waywardpines | [MAY 2022 | GRAVITY FALLS, OR] and they're giving me hell back in hades

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[MAY 2022 | GRAVITY FALLS, OR] and they're giving me hell back in hades

Ten years ago, Bill Cipher attempted to turn the world into a heinous nightmare realm with the help of a broken and misguided Dipper Pines. The fight was brutal and lives were lost, but Mabel Pines, determined to get her brother back, managed to yank Dipper back from the edge of darkness and together, they supposedly banished Bill from this dimension permanently.

The cost, however, was unimaginably high.

Dipper grew estranged from his family and his sister and Mabel, unable to truly face what that horrific summer did to her, suffered from a serious case of arrested development. As the twins grew up and went their separate ways, Dipper went off to college, and Mabel returned to Gravity Falls, out of fear of being alone. And so it went- Dipper studied the occult and distanced himself from his family so they might never get caught up in his problems again, and Mabel tried to make a life for herself without ever truly growing up.

But this could not hold.

During the summer of 2022, exactly ten years to the day of their arrival in Gravity Falls, Stanley Pines has gone missing, leaving a series of cryptic codes in red paint. Determined to get her brother back to Gravity Falls to reunite the Mystery Twins and find their missing grandfather, she goes on a quest to find him, only to find him less enthused about recapturing the past. Things change, however, when Dipper deciphers one of the codes left behind and discovers it's a message from Bill- he's back and he's looking for Dipper.

With no choice left, the twins set off back to Gravity Falls, and Dipper is about to learn that the town has changed significantly in ten years.

+++

The forest hasn't really fully healed from the events of ten years ago. Passing the endless pine forests, there's still scorched gaps where the forest fires took out chunks of the vegetation and only the bare minimum seems to be returning its former glory. Up ahead, the water tower comes into view- repainted and no longer proudly displaying Robbie V's muffin-shaped mushroom cloud. The forest might be shabby, but the town itself seems to be flourishing far better than it was when the twins were here before- a sharp contrast to the fact that Mabel warned Dipper the town was weirder than usual.

"It's... a lot different than you remember, probably," Mabel says awkwardly, keeping her eyes straight ahead.

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"There might be one or two..." She presses her index fingers together and shrugs, because clearly dinosaurs are a matter you just shrug over. Meanwhile, Waddles flops over on his back for tummy scritches. He has significantly more tummy now. Better get started.

The door to the shack slams open, causing Waddles to oink in surprise, flop back onto his feet, and stagger back towards Mabel in alarm, trying to hide behind her, regardless of the fact that he's twice as wide as she is. The man standing on the porch now is unmistakable, having not changed a bit in ten years, aside from the unfortunate beginnings of a mustache above his lip.

"Dude. I totally heard oinks of recognition. Is he here?" Soos directs that question at Mabel, who takes a moment from comforting her pig to point at Dipper. A light brightens the older man's eyes as he steps off the porch as if in a trance.

"Dipper, look at you... Aw man. I feel a hug comin' on. If you're gonna stop me, you better yay or nay me fast. Nope. Too late. I'm goin' for it." And Dipper gets gathered up in a crushing hug that lifts him up off the ground a bit. He's excited. "It's so good to see you, little dude. Heh. Guess you're not so little anymore, huh?"

He puts him down with slightly more care than he picked him up, placing his hands on Dipper's shoulders, and nodding firmly. "You've become a man. I am so proud."

"Soos!" Dipper laughs, just a little embarrassed at the hug, but he doesn't fight it. Soos is one of the few parts of Gravity Falls that gives him no mixed feelings at all. Soos was always great. The cool older brother he'd never known he wanted.

He grins, shrugging a shoulder as Soos sets him down. "Yeah, time does that." He glances up at Soos and shoves him affectionately. "And hey. You're one to talk! Mabel tells me there's a Mrs. Soos now!"

Mabel looks up from cuddling Waddles to give Soos an encouraging smile as he inevitably starts to sweat it out. "Hah... Y-yeah, Melody and me. We, uh..." There are few things in the world that Soos is extremely good at and dealing with what might be a potentially awkward situation is not one of them. He removes his hat and twists it around in his hands. "Uh, look, dude, sorry about not sending you an invite, but since you weren't respondin' to Mabel's letters, we... we figured we didn't wanna put any pressure on you to come out here and dredge all that stuff up again. Yanno?"

Mabel stands up, brushing mud off her jeans, and goes to pat him on the shoulder. "It's okay, Soos. He gets it. And he's here now." She shoots Dipper a look over his shoulder, hoping he can comprehend I will explain later, please don't hurt his man-feelings in a look.

Soos, thanks to that brief interruption from Mabel, manages to regain his cool and return his hat to his head. "Right. And, anyway, I will hereby invite you to all future birthdays of the Little Sooses and Melodies that will arrive one day. May they be as awesome as their Uncle Dipper and Aunt Mabel."

There are some things that time cannot possibly erase, and knowing what Mabel means when she gives him a look like that is one of them. He gives her a look that says You'd better and smiles at Soos. "It's okay, man. Just sorry I never got you a wedding present." He pats Soos on the shoulder. "And you'd better. Someone's gotta tell them embarrassing stories about their dad turning into a pig."

"Dude. Dude. Not cool. I switched bodies with a pig. It's a totally different thing." Soos turns to Mabel and gives her a faux salute. "And as requested, nothing has been touched, Boss Mabel."

Mabel salutes back. "Excellent work, Soos. Give yourself a raise."

"I absolutely will do no such thing, out of respect for Mr. Pines."

Mabel laughs and throws an arm around Dipper, guiding him towards the Shack. "That's what I like to hear, Soos." She leans up to whisper a quiet thank you in Dipper's ear, before gripping his shoulders tightly as she steers him into the place that was their home for a summer.

The pictures didn't quite do it justice. The counter is still painted in the same binary and a variety of other codes have been written on walls and on the floor and sectioned off with police tape to prevent anyone from walking on them. At the counter, carefully avoiding the dried splatters of paint, a teenage girl with bubblegum pink hair eyes them from over her magazine.

"Oh, he's here finally," she drawls in a bored tone. "Great. Now I can finally clean this creepy stuff off the walls. Whoo-hoo."

"Holiday!" Mabel responds, releasing her hold on her brother so she can shoot the girl her most chastising expression. "Where's your customer service smile?"

"He's not a customer. He's your-"

Mabel shoots the girl a narrowed eye look and the girl responds with a smile that looks more like a pained grimace. Satisfied, Mabel turns back to Dipper. "That's Holiday. She's a... work-in-progress."

"Heard that."

Mabel keeps smiling.. "And our replacement Wendy."

"Love being called that," Holiday flips a page in her magazine pointedly, but tries to subtlety meet Dipper's eyes all the same.

Dipper pauses as he walks in, taking a moment to take it all in. Despite the red paint, it still feels so familiar, though everything also seems smaller than he remembers it. He really did grow up, he supposes.

He pulls a hat from the display next to the door and puts it on, looking at himself in the mirror. It's... odd. This isn't the same hat, though it has the blue pine tree on it. This one's bigger. For an adult, not a child. But it fits him, and it suits him as well as it always did.

He takes it off hurriedly, turning back to look at the room in front of him. He pushes aside some bobblehead Stans and sets his laptop down, looking back over at Mabel as it starts up.

"What's up with original Wendy?" Dipper rubs the back of his head, trying to look as casual as he can and completely failing (bluff 6). "Not that it matters or anything. Just curious." It's not like there's even a hint of a spark left in that torch he's carrying. Of course.

He looks over at the new girl, meeting her eyes with a slight frown. Work-in-Progress Holiday. Where did she come from?

Holiday turns a color that's almost as pink as her hair and buries her face in her magazine. Mabel glances between them with a knowing look and then leans on the doorframe, while Soos hovers nearby.

"She'll be around." Oh she caught both of those things- Holiday's teenage awkward and Dipper's old torch. "I told her to bring us some stuff to clean this up once you got it all decoded. She's really excited to see you again, Dipper."

Dipper glances over at Mabel suspiciously for that last statement. After all, he and Wendy ended things solidly in the just friends area, and that was just great. Sure, it might have occurred to him that dating a 25 year old when you're 22 is way less weird than dating a 15 year old when you're 12, but it sure isn't something he's expecting. He doesn't even know if she's single.

He takes out a notebook and starts scribbling down the code. Once he's got it into something he hopes is a cohesive whole, he goes back to the laptop to type it into his program, sitting back to see what it comes up with (decipher scripts 39).

The codes are all relatively simple- the sort of thing that suggests whoever was writing them needed to be quick and efficient, while still making certain they appealed to their audience's intelligence, hence why it's a series of different ones, rather than just the same.

Binary on the counter, but nothing more than the welcome he's already translated.

Splayed across the floor is Atbash, translating to: YOUR CALCULATIONS WERE A LITTLE OFF. A+ FOR EFFORT. D- FOR EXECUTION. GUESS YOU MISSED SOMETHING.

The one on the walls are basic number substitution, bearing one fairly cryptic, but simple, message: THE SEQUEL ALWAYS HAS WAY MORE EXPLOSIONS THAN THE ORIGINAL.

Taunts. Every one of them. No real clues to speak of, but one simple, singular message that rings true in all of them that no code needs to hide- I'm back.

Now that she's back among the scrawling letters and all is quiet again, Mabel shudders. "It's true, isn't it? It's not some sick joke. He's actually back."

Honestly, he probably didn't even need to go through that much effort for Atbash and number substitution but he's a little rusty. Enough that he double checks his work with the computer. Just in case he's wrong. Hoping he's somehow wrong.

"Yeah, he's back." He tears the page out of his notebook and crumples it up, throwing it as hard as he can. "And he's taunting me. These aren't clues, they're bait. He knew it would get me to come here. We're playing right into his hands."

The trouble is, he isn't sure what else they can do. Of course he was going to come. He can't risk what'll happen if he doesn't. Next time it might really be blood.

Holiday, being the only one who doesn't know what anyone's talking about, peeks over her magazine and glances around at the adults, wondering if anyone's gonna say anything. Mabel chews on a nail and nods slowly, the reality sinking in, and Soos squeezes her shoulder reassuringly, and that reminds her she has nerve.

"We beat him once, Dip. We can do it again."

The bell suddenly jingles, causing Holiday to jump nearly out of her skin. She blushes harder and exits the room hastily through the employee's only door, while Soos and Mabel turn to see who just walked in.

The redhead in the doorway glances between everyone, eyes wide with something akin to surprise as she tries to figure out why all the grave faces. She drops two buckets of paint remover on the floor and nudges the door closed with her feet. "Yo. Did I... miss a funeral or something?"

"Wendy?" If there's anything that can break Dipper out of his funk, it's seeing her again. He smiles, standing up, and turns towards her. This is the part where he should say something cool. Some awesome one-liner that'll make him come off as clever and cool under hard circumstances and make her remember how much fun they'd had. Maybe even something a little flirty. The perfect first impression of adult Dipper who is now so grown-up and super suave.

"....hi."

Wendy squints at him for a second, and then breaks out into a wide toothy grin. Some things don't change- Wendy certainly hasn't. She's grown out of her teenage gangliness and is currently wearing a flannel shirt over a smock displaying MR. MYSTERY'S HARDWARE SHACK in bold lettering. Impossible to miss, because it falls directly in view of her chest line.

"Whoa. I thought you guys weren't letting tourists in here yet. Who is this guy? It can't be Dipper." She strolls up to him and immediately ruffles his hair so she can see his birthmark without making it obvious that's what she's doing. "Dude! I don't even have to bend over to hug you, anymore. What the hell is this? Who do you think you are, man." She punches him in the arm rather hard, and laughs. "That's for getting older on me, you jerk."

Dipper's wisdom check of 6 means he sure doesn't pick up on what she's doing, but then again, he's never been the best at using all of his brain around Wendy. She's lucky he didn't make a list in the car.

(He started one. But he crossed it out before Mabel could see what he was doing.)

He grins, and it widens when she punches him, even though ow, it hurts. Why are all the women in his life so good at punching?

"I've missed you too."

Mabel tries to hide her delight behind her hands, but her grin reaches all the way up to her eyes, and she's doing a little bounce from one foot to another.

For all Wendy cares, however, Dipper may as well be the only person in the room, which is probably something Dipper has been waiting for his entire life. "Seriously, I thought you were never coming back. I thought Mabel was Kerpranking me when she told me she was going to get you." She shakes her head, still smiling. "It hasn't been the same without you here."

Edited 2015-06-29 07:04 (UTC)

Dipper's pretty sure it was better without him there, but Wendy missed him and even he isn't bad enough at this to argue with that. There are a lot of things he could say that fly through his mind. An embarrassingly large part of him wants to blurt out that she's not that much older than him anymore, or at least the amount matters less. He wants to ask if she has a boyfriend, to tell her that his life hasn't been the same without her either, that she's still the coolest person he's ever known, that wow, he hadn't realized when he was a kid that she wasn't all the way grown up either and she really looks good.

But his charisma check is a 9 so he doesn't really... try to flirt much.

"Kind of the same now that I'm back. There's a mystery for me to solve."

He gestures at her.... smock that's definitely the part he's looking at. "Tell me you're not selling Stanmers or something."

"Ugh. No." She looks down at her smock and rolls her eyes. "Stan helped me buy a hardware store after I got out of community college, but only after I promised to name it after him, promote the Shack, and give him a discount."

But even so, it was pretty good of Stan to help her, after she... utterly failed to do much of any work for him at the Shack. "I'm the boss now, so I can do whatever I want. Including take extra long lunch breaks so I can hang out with you guys."

"Stan helped you?" Dipper can't help but raise an eyebrow at that. He doubts that the discount and promotion help make up that much of the cost. It just seems so... selfless. If there's one thing he can count on, it's Stan being selfish. Him actually helping Wendy, who might be the coolest friend Dipper ever had but he can admit she was a terrible employee, is hard for him to reconcile with the view he had of the man.

"That's good. Great. I mean we've--" he almost says got a lot of catching up to do but chickens out a little, stumbling a little and says instead: "got a lot of work to do. On the mystery. You know. Figuring out... things...."

Edited 2015-06-29 18:12 (UTC)

Wendy's expression falters and she rubs the back of her head. "Yeah. The, uh, mystery." She clears her throat, stepping around him, gingerly to address Mabel. "Speaking of mysteries, that thing we were looking into? It's definitely a thing again."

She glances at Dipper, unsure if she wants to be vague or not, and Mabel gives her all the sign she needs by looking down at the floor. Wendy balks. "Mabel, you didn't tell him? This is his thing."

"His thing is getting Stan back and getting rid of You-Know-Who. And we need to stop saying thing, because it's starting to sound like a nonsense word."

Soos looks between the two women, deeply confused. "And, honestly, I've lost track of how many things are a thing right now."

"What are you talking about?" Dipper crosses his arms, looking suspiciously at the two women. Soos, at least, is spared his suspicions. Soos looks confused too. "If I'm in this then I need to know everything. I don't want it to be like last time. No secrets."

Because he sure remembers how many secrets Stan was keeping. He sure... holds that grudge even up til now.

"It's not a secret, Dipper." Mabel sounds mildly exasperated. "I know what you're here for, and I didn't wanna distract you from it, but that doesn't change that this town is still cuckoo bananas, and not a lot of people are willing to deal with things head-on."

Wendy and Mabel exchange looks, and since Mabel looks awkward as hell about it, she chooses to be the mature one and explain. "After Mabel showed up, the four of us- me, Mabel, Stan, and Soos- started helping people with monster attacks. Considering most of 'em only attacked tourists, Stan figured it was better for business if he helped. The thing I was talking about is for the past few weeks, something has been killing people."

"And ripping their livers out," Mabel adds.

Wendy shrugs. Just another day in Gravity Falls. "Yeah. Same MO every time, but it's... not related to Stan or... sketchy triangle weirdness. It was going on before he vanished, so I mean... If you want nothing to do with it, I get it. And I know Mabel wants to stick to you like glue right now, so if you guys wanna keep focusing on Stan, that's cool. Soos and I can handle this."

Soos is... still sorting out which thing is which, over here, having zoned out of the conversation. "Wait. What if I'm one of the things? Whoa. But which thing am I?"

"And you didn't think mentioning 'Oh, by the way, some monster's ripping out people's livers' on the car ride over would be a good idea?" He glares at Mabel, crossing his arms. They're going to to have to have a long talk about what else she might not be telling him later. "Or that I wouldn't help?" This time he turns his annoyed look on Wendy. "Come on, you can't think I've changed that much. I'm not gonna sit by and do nothing while people are getting hurt."

Or maybe that is the change. After all, he almost sat by and did nothing when Bill wanted to hurt people. Why would now be different?

He shakes his head, reaching for his bag. "No, fine, I'm back, I'm doing this. Full on Mystery Twin." He lifts his crossbow, holding it up and aiming it at one of the images of Stan. "Besides, I've picked up a few tricks since I left." He lets loose a bolt (atk 13 but it's a freaking poster how high can the AC be). "Might even be fun."

Mabel, Wendy, and Soos stare at him for a long time after that crossbow bolt is released, all of them gaping. Only Wendy manages to break the silence.

"Damn, Dipper." She lets out a low, impressed whistle. "You grew up." She nudges Mabel, who laughs awkwardly and rubs her head, unsure that she's going to like any conversation that follows. She wanted him here, and she wanted this, but now it just seems like she led him here under false pretenses.

Wendy strolls over to remove the bolt from the wall with ease, waving it a little in Dipper's face. "Okay, if you're all in, here's the deal. We've had three tourists dead within the last three weeks, and in none of those cases was there any sign of forced entry. One guy got iced in his RV, another his locked hotel room, and the latest one was a trucker who got ripped a new one in his truck. Not so much as a broken window, except for a few glass cracks that happened from inside the truck while the dude was struggling. Crazy, right?"

"Pretty crazy, but definitely explainable. Means we could be dealing with some sort of shapeshifter again, or something with mind control, or something insubstantial." Dipper takes the bult back, tapping it against his chin as he thinks about it, trying to remember anything he might have read about liver tearing monsters that could get into places without too much difficulty (knowledge 38). "How far apart were the kills? Did anyone hear or see anything?"

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