[To be fair nothing is really as it seems in Gravity Falls. So why should the take out be any different?
Mabel's honestly stuffed the entire cookie in her mouth before remembering there is a fortune in it and carefully extracting it off her tongue without getting it all spit covered. She unfolds the tiny paper.]
Hey, Dipper! Look at this.
[Typed in that familiar light blue type on the paper is a very simple message:
A visit to the craft store is coming--you're out of blue yarn.
Mabel is completely unfazed by this as she digs through the bag of yarn next to her seat, only to come up fascinated at the tiny ball of blue yarn that's left. There's barely a foot of string.]
[Dipper Pines: Ruining things for his twin sister since 1999.]
Mabel, it's a cookie. Cookies don't know things. Look, I'll show you.
[He says this, but even as he's opening his own cookie he doesn't sound completely sure. I mean, that was an oddly specific thing for a fortune cookie to say. Usually the fortunes were broader in scale -- easier to apply to any person or situation.
Dipper clears his throat as he pulls out the little slip of paper and reads:]
"Your shoe's untied, Dipper."
See? Nothing too --
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w a i t.
His shoe is actually untied, but more importantly...]
[This was the nod the world that Lobco had intended to wind up in, but, well. Here she was. Thus far she hadn't run into any trouble but there was something awfully odd about all the animals here. She had tried talking to some of them but they either paid her no mind, ran away once she spoke, or tried to attack her. While the latter wasn't exactly uncommon, given that she was in her shrimp form, usually they'd make some snide or sarcastic remarks while doing so.
None of them had spoken so much as a word to her, and she wondered if it was that obvious that she was an outsider.
With a sigh she clambered onto a tree stump to rest a while. The respite was short lived when out of the bushel came a young looking boy. Lobco considered him for a moment before speaking.]
[Lobco wasn't the only one who had noticed the strange behavior of the animals lately. Granted, it was probably for far different reasons. While she was confused because of their antisocial behavior, Dipper was concerned because of the rabbits. Over the past few days they'd been kind of freaking him out. And by freaking him out I mean they were being all cute and fuzzy one second and the next their eyes would glow red and they'd give him a look that he would swear was saying, "DEATH IS COMING FOR YOU, BOY."
All in all it was pretty disconcerting which is how he found himself out in the woods once more with his journal close at hand.]
There has to be something in here about what's going on. There's no reason for --
[He stops in his tracks, snapping the journal shut with one hand. Someone just said hello to him. A girl, but where was it coming from?]
[Yosuke allowed himself a brief moment while sitting on the edge of the 12 year old's bed to consider how his life had come to this point.
The facts were these:
Yosuke Hanamura, 17 years of age, had gone with his friends to Junes. They were about to make a pilgrimage into the TV world like usual when, after entering the TV, he found himself not in that world but falling through a wormhole. Specifically, a "wormhole worm wormhole" that had been dug by the worm it was name after, capable of connecting its own holes with gateways between other dimensions. He was told that they never stayed open, but sometimes drew in interesting things, of which he was one. He had been told this by one Dipper Pines, the aforementioned twelve year old who'd been unlucky enough to find him, and he'd been able to understand him thanks to a "translermite" that had dug itself into him while unconscious, a bug that was part magical translator and part termite that Yosuke felt little love for despite it improving his situation.
With nowhere to go, he'd found himself in the Mystery Shack, trying to get his bearings. Unfortunately, Yosuke was running low on important questions to ask, and could only dodge the question of what he was doing before he got pulled across the globe for so long. Thankfully, he had plenty of 'changing the subject' experience.]
So... this sort of thing just happens all the time, huh?
[Dipper tucks his journal under his arm and starts to count things off on his fingers.] There's been zombies, gnomes that tried to marry my sister, a kid-eating summerween candy monster, some time traveler guy, a pterodactyl that stole Waddles...
Stuff like that, you know? But at least the translermite infestation doesn't seem to have any major negative side effects, so that's good! Well, other than, you know, being termites and stuff.
[He wants very badly to call bullshit on every single claim the kid's making, but then he's not exactly in the best position to do so. So there's nothing for him to do but sit and sigh.]
Freaking bugs... guess I better get used to my new career as a translator. I doubt they make medicine for this kind of thing. [He grumbles a bit more at the bugs, but there's not much to be done.]
I still can't get over how calm you are about it all. I know some tough kids back home, but you take the cake.
Not really, no. I mean, if you told a doctor you had a bug in your head that could translate they'd tell you that you were crazy and send you on your way with a prescription for an anti-psychotic and minor shock therapy.
There's probably some way to get rid of it, but I'm pretty sure that you can't fumigate the inside of a human skull and expect them to live.
[He shrugs, hopping up on his bed. Dipper takes out his journal once more, flipping through the pages and trying to find something that might actually be helpful. It's also helpful for him because he doesn't have to look at Yosuke when he starts lying though his teeth.]
O-oh, yeah. That's me all right. Always takin' things in stride.
[How did you even get into this mess in the first place? Was it Bill's fault? It was probably Bill's fault. But really who goes along anything this guy says.
Also I bet you can't get out of this either is not a good enough reason to listen to Bill, Dipper.]
[Bill meanwhile doesn't move while being shaken because he doesn't seem to be paying attention to the laws of gravity again.]
That's because you're so negative Pine Tree. Anyway the good news...for you.... turns out that your life force isn't enough to get this thing off us so we won't have to sacrifice you....yet anyway.
The bad news is....your life force isn't enough to get this thing off us so we're going to have to find something more powerful and that's going to take a bit. Which means we're stuck like this. ...which is going to get real boring real quick so I hope you like working under pressure!
[There, lurking somewhere out of the corner of your eye, you see it: a bottle, much like the kind that would wash up on the shore of some desert island out in the middle of nowhere. How did it get all the way to Gravity Falls? No one knows... But there have been rumors about a mysterious walking bottle (arms and legs and all!) wandering the woods at night.
It looks fairly uninteresting at first glance. It could just be one of Mermando's messages to Mabel.
Look at it suspiciously, circle it a few times while making noises of vague contemplation, wrestle internally if he should pick it up or not because there was that weird rumor about walking bottles going around and who knew what was going on there, but in the end...
In the end he's going to pick it up. That's what do. Seriously, if Mabel found out he that he came across one of Mermando's messages and didn't bring it back to her he'd never hear the end of it. Ever. ]
[The bottle wiggles about in Dipper's hand, and very faintly, carried on the BRISK Oregon wind which may or may not be brisk considering it's Summer the faint and muffled noise of someone complaining angrily can be heard coming from within the bottle]
[Dipper doesn't like that blue flame. He doesn't like that blue flame for a number of reasons. The biggest reason being that it reminded him of Bill and he really, really, REALLY, didn't like Bill for far more different reasons that he'd rather not think about right now.
Still, this kid didn't sound like Bill and Dipper can't recall seeing any sort of flame bobbing behind his body when Bill took it.
Hmm...
Dipper ducks out of sight and starts to flip through the journal. He'd rather not be seen by this guy until he has some idea of what he's dealing with. That said he is making a lot of noise and is doing a really terrible job of muttering under his breath.]
Come on, there has to be something in the journal about this...
[Yeah sorry Dipper, he's got pretty good hearing. Well, better than a human anyway. Your muttering is going to give you away kind of quick.]
...
[Although how should he go around it this time? Since the last time he approached it ran away. Which is fairly normal...not many ghosts like leave after all. Maybe a quieter method would work better, like sneaking. The ghost should have a much harder time escaping if he can surprise it!]
[Semi-lost in some creepy woods in Oregon is not the weirdest place that Piper's demigod quests have ever taken her.
Then again, she doesn't know just how weird Gravity Falls can be...yet, anyway. That'll probably change, and soon, but for the moment, she's peacefully oblivious to any and all impending mega-weirdness, and is bent over her Ancient Greek ceremonial dagger, staring hard at the gleaming metal, as if glaring at it will somehow force it to show her...something. Anything. Like a way out of here, or at least a way to go. As it is now, wandering around the woods isn't getting her much of anywhere, and she's started to get a bad feeling about being out in the open like this. Like someone--or something--is watching her...]
[In this forest there are plenty of things that could have been watching Piper: gnomes, manotaurs, and hide behinds, just to name a few. However, as far as this particular thing watching her goes it was neither monster, nor magic. It was just a small 12 year old boy hiding in the bushes frantically flipping through a book while stealing furtive glances at Piper and her dagger.
Not that he doesn't trust strange people with what appear to be ceremonial daggers, but he really doesn't trust strange people with ceremonial daggers.]
[That frantic rustling of pages doesn't go unnoticed by the lost demigod--she's too constantly hyperalert out of necessity to miss something so obvious, and Dipper is probably muttering to himself as he fans through those pages anyway, which just makes him all the more obvious.
Piper isn't Annabeth; she doesn't put a lot of thought into carefully structured plans, with twenty-step backup plans for her backup plans. That isn't to say that she's completely reckless either though--and in this case, leaping at whoever, or whatever, was in those bushes with her knife out didn't seem like the best move. No, this called for finesse.
Charmspeak it was.]
Hey! Come on out of there! Don't you want to be friends?
[It could have happened any number of ways. This was Gravity Falls, after all. It was basically a primordial sea of weird, from which all manner of freaky and unbelievable things emerged.
It actually could've happened in a worse way than it did, too. Well, probably, anyway. As it is, it's still Dipper's fault, but only obliquely so. After all, it was Grunkle Stan who had told the twins to stop watching a three-day Duck-Tective marathon and go outside to get some fresh air. (Dipper was pretty sure that Stan just wanted the TV to himself--the man could only take so many missed episodes of Baby Fights, even if he'd started to come around about Duck-Tective.) And it was Mabel who, in the middle of their walk to get fresh air, had tricked a fairy into giving her some of the anti-aging cream the little fae was milking from a tiny herd of tiny unicorns with tiny razor-sharp sharklike teeth. And it was Soos who had gotten Mabel's bottle mixed up with the drinks he'd gotten from the vending machine to share with the kids.
But it was Dipper who had given up his drink when Wendy had come in for her shift, looking hot and exhausted from the bike ride to the Mystery Shack. And it had just so happened that his drink...was actually Mabel's bottle of anti-aging cream.
A sip every now and then was supposed to 'preserve your youthful good looks' as Mabel put it; but Wendy had basically chugged the whole thing all at once...and the results were pretty immediate. No sooner had Wendy said, "Man, I feel kinda weird," then the change began. Dipper could only watch in wide-eyed horror as the years began to melt away from the older girl, until he was looking down--yes, down--at a probably nine-years-old or so version of Wendy. (He was actually pretty relieved, though. He'd been afraid that he'd have to watch Wendy getting younger and younger until she finally turned into a baby and then disappeared altogether. He didn't know HOW he would've undone THAT.)
IN ANY CASE, TL;DR
HI DIPPER, THERE IS A NINE-YEAR-OLD REDHEAD WHO DOESN'T KNOW YOU WANDERING AROUND INSIDE THE MYSTERY SHACK GIFT SHOP, POKING THINGS THAT PROBABLY SHOULDN'T BE POKED.]
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eerily accurate fortune cookies
Mabel's honestly stuffed the entire cookie in her mouth before remembering there is a fortune in it and carefully extracting it off her tongue without getting it all spit covered. She unfolds the tiny paper.]
Hey, Dipper! Look at this.
[Typed in that familiar light blue type on the paper is a very simple message:
Mabel is completely unfazed by this as she digs through the bag of yarn next to her seat, only to come up fascinated at the tiny ball of blue yarn that's left. There's barely a foot of string.]
It's true.
Yes, good. I like it.
Dipper peeks over his sister's shoulder, frowning.]
Well, yeah. Weren't you saying the other day that you were running out? You already knew that.
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Yeah, but... [Don't ruin it] How did the cookie know?
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Mabel, it's a cookie. Cookies don't know things. Look, I'll show you.
[He says this, but even as he's opening his own cookie he doesn't sound completely sure. I mean, that was an oddly specific thing for a fortune cookie to say. Usually the fortunes were broader in scale -- easier to apply to any person or situation.
Dipper clears his throat as he pulls out the little slip of paper and reads:]
"Your shoe's untied, Dipper."
See? Nothing too --
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w a i t.
His shoe is actually untied, but more importantly...]
HOW DOES IT KNOW MY NAME?
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Sorry not sorry for this I didn't need my heart did you need yours?
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None of them had spoken so much as a word to her, and she wondered if it was that obvious that she was an outsider.
With a sigh she clambered onto a tree stump to rest a while. The respite was short lived when out of the bushel came a young looking boy. Lobco considered him for a moment before speaking.]
Hello there.
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All in all it was pretty disconcerting which is how he found himself out in the woods once more with his journal close at hand.]
There has to be something in here about what's going on. There's no reason for --
[He stops in his tracks, snapping the journal shut with one hand. Someone just said hello to him. A girl, but where was it coming from?]
Hello? Hello? Who's there?
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[She twitched her antennas and raised her front two legs to wave them at Dipper, trying to get his attention.]
I don't mean to bother you, but could you tell me where I am?
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Dipper squints, brows furrowing in uncertainty.]
Are you... Are you a talking shrimp?
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The facts were these:
Yosuke Hanamura, 17 years of age, had gone with his friends to Junes. They were about to make a pilgrimage into the TV world like usual when, after entering the TV, he found himself not in that world but falling through a wormhole. Specifically, a "wormhole worm wormhole" that had been dug by the worm it was name after, capable of connecting its own holes with gateways between other dimensions. He was told that they never stayed open, but sometimes drew in interesting things, of which he was one. He had been told this by one Dipper Pines, the aforementioned twelve year old who'd been unlucky enough to find him, and he'd been able to understand him thanks to a "translermite" that had dug itself into him while unconscious, a bug that was part magical translator and part termite that Yosuke felt little love for despite it improving his situation.
With nowhere to go, he'd found himself in the Mystery Shack, trying to get his bearings. Unfortunately, Yosuke was running low on important questions to ask, and could only dodge the question of what he was doing before he got pulled across the globe for so long. Thankfully, he had plenty of 'changing the subject' experience.]
So... this sort of thing just happens all the time, huh?
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[Dipper tucks his journal under his arm and starts to count things off on his fingers.] There's been zombies, gnomes that tried to marry my sister, a kid-eating summerween candy monster, some time traveler guy, a pterodactyl that stole Waddles...
Stuff like that, you know? But at least the translermite infestation doesn't seem to have any major negative side effects, so that's good! Well, other than, you know, being termites and stuff.
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Freaking bugs... guess I better get used to my new career as a translator. I doubt they make medicine for this kind of thing. [He grumbles a bit more at the bugs, but there's not much to be done.]
I still can't get over how calm you are about it all. I know some tough kids back home, but you take the cake.
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There's probably some way to get rid of it, but I'm pretty sure that you can't fumigate the inside of a human skull and expect them to live.
[He shrugs, hopping up on his bed. Dipper takes out his journal once more, flipping through the pages and trying to find something that might actually be helpful. It's also helpful for him because he doesn't have to look at Yosuke when he starts lying though his teeth.]
O-oh, yeah. That's me all right. Always takin' things in stride.
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... mabel was invited. don't invite mabel places.
I think you mean invite Mabel everywhere.
This was ten thousand percent worth waiting for
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Chinese Finger trapped together.
Also I bet you can't get out of this either is not a good enough reason to listen to Bill, Dipper.]
So....I've got good news and bad news.
Ahahaha! Perfect.
Good news?! How is there good news because all I'm seeing is bad!
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That's because you're so negative Pine Tree. Anyway the good news...for you.... turns out that your life force isn't enough to get this thing off us so we won't have to sacrifice you....yet anyway.
The bad news is....your life force isn't enough to get this thing off us so we're going to have to find something more powerful and that's going to take a bit. Which means we're stuck like this. ...which is going to get real boring real quick so I hope you like working under pressure!
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It looks fairly uninteresting at first glance. It could just be one of Mermando's messages to Mabel.
That ended up in the middle of the woods.
Somehow.
Maybe.
WHAT DO?]
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Look at it suspiciously, circle it a few times while making noises of vague contemplation, wrestle internally if he should pick it up or not because there was that weird rumor about walking bottles going around and who knew what was going on there, but in the end...
In the end he's going to pick it up. That's what do. Seriously, if Mabel found out he that he came across one of Mermando's messages and didn't bring it back to her he'd never hear the end of it. Ever. ]
Huh. How'd this get all the way out here?
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which may or may not be brisk considering it's Summerthe faint and muffled noise of someone complaining angrily can be heard coming from within the bottle](no subject)
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THIS SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED SOONER MY BAD
[Out in the woods was a demon with a bobbing blue flame following behind it. It was somehow in a hurry, but for what? Who knows!]
Ugggh, how did I even loose it?!
[And hurrying deeper inside. Hopefully... he doesn't get lost in there, whatever this search even was for.]
NO WORRIES
Still, this kid didn't sound like Bill and Dipper can't recall seeing any sort of flame bobbing behind his body when Bill took it.
Hmm...
Dipper ducks out of sight and starts to flip through the journal. He'd rather not be seen by this guy until he has some idea of what he's dealing with. That said he is making a lot of noise and is doing a really terrible job of muttering under his breath.]
Come on, there has to be something in the journal about this...
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...
[Although how should he go around it this time? Since the last time he approached it ran away. Which is fairly normal...not many ghosts like leave after all. Maybe a quieter method would work better, like sneaking. The ghost should have a much harder time escaping if he can surprise it!]
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YOU GET WHAT YOU ASK FOR <3
Then again, she doesn't know just how weird Gravity Falls can be...yet, anyway. That'll probably change, and soon, but for the moment, she's peacefully oblivious to any and all impending mega-weirdness, and is bent over her Ancient Greek ceremonial dagger, staring hard at the gleaming metal, as if glaring at it will somehow force it to show her...something. Anything. Like a way out of here, or at least a way to go. As it is now, wandering around the woods isn't getting her much of anywhere, and she's started to get a bad feeling about being out in the open like this. Like someone--or something--is watching her...]
YESSSSSSSSSSS
Not that he doesn't trust strange people with what appear to be ceremonial daggers, but he really doesn't trust strange people with ceremonial daggers.]
<333333
Piper isn't Annabeth; she doesn't put a lot of thought into carefully structured plans, with twenty-step backup plans for her backup plans. That isn't to say that she's completely reckless either though--and in this case, leaping at whoever, or whatever, was in those bushes with her knife out didn't seem like the best move. No, this called for finesse.
Charmspeak it was.]
Hey! Come on out of there! Don't you want to be friends?
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Suddenly a Child, of course, as discussed! <3 Also, sorry for the book.
It actually could've happened in a worse way than it did, too. Well, probably, anyway. As it is, it's still Dipper's fault, but only obliquely so. After all, it was Grunkle Stan who had told the twins to stop watching a three-day Duck-Tective marathon and go outside to get some fresh air. (Dipper was pretty sure that Stan just wanted the TV to himself--the man could only take so many missed episodes of Baby Fights, even if he'd started to come around about Duck-Tective.) And it was Mabel who, in the middle of their walk to get fresh air, had tricked a fairy into giving her some of the anti-aging cream the little fae was milking from a tiny herd of tiny unicorns with tiny razor-sharp sharklike teeth. And it was Soos who had gotten Mabel's bottle mixed up with the drinks he'd gotten from the vending machine to share with the kids.
But it was Dipper who had given up his drink when Wendy had come in for her shift, looking hot and exhausted from the bike ride to the Mystery Shack. And it had just so happened that his drink...was actually Mabel's bottle of anti-aging cream.
A sip every now and then was supposed to 'preserve your youthful good looks' as Mabel put it; but Wendy had basically chugged the whole thing all at once...and the results were pretty immediate. No sooner had Wendy said, "Man, I feel kinda weird," then the change began. Dipper could only watch in wide-eyed horror as the years began to melt away from the older girl, until he was looking down--yes, down--at a probably nine-years-old or so version of Wendy. (He was actually pretty relieved, though. He'd been afraid that he'd have to watch Wendy getting younger and younger until she finally turned into a baby and then disappeared altogether. He didn't know HOW he would've undone THAT.)
IN ANY CASE, TL;DR
HI DIPPER, THERE IS A NINE-YEAR-OLD REDHEAD WHO DOESN'T KNOW YOU WANDERING AROUND INSIDE THE MYSTERY SHACK GIFT SHOP, POKING THINGS THAT PROBABLY SHOULDN'T BE POKED.]
Whoooooooaaaa! What's this weird thing?
[POKE POKE]