Dipper and Mabel stepped down off of the bus and onto the gum spotted dusty floor of the bus depot. The depot was empty and depressing looking. It was little more than a tin roof over a cement curb and a small building with a sliding glass window and a glass covered poster board with all the posted arrivals and departures. The only person at the bus depot was an old man in a sharp black suit, a red fez hat and thick black plastic frame glasses. He had a large misshapen nose, a five o'clock shadow and a deep set frown. It took a long moment before the twins recognized him as their great uncle Stan.

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel called, sniffing loudly to hold back a wave of emotion as she hurried over to the man standing under the rusted tin roof. Their grunkle's frown deepened slightly, but he didn't hesitate to fold his niece into his arms as she came running toward him.

Dipper moved much less enthusiastically toward his great uncle. It had been a long and emotional bus ride for a lot of reasons and he was feeling numb and tired. He mostly just wanted to sleep. He mostly wanted to be home safe and sound with his mom and dad, but sleeping at all and trying escape into unconsciousness was a nice alternative.

"It'll be okay, sweetie," he heard his grunkle mutter softly to his sister as Dipper slowly approached. Grunkle Stan looked up at Dipper with what Dipper thought might be a sympathetic grimace. He assumed that meant that he looked as bad as he felt. "Come on," he said with a gesture over his shoulder. "Let's get you kids back to the shack."

Mabel sniffed again loudly, but didn't protest at being gently separated from Grunkle Stan's middle and shepherded out of the bus depot and into the tiny parking lot beside it. There were only a few cars there, one being a beaten up brown station wagon that Dipper recognized from the last time he and Mabel had visited their Grunkle when they were little kids.

All three of them piled into the station wagon and Grunkle Stan very slowly (but still rather recklessly) drove them back to his home. The ride was silent, except for the sound of slow sad acoustic country songs coming through the crackly speakers and Mabel's occasional sniffs.

Dipper closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window. He tried to keep his mind clear, but his mother's face kept swimming to the front of his mind. Not her usual face, but the face she had when putting the two of them on the bus. Her face creased with worry and exhaustion.

"Be good for your uncle," she had told the two of them sternly. "Think of this as just a vacation from Piedmont," she said, trying and failing to sound light hearted. "Your father loved Gravity Falls when he was kid. And, most importantly, the two of you will be safe there."

Dipper remembered thinking that he couldn't remember his father ever talking about Gravity Falls, let alone fondly. But, the stress in every angle of his mother's body had stopped him from questioning just this once. He knew that Gravity Falls was reputed to be a town by and for monsters of all types with all kinds of magic in place to protect it from the outside world. If anywhere was safe for him and his sister, that would be it.

When they passed a large billboard with the words 'Welcome to Gravity Falls' written in obnoxiously bright orange font on a backdrop of full fluffy pine trees and a setting sun, Mabel turned to her uncle and tugged nervously on a thick black leather cord tied around her neck.

"Grunkle Stan, can we take the charms off now? They itch," she asked, frowning and looking pleadingly at her uncle's profile.

"Sure, kid. You're both safe now," Grunkle Stan replied after a sideways glance at his niece.

Mabel gave her grunkle a watery smile before pulling a small plastic tarp out of her backpack and putting it on the seat under butt. Only after the plastic was down did she pull the black leather cord and the small dark purple quartz charm that hung from it over her head. As soon as the charm came off of her, reality twisted slightly to the left and her healthy looking human legs were replaced with an octet of thick powerful dark purple tentacles with white undersides and twitching suckers.

Mabel sighed heavily and stretched her tentacles as well as she could in the cramped compartment of the car. She rubbed her palms at the base of her front most tentacles and gave a small groan. "That feels so much better," she sighed. Twisting around, she gave Dipper a curious look before asking, "Aren't you going to take yours off?"

"I don't want to in the car," Dipper replied shortly. Mabel's lower body was pretty flexible, so she could ride in the care fine in her original form. It wasn't so easy for Dipper.

Though, he really wished he could take off the charm. Mabel experienced the extended effects of the magic as a dry itching on her hidden body parts. For Dipper it was more of a steady painful ache, slowly increasing the longer he used the glamour to blend in.

Luckily, it didn't take long after passing the town limits before Grunkle Stan was pulling off onto a side road extremely clearly marked as the road to the Mystery Shack. The sign that alerted Dipper was very hard to miss and was completed with a large refractive yellow arrow and spattered around the periphery by question marks.

The road was rough and Dipper winced every time the station wagon pulled through a pot hole or ditch, but he only had to deal with the rough ride for a few minutes before they were pulling up in front of the Mystery Shack.

It looked much like it had in his memory. A small-ish log cabin building with a very high peaked roof and out of place looking stained glass windows. In large block letters on one side of the roof the words MYSTERY SHACK were spelled out so that they could easily be seen as soon as you entered the clearing. There was a perfect circle of grass around the building itself and outside of it the ground was bare dirt spattered with little rocks and small tufts of grass here and there.

Dipper was the first to tumble out of the car, his bewitched legs ungainly and numb. He quickly pulled the dark green quartz charm out from under his t-shirt over his head. The magic lifted like a belt quickly loosening and Dipper felt the strange feeling of his four legs and lower body unfolding itself beneath him.

Despite being twins, where his sister's lower body was a set of eight thick powerful tentacles, Dipper's lower body was that of a small fawn. Much like a centaur, from the base of the fawn's neck up he was a normal human boy and from his hips down he was a small fawn. His fur was a reddish brown with white spots on his lower back and rump. His underbelly was a softer white fur and he had a small tail that was white underneath when he tipped it up, a movement he couldn't consciously control.

Dipper took a deep breath as the magic released its hold on him and stretched his legs, his hooves digging into the soft earth and gravel driveway.

Mabel quickly came around the side of the car and tangled her hand in his. She had been clingy ever since their parents put them on the bus, but Dipper would never push her away when she needed him. It was rare when it happened, anyway. It was usually the other way around.

Grunkle Stan made his way into the shack without a backward glance at this niece and nephew. The two kids followed him sedately, shifting their backpacks nervously on their backs.

Grunkle Stan lead the two of them through the shop that took up the large front room of the Shack, into the living area and then up the rough hewn staircase to the attic. There were two twin sized beds pressed against opposite walls with an out of place stained glass triangle shaped window between them.

"Here you go, kids," Grunkle Stan grunted, stepping aside so the twins could make their way inside. Mabel veered sharply for the right bed and Dipper moved toward the bed against the left wall by elimination. "You guys can sleep here until your parents, ah," Grunkle Stan fumbled for words. The twins pointedly didn't look at him. "work something out," he finished lamely.

"Grunkle Stan?" Mabel spoke up, her voice small and uncertain.

"Yes, sweetie?" Grunkle Stan replied quickly, but it sounded like he was expecting a hard blow to come with her next words.

"I usually sleep in an aquarium," she said, her bottom lip wobbling.

Grunkle Stan opened his mouth and let it hang open for a long moment, before he closed it. "That makes sense," he said, scratching at the side of his head. "I'll be right back." Grunkle Stan started for the door before pausing and turning to look at Dippper. "You okay, kid?" he asked, looking doubtfully at the red brown fur of Dipper's lower body.

Dipper flushed and mumbled, "Yeah, the bed is fine."

After Grunkle Stan had retreated down the stairs, Mabel moved over to Dipper's side of the room as he was stepping up onto the bed and settling down, tucking his long thin legs underneath him.

"Mom and Dad will be okay, right?" she asked. She had a smile on her face, her white teeth girded in silver braces shining in the colored afternoon light coming through the window, but there was something tight about her expression that told Dipper she was scared.

Dipper held a hand out to her and Mabel didn't hesitate to grab his hand in hers and tuck herself against his chest. Dipper leaned heavily against his sister and allowed himself to relax and soak up her warmth.

"They'll be okay," he said quietly. "Dad is tough as nails and Mom is super smart. They'll shake that jerk wad hunter guy and come back to pick us up in a few days. Don't worry, Mabel."

"I'm not worried," she mumbled into the fabric of his vest.

Dipper was comforted by the sharing of platitudes and the physical comfort of having his sister close by. So comforted that he must have fallen asleep against her, because he couldn't remember anything else except waking up in bed the next morning

Dipper ran frantically through the woods, his heart hammering painfully against the inside of his rib cage. He clutched the journal to his chest as he vaulted over fallen logs and hopped from one rock to another on the overgrown and winding track that, he hoped, lead back to the shack. He could hear his sister's strong legs (tentacles, they were tentacles) tearing through and slithering over the terrain, her progress much louder and violent than his light footfalls.

Behind them, rising up as tall as most of the pine trees were a mass of gnomes. Little men in pointy red hats with long full beards reaching almost to the ground, standing on top of and holding onto one another in so specific of a configuration as to create a larger cobbled together version of themselves.

"I can't believe you got us into trouble this quickly!" Dipper gasped between breaths. "We haven't even been here a whole week!"

"Well, excuse me!" Mabel snapped back. "Excuse me for putting myself out there! I thought I had finally met my dream guy!"

"A vampire!" Dipper shouted incredulously.

"My dream man!" Mabel agreed loudly, sounding significantly less out of breath than her brother. "And, look what happens! He turns out to be a bunch of gnomes in a boy costume!" Mabel shouted pointedly over her shoulder. "JEFF!"

"Hey!" Jeff shouted back from somewhere around the head of the gnome monster chasing them. "The dating scene is really tough for a guy like me! I had to do something to gain an edge!" he yelled back at Mabel.

"Tricking a girl into thinking you're something you're not is not an edge, Jeff!" she shrieked back. "That's called being a jerk!"

Just as Jeff huffed out an indignant sound and the creature behind them gave a burst of speed, the twins rounded a copse of trees and the Mystery Shack loomed up ahead of them. The sight gave Dipper the shot of adrenaline he needed to keep up with his sister and make it to the round clearing surrounding the shack.

The gnome monster didn't hesitate to come crashing after them into the clearing, but only made it about a step or so before walking face first into the invisible barrier that surrounded it. A thousand angry and pained squeals and yelps erupted from the gnome conglomerate as they hit the barrier, bounced off and fell backward into the pine trees behind them. The monster shattered apart into groups of bruised and unhappy gnomes, Jeff standing head and shoulders above the rest as the surliest of all.

The twins slowed to a stop once they realized that the gnomes were no longer trailing them and circled back to take a look at their felled enemies.

"Pines!" Jeff yelled, dramatically shaking his fist at the fraternal twins. "You won't get away with this humiliation you have leveled against us gnomes! We will have our revenge! You think that your puny magical barrier will protect you?"

"Yes," the twins said together.

"Rah!" Jeff yelled, his anger apparently putting him at a loss for words.

Approaching from behind, their Grunkle Stan stopped behind his niece and nephew with a bemused expression. "I don't want to know," he mumbled, before setting the leaf blower he was holding on the ground and starting it with one mighty yank on the cord.

"He was catfishing!" Mabel yelled, throwing her hands above her head in indignation.

"I said I don't want to know!" Grunkle Stan yelled back before pointing the leaf blower at the gathering of gnomes closest to his barrier and blowing them backward, head over heels, into the treeline.

Jeff was part of the group of gnomes that were blown away, shaking his fist and yelling about revenge to be had the whole way. The rest of the gnomes grumbled and glared menacingly, but followed after their comrades peaceably enough, not eager to add more bruises to the ones they were already nursing.

After the last of the gnomes had either been blown back into the woods or retreated there on their own, Grunkle Stan turned off the leaf blower and turned to the twins.

"You two are going to be a pain in my a-er-rear, aren't you?" he said blankly, regarding the two of them.

The pair looked at each other, speaking silently to one another for a brief moment, before turning back to their uncle and shrugging bashfully in unison.

Their uncle sighed heavily before smiling at the two of them like a man happy to find defeat. "I wouldn't expect anything less of my niece and nephew. Now, get inside, kids. As a special treat, I'll let you pick whatever you want from the gift shop. Free of charge!"

Dipper sat in bed that night and twisted his new hat in his hands. It was still stiff and new, unlike his old hat that he had lost during his mad dash through the woods earlier that day. Mabel was lounging in her aquarium and periodically shooting the grappling hook at things across the room and then slowly reeling them back toward her. She was building up an impressive pile of stuff around the base of her aquarium.

"You know," she said into the comfortable quiet they were sitting in. "I was sort of lying when I said I thought this place would be fun. But, now my lie sort of became the truth!" she laughed, pointing her grappling foot at the leg of Dipper's nightstand and shooting it. She giggled maniacally as she slowly dragged the nightstand toward her until the lamp toppled off having reached the end of its electrical cord.

"You're talking in Mabel speak again," Dipper mumbled vaguely, watching his nightstand slowly disappear across the room. He felt a million miles away just then, his mind preoccupied with a thousand things to worry about and unable to focus on one thing.

"Like, I thought this place would be depressing and that we would be depressed the whole time we were here," Mabel said matter of factly, drawing Dipper's attention. He had believed the same thing. He still believed that same thing. "But, today was a lot of fun! Grunkle Stan just lets us go off to wherever, because this town is 'protected' or whatever. There's all these magical creatures everywhere, just like us! We don't have to hide or worry about normal people or anything! Plus, that chase today was pretty fun."

"How can you say that was fun?" Dipper squeaked, coughing harshly when his voice cracked in the middle of his sentence. "You were almost married off to a gnome king, then we were chased by a monstrous amalgam of gnomes! Your idea of fun is pretty twisted, sis," he snorted.

Mabel just smiled serenely back at him. Leaning over the edge of the tank, she wiggled her eyebrows at him and said, "Come on! Look me in the eye and tell me you weren't having fun investigating my boyfriend with your stupid journal."

Dipper frowned at his sister and then back down at the red journal with the six fingered hand drawn in gold on the front. He remembered the feeling of curiosity and exhilaration at finding the journal hidden in the forest. He remembered his determination in researching and following Mabel and Norman around. He remembered the thunder of adrenaline in his veins and his ears as he was being chased.

He scratched his cheek and glanced away while admitting in a mumble, "It was fun."

"There's my Dipper!" Mabel shouted before falling backward into her aquarium and showering the pile of stuff around it in water.

Dipper looked down at the journal again and smiled faintly. He was still worried about his parents and about their future, but Mabel was right. This place was fun. Grunkle Stan was fun. Maybe for once he could try and stop worrying and just enjoy what was happening around them.