Chapter 1: Things Are Gonna Get Weird

"Welcome to the realm of mysteries."

"GRAVITY FAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLSSS!" Mabel screeched as loud as her little lungs could manage, shaking her brother, Dipper, with uncontained excitement.

Dipper gently pushed Mabel off him. "I get it! You're excited to go back to Gravity Falls. I heard you the first hundred times you said it. Now can you please stop screaming?"

"You got quite the pair of lungs on ya, I'll give you that. But if you keep hollering, my hearing might give out!" An older voice called out from the front, it belonging to none other than Stanley Pines.

Dipper and Mabel were currently in the back of his car, taking a joyride down a long road surrounded by woodland. Instead of taking the bus like usual, their parents allowed Stanley to take them directly, so the journey turned into a little family road trip.

Stanley wanted to use this prime opportunity to get some exclusive time with the kids before they met up with everyone else. After all, it was his idea to use the road trip as a bonding experience—an idea he was slowly starting to regret.

Mabel pouted. "Your hearing is already giving out, Grunkle Stan!"

"Hey! The truth hurts, y'know." Suddenly, a pig oinked, causing Stanley to look down at the passenger seat, where Waddles sat. "I know, right? Kids these days."

Mabel rolled her eyes before turning back to Dipper. "How can you not be as excited as me? We're going to—"

"Gravity Falls, yeah, I know," Dipper finished for her before continuing. "And who said I wasn't excited? I'm very excited! I'm so excited, I want to jump out of this car right now! But unlike you, I have a little self-control." He crossed his arms.

Mabel gasped exaggeratedly in response, as if he just accused her of committing the foulest crime. "I have self-control!"

Dipper chuckled. "Yeah, right. You're the same person who chanted 'Gravity Falls' nonstop for four hours straight!"

"Those were... dark times..." Stanley shivered.

"Seriously, it's only been one school year, and you're acting like we haven't seen everyone in decades. I think you miss them a little too much."

"Oh yeah? Well, what about you?" Mabel pointed to Dipper's head, where he wore his signature hat with the pine tree symbol. "The second school ended, you were quick to put that on!"

"W-Well look at you! You're still wearing that same sweater!" Dipper deflected, pointing at Mabel's pink sweater with the shooting star. She could've picked any of her (many) sweaters to wear, but she chose that one specifically. A detail Dipper was quick to point out. "I'm not surprised it still fits. You haven't grown a single inch since last summer."

"You haven't either!"

"Yeah I have!"

"Oh yeah? Why am I still taller than you, then?"

"It's called a ghost inch."

"What? That's not real."

"Is so!"

"Is not!"

"Is so!"

"Is—"

"Kids!" Stanley interrupted, ceasing the twins' obnoxious bickering. "You're both thirteen and survived your first year of high school. Quit acting like children!" The car filled with ambient noises from the outside road as the conversation paused. "And Mabel's right. Ghost inches are totally not a real thing. That just sounds dumb."

There was another brief pause. However, after the moment passed, the car filled with cheerful laughter.

"Man, I missed this," Dipper admitted.

He took out a piece of neatly folded paper from his pocket. It was a signed note—the same note he had received at the end of summer with everybody's signature.

He had held onto this note ever since they arrived home at Piedmont, repeatedly staring at the words "See you next summer." Dipper counted the minutes, the hours, the days, the weeks, and the months for summer to begin again. It hadn't even been a full calendar year since he's last seen everyone. Yet, it's felt like decades.

"I can't wait to see everyone."

Though Dipper meant what he said, Mabel couldn't help but detect a hint of sadness in his tone. "What's wrong, Dipper?"

Dipper looked at her, initially confused, but then realized she could, in a sense, feel how he felt. Call it a twin's intuition. "Nothing's wrong. I mean, come on, we get to go back to Gravity Falls!"

"But?" Mabel pressed, sensing something else wrong with Dipper. Even Stanley was more tuned into the conversation, eyeing the rear-view mirror more frequently.

"Well, it's just...I don't know." Dipper sighed and leaned back in his seat. "I've been thinking about everything we went through last summer, and I guess it just bums me out that we're never gonna have another summer as fun as that one."

"FUN?!" Mabel screeched unexpectedly, causing Stanley to jerk the vehicle. Luckily, there were no other cars on the road. "What part of nearly getting our heads blown off by some triangle dude was fun?!"

"Well, obviously those parts weren't fun. I mean, come on! He possessed me!" Dipper looked out the window, watching the trees pass by in a blur. "I'm just saying, what if there's not as many mysteries to solve as before? What if this summer is...boring?"

"Boring? Come on, Dipper! How will anything that could happen in Gravity Falls possibly be boring?"

Before Dipper could respond, Stanley chimed in. "She has a point. Besides, it's like my brother always says: There are more mysteries in Gravity Falls than there are stars in the night sky!" Stanley scratched his chin. "Or something like that."

Mabel and Stanley's words brightened Dipper's mood enough for him to smile. "Thanks guys," he said sincerely before looking back through the window.

A moment passed, then Dipper's face grimaced. "Grunkle Stan, should you be driving this fast?"

"Sure I should. It's perfectly fine."

"But the speed limit is twenty."

"If there's no cops, there's no speed limit!" Stanley declared before gesturing to look outside. "Besides, there's no one else on the road! Just hold your horses, Dipper. We're almost—"

The car suddenly sputtered and vibrated violently. "Oh come on! Not now!" The engine whined down before the car shut off completely, stranding them in the middle of the dirt road. "Ugh! Stupid hunk of junk!"

Dipper and Mabel weren't surprised the car turned off. It was particularly old, so that was to be expected. That, and this was probably the sixth time it shut off on them.

"Hang on, kids." Stanley groaned before stepping out the vehicle. From the way he was moving, the twins knew he was going to jumpstart the car like he had done the previous times it cut off.

While he did that, Dipper and Mabel talked about all the fun things they'd do over the summer. The one thing they had in common was sharing their first year of high school experience with the others. After that, their ideas on what a fun summer looked like varied.

Mabel got giddy talking about all the sleepovers she planned to have with Grenda and Candy. Meanwhile, Dipper was fangirling over the remaining mysteries he and Great Uncle Ford could solve.

The chat went uninterrupted for five minutes, coming to an abrupt end when Dipper felt a chill go up his spine. He went dead quiet; Mabel was quick to notice. "Everything alright?"

"I think so..." Dipper answered uncertainly, then exited the car.

"Dipper!" Mabel called out to him but got no response. Dipper walked to the front of the car, looking upward. Eventually, she unfastened her seatbelt, grabbed Waddles, and followed him out of the car. "Dipper, what are you doing?" She asked in a more concerned tone rather than a confrontational one.

Dipper, still not responding, squinted his eyes as he stared ahead past the trees. Mabel turned to what he was looking at, and her eyes widened.

The car roared to life behind them, prompting Stanley to stand up straight. "Haha! Yes! It lives!" He wiped the sweat off his forehead, then closed the hood of the car.

"GAH!" Stanley jumped when he turned and saw Dipper and Mabel standing a few feet away. He hadn't heard them step out of the car. "Jeez! You two tryna give me a heart attack or somethin'?" He complained, soon noticing they weren't paying him any mind. Instead, their attention was on the sky. "What are you two knuckleheads looking at?" Stanley followed their gazes to the sky, having his question answered immediately. "Is that a black pyramid? In the sky?"

"I thought it was a ship," Mabel commented.

Dipper shook his head. "No, no. I... I think it's both."

In the distance, a black triangular vessel hovered in the sky. It resembled a black pyramid, plastered with small lights. Due to the sun's alignment in the sky, the pyramid's tip was perfectly pointing at its center. The strangest part of the pyramid was a cyan-blue glow coming from its underside, and it only got brighter as the seconds passed.

"Where did that thing come from? It wasn't there a second ago." Mabel questioned, to which nobody had an answer for.

"Wait." Dipper realized something. "Isn't it hovering over Gravity Falls right now?"

Mabel and Stanley turned to him, but before they could answer, the blue glow underneath the pyramid exploded outward in a large shockwave.

The shockwave expanded rapidly, blowing past trees and shaking them like a tornado was passing by. When the shockwave passed over the Pines Family, it was strong enough to send them sliding back a short distance. The blowing wind from the shockwave sent Mabel's hair flopping everywhere, obscuring her vision and forcing her to drop Waddles.

It was all over in less than a second, but that didn't mean the three weren't shaken.

"W-What was that?" Dipper stammered, adjusting his hat as he looked back up at the pyramid.

The group remained silent for an undetermined amount of time. Then the silence was broken by a strange noise coming from behind, followed by the frightened squeals of Waddles.

Everyone turned to see a blue portal with jagged edges had appeared near the woods behind them. The portal was currently sucking up Waddles, who ran as fast as his tiny legs allowed. It was in vain, as Waddles couldn't outrun the suction and gradually got closer and closer to the portal.

"WADDLES!" Mabel cried out, impulsively sprinting for the pig.

"MABEL!" Dipper and Stanley called out, reaching to grab her. Unfortunately, Mabel proved too fast for them; She reached Waddles before they could reach her.

Mabel scooped Waddles into her arms and then realized too late that nothing was stopping the portal from sucking them both in, which is exactly what it did. She called out to Dipper and Stanley as she fell further in, and the two rushed over.

The portal closed suddenly as they jumped for it, causing them both to stumble and fall into the outskirts of the woods.

This was not how Dipper wanted his summer to start.

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