deercountry | 01: Infections of a Different Kind

The first symptoms are easy to miss, because honestly, the first symptoms are really just Mabel on an art bender and all of the Pines have times like this now and again and Mabel even warned them this one was coming, waving her sketchbooks at them and batting around the idea of becoming a professional designer here in Trench. It's a positive thing, even, right? She's always had a penchant for things like this, but Trench has given her the motivation to really go for it, because the blood enchantment provides her with an opportunity to make things that can protect people from the inherent dangers of the place. The others all have their own personal missions, so why wouldn't they be happy if Mabel has found hers?

And when she stops sleeping, that's normal, a common side effect of a very busy brain in this household. When she stays mired in her work for hours on end and forgets to eat dinner or shower and has no idea how long she's been working, that's normal too, another thing they all suffer from when they get into the zone like so. Her studio slowly fills with projects in various degrees of completion as her ability to focus fades, but an inability to see a project through before flitting off to the next exciting thing is yet another common problem, and nobody thinks anything of it if they walk in on her rolling around on the floor instead of working because that's just Mabel with the fidgets, no big deal. The extreme increase in her candy intake is honestly a little alarming even for her, but to be fair, her vileblood problems meant she had to poison all of her own food during October of all times, and given that she has yet to sort out an equivalent of Mabel Juice in this setting straight sugar is the next best fuel here.

It isn't until the first of the physical symptoms comes in that things start to feel properly wrong. Mabel runs to her brother first, as she always does when she's worried about being Really In Trouble™ and might need him to help her offset it, and given that the intensity of her emotions is even greater than usual he will most likely feel her distress incoming before she even scurries into the room. When she does, her hands are clasped over her mouth, muffling the noises she's making which are probably his name, and tears are streaming down her cheeks.

It's true that almost all of that goes unnoticed, even by Dipper for the longest time. Mabel really is just like that sometimes, and their whole family is guilty of being some degree of this way on a constant basis. Her sleeping less does strike him a little strange, since she is usually the only one of them that isn't a regular insomniac, but he knows she's got a big project on her hands and doesn't think much more of it.

He does not think too hard at the sugar, either, when he's known her to eat raw sugar packets and when her eating habits have been strange thanks to her blood.

No, it's all weird and on his radar, but as a small blip in the back of his mind. Something that he might be mindful of it something gets worse.

He feels her before he sees her. That spike in emotion carries all the way into their bedroom where Dipper was at his desk, working. It sends a jolt through him, a pressure on his heart, and he starts to look around. Sure enough, Mabel is there just a moment later looking in real distress. His own spikes and he meets her half way, looking over her with concern. Did she hurt herself? Did something attack her? He does not like the way she's covering her mouth.

"Mabel! Mabel, what happened? What's wrong? Let me- Let me see."

Her panic is such that Mabel is having trouble finding words, and she bounces from foot to foot unhappily, a series of "mm, mm, mm" noises coming from behind her hands. At last, she pries them off and opens her mouth wide with a "mlagh," both her index fingers pointing inside.

Mabel has sprouted fangs.

And they are undeniably fangs. Her canines are long and sharp and the two teeth on either side are also decidedly pointier than they should be, and much more importantly, although her mouth has been weirdly itchy all morning the fangs came in so quickly and so hard that Mabel's gums are bleeding -- and they've pulled her braces out of place. She's long accustomed to those braces and the aches that come with adjusting them, but they aren't meant to move like that and it hurts, and she can taste all the blood in her mouth and it's awful.

Her panic is visceral and he has to work hard to not let it overtake him. Luckily concern for family usually wins out on top of panic and Mabel is not in good shape.

When she finally let's him look, he jolts back in surprise.

"Whoa!" Okay, so obviously the braces are terrible and he knows just how terrible they are thanks to that whole body-swap mess, but seeing them ripped and bent out of place because his sister grew fangs was not at all what he was expecting. Oh there is a lot wrong right here.

His mind scrambles for where to start. The fangs were a worry but more immediately, she was bleeding and the braces were causing her pain. They really should have tried to get these off back in the Dream. Actually, did Mabel reform from a squid with them intact??? What the fuck????

Focus! Focus, Dipper!

"S-Sit down. I'll go find some tools! I looked up once how to get them off because I'm a paranoid lunatic, just hang on."

Mabel manages a hiccup and a nod, and slides into the nearest chair, tapping her feet against one another. She sure did reform with her braces intact and thought nothing of it, because they may as well just be part of her body. Fortunately, she can always trust her brother to be a paranoid lunatic, and likewise she also trusts him to at least free her new fangs.

He'll be able to feel her calming down somewhat, but she keeps right on crying as she waits. Maybe it's the lack of sleep or the stress of her own ideas weighing on her, but she's been feeling everything a lot more intensely the past few days. The sudden feeling of knives in her mouth was so abrupt and unwelcome that it knocked her completely off kilter, and it'll probably take her all day to calm down.

Dipper is very quick about gathering what he needs. He runs through a mental checklist: Pliers with the wire-cutter bit on the inside, gloves, gauze, warm water, whatever pain reliever they might have laying around. He doesn't come across either of his uncles, which means Ford is probably out on a field excursion and Stan is working at the Hut.

That's fine. He can take care of the immediate issue and then find one of their uncles after. Ford probably has a degree in orthodontics, right? He can probably handle the rest if Dipper can just get his sister free of the initial tangle.

That's what he tells himself, at least, as he runs back up the stairs. His hands are shaking just a little as he puts everything down on the desk, quickly trying to recall everything he read once in a late-night fit of endless article clicking he is sometimes prone to. It might come in handy, he thought. What if they got into an accident or something and he needed to know? God, he hates being right sometimes.

He drags over another chair with the wire-cutters and sits on it with his knees so he can peer better into her mouth.

"Okay. Okay, just don't move. Tell me if something hurts, okay?"

Hopefully not by biting him.

Mabel does not experience dental anxiety as a general rule; mostly it is overridden by the annoying habit all dentists have of trying to convince her she should not eat popcorn or gummy candy while wearing braces, which she does anyway, and somehow they always know.

She is experiencing dental anxiety now, but honestly this is less because it is her brother and more because her mouth is already in wretched shape anyway and also, in the back of her mind where she is not currently paying attention to it, Mabel does indeed possess the awareness that one does not simply sprout fangs for no reason.

"Should -- should I lay down?" she manages. She sounds like she has a terrible cold and a lisp on top of that. It is not easy to speak around fangs in your mouth.

He considers that, hands going still, before he shakes his head.

"I don't have one of those little dental vacuum things to get the blood out of your mouth. I don't want you to choke on accident," He says, pulling on the gloves. Her blood is ...going to be tricky to work around if they don't hold up, but he does not have much choice.

He takes a deep breath and gets to work, snipping any wires he finds straining or pulling on the teeth around her fangs, and then collecting anything hanging loose.

"Spit sucker," Mabel mumbles, completely without her usual relish for phrases that are inherently hilarious.

As it turns out, it's both Mabel's blood and her spit that will cause Dipper problems. They know it causes numbing because of that one time Dipper tried to slap his hand over her mouth to shut her up and she licked it, as siblings will. Today it's straight up corrosive for some reason -- either because of all the blood mixed in or the terrible state she's in. On the other hand, this actually makes Dipper's work much easier and faster. While the braces themselves haven't started to disintegrate from the exposure yet, the adhesive that holds them to the teeth themselves is suffering from it, and the bits glued to the front are already willing to pop right off. Most likely she'll be spitting out the bits that are further in the back for the next several hours.

Mabel relaxes a little further as the pressure in her mouth begins to ease. Her new fangs continue to itch a little beneath the throbbing ache, though. Dipper might actually notice them shifting a little as they're freed from their metal prison, settling where they want to be.

Edited 2021-11-11 06:54 (UTC)

It is very sad, and even Dipper can't muster a chuckle at what is frankly, a hilarious word. Instead he is too high-strung and focused on his task. This isn't just patching up a scrape, what he is doing could really hurt her if he makes a mistake. No pressure.

Thank goodness they're coming loose, though. A lot easier than he expected, actually, which he attributes to her weird spit and blood. Normally he'd find that concerning but right now it's a godsend. He doesn't have to twist too hard on the brackets on the front of her teeth, and most of the wire comes loose with a few tugs and strategic cuts. He leaves her molars alone, mostly because they're hard to get to, and they don't seem to be causing problems, but also he's starting to notice his gloves starting to react to Mabel's blood.

He finishes just as they start to disintegrate, sparing his hands any pain, and he quickly shucks them and stuffs them out of sight before he leans back with a deep breath.

"Okay, I think... I think that's the best I can do without Great Uncle Ford's help. How do you feel?"

Mabel closes her mouth gingerly, running her tongue carefully over her teeth. It's super gross. And her teeth themselves feel all wrong, misshapen and out of place, not unlike the ache that always comes after an adjustment on the braces they've just removed. But although her eyes are still leaking a little just from the stress of it all, the simple fact of having Dipper here to take charge of things has helped to steady her, and with the most immediate problem taken care of these other ones at least are not so scary yet.

Still, she grabs a blanket from whoever's bed is closest and wipes her face before she wraps herself up in it. The problem with trading her sweaters for blouses is that now she doesn't have easy access to Sweatertown.

"S'better," she agrees. "But why...? I haven't met any hot vampires or anything."

He watches her for a bit, as if making sure nothing else weird was planning to crop up. He grabs the glass of warm water he brought and joins her on whichever bed she's settled on. After offering her the glass he falls quiet to give it some thought.

It was a pretty abrupt development. He's not sure if he's encountered such a thing before on the network, though that doesn't mean a lot now. They still knew so little of their own natures, let alone what this town might do to them. It's frustrating that he can't come up with an immediate answer, though, he does have a few theories.

"...I'm not sure. It could be something to do with your blood? Or ...maybe-" Or maybe it's something to do with Corruption, which he's seen get thrown around a lot lately. "What were you doing before it happened? Can you remember?"

Taking the glass, Mabel gratefully swishes the water around in her mouth, wincing a little as the water hits her sore gums. It's a big help, but she finds she doesn't have it in her to swallow the mouthful and there's nowhere else for it to go, so she spits it back into the glass and sets it aside. Given the circumstances, although the blood is now plenty diluted, Dipper might want to quietly retrieve that glass and set it aside for art or lab use only later on. Mabel won't think of it herself.

"I was just working. I've been working." It's true. Towards the beginning of this stretch she scurried out on emergency supply runs from time to time, but here lately she's just been hunkering down in her studio, barely emerging. "It's not going great, but why would that make my teeth bulk* out?"

*This slang of course is descended directly from a comic book character known as The Unbelievable Bulk, who grows large and blue when frustrated. His secret is, he's always frustrated.

Dipper considers this information for a moment. It doesn't strike him as unusual, except for maybe her claiming things weren't going well. Mabel was a confident person, and so if she was struggling with her vision, it had to really be giving her some trouble.

He takes that into consideration her working as hard as she has been and frowns.

"When's the last time you ate? Or slept?"

Mabel was not immune to a hyperfocus frenzy, but she was not an insomniac like he was. She was usually pretty good about finding places to stop to rest-- or just tiring herself out entirely and passing out on the floor. One or the other.

Mabel opens her mouth to answer, confident in that, at least. Until she abruptly isn't.

"-- uhhhhhhhh. That. That's a good question? I -- when did I eat?"

It is also not at all an uncommon thing for Mabel to forget to eat for long stretches of worktime and emerge, ravenous, snarling like a dinosaur. But she is a growing child and at worst this means she misses lunch. Just now, she can't remember lunch, but she also can't remember dinner. Her recent awareness is just an endless stretch of half-formed ideas and abandoned sketches twisting themselves together in a big wad of tangled metaphorical yarn barf.

Even more damning is that this realization is not resulting in an immediate run to the kitchen to shove the first sweet bread product she finds into her mouth.

Yeah, see, this is behavior he expects out of him or Ford. Mabel not realizing this and then immediately fixing the problem like the single holder of the Pines Family brain-cell that she often is ....is. Concerning.

He gives a few minutes to sort it out, but when she doesn't, Dipper starts to fuss. He takes her by the hand and starts to pull her off the bed, towards the door.

"That's a terrible answer. C'mon, we're going downstairs. I think there's some leftover scrambled meat in the fridge. I can also bake something, if you want-"

"Do you think I grew fangs because I haven't eaten lately?"

She follows her brother readily enough, but as they clomp out of the room and down the stairs, she lets out one of her giant gasps and claps her free hand to her cheek.

"Dipper. What if my creepy vileblood wants to feast? on souls? Is that why everyone hates vilebloods? Is that why I haven't felt hungry for real?"

This is decidedly the wrong end of the YA novel to be on in life.

place holder for now

[Well. Everything is going to shit.]

[Mabel is bedridden from corruption and Dipper only half-thinks he's helped, he isn't sure. Ford has been missing for ...days, probably, grabbed from under their noses and gone to who-knows-where. There are insane, blood-craved insane people running around with their powers, stealing and torturing people, and Stan forbade him from going anywhere on his own.]

[What, and he's supposed to just sit around and do nothing? No!! Absolutely not!]

[He found a loophole, at least, and he's gone to Oscar about helping him out with something. Stan can't be mad if he's not alone and Oscar is about the only person he'll trust at this juncture when his stress and anxiety are running so high. God, he was tired. When was the last time he slept? He isn't sure. It doesn't matter, not until he can figure out where Ford's gone.]

[And he's got a theory, so no backing down.]

[Dipper waits by the lantern for the School of Mutter in Gaze, which is where he asked Oscar to meet him. He's a little antsy, bouncing slightly on his heels. He looks particularly twitchy today, with dark circles around his eyes. It's been a hard few days.]

[There was an odd urgency to the message Oscar had received from Dipper that was impossible to ignore-- and, with the town partly turned upside down with a rash of disappearances and suggestions of people being abducted, Oscar felt there was no choice but to follow through with the request to meet. The turning of the seasons made the stump of his leg ache with a low-grade yet insistent pain, but it was nowhere near what it had been at this time last year.

A certain enchanted scarf which he wore under his cloak ensured that.

Upon arrival, he lowered his hood and, with one look at Dipper, immediately stepped forward with his arms spread with an open invitation for a hug.]

It must be bad, if you're looking like that. Dipper... what's happening?

[The sound of Oscar's voice brings him a shocking amount of relief. He turns, debating the invitation for barely a second before he has all but thrown himself at the other boy.]

Oscar! There you are, I was starting to get worried.

[It hasn't really been that long of a wait. If anything, Oscar is perfectly on time, but Dipper sure does look wound up anyway. With his grip tight and face buried into his shoulder, Dipper replies, somewhat muffled:]

Grunkle Ford's missing.

[Even without touching the connections they shared because of their bond, Oscar felt the fizzling, heart pounding vibration of anxiety and worry from Dipper's demeanor and presence reflected within his own person. He sucked in a sharp breath at the short, muffled explanation-- and felt the spike of fear dig into his chest.

Arms tightened around Dipper's skinny body as Oscar laid his head upon the other boy's.]

We'll find him.

[Oscar vowed firmly, knowing that there was no talking Dipper down from this one. His family was too important-- and Oscar knew that he would do the same if it was anyone he considered to be a part of his own found family.]

How's Mable? And Stan?

[He could choose to be Himself, or he could choose to be the Wizard he knew he was still slowly becoming. Regardless, they didn't have time to give into fear;

It would only make them become that which they feared the most.]

[For a few blissful moments, Dipper allows himself to relax. He basks in Oscar;s warm and for a moment, everything feels okay. It doesn't last, and Oscar's question sets him on edge again, remembering that Ford is only half of what's driving him right now.]

[He pulls away just enough so he can look at Oscar.]

Grunkle Stan is ...as good as he can be. Mabel- ...Mabel's corruption got the better of her. She's ...recovering, but she's been bedridden for a few days now.

[He knows what it could have meant, if he hadn't been able to bring her back. He's been watching closely on the network. He knows what happened to Manabu. His expression is tired, but there's something manic and desperate about it, too. There's a certain quality to his eyes that shouldn't be there. They're a little bloodshot, a little foggy.]

I almost lost her, too.

[He pulls away, eyes focusing and narrowing. He's on a mission.]

C'mon. I've got a plan.

[Oscar's face settles into a concerned frown at Dipper's words. He knew how he would feel if the same kind of thing happened to Ruby-- he recalled the panic and fear he felt when she didn't return home in the spring, and emerged in a form that was contorted into that of a Grimm by Salem's hand. It was sheer luck and quick thinking that had allowed her to return to them as herself.

But, anyone who ran in the same circles as Qrow Branwen knew that luck was a limited resource.]

We'll make sure that doesn't happen, Dipper.

What kinda plan do you have?

It's the Zealots.

[Dipper begins to walk down the street. He's heading towards a quieter place, an unseen alley. Something out of the way, somewhere ripe for someone to get snatched off the street]

The blood-crazy monsters that have been appearing lately. They're Sleepers- or at least, they were once. I've run into at least one so far, but I'm sure they're behind all this. They grab people off the street with their powers and take them away somewhere.

[He drops his voice and peers down an alley, before heading down it himself.]

If we catch one in the act, we can follow them.

I've... heard about what they're doing,

[Oscar said tightly, recognizing that look in Dipper's eyes. It was the look of a person who would do something crazy to protect those that they loved-- and a part of Oscar recognized that potential within himself too. Drawing himself up, he followed Dipper down the alley. Not for the first time since arriving in Trench, Oscar found himself glad to have kept his custom weapon specialy designed by Ruby in it's collapsed form on his person.]

And if we don't catch one... we're going to find a way to lure them, right?

That's the idea, yeah.

[It's a crazy idea, honestly. Dipper really should know better, after narrowly escaping with his life the last time he met one, but he's ...well. Oscar knows how the Pines get about family, and Dipper sure doesn't seem to be in the best of states right now.]

I've been asking around, and this alley had someone vanish down it.

[While that seems like an interesting lead, it's not a lot at first glance. However, Dipper glances around, walking carefully, until he stops before what appears to be some overturned boxes. He moves them, looking through what just seems like a pile of alley trash before he picks up something.]

[It's a glove.]

You've really made a headstart on this...

[Because of course he did. Oscar was hardly surprised-- and intentionally slowed his pace so his uneven gait didn't draw and unwanted or unneeded attention upon them in the alleyway. It was a blind passage, of the sort that no one thought twice while passing by. Nothing but trash and the occasional bike or wagon saw this area with any frequency.

In Oscar's opinion, it also looked like the sort of place a scared person would think to hide.]

There's not a lot of routes of escape here. It's a good place to corner someone and get the jump before they can scream.

[He had read enough mystery novels to know the patterns. But, this was Dipper's mystery-- and Oscar would follow the lead he was given.]

Yeah, I've been sneaking out to do my own investigating.

[Especially after the row he had with Stan over this. At least he's not going alone this time. It seems like he's at least thinking that far ahead.]

It seems pretty ideal if you're running a Sleeper Snatching gig. Hey, cover me while I try something.

[Dipper holds the glove in one hand and closes his eyes, seemingly concentrating on something. It's a power he's only managed to use a couple of times, but of all times, now really would be great for it to work.]

[He's rewarded with a flash. Something violent- a scream, a ringing of the ears as the viewpoint of the memory slams into the ground, and then pain. Dipper gasps and drops it, standing up to try and shake the images away.]

[Readying his stance and weapon, Oscar quickly checked their perimeter before leveling his gaze upon Dipper. He knew to watch their backs-- but, he also didn't feel comfortable taking his eyes off of Dipper.]

Sure. What are you gonna --?

[And Dipper's gasp cut him off, but it was all the answer Oscar needed. Rushing over, he gently placed a hand on the other boy's shoulder.]

-- What happened, Dipper?

[Dipper leans into the touch as his vision clears finally. He lets out a shaky breath and blinks.]

...Sometimes when I touch things, I get visions. It's arbitrary, and usually has to have some kind of strong emotion tied to it, so it doesn't always work when I want it to but-

[Man, it sure worked this time.]

-This one. It told me what I wanted to know.

Sheesh-- I'm glad that kinda thing hasn't happened to me yet.

[He shook his head, counting his lucky breaks that he happened to have Remnant's Local Telepath among his friends and teachers from even before they entered Trench. Oscar had learned enough to guard himself at least against the little things. Taking in a calming breath, he tried to allow his own presence to be a grounding and support for Dipper while he recovered.]

But it sounds handy, even though you really should be careful with it.

What did you find?

Well, this month is getting progressively worse the longer they go along. Ford is missing, Mabel's corruption nearly overwhelmed her. Mabel still isn't doing super great, and they still haven't found his uncle. There's reports of insane people kidnapping sleepers and stuff about a horrible blood harvesting farm. Yes, everything about November is terrible. November is the new cursed month. He'd be grateful for them leaving his favorite month alone if not for the terrible results either way.

Speaking of that, Dipper has been sleeping ...more, lately. Which isn't weird on it's own (or maybe it is since his insomnia is no secret) but no matter how much sleep he gets, it never feels like enough. He wakes cranky and tired and strung out, and the stress of this month so far is starting to make him testy and irritable.

It's probably being in this state that leads him to making the current decision to venture out. Realistically, he knows its a terrible idea, especially since there's no one to go with him right now, but what's he supposed to do? Just wait for Ford to come back? Home they don't find him in pieces on the floor of some blood farm? No!!! He doesn't care if Stan told him to stay home, he's going.

He doesn't bother to try and sneak out, either, another strange oversight. He just grabs his things, his gun, and aims to walk out the door, right in front of Stan.

Stan's been ridiculously stressed since Ford went missing. Any time he's not in front of the kids he's been doubling his efforts to try and figure out where the hell he is, where this supposed blood farm is and who exactly he has to kill to get his brother back (Again, his mind supplies, but he swats the thought away.)

But not every second of the day can be devoted to it. Sometimes seconds need to be reserved for things like eating lunch, which is what he's up to when Dipper storms right past the kitchen table to the door.

Stan roughly swallows his bite, coughs from the effort, but still calls Dipper out the second he's able to.

"Hey! Where the heck do you think you're going?"

Dipper considers not answering him, to try and avoid the confrontation, but he figures that Stan will probably give chase if he doesn't say something. He does kind of miss the days when Stan really didn't seem to notice when the twins came and went. He's attentive now, which is frustrating.

"I'm going to find my uncle!" He says finally, stopping just short of the door. For the sleep he's been getting, he doesn't look great. Dark circles impressive even for Dipper, and there's a paleness to his skin that seems off.

"I'm done sitting around, waiting for something to happen!"

Dipper knows him well - Stan's already rising from his seat, anticipating a chase. It's almost a relief that Dipper stops, except that it means they'll have to actually have this argument now.

"You're not just sitting around, you're keeping yourself from winding up like Ford!" he says. "I know waiting ain't great, but it's better than getting caught by one of those zealots. The last thing we need is you rushing in and getting yourself killed just 'cause you wanted to help!"

He's being harsh, but there's a truth underneath it - he doesn't want to lose anyone else if he doesn't have to. The kid doesn't have to try and be a big damn hero every time.

It's been a remarkably long time since he and Stan have gotten into it, but that exact harsh, blunt way of putting his foot down is familiar and it immediately raises Dipper's hackles.

They were cut from the same cloth in a lot of ways, this was definitely one of them.

"And if we just stay here and do nothing, we're just abandoning him to whatever horrible fate those blood farms are! Don't you care!?"

Dipper knows exactly what will cut Stan deep and rile him up. Stan had been looking to firmly shut Dipper down, but that one stung and he's not going to take that without argument.

"Of course I care!" he snaps. "I didn't drag him back from the multiverse just to lose him to a bunch of blood-crazed loonies. But that doesn't mean you can just run in guns blazing and hope it works! Leave something to someone else for once, would ya?"

He's a good kid, but he's always sticking his nose in everything and one of these days it'll get him killed - Stan's just here to make sure that day isn't today.

"Besides, Ford'll be a wreck if he finds out you got grabbed trying to save him," he points out. "You know that, right?"

He'll feel a little (a lot) bad about that jab later, when he's less heated. Instead his frustration just riles further with Stan's new angle.

"And why do you think I could ever do that, Grunkle Stan?! Because the second I do everything starts falling apart!"

There will be a lot to unpack here, later.

"Or did you forget who actually took down Gideon when you just gave up! Or who freed Mabel from Bill's prison while you hid in the shack! Have you considered maybe there's a reason I can't just leave stuff alone!?"

Stan huffs at the insinuation that he gave up. Buying those tickets and sending the kids home was one of the hardest things he ever did. It stings, but the fact that it hurts just makes him lash out even more.

"Yeah, yeah, you jumped in the big robot, big whoop. Which one of us got that little troll sent to adult jail, huh?" Stan points out, with his arms crossed. "Me! 'Cause I figured out he was spying on the whole town! Sure, you kids would've been halfway to Piedmont by then, but all I would've had to do was call up your folks and tell them I got the deed to the Shack back!"

Since he literally turned the kid upside down and shook it off of him. The Mabel one is harder - at least with Gideon he was sure he was sending the kids home where they would be safe and well-fed.

"And look, I didn't know where she was! Or where you were!" He points hard at Dipper. "All I knew was there was a literal apocalypse going on and that I wasn't gonna be good to anybody dead! I let every freak in town who turned up on my doorstep in hoping any of them knew anything about where you kids were! Yeah, I hid! The world was ending! Everyone should've been hiding! I had the only safe place in town, and all I could do was try and keep it that way and hope you two would make it back h-- back to the Shack."

And they did, eventually. He'd been so relieved, and it's a weird feeling to remember on top of how pissed off he is right now.

"Call me a quitter and a coward all you want. You wouldn't be the first! But that doesn't make you right here," he snaps. "We don't know enough about what's going on for you to just jump off the deep end!"

Edited 2021-12-13 01:53 (UTC)

Dipper is both picking up on those emotional pings from Stan, and taking them in. Too angry in the moment to be able to sort them out, they just set him off, instead. His own hurt at being brushed off, of not being taken seriously is an age old pain from Stan in particular that it only makes things worse. Arguing with Stan is about as productive as arguing with a brick wall, and he knows it. It's just impossible for him to back down at this point.

Dipper screams in frustration, words actually failing him this time because there is just so much wrong with what Stan is saying he doesn't know where to start. Instead something strange happens. The world shifts and the color around them bleeds out into monotone.

The air becomes floaty and dreamlike and everything seems to stop.

"That doesn't make you right, either! We won't know anything until we look, the answer isn't going to just come to us!"

Stan was already gearing up to say the next thing on his mind, but then the color bleeds out of the world around them and he takes a startled step back.

"What the-- how the heck did you do that?!"

It's instantly familiar though - it has the look and feel of the mindscape, except that he isn't dreaming and won't be able to manipulate it the way he can manipulate his own dream. Time's come to a momentary halt.

The startle does take some of the wind out of Stan's angry sails though, and he pinches the bridge of his nose in a more muted frustration.

"No one ever said I wasn't looking! I mean, yeah, right now I was eating a sandwich, but I've been looking! I just..."

...Ah. There's the real problem. Stan gives a heavy, heavy sigh.

"...I just wasn't involving you kids in it."

It startles Dipper, too. Who only realizes what's happened when Stan doesn't shoot back another biting retort. He blinks, glancing around and then his heart leaps into his throat. It's happening again, and Dipper full off too many volatile emotions right now to be able to get it to go away.

Instead the kitchen flickers away, becoming forest. A clearing of birch trees, with knots shaped like eyes-

"That's why," He manages, letting out a breath. Stan's response isn't heated, or angry. It isn't infuriating. It's just the truth, and with that, Dipper simmers down, finally.

Color bleeds back into the world, like paint dropped into a glass of water. Dipper heaves a sigh of his own, just as tired.

"After all this time, after everything, why are you still keeping stuff like this from us?"

Stan watches as color drips back into their surroundings and the kitchen becomes a kitchen again. It's significantly less unsettling, but the fight's already calmed down.

"It's not that I wanted to," he tries to explain. "I just-- I didn't want a repeat of last year, alright? You and Ford both kicked it at once, and now Mabel's here too."

There's something unspoken there, something that Dipper might be able to feel intuitively now. I didn't want to be alone again.

Stan can't make himself actually say that though, and he huffs and crosses his arms.

"Prolly could've said something though," he mutters. "Y'know, so you didn't think I was doing nothing."

01: Infections of a Different Kind

Episode One: Corruption Arc is Go

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cw: tooth-related body horror

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cw: now we are having dentistry funtimes

cw: dental horror aaaaall the way down lads

cw: just having a grand day drooling at the diy dentist

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Episode Two: The Mushroomening

Intermission: Getting up to shit [Oscar]

All the shenanigans

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Episode Three: Return of The Stubborn Jerks.

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