Chapter 57: ParanoiaKeet

A/N: Like parakeets, but paranoid! For those who don't know, I myself now own FOUR birds. (2 white doves for my little bro's magic shows, 1 wild dove I rescued when she was just a baby, and a cockatiel.) What can I say? I like having lots of pets, especially birds, but I have other pets too. I could fill a whole book with stories about my pets (I already have a FanFic based on one of them actually) so I'll stop talking here and let you enjoy the chapter. ^^

The next day brought new adventures to be had. As usual, it was never boring in the Mystery Shack, or in the entirety of Gravity Falls for that matter. They started breakfast in their usual week-day routine, with Mable and Dipper prepping bowls of cereal for each of them while Bill sat sleepily at the table, his head occasionally lulling to the side and drooping in exhaustion.

In his sleep-hazed mind, Bill reflected on the oddity of his own thoughts. Here he was enjoying what he thought of as a now "usual" and "average" morning. Since when had Bill Cipher, Dream Demon of Chaos and Nightmares, ever had anything resembling a routine to follow in his life? Every day for the last probably billions of years had been something new to him; he'd always been in a new place, with new people, or if he happened to be with the same people at least the people themselves were as unpredictable as he was, and something drastically new always happened.

Yet somehow, in retrospect, that life he once lived of something new every day felt more monotonous than the current one. He had some semblance of a usual day now…. And he kind of liked it. He'd barely been here two and a half weeks, but it was already beginning to feel familiar, yet not boring. He was about to have the same breakfast he'd had four times before already, but it didn't feel annoying or plain.

Like good and evil, happiness and sadness, could chaos only truly be appreciated if there was order to balance and frame it? Was it having the Pines around to be almost as unpredictable as his old Nightmare Gang used to be that made his days still interesting? Or was this another side-effect of being human? He wasn't sure he wanted to know, and he was too tired to decide, so Bill opted to resting his head on the table before him and closing his eye in a moment of thoughtlessness.

"Still tired?" Mable asked as she set a bowl of brightly colored and no-doubt sugary cereal in front of him, a Cracker crumbled into the mix for good measure. Bill didn't bother responding, instead noting the little gummy bears scattered throughout his breakfast. 'At least it's edible,' he thought, deciding not to complain. It was better than plastic sparkles, for sure.

"He used his powers yesterday," Dipper commented as he sat at the table next to his sister. "It's natural he'd still be tired today."

Bill nodded slowly. "That's why I think I'll let Shooting Star do all the work in our hunting today."

Mable perked up, her cheeks full of cereal and gummies. "Wh-meh?" She tried to speak around her mouth-full, milk and crumbs slipping out from between her lips. Dipper was rolling his eyes at her, slightly off-put but used to this. He had long since stopped trying to get her to take smaller bites.

Bill grimaced. Mable was as poised as ever, but it kind of added to her charm, in a weird way, and she wasn't doing any real harm, so he let his disgusted look speak for itself and continued with their conversation. "Yes…. Well, we aren't up to anything dangerous today, and you're most suited for the task regardless."

"What do you have planned?" An old, gruff voice sounded from behind them as Ford entered the room.

"We'll catch some ParanoiaKeets," Bill responded, meeting Ford's eyes with his own. "Problem?"

Ford hummed. "No, that'll be fine. As long as the kids go with you it should be alright." He looked at his Great Nephew. "Make sure to take good notes for me Dipper, I've never gotten to study them up-close myself!"

"Why, what are they?" He asked, intrigued to know that his Grunkle Ford knew about these things, but hadn't studied them. "Why haven't you written about them in the Journals?"

Ford laughed. "Well, some creatures are harder to catch than others. I've seen these flitting around the place, but I could never manage to get near enough to one. I've never heard of them causing any harm though."

"Why, what are they?" Mable asked, wiping milk and crumbs form her mouth with her sleeve. "What can I do about it?"

"Well," Bill began, "to put it simply, they're birds. From the order of Psittaciformes to be exact."

"So, what, parrots?" Dipper asked, trying to recall all the nomenclatures of naming he'd been studying over the last year. He thought naming the various creatures of Gravity Falls more scientifically might come in handy, so he'd been doing some rigorous research.

Bill nodded. "Pretty good, Pine Tree. Yes, parrots, to put it simply."

"But parrots usually only occur in tropical locations, we're way too far North to have a native species of parrots!" Dipper objected, pulling out his Journal and beginning to take notes.

Bill scoffed and rolled his eye. "Seriously Pine Tree? Since when has Gravity Falls adhered to normal rules? Besides, there have been species of parrots known to live in odd locations once they were introduced there by humans. And it isn't as if parrots are incapable of withstanding colder weather. The Australian Outback has a variety of parrot species, the most famous of which is probably the cockatiel, a fairly common pet choice, and in the winter nights it can get well below freezing there."

"He has a point," Ford mumbled around his cup of coffee, still listening in on the conversation but otherwise not becoming too engaged.

"Okay, but why haven't they been studied before?" Mable asked. "Are they hard to see?"

Bill shook his head. "They have some pretty bright colors actually, most of the time. They have camouflage abilities but normally they don't bother with it. They avoid town, so it isn't common to see them, but they don't particularly go out of their way to avoid humans too much. They have one other distinct advantage that makes it nearly impossible to get close to them."

"What is it?" Dipper asked, his pen already ready against his Journal page.

Bill hummed. "They can sense emotions and intent. Like other birds of their type, they're flock animals, and have a knack for understanding emotion and desire. They're among the smarter species even for parrots, and while they don't sport language capacity much higher than any other parrot, they can read and sense the emotions and intentions of those nearby better than anything else. If your intent is to harm or capture them in any way, they'll likely sense it from quite a ways off and avoid you. They're average flyers, with average camouflage capabilities, but for a small flight-bound creature that can sense you from a quarter mile away in a dense forest it's nearly impossible to capture one."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" Mable asked, perplexed. "You want me to catch it?"

"Hmmm, catching it maybe isn't the best term for it," Bill decided. "It's best if you think of it more like, taming it maybe? Get it to help you. How you do that exactly, I think only you can decide. You, Shooting Star, are the only person I know who could pull this off without some extreme amount of force or planning, so it'd be best if we just leave it to you. Pine Tree and I can tag along, but we have to maintain a blank slate of intentions. We can't let them sense that we have any other desire besides just to be following you. If we tried to engage one, it'd almost certainly run from us."

"Sounds fun!" Mable agreed. "As long as I don't have to hurt them or anything! Maybe I can just make friends with it!"

"Sounds like a plan," Ford added as he polished off his first cup of coffee for the day and set his now empty mug in the sink. "I'll leave you kids to it then. I've got some things I want to check in the lab, there's work to be done for me, so I'll sit this one out."

"What about Grunkle Stan? Maybe he'll want to come!" Mable wondered, but Dipper shook his head.

"It's the middle of the week during summer vacation Mable, Grunkle Stan's already waiting to start a tour up front. He's busy helping out with the Shack. Which means we should probably get out of here before he decides to ask us to stay and help too."

"Good luck then." Ford pointed at Bill. "And make sure to keep a close eye on that one. I'll be down in my lab if you need anything." With that he exited the kitchen, presumably off to work on his usual mad-scientist inventions down in his lab.

Dipper quickly collected their empty bowls and dropped them in the sink with a clatter. "Let's go then! If the early bird gets the worm, then the early kids get the bird too!" He was clearly brimming with excitement at the promise of new discoveries.

Mable was just as quick to hop up and pull Bill out of his seat by his sweater sleeve. "C'mon, I wanna see what they look like! I bet they're beautiful~!" She said wistfully, dragging Bill out behind her and Dipper.

Bill sighed, but smiled. He was still sleepy at eight o'clock in the morning, though he also supposed a calm little adventure couldn't be too stressful either. He preferred getting out of the stuffy Shack and into the fresh air of the woods anyway.

….

The trio wandered out into the forest, Bill keeping track of where they were going so they could find their way back, but not in particular leading them in any one direction. He tried his best to maintain a direction where the town and Shack were behind them so they were traveling further into the woods and away from civilization, and just hoped he could find the way back easily enough afterward. They weren't going to be out past dark, so he could just use the sun to navigate their way back.

Dipper, without anything more to add to his Journal yet, settled for walking along while staring out at their surroundings, keeping an eye out for any birds but also noting anything interesting in the forest around him. It was a calm and warm, but not blistering hot, summer day, and strolling through the forest was easy. After all the difficulties they had faced recently, Dipper was looking forward to a day without trouble. For Bill especially, Dipper couldn't help but feel that if so many bad things kept happening, Bill was only going to have a worse impression of humans than before.

For now, Bill seemed content with keeping an eye out, so to speak, and listening to the sounds around him for any advanced whistle patterns that might signify the ParanoiaKeets were about. Subconsciously, his fingers reached out to brush nearby plant leaves and fern blades as they walked by. 'Like a real child would,' Dipper thought to himself in mild amusement.

Mable…. Wasn't enjoying the peace of the forest, really. Instead she was running around them in circles and zig-zags, wide eyes peering up at all the branches around her and calling out "here birdie-birdies! Let's be friends! Where are youuu~?" Occasionally she'd spot a bird in the brush, squeal, quickly approach it, then deflate a little when an average crow, dove, or sparrow made a hasty retreat from her. She was always quickly back to her full-energy searching though, a smile still bright on her face.

"Will she really find them like that, being so loud?" Dipper asked. "Won't she scare them away like she has every other bird we've seen?"

Bill shrugged. "No, it's fine. I'm just going to leave her to it, it's not like we could ever sneak up on a ParanoiaKeet in the first place, and if anything, it sends them a pretty clear message that Shooting Star is trying to approach them in a straight-forward manner, not just hunting and catching them."

Dipper nodded. "Yeah, I guess that makes sense." He paused when a bright blue darted past the corner of his vision. A quick look over at Bill confirmed that Bill had stopped too and was now peering off to the side. Mable hadn't seemed to notice though.

"Come out, come out!" She called in a sing-song sort of voice. "We'll be best friends, and you'll help us, and I'll give you treats and take good care of you, you'll see! And I promise I'll let you out whenever you want and when we don't need your help anymore, I'll still come visit you in the forest, or wherever your birdy home is!" Having found no success in the trees, Mable was now looking through a hollow log on the forest floor, her head hanging up-side-down as she lay on the log and peered inside. "Are you sleeping in here? This is where I'd sleep if I was you."

Dipper frowned. "Uh, Mable! They aren't in the log! Come out here and look!" He said, sounding kind of frustrated.

"Whaaat, there's no harm looking. No need to be so grumpy!" Mable grumbled as she stood and brushed dirt off her pink sweater. She looked up, and for the first time noticed that in the trees above them a flock of brightly colored, small birds had gathered. "Woah!"

It looked like a field of flowers, but hanging above them instead of on the ground below. Each one had a primary, vibrant color off-set by a secondary, complimentary one. Most of them had the color balanced one on their chest and the other on their wings. Some had variant markings, with color only on wing-tips or coloring their face. Some with white and black markings to further distinguish them, and every one of them was unique in some way.

"They're…. Gorgeous!" Mable said, squishing her cheeks with her fists and her eyes getting impossibly large and sparkly.

"Remember Pine Tree," Bill whispered as he took a step back and stood to Dipper's side, "don't even think about engaging them. We're just here to accompany Shooting Star. If we get involved, we'll no doubt scare them away."

"Can I think of taking notes?" Dipper asked cautiously.

Bill nodded. "So long as you settle for only taking notes on what you can see now and from afar. Don't consider engaging for any kind of study and you'll be fine."

Dipper mentally marked the ParanoiaKeets as "off-limits to interact with" in his mind before pulling out his notebook and beginning to sketch a pair of them. "I'm going to need to color this when we get back," he said even as he continued to make marks on the page. "Black and white really doesn't cut it."

Mable was, cautiously for once, approaching a fiery-orange bellied parrot sitting among the lower, eye-level branches. It had black lines along the feather-tips on its head forming a light waving, repeating crescent pattern, something she'd seen on normal parakeets at the pet store before. This one had bright blue skin above its beak and around its nostrils, and shiny yellow-tinted green feathering along its head, back, and on the majority of its wings, the tips of which were white.

"You're soooo cute," Mable cooed. "Do you wanna be friends?"

It blinked at her, but didn't otherwise move.

"I'll take that as a yes!" Mable cheered and held out a finger. She waited, knowing not to grab the bird, and just left her finger up. After a little while the bird stepped onto it. "Nice! I'm gonna name you Daisy!"

"But…. Daisies are white," Dipper complained.

"Nu-uh, they can be lots of different colors too!" Mable protested.

"But that's a male," Bill added. "See the blue skin along it's nostrils? That's called the cere, and bright blue like that means it's clearly a young male. The females have brown or tan or very light, almost white blue."

Mable huffed and glared at Bill. "Whatever Mr. Know-It-All! Fine! Then, how abooout…. Roberto!"

"Roberto?" Dipper asked. "Mable, that's a stupid na-" She glared at her brother. "Eh…. Okay, fine, whatever, it's your bird I guess."

Mable huffed and looked back at Roberto. "Okay Roberto, I'm gonna take you home! I'll give you a nice place to sleep, and I'll feed you and we'll hang out all the time! I just need your help for a little while I think and then I promise I'll let you go okay?"

Roberto blinked at her again, not moving. The rest of the birds took off in a storm of color, gusts of wind pushing by as their wings beat and carried them away until only Roberto and a few stray colorful feathers remained. Dipper picked up a couple of the feathers and placed them in his Journal for safe keeping.

"Aww, who's my good little man!" Mable hummed as she made a kissy face at Roberto. Then she looked up, and turned to Bill. "I meant you Bill!"

Bill's cheeks turned red and he looked furious, embarrassed, and surprised. The red only increased when both twins began to laugh. He scoffed. "Ah, whatever, I'm a million times older than you, little human child!" He puffed grumpily and crossed his arms, turning to sulk his way back to the Shack. "Let's just go!"

"Wait, Bill, don't be mad! It was just a joke!" Mable explained, but her voice was still full of laughter and Bill ignored her, grumbling about insolence all the way back to the Shack even as Mable began to coo and make kissy noises at her new temporary pet.

When they returned to the Shack, Mable found one of the smaller cages Grunkle Stan kept lying around to use in his attractions. She found a smooth stick and placed it inside like a perch, covered the top half of the cage with a blanket so it wouldn't get to cold, and hung it up off a hook in the roof of the porch. She placed Roberto inside, but left the cage door open, vowing silently to him that she'd never shut it unless absolutely necessary. He read her intentions and accepted the condition. He calmly sat in the cage, ruffling his feathers and setting down to make himself at home.

"Well, now if anyone comes prowling around with bad intentions, he should let us, or at least Shooting Star, know about it," Bill clarified.

"Oohhh, so that's how it helps with our defenses," Dipper said. "I'd kinda been wondering."

Bill nodded. "We should get a decent warning, he'll be able to sense if anything's up for at least a quarter mile of within the Shack, maybe further. Depends how adept he is exactly."

Dipper looked at Roberto, who was still sitting calmly and dully in his cage. The only bright thing about him seemed to be his coloration. "And, what if he's not very adept and can hardly sense things at all?" Dipper had to voice the concern which, honestly, Bill had begun to consider already too.

Mable made an indignant noise and punched her brother in the arm. "Oww," Dipper whined.

"Roberto'll do great!" She defended. "He's the smartest boy, you'll see! He trusted me after all!"

"If you say so," Dipper mumbled, hoping to avoid any more of his sister's punches.

"I do say so! Now come on, let's go into town and buy some stuff he'll like to eat!"

Bill flinched. "I…. Think I'll stay here." He started to creep back into the Shack, but Mable snagged him by the arm.

"Com on, you'll be fine! Nothing will happen with us around, you'll see!" She started to drag him away from the safety of the Shack. "You can't avoid town forever, and we'll ask Soos to come with us if he isn't too busy!"

Bill groaned. 'This isn't going to end well.'

A/N: Mable doesn't know why she chose the name Roberto, but Author does! Haha. For anyone who's curious, he's named after the famous poet Robert Frost. One of his poems is "Nothing Gold Can Stay." Since the bird's main colors are a fiery orange and green with flecks of shiny yellow in it, it seemed fitting. ;D

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter and remember! Reviews are Love, Reality is an Illusion, the Universe is a Hologram, Buy Gold, BYE~!