I'll be right back with you after I sort this out." Once Wendy had left he shut the door and turned to berate Mabel for her meddling only to find that he had been surrounded by a dozen Mabel clones.
"Mabel?" He panickedly cried, "What are they doing?"
"We're just going to put you back in there to let your summer romance with Wendy begin!" Mabel proclaimed.
"No Mabel! I'm not going to tell her that!" Dipper protested.
"Wait, what?" Mabel asked, sounding genuinely confused. "I thought you had a really big crush on her?"
"It's not a crush! I just think that she's awesome and I just want to be around her all the time." He stopped himself seeing that it was getting him nowhere, "But you can't just force me to tell her that."
Mabel's eyes were darting around as if she was putting her thoughts together with her eyes. Maple however wasn't as understanding. "But she's right there! Just go in there and tell her about your undying love!"
"I'm not too sure about this anymore," Mabel said. "This doesn't seem like the perfect afternoon we wanted."
"You're giving up?" Maple asked Mabel, scandalized.
"Yeah! Dipper's miserable! It wasn't supposed to go like this!"
Maple looked at Mabel, crestfallen with disappointment. "Remember when I said I wouldn't turn on you guys?"
"I knew it!" Dipper yelled, partly in satisfaction that his paranoia had been vindicated for once, the rest in fear. The Mabel clones turned on their creator. With six to Mabel and Dipper each they grabbed them and carried them away. They tried their hardest to wrest themselves from their grasp but no amount of wiggling and squirming could escape the yarn prison.
"You butthead!" Mabel yelled at Maple as she was carried away. "I believed that!"
"So did I!" Maple called back just before she disappeared from sight. They were carried to the closet Dipper had been trapped in by his own clones just last night. They were unceremoniously thrown in and the door locked.
Mabel pounded on the door. "Let us out!" she demanded of her rebellious clones.
"Nope! Not until you let Dipper's romance blossom!"
"But you can't keep us here forever!"
"Yes we can! There's a coloring book and a snack."
Mabel looked down and saw the snack; a bag of Smile Dip. Remembering the sugar induced hallucinations from the last time she ingested the stuff she kicked it in disgust into a dark corner before sitting down next to Dipper. They sat in darkness and silence for a few seconds before Mabel spoke up.
"I'm sorry Dipper, for getting you caught up in this mess."
"Why did you do all this?" He asked.
She sighed and then answered. "Because I saw you with Wendy and wanted you two to work out. In the two-something-weeks we've been here both of my summer romances have either been gnomes in disguise or straight up psycho-sociopath. I wanted to make the perfect afternoon and so I cloned myself some more to pull it off."
She was thrown off when his laughter pierced the quiet. Despite the circumstances she couldn't help but smile. "What? What's so funny?"
"I did the exact same thing last night!" Dipper laughed.
"Really?"
"Yeah! Remember that checklist? I made my clones to do everything the checklist said so I could ask Wendy out to dance but then Wenddy turned up too early and I started talking to her and saw that I didn't need the checklist. I told my clones that and they locked me up in here."
"Well, I'm still sorry for having you locked up again."
"Hey, at least we learned something from this."
"Don't overthink things," Dipper said.
"Don't trust clones," Mabel said at the same time.
"Uh, yeah, either works," Dipper summarized.
"Awkward sibling hug?" Mabel offered.
"Awkward sibling hug," Dipper agreed.
They both embraced each other, patting each other on the back. "Pat, pat," they both said.
"Okay, now we can leave," Dipper said once they had finished. He stood up and tried the knob and found it locked. "Huh, they locked it this time. I don't know how to get out."
"Never fear!" Mabel said as she reached into her sweater and pulled out her grappling hook. She grabbed onto Dipper and fired up through the ceiling. They were both yanked up and out and landed on the platform on the roof.
"See?" Mabel asked as she dusted bits of drywall off her sweater, "my grappling hook is useful!"
"I guess you're right," Dipper conceded. "Now, how do we deal with the clones?"
"I don't think this is a good idea," Dipper cautioned as he was helped onto the copier by Mabel. "Making more clones means more clones to rise against us."
"We can't take on my clones without them," Mabel justified. "Besides, they only seem to do that when you change your mind, and we don't want to be put back in the closet."
"Oh, alright," Dipper said as he laid flat on his back. Mabel pressed the copy button and waited as an army of their own formed. The first one fell to the ground and climbed out of its paper and turned to meet his makers.
"Dipper?" he asked as if he already knew him.
Dipper flipped onto his belly to see the clone. "Tyrone?"
"Wait, who is Tyrone?" Mabel asked in confusion. "You two know each other?" Her question was ignored.
"I thought you were dead! How are you still alive?"
"I have no idea! Respawn baby! Oh, hi Mabel," Tyrone finally greeted her.
"Who is this?" Mabel asked Dipper.
"He's Tyrone. I've always wanted to be named that," Dipper sheepishly admitted. "He's like Maple, but good."
"So… we are making a clone army to stop the Mabel clones before they do something to ruin Dipper's attempt to get Wendys affection?"
The Mabel clones were all stuffed onto the couch in the shack's living room watching duck-tective. Every now and then Maple would get up and check the closet to see if Dipper was ready to let Wendy know his feelings about her. Every time she had been met with absolute silence.
"Should it be taking this long?" Maple asked the rest of the clones as she sat back down on the couch.
"Don't worry about it," Music Note Mabel said. "We have all summer for his romance to develop!"
They continued watching the TV, not seeing the danger creep up behind them. All at once, a Dipper clone shouted, "Clone war!" and they all jumped the Mabel clones. As they were busy fighting Mabel and Dipper snuck past them to get to the giftshop.
"You two good?" Wendy called out from the counter. "It sounds like a riot in there."
"Uh, yeah, do you know where we put the water balloons?" Dipper asked.
"Yeah, we left them outside," She answered, but the voice was coming from behind them. They spun around to see another Wendy climbing down the ladder to the roof platform.
"Two Wendy's!? You used the cloning machine!"
"Yeah, I felt the best way of getting out of work was to get someone else to do it," Wendy explained. She looked at the clone at the counter and squinted. "Where's the other one?"
"The other one?" Dipper questioned.
"Beats me," The Wendy clone said, blowing her off as she readjusted herself.
"Hey, you're gonna do all her jobs right?"
"Nope. You can do that."
"What do you mean nope?"
"I don't feel like doing it."
Dipper and Mabel stepped back as Wendy went up to her clone, now wary of a second clone war about to break out.
"You're supposed to be running the gift shop while I chill," Wendy said as she forced her clone's magazine down to look her in the eye.
"What's your problem?" Clone Wendy snapped as she shoved Wendy back.
"What's your problem?" Wendy snapped back, shoving her clone back. Their shoving soon devolved into a full on brawl. Dipper and Mabel climbed onto the counter to avoid being caught up in it. The third Wendy clone walked out from one of the clothing racks, took the other clone's place and started reading the magazine, not caring about the fight.
The two redheads tumbled across the gift shop floor and into the door to the living room. Once the door opened the Pine clones fight spilled into the gift shop. In the ensuing chaos the Twins slipped out the entrance and went around to the back porch. The container of water balloons were there next to the couch where Soos was sitting.
"Hey dudes!" Soos greeted.
"Hi Soos," Dipper answered as he cracked open the container. "Shouldn't you be in the shack?"
"I would but these beavers are very distracting," Soos answered. They both looked over to see some beavers performing tricks and stunts in front of the porch. Mabel handed Dipper the hose and they started filling the water balloons in mass.
"Okay, we lure out the clones into the front, then we attack them with the water balloons," Dipper briefed Mabel as he filled the last balloons. He shut the case and they both lifted it up and started walking to the gift shop.
"You dudes need help with that?"
Both twins jumped in surprise and the handles of the container slipped out of their grasp and the contents spilled out onto the grass, prematurely detonating in watery explosions. They swung around to see Soos in front of them.
"Soos!? How are you over here? You were-," they stopped and put two and two together when he saw Soos also sitting on the couch.
"Soos, you cloned too?" Mabel whined. "But why?"
"Everyone else was doing it, and I kinda felt the need to fit in," Soos (or Soos' clone, they really couldn't tell) said.
"Well, we're now out of water balloons," Dipper informed.
"How are we going to get rid of the clones now? They're going to keep fighting until there's nothing left."
"Hold on, I have an idea," Dipper informed. "We can trip the fire sprinklers. It worked last time, we just need something to activate them."
"Here, take this," Soos said, pulling a lighter out of his pocket and placing it in Dipper's hand.
"Thanks Soos! Soos clone? I can't tell."
"Soos clone," clone Soos informed. "Do you guys need any help getting to the sprinkler?"
"Uh, yeah we do. But wouldn't that also end you?"
"Well you see dudes, all the clones you've made have a purpose for their existence which they more or less carry out. Soos made me so he could fit in with you guys, and since there's already a Soos, I have no purpose other than waiting for my demise. Therefore, activating the sprinklers fulfilled my purpose," clone Soos explained, in the same tone he would use when explaining a piece of machinery.
"That's… horrifying," Mabel squeaked out.
"Contemplating your mortality comes easy when death is a splash away," clone Soos summarized. "Let's get to it."
They followed the suicidal clone back to the gift shop. The door opened for them as a Dipper clone was sent flying through before being shortly pulled back into the brawl. They looked through the doorway and saw the gift shop in shambles as clones threw each other onto racks and shelves, knocking merchandise to the ground.
Dipper looked around for anything to burn and saw a knocked over stand of pamphlets. He crawled towards them, weaving through the various fights until he grabbed a handful of cards. He had almost made it back when he was finally noticed. A pair of hands grabbed him from behind and pulled him up. He was spun around to see that his assailant was Maple, who promptly delivered a right hook to his face, seemingly unaware the Dipper she caught was the real one.
He fell to the floor again and Maple pounced on top of him ready to deliver another blow. Dipper raised his hands in front of face but the punch never came. Instead clone Soos came to the rescue by grabbing Maple by the scruff of her sweater and throwing her into a crowd of clones, knocking them down like bowling pins.
Clone Soos picked up Dipper and placed him on his shoulder with Mabel on the other, carrying him to the nearest sprinkler. They stopped under one and Dipper pulled out the lighter and started trying to ignite it.
By now the clones had figured out that the Dipper and Mabel perched on clone Soos were real, and what they were trying to do and they swarmed around them trying to knock them down. Dipper kept struggling to start a fire.
"Hurry Dipper!" Mabel yelled.
"I'm trying!" Dipper yelled back.
A Wendy clone picked up a Dipper clone and threw him at Mabel like a baseball. They collided and Mabel was thrown off her perch, falling into the mob below.
"Mabel!" Dipper cried out. He redoubled his efforts, flicking his thumb against the switch until an orange flame blossomed up. He set the corner of the pamphlet on fire and jammed it into the nozzle of the sprinkler.
Water rained down on them and the clones started melting. The Dipper and Wendy clones gave a collective groan of annoyance that their short lease on life was at an end, while the Mabel clones went out with a 'whee!' and clone Soos accepted his demise silently. Dipper was lowered onto the floor as clone Soos melted until he was lying on his back in the sludge.
To his side Mabel popped up from a mound of sweaters drenched in sludge safe and sound and Wendy from behind the counter covered in paper mache. They all stared at each other for a while.
"Well… I just saw both of you melt in front of me. A dozen times over," Wendy said.
"You good?" Dipper asked.
"Yeah, it's only the…," She stopped to think about it, "... fourth weirdest thing I've seen," She answered. She went to Dipper and Mabel and helped them out of the muck.
"Well, at least nothing bad happened," Mabel said. They all laughed at the absurdity of it, not hearing Grunkle Stan return.
"Wendy, I'm back from- What happened!?"
The End.
Vppdgm ipu Kpitm yzja kmbwil!