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“Your sister’s a freak, Pines,” the captain of Piedmont High’s football team sneers on the thirty-eighth day of the fall semester, and, well, that’s how Dipper Pines winds up in the principal’s office for the first time in his life. Mabel thinks it’s cool—not on the same level as punching out a pterodactyl, but we can’t all be Grunkle Stans—but their dad doesn’t really share her sentiments.“What did Great Uncle Stan teach you kids over the summer?” he muses with a weary shake of his head in the driver’s seat of the car that afternoon. “Buckle in, Mabel.”Mabel obliges him with a series of enthused spaceship noises.“You, too, Roderic,” their dad says.“It’s Dipper,” Dipper mutters bitterly, and then, in a blurt, “Why are you mad at me?! He was being a total jerk!”“I don’t know how things worked in Gravity Falls, kiddo, but in regular old life, you can’t just go around hitting people whenever they say something you don’t like,” their dad barks. Dipper scoffs and slumps back against the seat, folding his arms tightly over his chest and still not fastening his seatbelt. “What was it, then? What did he do that was so abhorrent you had to punch him in the jaw?”Dipper glances over at Mabel, whose eyes have already wandered with reverent focus to the view outside the window, to the sight of Crocker Park ambling by in oranges and yellows. A sour feeling opens up in his chest.“It…” He grips the sleeve of his hoodie more tightly. “Well, the thing is… I… he… yeah.”Their father makes a point of catching Dipper’s eye sternly in the rear view mirror, rolling the car to a stop at the next red light.They don’t talk about it again. And Dipper might not be the most physically fit of specimens, but it feels pretty good to have done something with his hands, since they’ve been a little lost ever since they ran out of dilapidated journal pages to flip excitedly through.“Why did you go all Amazon on that guy?” Mabel asks him that night while they’re brushing their teeth. Before he can even answer, she makes a face with the toothpaste foaming at her mouth and groans out a series of truly depressing imitations of zombie noises, waving her hands at either side of her head.Dipper spits out his toothpaste and turns on the tap. Mabel’s growth spurt over the summer hadn’t stopped, and now she’s half a head taller than he is, and she’s getting her braces off in five months.“I mean,” Mabel continues, bubbly and enthused, sticking the pink toothbrush back in her mouth, “I’m not your boss, or anything, but you should probably knock it off; you’re gonna get in trouble.”“Can’t be worse than any of the shenanigans Stan got us into,” Dipper replies, his smile a little wan but still real, and Mabel laughs, shoving his shoulder a little too hard.“Shenanigans!” she repeats with a shake of her head. “You are on fire tonight, bro! But fine, don’t tell me; I guess I can deal with the fact that you don’t trust me; that’s cool.” She fakes a loud sniffle, flinging an arm across her eyes. “That’s cool!”“Mabel, it’s not that,” Dipper protests, but he doesn’t make any further attempts at defending himself, because proving her wrong means repeating the garbage words the football captain and a dozen other people at their new high school had said, and Dipper will be honest, if you promise not to tell anybody else, since he’s got a reputation to uphold: he’d rather be reputed as a quack his entire life than ever allow Mabel to think she was one.“Y’know the Hide-Behind could have followed us all the way back from Gravity Falls and we wouldn’t even know it?” she whispers when Dipper’s about to fall asleep, her voice hushed and astonished like she’s just had an epiphany. Dipper rolls over and doesn’t answer. He’s not brave enough to think things like that. He forgot how to be brave the second he realized that the meatheads who bully him between Geometry and gym don’t walk around in giant robots or control hordes of gnomes with a single whistle.Gnomes, he can handle. Emotionally mangling amounts of peer pressure? Different story. Their parents hadn’t let Mabel bring Waddles back to the house, so she’d finagled Grunkle Stan into sending her updates on the pig’s status via Snapchat at least every half-hour. Well, okay, it’s actually Wendy who does it, since Grunkle Stan couldn’t operate a cellular phone if a billion dollars depended on it (which is saying a lot for him), and half of the photos are of Soos accidentally fumbling into the shot, but it’s something, right?Their first day of school isn’t disastrous or anything, all things considered. Mabel, being Mabel, makes a few immediate friends, but mostly makes an impression, and Dipper sits in the front row and answers every question right and doodles a one-eyed pyramid in a top hat on his notes, and he only gets knocked around once by a couple of jocks who want to steal his lunch money, but surprise, jock population, Dipper Pines is one step ahead of you and never carries his lunch money on his person, so this victory lies with him. Him and his wedgie.He sneaks a lot of glances at Mabel’s Sev’ral Timez calendar when she’s at soccer practice, and no matter how many days she’s ticked off in glittery pink pen, the weeks leading up to the square in June ostentatiously labeled “GRAVITY FALLS!!” never seem to shrink in size. And it’s not that Dipper’s a cynic, or anything—or, God forbid, a skeptic—but it’s hard to maintain an unflagging enthusiasm in talking about Manotaurs when, as October rolls around, he starts to have trouble remembering what their names were, or how many heads the Multi-Bear had, or what that one weird gnome had been called, which is pretty disgraceful, considering that was the only word the little guy even knew how to say.“What’s got you so down these days, li’l bro?” Mabel inquires one mid-October morning as they wait for the school bus, and Dipper is so bummed out, on a general level, that he doesn’t even think to be indignant at the fact that she’s still insisting on referring to him as her little brother when she’s only three minutes older.“How are you doing this?” He answers her question with another question, and she immediately pulls out her other purple cupcake-shaped earbud, turning on the bus stop bench to face him more fully. “Mabel, we spent the summer getting tangled up in conspiracies and fighting cursed wax figures of Coolio and Sherlock Holmes; how are you fine with being back here the same as always?”Mabel, uncharacteristically, takes a moment of quiet contemplation to consider his question. Her Wonder Woman sweater peeks out from the ultraviolet raincoat their mother had wrestled her into before leaving for work, and her embroidered bell bottoms have the slightest tinge of darkened moisture on the hems.“Well, I mean,” she replies, kicking her feet, “It’s not like we’re never gonna go back. And I guess I’m, like, kinda different than you, ’cause I’m fine with just knowing that stuff exists, but you, you’re all… waaaah, gotta chase it down! You know?”Dipper pulls the bill of his hat, now the tiniest bit faded, further down.“But don’t sweat it, Dip,” Mabel continues, hitting him lightly in the shoulder in her usual commiserating routine. “Chill out and enjoy being unremarkable for a while! I mean, what isn’t charming about not having to eat Lazy Susan’s coffee omelettes, right? Haha.”Dipper lets out a wan chuckle at that. “It’s not even the monsters, though, Mabel; I miss Soos. And I…”Red hair, trapper hat, freckles moving around a smile, scraped-up elbows under teal plaid sleeves rolled up and wrinkled. He flushes and feels kind of stale inside.“She and Robby are probably... rubbing noses, and... making babies right now,” he grumbles, sinking further down and folding his arms over his chest. Mabel snickers.“Tons,” she goads him, and then lets out an exasperated pffft. “You’re such a goob. Wendy’s not gonna forget about you. Plus aren’t there like three girls at school who like you already?”Dipper gives a start. “Uh… are there?”Mabel snorts and then guffaws. “Gotcha! The… girls liking you part, not the Wendy part. Stop freaking out, Dipper; we’re gonna be fine.” She raises her fist and beams, a mouth full of braces and cheer. “We’re the Mystery Twins, yo.”Dipper thinks it’s a little annoying, sometimes, how easily Mabel can make him feel better. As the bus pulls up, he bumps his knuckles against hers and smiles and says, “Mystery Twins,” and he almost forgets to wonder if Gideon’s still in jail. Word reaches them around Christmas that Gideon is not, in fact, still in jail, and has, in fact, broken out. Nobody knows where he’s gotten to, and Grunkle Stan is weirdly tight-lipped about the whole thing, so Mabel puts her arms akimbo and stands up straight on the front porch when the cold December breeze rushes through and declares, “We’re going back.”If he thinks about it, Dipper figures that that’s probably when they first start splitting away from their parents. When they get older, they regret it a lot less, because really, who needs wrapped presents under the tree when you can have mermen and zombies and islands that float up out of the water and try to devour you, right? The point is, that's not the first time Dipper and Mabel run off hand-in-hand to chase something, but it is the first time their parents don't think to shout at them to come back home. He figures that maybe they recognize something there, and maybe it's the same something that compels Grunkle Stan to send them coupons for gas and disposable razors instead of Christmas cards.“Kids?” Grunkle Stan squints crabbily when they both knock frantically on the door at midnight, having run all the way to the Shack from where the late bus had dropped them off. He scratches his head and a little bit of dandruff flakes off, and his trusty boxers have a suspicious food stain on them. “What the heck’re you two doing here; it’s Christmas Eve!”“Technically it is now Christmas Day,” Mabel corrects him after consulting her magenta snap-on watch. “Which means we are your presents! Surprise!” She throws her arms in the air and, when met with no response, stiffly holds on her smile, glancing pointedly at Stan. “You can start crying with joy now. My arms are getting tired.”“Yeah, yeah, get in here before your parents try to shove a kidnapping charge on me,” Grunkle Stan grumbles, but Dipper swears he catches a small smile on his face before he turns to beckon them both in. “Yeesh. Don’t tell me you forgot your toothbrushes or somethin’.”“Nah,” Mabel drawls with a wave of her hand. The three of them walk into the kitchen and Stan flips on a light, and Dipper and Mabel both take seats at the table on practiced instinct. “We heard Li’l Gideon made a jailbreak and figured we’d come out to offer some, y’know, Mystery Twins mojo! Expert aid! That and Dipper was bumming out the whole stinkin’ house since there weren’t any, like, chupacabras there, so…”“Mabel!” Dipper hisses, flushing red, but Grunkle Stan lets out a belting cackle, rummaging around for a Pitt.“Hard to get outta this town, isn’t it?” He emerges triumphant from the refrigerator with a fresh pink can (and Dipper remembers a page from the journal: Object Duplicating Crystal, and he smirks). “But if you’re stayin’ here, you gotta start payin’ rent; that’s final. Stayin’ is payin’!”“What!” they both shout in indignant unison, and Grunkle Stan goes back to barking out laughter, tossing the soda back.“Quit gripin’, the both of you, and go upstairs; the beds’re all made and junk.” He flicks a hand at them and rolls his eyes. “Soos wanted to get ’em ready with at least six months to spare; I said, keep dreamin’, pal; I wanna use that room for the new Cornicorn! But did he listen? Fat chance…”“Waddles!” Mabel squeals, already halfway out the kitchen and into the living room, following the sounds of oinking.Dipper glances over at Stan and feels immediately uneasy, as he is wont to do. Stan takes another swig of cola and flops down at one of the unoccupied chairs, narrowing his eyes at Dipper.“I’m guessing your parents aren’t on board with this,” he says, and Dipper shrugs.“Nah,” he mumbles.“How was life outside of Gravity Falls?” Stan asks, finishing off the soda and flinging the can over his shoulder. It hits the trash can dead-on, but the lid is down, so it doesn’t make any difference.“Eh,” Dipper grunts back, and Stan coughs out another guffaw, clapping a hand on the table.“See what I mean, kid?” He stands, giving Dipper a noogie that gets him yelping. “No going back.” He releases him. “All right, knock it off with the wimp stuff; I got a fake Christmas tree to not plug in because the electric bill’s gonna knock your eye out. Come on, come on; I haven’t got all night!” The journal is still upstairs, under the floorboard, where he'd clumsily hidden it ten minutes before the bus pulled up at the end of August, and there's still a thumb-shaped ketchup stain in the upper right corner of a page on the Summerween Trickster, and it still smells a little like garlic from when Mabel had spilled seasoning powder all over it during one of her many failed cooking attempts. And Dipper thinks, with a little bit of pride, that he and his sister do not fight monsters. They believe in them.