GRAVITY FALLS

"MAN EATER"

Chapter 1: Discoveries

"I can't believe I let a triangle trick me." Dipper muttered as he examined the destroyed laptop. Bill did a good job in busting the thing up, and it would be a miracle if he could salvage anything. Not even Soos could repair this junk. Ugh, and to think he was so close! Finally he had something that could've revealed the author of the journals and it was ripped from his grasp. With an exasperated sigh he threw the useless machine down and fell back on his bed.

"Aw don't be like that Dipper! I'm pretty sure there's something else we could find. Maybe there's another secret tree bunker-thingy." said Mabel reassuringly. On the other side of the attic, his sister was dressing up Waddles for a cat-walk event later on.

"I don't think so, Mabel. I read and re-read the journal a hundred times, and not even the black light showed any sign of more bunkers." He dragged the palms of his hands down his face and rolled over to lay on his stomach. "So close." He said into the pillow, and let out another sigh. Watching her brother mope around set a frown on the twin's face. She knew how important this was to her brother, but this was too ridiculous even for her.

Tentatively she said, "Dipper, I think you should go out and hang out with people. You know, to get your mind off of...things, and hey you might even make a friend!"

The boy turned to look at her, an offended look on his face. "I have friends!"

"I mean friends your own age Dip Dip. You know, pre-pubescent boys with social awkwardness like you."

"Wha- I don't have social awkar-!"

He was cut off by the door slamming open, making both the twins jump up in fright screaming. It was Grunkle Stan, and he was heaving like he ran a marathon through the desert.

"Kids, no time to explain! Prepare code Twinkle Tums now!"

The twins jumped off their beds immediately and got ready in a flash. Code Twinkle Tums, or rather hurry up and get into costume so Uncle Stan could cheapskate the tourists into believing what they are seeing are real monsters, but in actuality it was just Dipper dressed up in his wolf-boy costume and Mabel painted in the colors of the rainbow with a unicorn horn strapped to her head. By the time they finished Stan was gone, already downstairs in the shop getting ready for the tour.

"I hate wearing this outfit." Dipper whined while adjusting the fake wolf ear headband on his head. Stan had found out what happened to his top-seller costume and made Mabel make a new one, much to her pleasure since she loved to do anything creative. Unfotunately, she didn't make the top piece (which he requested personally) and he was left wearing the furry bottoms. He was already in position, hugging his bare chest from the cold air. Not long after he heard the approaching sound of people and Uncle Stan's booming voice trying to mystify the group as he showed them mysterious objects. There was ooh's and aah's and a lot of clicking sounds of cameras taking pictures.

"And here behind this curtain is the most horrendous, vile thing to ever walk the earth," he paused for dramatic effect. "...The Preteen Wolf Boy!" Stan exclaimed as the curtains opened to reveal Dipper, an uncomfortable look on his face as the tourists gasped and one in the back even screamed.

Horrendous? Really? Thanks Grunkle Stan, I can just feel the love.

"If you throw money at him he'll dance."

And here it comes.

Dipper flinched as dollar bills and coins rained down on him and he started dancing as best as he could. Soon the tourists grew bored and Stan lead them to the next attraction, which was Unicorn Girl. As Dipper slowed down his dancing, something hit him square in the head.

"Ow! What the-" He rubbed the spot where he was hit and bent down to pick up a gold coin. He looked at it confused and flipped it over and frowned. On the other side was a design of a pyramid with an eye in the middle. It was obvious who the person, or demon, was. Bill? Dipper looked up, searching for the person who threw the coin at him. The crowd of tourists were glued to Mabel singing and dancing while thowing glitter in the air, and Uncle Stan was sneakily snatching wallets from the transfixed tourists. But where...

The door to the mystery shack opened with a jingle and Dipper barely had time to see a flash of dark hair till it disappeared.

"Wait!" He called out, and leaped off the stage and made a mad dash to follow the person. None of the other occupants of the room noticed him leave and that was fine by him. He was supposed to be gathering the money he got but this was too important. Whoever this person was, they know about Bill Cipher and they might know something about the journals.

He flew out the door and frantically looked around. Another glimpse of someone going into the forest and Dipper was off, calling to the person to stop. It felt like no matter how fast he ran, the mystery person was faster. His heart was beating a mile per minute, and his breaths became ragged from exhaustion.

Darn you noodle legs, go faster!

But his legs were screaming at him to stop. He finally did when he broke through some bushes and entered a clearing. He bent down, hands resting on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. You'd think with all the running he had to do before because of his and Mabel's crazy adventures he'd get used to it, but he felt as winded as the time he stayed up late and began eating his shirt. He looked up to survery his surrounding, but there was no longer a trace of the mystery person.

Dammit, dammit dammit! Where did you go?

"Why are you following me kid." said a voice behind him.

Dipper, though he won't admit it till the day he died, let out an unmanly squeak and spinned around. There before him leaning casually against a tree was a girl with long messy dark hair, her arms crossed and a cool expression on her face.

He pointed at her. "You!" he proclaimed, "You threw that coin at me!"

She raised an eyebrow, "And you want an apology for that?"

"So you're not denying you threw that coin at me." he said suspiciously.

"I guess not." she replied shrugging her shoulders.

Dipper was thrown off by the blatant reply but shook his head. "What do you want! Where did you get this? Who are you?DoyouknowaboutBillCipher?Isheheresomewhere?GASPisthisatrap?!Iwon'tmakeanydeals!"

"Woah woah kid calm down. Your going to choke on your tongue."

Dipper took the advice and stopped talking, breathing heavily from the outburst. Once it seemed the boy was going to be alright and not fall over and die, the girl spoke.

"My name's Dana. And your Dipper, Stan's niece." She didn't say it like a question but a statement.

"How do you know that?" Dipper asked confused and slightly freaked out.

She shrugged, "I know a lot of things."

Lots of things. Dipper thought as he remembered the other person who said those words.

Dana looked around suddenly as if someone was spying on them behind the trees.

"This is not a good place to talk." she said, still eyeing the trees suspiciously. "If you want answers follow me."

Not waiting for a reply she took off in a brisk walk and Dipper had no choice but to follow her.

Atleast i'm not running after her, he thought. Dipper's legs still burned from the sprint through the woods.

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They walked for a long time through thick trees that blotted out the sun until they started to spread out which meant they were deep in the woods. Occasionally Dipper would try to ask more questions but she would rebuff him with a "not here" and "hurry up".

"Ow." Dipper muttered under his breath as he slapped another mosquito bite. He suddenly regretted not putting a shirt on before he went off into the woods. That's when he realized he was still in his Wolf-Boy costume and blushed a crimson red. Oh god! He was half-naked, and infront of a girl no less. Not that Mabel was not a girl, but it was different when she saw him half-naked and that usually was when he was in his swimming trunks. And Mabel was his sister, the only thing he had to fear from her was her surprise tickle attacks.

She saw my man nipples, Dipper thought mortified.

Uneasily he asked, "You don't happen to have a shirt in your bag, do you?" Or mosquito repellent. Seriously, both would do fine.

"Shut up, we're here."

She came to a halt and what he saw made his eyes go wide and a "woah" escaped his lips. Before them was a sight to behold. It was a huge clearing in the woods, and a medium sized lake like the one he and Mabel went to to solve the mystery of Anomaly #42 took up much of the space. Rocks of many sizes littered the ground around the lake. A stream led the rushing water away, possibly to connect to a bigger body of water. But what caught his eye was the huge waterfall that glistened under the sun.

"I've never seen this place before." Dipper said in amazement.

"Yeah and I like to keep it that way. This place is too far in for humans to get here without getting scared off by magical creatures." she said as she led him around the lake and towards the waterfall.

"Uh, why didn't we encounter any magical creatures?" Dipper asked. The last time he checked, they were both walking meat bags, or Bill so liked to say.

"I guess we got lucky." she replied nonchalantly.

They approached the waterfall, the sound of rushing water roaring in his ears.

"C'mon." she motioned, and went through the waterfall.

Dipper only hesitated for a second before following her in, getting drenched in the process. Once on the other side, he followed her through a path in the secret cave. The more they walked, the light from the day dimmed until it was gone and only darkness remained, leaving him blind. He squinted into the inky darkness, trying to see what was infront of him, or really anything for the matter. Slowly, he started to make out the shape of Dana. But she was getting clearer. He then realized that a soft glow was coming off the walls of the tunnel, illuminating the way. On closer inspection, the source of the light was coming from little blue gems stuck to the walls.

After a while the tunnel opened up into a wide cavern. Actual sunlight streamed down from a hole in the ceiling and Dipper could see random assortments of furniture strewn about the cave. Under the opening in the ceiling was a roughed up looking mattress with a green blanket strewn over it, as if someone didn't have the will to care enough to make the bed. On one side was a red couch, seams loosened so the inside stuffing popped out. There was a small round wooden table infront of the couch and...

"Is that a tv?" Dipper asked bewildered at the sight of a flat screen in the middle of a cave with no plug in, in sight.

"Mmh? Oh yeah that. I won a bet with Cipher." she said.

"What was the bet?"

"Who could lick their elbow first."

"And you won?" Dipper asked skeptical.

"Nah, Cipher 'technically' won but he 'technically' doesn't have elbows." she said, doing the two finger gesture,

"Or a body."

"You can sit there." she pointed to the mattress. As Dipper made himself comfortable, he followed her form as she walked to a fridge (that works surprisingly) and pulled out two classic looking sodas. She walked back and sat down opposite of him, her bag in between them.

"Here," she said, handing the drink to him. They drank in silence, Dipper grateful for the refreshing liquid that relieved his parched throat. Once he had his full, he got down to business.

"How do you know about the Dream Demon?" he asked, more like demanded. Despite her hospitality, he was still unsure if she was friend or potential foe.

Probably should of thought about that before I followed someone inside a cave where no one can hear me scream, Dipper thought in retrospect. Eh, he never did think things through.

"No wait who are you first?"

She also set her bottle down and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. "I told you, my name's Dana. I brought you here because this is the only place in Gravity Falls that Cipher can't listen in on us. And believe me, he is always watching." she said the last part mimicking the voice of the golden triangle.

"That's creepily good." Dipper commented.

"Thanks I had a lot of practice." and he was sure he noted a tone of pride in her voice.

"How do you know this place is even safe?" he glanced around, expecting to see the demon in the dark corners of the caves. "He could be watching us right now."

"No, he isn't. I made a deal with him a long time ago. This place is demon free."

That reassured him a bit, but he was still paranoid. He has been ever since he arrived in this old town.

Damn gnomes.

"You didn't answer my question, how do you know about Bill?"

"Like anyone else who met a demon. I wanted something, and he provided. Of course with a deal. Selfish little shi-"

"What deal?" he cut her off.

She looked at him annoyed, "The none of your business deal."

He frowned, "Okay you won't tell me that, can you tell me anything else? Do you know anything about some journals? Red, has a six fingered hand on the cover. The author? Do you know who wrote them?" He fired. He knew he probably shouldn't be mentioning the journals – TRUST NO ONE – but he couldn't help himself. If someone knew about Bill, then they must know about the journals and their owner.

"I... know about the journals. And I know who the author is." she said slowly. Dipper's eyes widened in excitement. This was it! This was finally it! Long nights staying up till the early morning, skimming pages over and over again until he passed out from exhuastion was not all for nothing.

"But I can't tell you."

...

What.

It took a while for him to process what she just said, but when he did he jumped to his feet.

"But but but but but why not!" Dipper yelled confused.

She let out an exasperated sigh and ran her fingers through her hair. "Because I made a dumb deal. And before you ask i'm not going to tell you what it was. All you need to know is that I can't reveal anything about this town's secrets, including the person who wrote those journals."

Dipper groaned and hid his face behind his hands and sank back down onto the mattress. No of course it couldn't be that easy. When was it ever easy for him. He should've known. He could've stopped himself from getting so excited and hopeful. Man it felt like someone kicked a puppy, and he was said puppy.

"But I can help you."

He looked up, a questioning look on his face. "One flaw in the deal we made was that I can't say anything about the secrets. Doesn't mean I can't do something to help you find out those secrets... Heh, I almost feel like a demon."

"Thats great!" He jumped up again excited, but stopped and squinted at her. "But how do I know I can trust you."

"Are you always this paranoid? I don't know how to prove it to you, so the only thing I can give you is my word. I swear. On my Xbox's life. Red ring of death and all." She made a circle motion with her finger.

"Wait, you have an Xbox?"

"Yeah over there." She pointed towards the tv stand, and how he didn't notice it before was a mystery but there it was, black and beautiful. For a moment he forgot all about Gravity Falls secrets, and he ran at the thing, hugging it and even kissing it. Aw man, how long has it been since he saw one of these babies. Ever since he was sent here for the summer, he had forgotten all about the modern world. Not even the tv shows at the Mystery Shack had anything up to date. Not even the news. And forget about computers, Uncle Stan was too cheap to buy anything that expensive.

"Back of the box kid." Dana promptly peeled Dipper off of the console and placed it back on the shelf gently.

"Where? How?"

"Why are you even asking, you know how. And from whom." she replied, checking to see if any scratches were made on the console. He stared at it longingly, and at the row of games stacked in a neat line.

"You sure make a lot of deals with Bill." he said thoughtfully.

"It's a bad habit of mine." She straightened up once she made sure the console was fine and walked back to the mattress and zipped open the bag. Dipper followed and sat down next to her, curious.

"Do you recognize this?" she asked as she pulled out a piece of worn paper and placed it infront of him. On the yellow wrinkled paper was a penciled drawing of an upside down triangle and a circle in the middle. Four lines extended out from the triangle and each connected to more circles. Dipper stared hard at the drawing, trying to think back to where he might've seen this before but he came up blank.

"Am I supposed to?" he said weakly.

She clicked her tongue. "Here maybe this will help." She then took out a hunting knife from the bag and sliced the paper into three parts. Dipper tensed when he caught sight of the knife but relaxed when she wasn't going to use it on him. "Now take a look."

He stared again at the now three pieces of drawings but nothing came up.

"I don't know what you're..." he trailed off as he noticed something oddly familiar. And then it struck him. He had seen this drawing before, or parts of it. He should remember since he's memorized the pages to heart.

"But they're in different journals." he breathed.

"Exactly. Do you know what this drawing represents?"

Dipper shook his head, still in wonder of the new discovery he made. "It kinda looks like a device or a-a-a"

"A gateway?" she finished for him.

Dipper nodded. "Is it?"

She looked at him blankly, "I can't say." But she nodded instead.

"So, so this thing this device is sorta like a portal to another dimension?"

She nodded again.

"That, thats amazing!" He said astonished. Who knew. Who knew. "How are we gonna build this thing? Do we need all the journals for this?" Dipper asked excited. This could be one of the most important mysteries this town has. He just found out the biggest mystery.

"No, we are not going to build it under any curcumstances. You are not going to go find the rest of the journals. This is not the reason I showed you this for." Dana said sternly.

Dipper opened and closed his mouth. "But why? What's so bad about building the portal?"

"I can't tell you." she said fustrated, "But you have to believe me when I say building the gateway is a bad idea. It'll lead to nothing but destruction." She paused, lost in thought. "I should take you back. You're sister is probably wondering where you are."

Dipper bit his lip and waved his arms. "But there's so much I want to know. I have so many questions!"

"And I don't think I can answer 90% of what you're gonna to ask anyways." she said getting up. He didn't want to admit it, but she was definitely right. Dipper followed and they walked back to the tunnel next to the tv. He glanced at it.

"Can I atleast play your Xbox?" he asked sheepishly. The look she gave him answered his question.

They made their way out of the cave, passing the glowing jems and through the waterfall (I hope I don't catch a cold from this) and started the long way back to the Mystery Shack.

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Unlike the first time they ventured through the woods, they encountered a mythical creature, a Gremloblin to be exact, which promptly started chasing them. After leaping over rocks and swerving through trees, and much cursing from his new partner, they finally left the beast behind... only to then get stalked by the Hide Behind, much to Dipper's annoyance, reminding him of his failed Anomaly #132.

"Man I hate that guy." Dana muttered beside him. Dipper turned to look back but she grabbed his shoulder and forced him to keep walking. "Don't look back, it'll only encourage him more." Sure enough the persistent rattling noise faded away until only the sound of their feet crunching on leaves and twigs were left.

The sun was starting its slow descent back towards earth when they reached the outskirts to the Mystery Shack. They came to a stop next to the Bottomless Pitt, a new sign was staked next to the broken one when Stan broke it and fell into the hole.

"I fell in that once." she commented, peering over the edge.

"Yeah hah, not fun." Dipper agreed, scratching the back of his head. "So are you going to come in or..?" he trailed off, unsure if inviting a girl home was a good idea. Mabel would go crazy. He shuddered at the thought.

She looked at the shack, the S in Shack was still on the ground having been fallen off the sign from decay.

"Not today kid. Maybe some other time." she said.

"Oh well, okay um. Bye?" Dipper said awkwardly. He turned and made his way up to the shack but turned around. "Hey uh, when will I see you again?"

"Don't worry. I'll be around." she replied.

He nodded and continued his trek to the shack. She watched him go up the stairs, look back at her, and disappear through the door. She stayed for a bit, staring at the old shack with a strange sense of nostalgia. She didn't notice the colors around her fading or the bright light that shined behind her.

"Pine Tree suuuuuure is akward!"

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When Dipper entered the shack, the lights were off and he was greeted to a disco ball tapped to the top of the ceiling and loud energetic music. The furnitures in the living room were rearranged to face a make-shift runway and strutting down the cat-walk was Waddles wearing a dress in high heels. Mabel, Candy, and Grenda were cheering the pig on, throwing glitter and shiny confetti. Soos was recording the whole thing, and Grunkle Stan was asleep snoring in the back.

"I'm not even going to ask." Dipper said to himself since no one could hear him over the loud music. He started for the stairs but Wendy appeared coming out of the kitchen, a bowl of popcorn in her hands.

"Wendy!" Dipper exclaimed at seeing the red haired teen.

"Hey Dipper, are you gonna watch the fashion show? I think Mabel is going on next."

He felt like he had been running through the woods (oh wait he had), and his muscles ached but Dipper just smiled. "Yes, of course! Hahaha.." Dang it, he hated how his response to nervousness resulted in him laughing like an idiot. They sat down on the couch and Dipper grabbed a bunch of popcorn and stuffed it into his mouth. It was a good thing the lights were off or Wendy would've seen how red he turned. Even though Wendy told him (gently) that she just wanted to be friends, Dipper still had that unforgiving crush on her.

Stupid emotions.

Waddles was strutting a second time down the runway, this time wearing Stan's Fez and a small black suit with a cane attached to the oufit.

"Is that supposed to be Grunkle Stan?" Dipper whispered to Wendy. She laughed, "I guess so. They forgot the glasses though."

Candy was going crazy, squealing and taking pictures with her phone. "This is going to become internet famous!" she said in her weird fascinated way, her eyes shining. "Yeah work it!" Grenda joined in, dancing to the beat of the song.

The show continued, and Mabel must've went on sometime later, but Dipper wouldn't know. Before the sun dipped down to let the moon come up, the boy was sound asleep, hand left in the popcorn bowl. Later on he would wake up to Gompers chewing his pants. Then he would realize for the second time that he was still in his Wolf-Boy costume. And Wendy had seen him.

Pedicabo.