Mystery Kids: Beginnings- Part 7

Mystery Kids: Beginnings- Part 7

Mystery, adventure, action! It all awaits you here. Happy reading~

Gideon kicked his legs over the side of the roof. He was still mad, but he’d given up screaming insults at the sky and had settled on plotting just what manner of revenge would befall that goggle-headed freak. Without a book to consult it was a little hard, but he’d decided to maybe try zombies again. If he could convince them a real psychic’s brain was the tastiest of them all, maybe they’d listen. And how ironic that Norman would fall to the things he liked most. He relished the thought of their screams ringing through the Shack before he’d swoop in and win Mabel’s love by saving her from the undead menace. What a shame it’d be too late for her brother…

The snap of a car door interrupted his fantasy, and he watched as his father sauntered up to the house. When he didn’t notice his son’s predicament immediately, Gideon noisily cleared his throat and folded his arms. Bud finally looked up, shock spreading on his face and soon followed by worry.

“Why sunshine, what’re y’all doin’ up there?”

“Jus’ get me down,” Gideon demanded, and his father put up his hands.

“I’ll get the ladder.”

-------- 

The room was nearly identical to the previous ones in shape, but was much larger, and while the floor was still covered in books they were in neat stacks. This place actually looked inhabited, though the tall towers of books made their own sort of forest. Raz wound through them, keeping his eyes peeled and trying not to bump into anything. At the center of the room, he could see a space cleared out and a desk piled with more books, and more importantly, a person, and not just any person, but Dipper. He was hunched over the desk and could be heard muttering a steady stream of questions and theories to himself.

“… so if he’s not involved, that rules out the pizza guy entirely. Not that he had reason to be involved in the first place, but you can never be sure. Soos said the mailman’s a werewolf, could there be something there? He could be sending secret correspondence to… somebody. Better look into it. Mark that one down for suspicious,” Dipper rambled, gnawing on the end of his pen. “Oh, but what about the time Mabel found—”

“Uh, hey,” Raz interrupted, nearly sending Dipper backwards out of his chair. He watched as he ducked under the table and brandished his pen at him while he spoke.

“Who are you?! What are you doing here?” he demanded, and Raz held up his hands disarmingly.

“I’m Raz and I’m here to help,” he answered promptly, thinking quickly about how he could make friends. “Is it just me or is there some weird stuff going on around here?”

“Listen man, you have no idea. Whatever you’ve seen, it’s got nothing on what’s actually going on. Monsters, conspiracies, codes—you name it, it’s probably here.”

“Uh, I like to think I have some idea. I’m a certified paranormal investigator, so I might be able to help.”

Dipper narrowed his eyes. “You don’t look much like a paranormal investigator, and plus, you can’t be any older than me. How the heck did you get certified? I want proof.”

Raz happily obliged. After all, how he became a Psychonaut was one of his favorite stories to tell. Unslinging his backpack, he set it on the table to show Dipper his badges while he stood opposite of him and listened skeptically to the whole strange tale unfold.

“So…” Dipper began once Raz finished his story, “you expect me to believe you befriended a mutant lungfish, stopped a megalomaniac drill sergeant, and survived losing your brain? Are you sure you’re completely sane?”

“You expect me to believe there are monsters and conspiracies in Gravity Falls,” Raz retorted, and Dipper looked at his shoes.

“Good point. I guess I can’t blame you for being a skeptic. My own great-uncle won’t believe me, and his whole business is based on mysterious stuff.”

“Heh, I kinda figured. And almost no one believed me about the death tank plot either, so I know exactly how you feel.”

“So you’re like a government agent?”

“Yep. Cool right?”

“I’ll say. It’s… kind of a dream of mine to be some kind of super-cool agent investigating the paranormal. Do you really have to be psychic to join the Psychonauts?” Dipper asked, a pleading look in his eyes.

“Sorry, it’s… pretty much the basic requirement. I’m sure you’ll get to investigate weird stuff one day though. As far as I’m concerned you’re kind of already doing it, right?”

“I guess so. When you put it like that it sounds awesome,” Dipper smiled, circling around the table to spread out his notes. “I was starting to wonder if trying to figure all this out would be worth it if no one believed me. I mean, I think lives might depend on it, but some recognition would be nice too.”

“Maybe. What exactly are you trying to find out?” Raz asked, stepping a little closer.

“The truth,” Dipper replied, with eyes taking on a wild, unfocused look, “about everything.”

“Uh… that’s a pretty lofty goal.”

“There’s gotta be a reason for all this stuff showing up in Gravity Falls. Literally nowhere else is this weird, has so much bizarre stuff just—practically bursting out of the ground. I think maybe there’s some kind of conspiracy behind it all, but what’s even worse? For some reason I think this fake psychic Gideon thinks I know what it is.”

“Don’t worry, I know all about that jerk. So you’re trying to figure everything out before he tries to do something even worse?”

“Yeah. To me… or my sister,” Dipper explained with a sigh, brow furrowed with worry. “I’ve been looking through everything I know, but I just can’t figure it out. I bet if I didn’t have this headache I’d have gotten it by now.”

“Well, Gideon’s not a problem right now. If you really know something that could get everyone out of this mess I guess we better start looking.”

“Not sure what good it’ll do. I’ve already combed through this place like three times,” Dipper said with a shrug, and Raz gave him a look.

“The whole maze, or this room?”

Dipper blinked. “There’s more than this room?”

Raz frowned. “Oh boy. Um, yeah? Look, there’s the door I just came from, and there’s another door to the right. Doors usually mean there’s more than just one room.”

“Oh man, I’ve been in here so long… I guess I forgot about everything else. What’s out there? Anything?”

“Oh, just a labyrinth of library shelves, puzzles, a monster or two…” Raz listed, and grinned. “You know. Normal adventure stuff.”

Dipper’s eyes grew wide, then he hastily tried to scoop up a few pages of notes and ran off to the door, papers floating behind him. Raz snorted and set off after him, catching up a little ways down the unexplored passage.

“Hey, give me some warning before you go charging off like that, okay? I know adventure is pretty exciting, but if anything happens to you and I’m not there to help, it could be bad for both of us,” he griped, but Dipper seemed intrigued more than anything.

“So… what happens to me happens to you too? Is that how this works?” he asked, shuffling his papers as they walked.

“Not exactly. It’s mostly just inconvenient for me, but you could get really hurt. Just stay nearby and you’ll be fine, got it?”

“I’ve dealt with plenty of monsters by myself. I think I can handle it,” Dipper replied tersely, and for a while the two fell silent. They kept to what looked like the main hall, eyes and ears open for anything suspicious. Despite the fact he had someone with him, Raz still felt like there was something watching them, and Dipper’s habit of twitching whenever he thought he saw something was starting to affect him too. It was time to do something about it, and Dipper seemed to have the same idea.

“So… real psychics can do a lot of stuff, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” Raz happily replied, “and some more stuff than others. My girlfriend Lili, she can—”

“Hold on,” Dipper said, stopping abruptly. “You’re a secret agent and you already have a girlfriend?”

“Did I… not mention that when I was telling you how I became a Psychonaut?” Raz asked, raising a brow.

“No, you mentioned Lili, but not that she was your girlfriend,” Dipper replied with a frown.

“Oh. Whoops. Guess I just thought I did. Um… is there a problem?”

“Ugh, it’s—never mind,” Dipper huffed, scowling and heading off again. Raz shrugged and followed, but after a while, he couldn’t contain his curiosity any more.

“You said you fought monsters a few times. How’d you beat ‘em?”

“A lot of it actually depends on the monster. I once beat a couple of ghosts and saved all my friends by dancing, and another time, I melted a bunch of cursed wax statues,” Dipper explained, his expression lightening considerably.

“Dancing?”

“Yeah. As if things weren’t already weird enough, it’s like Gravity Falls has its own special brand of weird. I mean, there’s an old guy who lives in town that can build huge robots, but he’s just as likely to do a jig around his hat for three days straight.”

“Huh. Huge robots?”

“Yeah. He made a lake monster so convincing even I thought it was real, but it was just him trying to get his son to notice him.”

“Wow. Wonder what it’s like inside his head,” Raz mused, and his companion shrugged.

“I’m not sure I want to guess,” Dipper said with a chuckle. “Then I’ve brought a video game guy to life, made clones with a magic copier machine, and found crystals that can change the size of stuff depending on which way the light shines through them.”

“Whoa. I’m starting to see why people might not believe you,” he started, and Dipper shot him a look before he continued, “but it all sounds really amazing to me. Guess you have faced a lot of stuff; I think I know where the gnome monster I fought earlier came from now.”

“Oh man, don’t even get me started on the gnomes,” Dipper grunted, rolling his eyes. “They posed as a guy to date my sister, and at first I thought he was a zombie, but then it turned out it was just a bunch of them stacked on top of each other? Talk about messed up.”

Raz was starting to get the sense he’d arrived somewhere truly bizarre. No wonder Dipper wanted to learn all he could about this unassuming little town; there was way more going on than even a fake psychic brainwashing his enemies with psitanium. This clearly seemed to warrant further investigation, and he wanted to be the one to do it. Something to discuss with headquarters later.

“So you really think all this stuff is connected?” he asked after a bit of thought, and Dipper nodded.

“It seems far-fetched, even I’ll admit that. But… there’s just so much of it in one place! Unless the world is secretly overflowing with monsters and magic crystals and stuff that no one has ever noticed, but I don’t think that’s the case,” he replied, gesturing wildly. “I mean somehow a fake psychic, a medium, and a real psychic all manage to turn up here? And you know the guy the gnomes pretended to be, who I thought was a zombie?”

Raz nodded, not sure where this was going.

“He said his name was Norman. What does Norman—the medium—love? Zombies! And they both show up in Gravity Falls, at the Mystery Shack no less! Tell me that’s not weird,” Dipper rambled, on a roll. “And it’s just—a whole summer of stuff like that, at least it has been so far, and I can only imagine what’s going to happen next. I dunno, maybe aliens, or another coded message or something.”

The words barely had time to leave Dipper’s mouth before they stepped into another room with its floor clear and covered in the same stone tile grid Raz had encountered earlier. Like the first room, there was no obvious exit, but this time there was no furniture and the tiles were all marked with letters, a bit like a crossword puzzle but with no blank spaces to give any clues. Raz could already tell this was going to be a little trickier, but luckily Dipper was up to the challenge.

“Hmm… We probably have to enter a password of some kind. Think Dipper, what would you use as a password…” he mumbled, pacing around the room while Raz just tried random tiles to see if any could be pressed. They all refused to budge though until one marked with ‘b’ finally sank away.

“B’? Huh, not what I would’ve guessed. Okay, I might know what it is. Try all the ‘a’s you can find,” Dipper instructed after examining the tile and writing its letter down, and Raz nodded. Together they worked through the whole floor, but nothing worked.

“Um… maybe not,” Dipper said, scratching out something he’d written. “I guess just keep hitting stuff.”

And that is exactly what they did, and continued to do until thirteen tiles had all been pressed. In order, they spelled out the words “beware” and “veritas”. Like the first puzzle, a section of shelving slid into the floor to reveal the exit, and the two continued their trek through the maze. As they walked, Dipper pondered the two words, which seemed to be a phrase.

“Beware veritas? What is it, a monster? Or something else?” he muttered, mostly to himself while Raz kept an eye on their surroundings. The floor was starting to sink in some places, making footing a little less secure, and soon enough there were parts that had fallen away completely into murky gray water yards below.

“Geez, this place is a mess,” Dipper commented, peering over the edge with concern. “You sure we can cross this?”

“I can, no problem,” Raz replied. “It’s you I’m worried about. I mean, no offense, but despite all those monsters and stuff you don’t seem like the athletic type.”

“Okay, so maybe I’m not good at team sports, and I beat a lot of those creatures with my wits, but I can totally make that jump,” Dipper huffed, pointing to the next section of floor a few feet away. Tucking his notes into his vest, he took a few steps back—then a few more, just to be sure—and took a running start only to slip at the last moment, nearly sliding into the pit. Dusting himself off, he glared at Raz who was trying not to laugh and doing miserably, and tried again. This time he cleared the gap and managed to land just fine, and even jumped to the next one before reaching a chasm he wasn’t sure he’d be able to make. Raz caught up to him, still chuckling, and Dipper shot him a look.

“I’m sorry, but that was just too funny,” he explained, but his friend just rolled his eyes. “Okay, okay, serious adventurers here. I could probably just lift you across with telekinesis.”

“Yeah, that should work.”

Raz hopped across first, easily making the jump, then carefully picked Dipper up. He didn’t seem too thrilled about being dangled over a watery grave, but he was deposited safely on the other side nevertheless. The rest of the hazardous terrain was fairly easy to cross, and they were past it in no time, hurrying on down the hall. After a couple turns and a sighting of one of the little centipede-lizard things, they found themselves in yet another room.

But there was plenty to set this one apart from the others. Beyond its sheer size and the number of trees growing in and around it, rather than more shelves the far wall was stone and bore a set of three concentric circles carved into it. The outermost was the largest, marked by three equidistant triangles. The inner two sat within the spans of the triangles and were divided into segments, and as Raz discovered by going up and touching it, the innermost ring rotated. All sections—the triangles and the two inner circles—were marked by various letters: the outer with apparent gibberish, the inner with the alphabet, and the triangles with ‘v’, an equal sign, and ‘y’. After a bit of study, Dipper spoke.

“It’s a decoder wheel. ‘V’ equals ‘Y’… that must be the key to whatever that outer ring says. Once we figure it out, it’ll open and we’ll find out whatever secret I know that could save us from Gideon!”

“Um, okay. Anything I can help with?”

“I’ll figure out the code if you’ll move the wheel,” Dipper instructed, sitting on the floor and taking out his papers to begin deciphering. Raz shrugged and wandered around for the time being, wondering what lay behind the wall. At one point a group of censors popped up, and Raz was happy to pummel them while Dipper did his best to ignore the commotion and keep working, until finally he had everything.

“Alright, I’ve got it! Man, my brain picks some weird passwords. I don’t know how this one relates either: ‘the beginning is the end’. Talk about coded messages, right?”

“Wait… yeah, you did predict that, didn't you? Weird,” Raz commented, and Dipper blinked, then put a hand to his forehead.

“That’s not the first thing I predicted either! Before you got here, when I found the first piece of the rock stuff Gideon used to mess with us, I saw—something about red, green, and the word ‘goggles’. Raz, I predicted you! Whoa…”

“Whoa is right,” Raz said, in awe. Not even all psychics could see the future, and he only got the occasional hunch that turned out to be right, but everyone had those. But he could see how Dipper’s curiosity to know could lead to the Psitanium granting him the ability to see beyond the norm.

“So… could these codes tie in to stuff that hasn't even happened yet?” Dipper mused quietly, and the psychic shrugged.

“Maybe. If they don’t really fit what’s actually important to you, they might. Anyway, let’s get this door unlocked.”

Dipper handed him the paper with the decoded phrase, and he glanced over it before holding it in his teeth while he spun the wheel to each letter. It moved slowly, but with each correct entry something made a clank. On the last letter, the wheel locked, and Raz leapt back as the wall vibrated. With a dull grinding sound, the whole edifice rotated until the visual triangle formed by the three smaller ones faced down, and the two center rings retracted out of sight, leaving a tunnel. The two high-fived and charged in without further ado.

...Only to meet disappointment. The tunnel opened into more bookshelf halls, and the two exchanged confused glances before proceeding with a bit less enthusiasm. It was another particularly tangled area, overgrown by brambles and snags they were careful to duck through. Raz did his best to punch or burn the overgrowth away when he could, but there was no helping going in circles a few times too many. But while it annoyed Raz, Dipper seemed lost in thought, hardly noticing they’d turned down this hall for what was possibly the third time.

“Uh… so think of anything new?” Raz finally asked, trying to stave off an oppressing silence, and Dipper looked up like he’d forgotten he had someone with him.

“Hm? Oh, not really. Just trying to make sense of it all,” he replied, gaze turning back to the ground in front of him. Raz frowned and took up being pathfinder since Dipper clearly had no idea where he was walking. Had they gone down this way yet?

No, thank goodness; the books here looked untrodden on, and he had yet to come across any scorched vegetation, so that was promising. With Dipper trailing slightly behind, he forged ahead and found another room, though it was devoid of puzzles for once. Instead it was just littered with the same junk as the rest of the labyrinth. Some desks and chairs were scattered, and a few had nearly been totally consumed by the trees that grew around them, while the floor was thick with ferns and fog. If there were secrets here, they’d be well buried, but the exit was straight ahead. If it wasn’t for Dipper stopping in his tracks Raz would have carried on without another thought. He turned and gave him an inquiring look.

“The beginning is the end. The beginning of all my adventures this summer was when I found this old book cataloguing all the weird stuff in Gravity Falls. If you think of the other ways ‘end’ can be used, it might mean it’s the ends to whatever Gideon wants!”

“Good thinking,” Raz said, smiling. “So if we give him the book, he’ll leave you guys alone?”

“Well, maybe,” Dipper grunted. “Something tells me that’d be a bad idea though. I haven’t told anyone except Mabel and Soos… and Norman. And you. About how the Journal even exists, and it explicitly states ‘trust no one’ in really big letters. But I mean, those guys are my friends, and you… are sort of inside my mind, plus you seem cool, so you can know about it. But Gideon’s…”

“Insane?”

“Yeah. I feel like he’d use the journal for something bad. Like apocalyptically bad. What if he already has the others and this is the last one he needs to destroy everything? What’ll stop him then? What if this really is the ‘truth’ he was trying to get me to talk about? I mean I knew it was a possibility, but I didn’t know if maybe he thought I knew more, and the headache was really getting to me so I couldn’t think straight. Oh man, this is way worse than I thought. What if he…”

Raz watched Dipper work himself into a panic, struck with paranoia and worry anew. And he’d been doing so well. A sound caught Raz’s attention, and he looked up to see a multitude of the lizard-centipede creatures gathered on the tops of the bookshelves like crows. Watching with their wide yellow eyes, they hissed softly, almost in anticipation.

“Uh, Dipper…” Raz trailed, backing a few paces closer to him while keeping an eye on the creatures. “Might wanna… start moving again…”

But Dipper was ignoring him. “Oh! But what if this really does go back all the way to when Gravity Falls was founded, and something was always going to happen here? I’ve… I’ve gotta find out what’s really going on, I’ve gotta warn everybody. I have to find out the truth!”

All at once, the shadow creatures surged forward. Raz crossed his arms in front of him, but they flowed around him to converge on Dipper and engulf him. The shimmery black of their skin burst into roaring blue flames, and they merged into one huge creature that was built like a bear, with long powerful forelimbs ending in sharp claws. Its head was long and low, with a long jagged mouth much like the smaller creatures had, and three flaming yellow eyes. It held an unconscious Dipper in its jaws, his collar hooked on firmly on pointy teeth, and with a roar it vaulted over the bookshelves, trailing a long stream of flames that left everything smoldering.

Raz stood agape for a moment, then struck out on his levitation orb, hoping the path ahead lead to the same place the monster was headed. Toppled and scorched trees and bookshelves told him he was going the right way, though they made it a little hard to maintain any momentum. After a bit of climbing and squeezing through, he seemed to be in the clear and raced down a long straight corridor. The smell of smoke grew increasingly stronger, and he hoped he’d get there before too much damage had been done.

The hall opened into a huge round room, and Raz quickly studied it before the beast in the center attacked him. A moat ran around the room, with little walkways connecting to sealed doors that were spaced evenly around the room like spokes on a wheel. There were shelves, but they’d been knocked down and some, as well as their contents, were on fire. It was lucky there wasn’t much more to it than that, because with another bellow and a slam to the ground, the fire beast started the fight.

Raz was grateful there was plenty of room to run as the monster spat fireballs at him, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t looking for weaknesses. The moat was something; after all, what better way to put out a fire? But he couldn’t grab the monster with telekinesis—it was just too big—so there had to be some other way of doing it. A couple of psi-blasts only seemed to anger it; he barely avoided a lashing tail strike and noted not to do that again. So maybe…

With a smirk, Raz faced the beast, took aim, and lobbed a confusion grenade at its face. It screeched, sitting back on its haunches as it tried to wave the dizzying cloud away and dropping Dipper in the process. Seeing an opening, Raz darted in and grabbed his friend, who still wasn’t totally lucid and mumbled nonsense under his breath while he was carried to safety. Raz sat him just inside the entrance, briefly wondered what “Disco Girl” was, then turned back to deal with the monster. It was still sitting and wobbling back and forth, moaning, and glancing around, Raz realized he could throw the fallen bookshelves at it. Hurling one at it, he smacked the creature right in the face, and while the shelf vaporized, it also sent the creature reeling backwards—right into the moat. Steam erupted and the creature screamed, clawing its way back onto dry land and shaking itself out before lunging with claws outstretched. The blow shook the room, and though it missed Raz he nearly lost his balance trying to escape the impact. Now that he knew what to do though, and with Dipper out of harm’s way, he wasn’t so worried.

He was about to send another confusion grenade into the creature’s face when it seemed to pause and back up. Raz squinted as its eyes glowed a blinding white, and suddenly a beam of light shot through him, sending him to the floor. He lay there for a moment, enlightened to the fact that most of the campers at Whispering Rock hadn’t actually liked him and weren’t his friends that first day like he’d thought. That, and a good chunk of his mental presence was gone. Rolling to his feet once more, he fixed the beast with a glare.

“I get it. The truth hurts.”

The beast screeched in reply and spat another series of fireballs at him, which were easy enough to avoid but kept him from getting a fix to be able to hit it with confusion. An opening finally presented itself though, and he wasted no time in hitting it with the grenade-bookshelf combo again, then repeated the process a third time. With each trip into the moat the creature’s flaming body grew smaller until it was maybe half the size it had started out at, giving Raz a good idea of how much more it’d take to beat it. It tried firing the truth beam again, but this time Raz expected it and shielded himself, the light bouncing off his protective aura harmlessly. A few more trips into the moat and the creature was maybe the size of a pony, small and white-hot, and though not as powerful it was faster. Raz had to be even more on guard as the monster took to darting around the remaining bookshelves to avoid him and launch its own attacks more quickly. Raz was hit by another truth beam and enjoyed the realization that even if his dad had always loved him and just wanted him to be safe, he’d still been distant and authoritarian.

“I wish these weren’t so personal, ugh,” Raz muttered, massaging his arm where he’d been hit and trying to get a lock on the beast to hit it with a final round of confusion. The creature leapt forward to attack him directly, and he saw his chance. The fire beast writhed as the green cloud engulfed it, its fiery body roiling and distorting before bursting out in a final supernova.

Raz blinked spots from his eyes and shook his head out. He was sitting with his back to a bookshelf, and though he felt a little shaken he was otherwise okay. A shadow passed over him and he looked up to find it was Dipper offering him a hand. He gladly took it, and together they stood and stared at a small white flame that burned about two feet off the ground, right in the center of the room. Glancing at it, they cautiously approached it, and after a moment, Dipper brazenly stuck a hand through it.

“Huh, doesn’t burn or anything,” he commented, waving his hand through it again. “What do you think it means?”

“Well, I’m not an expert—well, not like some people I know anyway, but… If I had to guess, I’d say it was… your desire to learn things?”

“Maybe. Makes sense to me. Anyway, what should we do about Gideon? I’m not about to give him the Journal, and you’re good at strategy too. So what do you think? …Raz?”

Dipper looked up to find he was alone.

Mystery Kids: Beginnings- Part 5

And here we come to one of the first parts I changed quite a bit when I decided to rewrite most of the middle; though the story's largely the same, how it's told is a little bit different. Enjoy! ;3

There was a brown truck in the parking lot when Raz finally reached the Mystery Shack, and the door was open. Was someone else trying to rob the place now? He quickened his pace, then noticed the bumper stickers on the vehicle-- all from the Shack. An employee then, and probably someone who could help. Resting the siblings against the side of the building, he knocked on the doorframe before entering. A large man was tidying up the gift shop, and his worried expression changed to surprise when Raz walked in.

“Hey kid, sorry, but we’re not open. I think we got attacked by some kinda animal, like a Bigfoot maybe. Come back later dude,” he said, waving him off and looking apologetic.

“More like a kid named Gideon,” Raz said, and the man looked even more concerned. “Don’t worry, I took care of him. Name’s Raz.” He held out his hand, and the man shook it.

“Soos. So what happened? If Gideon was here, have you seen a couple of twins around? They’re like big-time enemies. I’m supposed to be watching the kids for Mr. Pines, but only one’s upstairs.”

“That’s why I’m here. Gideon hypnotized them, and I wanted to be somewhere safe to snap them out of it.”

“Gideon. And dude, no offense, but you’re like—ten. Don’t you think you should leave it to a professional?”

“Eleven, actually. And sir, I happen to be a professional.” Raz smiled, and showed his official badge as he explained everything. Soos seemed to hang on his every word, made him prove he was psychic by reading his mind and bending a spoon, then helped carry Mabel and Dipper up to their beds. It was obvious he was deeply attached to the two, and he even passed a fretful glace in Norman’s direction.

“Anything else I can do to help?”

“Keep Gideon away from here. I may have stuck him on his roof, but he figured out how to use psitanium as a WMD—a weapon of mental destruction,” Raz instructed, leaving out the part about how WMDs had been a major arc in True Psychic Tales issues 68 through 75. “I think finding a way down probably won’t be too hard for him.”

“Understood. These dudes… they’re gonna be okay, right? They were seriously not good the last few days.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll get them back—I promise,” he said resolutely. Soos nodded, then left to continue cleaning up and guarding the Shack.

“Razputin darling? Is everything alright?” Milla suddenly chimed, and Raz homed in on her presence.

“So far so good, Agent Vodello. I managed to help the first kid, he’s resting now. I also got the psitanium back, but there’s two more kids who need my help.”

“Oh no, are they as bad as the first?”

“Almost. But it turns out he’s a medium and had more going on than just psitanium poisoning. But the girl’s gone to her happy place, and her brother… I think he’s catatonic.”

“Okay, just be careful sweetie. I’ll update the others, you go do what you have to.”

“So I’m allowed to help these guys too?”

“Isn’t that what we agreed?” she replied, a hint of teasing in her voice.

“Awesome—I mean, good.”

Milla laughed, then let him go. He knew she would have wanted him to help regardless of the rules; she’d always had a soft spot for helping children and couldn’t bear their suffering. But now he had to decide who needed his help most immediately. He could at least ask Mabel if he was welcome in her mind, but catatonia was never a good thing. Maybe that feedback loop could actually be helpful here. Focusing on his telepathy, he felt out who was generating what. He was met by a wall of pain, and recoiled from the sudden onslaught. But once he plowed through that, he found an odd mix—determination, fear, worry, paranoia. Even his own concern was being bounced back at him now.

“So that’s what’s going on,” he muttered aloud, breaking his connection. Since psitanium stimulated the parts of the brain responsible for psychic abilities, it wasn’t uncommon that besides inflicting any variety of mental traumas it could awaken certain powers. The problem was, because these abilities weren’t natural, they were imperfect and uncontrolled. Mabel was taking in the emotions of anyone around her, and without the mental abilities to filter it out had become overwhelmed. Dissociating herself from the real world was a defense mechanism, and possibly meant she’d be relatively easy to help.

Without wasting another moment, Raz got to work. Compared to Norman’s, Mabel’s mental walls were in good shape, but he still slipped past the invisible barriers with ease. His feet sank into some kind of soft ground, and as the world swam into view it was obvious why. He was standing on some kind of hill made entirely of purple yarn, and more in other colors poked out of the one thing that immediately gave him pause—the rest of the landscape was flooded by a bright magenta ocean. In fact, everything was in vibrant colors that almost didn’t work together, including the sky— which was an impossible turquoise that faded to a light green near the horizon. Way out in the distance he could see more hills, and the largest was dominated by a castle straight from a fairy tale. And behind him… was the reason he was here. A huge indigo thunderhead filled the sky, pale pink lightning flickering within it as bands of magenta rain swept down from its leading edge.

“Guess that explains where all the water is from,” Raz said to himself, scratching his head. “Now I just have to figure out how to cross it…”

He looked around carefully and even managed to hop to the next couple of hills peeking out of the ocean, but there was nothing here except yarn and he was pretty sure he couldn’t do much with that. The only other thing he could think to do was call out and see if that got a reaction, but for all its color the land seemed devoid of life. At a loss but unwilling to bail, he sat on the cushiony ground and glared at the ocean, wracking his brain for some kind of solution.

As he watched, a wake rose and cut through the choppy waves, swirling magenta split by a curved blue fin. Warily Raz stood and backed away from the edge as the fin circled the island, a dark form cruising just below the surface before sinking back into the depths. Leaning carefully, he scanned the water’s surface and frowned. At least he knew there was something here after all, but it’d be really nice to know if it was friendly or not.

“Hello?” he said tentatively, putting his hands on his hips. Something round and blue burst above the surface right in front of him and squirted water at him, and he realized it was a dolphin trilling at him from the bank. “Oh. Hey there. Were you… stalking me?”

The dolphin uttered an offended squeak, then cleared its throat and spoke. “No, no! Now why would you say something like that?”

“Well, just how you circled this little island… it was kinda stalker-ish. Anyway, what’s going on in here? I came in to investigate, but I’m sorta lost already.”

“Oh man, it’s been bonkers,” the dolphin moaned, sinking so his mouth was below water and blew bubbles before rising again. “Things were all fine and dandy until maybe a few hours ago. Maybe minutes. I dunno, never could tell time. Anyway, next thing ya know it’s raining cats and dogs, and not literally either, that would’ve been awesome. It flooded the whole place and now everyone’s taking shelter in the castle.”

“Wow, it flooded everything that quickly?” Raz said, looking back at the storm.

“Yep. This little hill you’re standing on?”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a tree.”

“Whoa,” Raz gasped, looking at his surroundings with new eyes. “Guess I better help before that new storm moves in. Can I ask you a favor, uh…”

“Aoshima.”

“Aoshima? I need to get to the castle, but I can’t swim. Could you maybe find a boat or something that’ll take me?”

“I’ll carry you, no problem! I was headed out to take that sucker on, but they could definitely use some help at the castle, and it’s not that far. Climb on,” the dolphin instructed, rising to expose his back.

“Oh, um, thing is, I can’t really go in deep water at all,” Raz explained nervously. It wasn’t something he liked to bring up.

“Who said we’d be swimming?” Aoshima said with a wink. “Now climb aboard, I’ve got an appointment with a hurricane. I’ve gotta introduce it to the Knuckle Twins.”

With a dangerous grin, Aoshima pulled a pair of heavily-muscled arms out of the water and clenched his fists eagerly, making mock punches at the cloud looming on the horizon. Raz blinked, shook his head, then simply shrugged and hopped onto the—could he really call it a dolphin if it had big muscleman arms? It probably didn’t matter. He situated himself just behind Aoshima’s dorsal fin and gave his ride a thumbs-up. Aoshima nodded, and with a mighty flick of his tail leapt free of the ocean, his arms extended Superman-style. The yarn island was left behind as they ascended, and Raz wondered if this was what being a master levitator was like.

Flying made for a short trip, and they splashed down just in front of the road leading to the castle gate. Raz leaped onto the multicolored popsicle-stick thoroughfare and bid Aoshima farewell; the imaginary creature saluted him before taking off again, headed directly for the storm. Raz returned the salute before facing his own end of the fight—the most extravagantly pink yet formidable stronghold he’d ever encountered. He contemplated scaling the glitter-encrusted walls, but since asking for help had worked pretty well so far, it didn’t hurt to try again.

“Hello? Gatekeeper?” he called, and was startled when the door ground open as soon as he spoke up. A white unicorn with a mane that cycled through the rainbow and matching dappled spots along its flank poked its head through the gap and scrutinized him. Apparently satisfied with what it saw, it opened the door wider and beckoned him in with a hoof.

“Thanks. Can you tell me where I can find Mabel? I need to talk to her,” Raz asked once the equine had closed and locked the gates. The unicorn gave him a sidelong glance, then tossed its head and pointed across the grounds to the keep with its horn before retreating into the gatehouse-turned-stable.

“Huh. I guess not everything talks in here after all. At least he was still helpful,” Raz said to himself with a shrug, and started off through the grounds.

The town within the walls was quaint, with small houses lining each street and a center square consisting of a tiny park. It wasn’t exactly his style, but it was pleasant nevertheless, and he already had a good sense about the sort of person Mabel was just based on his encounters so far. But things were clearly amiss; though he could tell they were houses, each one was cloaked in a heavy knit cozy that made entry impossible. What he presumed were shops had cutesy stickers saying ‘sorry, we’re closed!’ pasted on their exteriors, and he realized even the flowers lining the streets were just paper cut-outs. Much like Norman’s mind the streets were abandoned, but at least this time there weren’t any malfunctioning censors to worry about. He made his way through town without a hitch, and soon the houses gave way to what could be considered the castle proper. The door to the keep was set into a deep vaulted portico, and as he approached two knights stepped out from niches carved into the glimmering stone walls, their lances crossed.

“No passing!”

“I also say no passing!”

Raz eyed them skeptically. “Look, I don’t want to have to hurt you. I’m here to help, I promise.”

“We have orders of the most rad importance to let no one through!” one of the knights replied, and the other nodded emphatically, dropping his lance and scrambling to pick it up again to point at Raz’s head.

“Yes! Retreat, or we will be forced to use our weapons of ultimate power!”

“Oh boy.” Raz rolled his eyes, not particularly intimidated by the bumbling knights. “Look, I’m a Psychonaut, an authority figure. I’m here to make sure Mabel’s okay.”

“Well we are the authority dudes around here! If you don’t leave, we will be forced to use—” the knight paused to draw a keytar from his back—“the power of music!”

“Excellent intro, bro,” his partner commented, and they bumped fists.

 “Yeah, great, but in case you haven’t noticed, storm’s moving in,” Raz said, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder at the looming clouds. “If we’re gonna go, make it quick.”

“Whoa, dude’s hardcore. Okay, ready Craz?” the knight asked, putting his lance aside and holding his keytar at the ready.

“Always, Zyler!” the other replied, rolling out a synth drum kit from the niche and sticks from his scabbard. Raz blinked incredulously as they started to play a cheesy melody, entirely serious about the showdown. The power of this music was entirely underwhelming, and he wondered if he could simply sneak by. The two certainly seemed oblivious enough for it to work, but the drum kit blocked most of the entrance and made it risky. Maybe they’d just wear themselves out instead.

“It’s not working!” Zyler cried, frantic.

“Play harder!” Craz replied, ramping up the tempo, and his partner hurried to match his pace. Raz simply waited, tapping his foot impatiently until Zyler fumbled his instrument, gauntlet-covered hands too cumbersome to keep up anymore.

“I can’t believe it… not even the power of music can beat this guy…” Craz uttered, arms slack.

“Do you realize what this means?” his partner said fearfully, and without warning the two suddenly clutched to one another.

“We’re doomed!”

“Oh come on!” Raz sighed. “You’re only doomed if that storm gets here and floods the place, not because your music was terrible.”

“Zyler, you know what I just realized?”

“What bro?”

“The dude we just lost to? He’s got a free pass.”

“Whoa, you’re totally right!”

“Huh?” Raz looked at each of them skeptically.

“Your sweater, dude! It’s one hundred-percent Lady Mabelton approved,” Craz explained, removing his helmet and kneeling to point at the psychic’s garment. Raz hadn’t noticed anything, but now that he looked, he was wearing a different sweater under his jacket— it was still green, but had subtler stripes and a cutesy brain with a little smiley face on the front surrounded by the phrase ‘Think Big!’ in multicolored bubble letters stitched onto it. Blinking, he gave Craz a questioning look.

“These helmets are pretty not-rad in the vision department, so we didn’t see your pass,” Zyler explained, following his partner’s example and taking his off.

“So… this thing’s kinda like a passport?” Raz asked, tugging at the chunky yarn.

“Basically. You get one, the lady in charge must think you’re okay,” Craz replied, nodding.

“That would’ve been nice to know before you tried attacking me with bad music,” he said, raising a brow at the would-be knights, who both looked aside. “So… did anyone else try to get in here before me?”

“Yes!” Zyler quickly responded, unusually fierce.

“That dude definitely did not have a sweater either. We found him sneaking around the castle doing stuff,” Craz added, looking disgusted, and Zyler nodded quickly.

“He wasn't impervious to the power of music though,” he said, and the two high-fived.

“Good to know you guys kicked him out,” Raz said approvingly, “but looks like he still managed to mess with things. Listen, I need to talk to Mabel—”

“Lady Mabelton,” Zyler corrected.

“…Lady Mabelton, and find out what’s going on. Can you tell me where she is?”

“Well…” Craz trailed, exchanging looks with his friend.

“She doesn't exactly want to see anyone right now. That’s why we’re guarding the door,” Zyler answered. “We know you’ve got a free pass and stuff, and that’s totally rad, but she’s pretty busy right now and shouldn’t be disturbed.”

“But this is urgent, it—it’ll affect the whole kingdom, and I’m sure the lady cares about her subjects’ welfare, right?” Raz reasoned, and the two scratched their heads.

“Totally,” they agreed in unison.

“So let me in already!”

“Dude makes a good argument,” Craz commented, and his partner nodded. They set their instruments down and pulled the heavy door open to let him pass, and Raz saluted them as he headed in at last.

“Finally,” he muttered as the door shut behind him. He wished the musical showdown had been a real fight, but maybe that was yet to come, and at least those two weren’t entirely useless. If they’d managed to chase Gideon off, maybe things weren’t so dire. For now he’d focus on finding Mabel and getting rid of whatever outside influences he could find.

But that was easier said than done. As he looked up, the keep interior only got more tangled and confusing, and the upper reaches faded into a warm pink haze. For anyone else, it might have been intimidating, but Raz rolled his shoulders and headed in, familiar enough with fairy tales to know that the damsel in distress was generally hidden away in the highest part of the castle.

A staircase ahead seemed to lead directly up, but then turned on its side halfway up and wound around until he was less than a third of the way up, and the walkway ahead spiraled and twisted down again, forcing Raz to reconsider how he was tackling this. At least he didn’t mind exploring, and the keep offered plenty in the way of rooms and galleries full of all the things Mabel loved. One door he found opened overlooking a dance floor, while another room held a petting zoo containing everything from the usual llamas and sheep to tigers, wombats, and even a narwhal. Upon opening, another room buried him in an avalanche of glitter and plastic gems; after struggling to sweep the mess up and shaking himself out, he took a breather. Sitting with his back against the door, he studied the upper reaches to see if he could figure out the right way up. With how much the place twisted around it was easy to lose track—and a crack of nearby thunder didn’t help.

“I hope Aoshima’s doing okay,” Raz mused as he stood and dusted himself off again. “Sounds like he didn’t have much luck fighting that storm off.”

“Nah, but he’s giving it his best shot,” a small voice piped up, and Raz looked down to see a pig dressed in a business suit by his leg.

“Uh… hey there.”

“Ah, you’ve got a pass. Alright, move along,” the pig said, waving him off with a hoof, and Raz made a connection.

“I get it! You’re a censor, aren’t you? I was wondering why I hadn’t seen any around.”

“Yeah, we've been pretty busy, as you can guess,” the pig snuffled, and Raz nodded.

“Yeah. I’m here to help with that. So as long as I have this sweater, we’re cool?”

“That’s how it works. Unless you go wrecking things or being generally mean to the lady. Then we have a problem,” the pig warned, narrowing its little black eyes dangerously.

“I don’t think we’ll have any problems,” Raz said, holding up his hands. “I am kinda having one right now though—how do I see Ma—Lady Mabelton? I can’t find the right way up.”

“Well, she doesn't exactly want to see anyone—”

“I got that, thanks.”

The pig blinked slowly at him, then continued. “As I was saying, she doesn’t want to see anyone, but she might make an exception since you’re wearing a pass. The tower staircase is straight ahead and to your right.”

“Huh. That was easier than I thought. I better get going though, thanks for the help.”

The pig censor waved him off and trotted away, turned, and walked straight up the wall. Raz shrugged and headed on himself, remembering the pig’s instruction and grateful everyone was so helpful in here. Sure enough, at the end of the hall there was a staircase, but as Raz followed its path upwards, things got complicated, twisting so that at some points he was walking upside down, or climbing on the bars of the railing like a ladder. It even looped through a wall and into a room where more pig censors were discussing dinner plans. But at least he was consistently moving up now, and the surroundings were becoming closer, cozier, with walls draped in yarn tapestries and floors carpeted with bright fake furs. It wasn’t like the claustrophobic confines of Norman’s zombie school though—more like an attempt at the close warmth of a hug. The final landing was barely big enough to take a few steps in before it dead-ended into thick knit walls. Raz looked up, grinned, and gave the weave a tug before eagerly taking to it.

One long and cramped climb later, he finally emerged in a round, comfortably sized and furnished room. A shelf with little knickknacks sat near the canopied bed, and a heap of pillows and stuffed animals was stacked to one side. Posters of teen stars plastered glittery purple walls, and strings of lights hung from the ceiling even though a fancy chandelier also lit the space. A variety of cats were scattered around, playing or sleeping, and one came to brush across his legs. Smiling at it, he took off his goggles and bent to pet it briefly. Looking up, he saw Mabel at a window, holding a stuffed tiger and looking over her land with concern. Thunder shook the tower, and as she glanced worriedly around she spotted him.

“Aw man, not another boy in here. Do you want to marry me too?” she huffed, frowning at him.

“Of course not! I actually happen to be taken already. Is that what all this is? Because Gideon wants to marry you?” Raz replied, gesturing to the yarn draped over the windows and storm outside.

“Kinda, but there’s this weird rock stuff he had too. He’s using it to drive us all bonkers…. He’s not still out there is he? I kicked his butt pretty hard, but it still feels all gross, like he’s still lurking like the Creepy McCreep-face he is,” Mabel explained, making a face as she sat on her bed and played with the stuffed tiger’s arms absentmindedly.

“I haven’t seen any signs of him. I guess he didn’t try to do the same thing to you he did to Norman—he didn’t want to talk to me at all, which made getting rid of Gideon’s hypnosis really hard. I’m glad you’re a lot more willing to chat,” Raz answered, walking over, and Mabel scooted over and patted the spot next to her.

“Norman’s quiet anyway,” Mabel said, smiling as she pulled out a thin moss-green scrapbook from under her pillow. “You just gotta know what to talk to him about, see? Zombies are always a favorite, but he’s surprisingly artistic too.”

“Heh, nice, though I gathered the bit about the zombies when I was in his head. So, any ideas how to get rid of the storm outside? Even if Gideon failed to hypnotize you, that’s still kind of a big deal.”

“I don’t feel hypnotized…. So that’s why I've been wanting to act like a chicken!”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure that’s not what Gideon would've done. You said something about him wanting to marry you right? It’d probably be something more like trying to make you fall in love with him. I read this exact thing in a comic book once,” Raz supposed, and they pondered together for a moment.

“Now that I think about it… he did say something about forgetting my dreams to live in his… super gross, am I right?”

“Whoa. You’re right, he is a creep.”

“I know right? He swore vengeance on our whole family and basically won’t leave us alone, ugh. And now he’s doing all this brainwashing stuff, and it’s really freaking me out,” she replied sadly, hugging the stuffed tiger close, and Raz patted her shoulder.

“Man, so he really is as bad as I thought. So… if he wanted you to forget your dreams… how would he do that exactly?”

“Hmm… well, I definitely haven’t been feeling that creative spark, you know? I just can’t think of anything, dreams or otherwise,” she sighed, frustrated, and Raz nodded thoughtfully.

“Creative spark? I mean, the place looks pretty creative to me…”

“Yeah, but that’s all old stuff I already came up with. I like thinking of new stuff, but I just…”

“Not happening, huh?”

Mabel shook her head, foot weakly scuffing the floor. Raz studied her downcast face before clenching his fist and standing.

“Mabel, I’m gonna help get your creativity back. I think Gideon did something to it, and that made everything else kinda fall apart. At least, it didn’t help. Any hints on how to get things going again?”

“Hmm…” Mabel scrunched up her face as she thought, but shook her head.

“That’s okay, I can figure it out. You just stay up here and try to relax,” he consoled her, then headed back to comb through the castle again. As he climbed down, he thought; if he hadn’t come across anything responsible for Mabel’s creativity or what could be blocking it on his way up… then maybe it was somewhere on the lower floors he hadn’t explored. At least heading down would be a lot easier—once he reached the main hall, he simply jumped over a bannister and dropped all the way to the first floor. Finding a set of stairs that lead down, he was disappointed to find a huge room with a wave pool in it. The other doors in the room only opened to closets of pool supplies—nothing helpful. Perplexed, Raz headed back up and stood in the foyer while he scrutinized the upper reaches, trying to think if he’d missed anything. But each room was so distinct he knew he’d been to every one.

“So if it’s not in the castle… then it’s gotta be outside,” he reasoned, turning to the doors and bracing himself for a storm.

Raz’s jaw fell as he stepped out into a very different mental world than the one he’d entered not long ago. Craz and Zyler’s niches were empty, and he hoped it was just because they’d retreated inside— staring out at the town in awe, he wouldn’t blame them.

The rain coming down in sheets may have been magenta, but it was still leaching all the color from the yarn cozies and eating away at the glitter-coated walls, whole layers of the stuff wrinkling and peeling away to expose dull gray stone beneath. The paper flowers had all but disintegrated, and deep puddles were starting to form already. If he didn’t hurry, all of this would become permanent, and he didn’t want to learn what it would mean for Mabel.

Summoning his levitation ball, he sped through town and did a full sweep of the grounds, even poking around the back side of the castle keep where he found a full garden, though all the blooms were closed and the butterflies he found were all huddled under leaves, trying to stay dry. Rolling back into town, he dropped his levitation and sat on the small bench in the park, frustrated and discouraged. Lighting cracked sharply overhead and he flinched, recalling his latest brush with electricity, but he wasn’t allowed to dwell on it as a large dolphin landed on top of him.

Of course it wasn't just any dolphin, it was Aoshima, and he was in rough shape. At first, Raz thought he was unconscious as he lifted him off with telekinesis, but he groaned as he was laid on the ground and his eyes fluttered open.

“I tried but… no power…” he rasped, tail flapping weakly.

“I bet you did great—but it is pretty hard to punch a cloud,” Raz consoled, patting the creature on the head. “Anyway, once I get Mabel’s creativity back I bet you’ll be back at full strength in no time. Only problem is… I can’t seem to find it.”

“So that’s why…” Aoshima said in a hushed tone, frowning. “Mabel believes in the power of love, but it’s her imagination that keeps this place running.”

               “So… it’s like a generator?”

“Almost,” the dolphin grunted, rolling over and heaving himself up on his arms. Raz watched curiously as he crawled over to the fountain at the center of the park, then waved the psychic over. Once Raz was standing at his side, Aoshima gripped the fountain and heaved, throwing his whole body into the effort but chittering angrily if Raz moved to help. The main drum separated from the fountain’s base, and with a roar, Aoshima tossed it aside to leave nothing but a dark hole and an exposed pipe. Panting from his efforts, the dolphin patted Raz on the head before he collapsed and faded away, returning to the raw mental energy he’d formed from.

Raz gaped sadly at where the dolphin had been moments ago, then balled his fists and leapt into the hole, grabbing the pipe and sliding down into the shadows. It went on for quite a while, and gave him time to think. Much like Norman, Mabel was having trouble getting over the Psitanium exposure, which seemed to hint that he’d almost arrived too late. The thought patterns that had arisen out of the mineral’s effects paired with whatever Gideon did were near a state of self-sustainment, and that was what made his mission so urgent. Regular people could trap themselves in similar situations all the time, but this had been given an extra nudge that made it far more serious than most people ever had to worry about… and Raz suspected that was one reason he’d been allowed to break the rules a little.

The pipe finally took a sharp turn into a wall, and a jar of fireflies set into a sconce lit a small landing just below. Dropping down, he surveyed his surroundings; the only hint there was more here than just void was the sound of dripping water echoing everywhere and a tiny square of light far below. Another pipe jutted out of the landing, vanishing into the darkness, and Raz tapped it with his foot. It clanged a little but seemed otherwise solid, so he took a few paces back and thought about how Lili had told him he’d make a great skateboarder once before taking a running start and leaping to give himself enough momentum to start sliding. As the landing went out of reach, Raz hoped he didn’t need that jar of fireflies to see.

After a lot of sliding around an apparently huge room and a few harrowing leaps of faith, the square of light had finally become a doorway and Raz was on the last pipe, headed straight for it. At least friction wasn't a big deal in the mental world; he was pretty sure he should've burned through his shoes by now—certainly in the real world that would be the case. Instead he just felt a little worn out from balancing for so long as he hopped off the pipe onto another simple landing just before the door. The yellow light reflected off several other pipes nearby, all of which seemed to connect to this room.

“Hmm… maybe it’s more like a boiler…” Raz wondered, and stepped in. His guess turned out to be wrong, not that it mattered much. The important thing was that this bizarre, whimsical machine sitting in the middle of the room wasn’t running. A huge sign surrounded by blinking lights on the front named it the Create-o-matic 3000, and there was a keypad and an output slot along with a maintenance panel beneath. He walked around it, ducking under pipes and tubing, but nothing on the outside looked broken or out of place. If only Sasha were here—he was the mechanically inclined out of everyone. Obviously the problem was on the inside.

Clambering through the maintenance panel, Raz was immediately enclosed by the ‘Create-o-matic’s nonsensical inner workings, and in some ways he was relieved to find they were completely made up. Knowledge of actual mechanical principles were useless in here: a team of hamsters turned wheels attached to gears that did nothing, tubes eventually connected to themselves, and Raz seemed to recall electricity had to be made by people—not one of those plasma ball things. But he knew Mabel wasn't one to care about how machines actually worked, just knew that her imagination was a silly one, and right now, it was missing a spark.

Digging through a tangle of wires, he found a missing spark wasn't the only problem. In fact, it was hardly the cause of Mabel’s distress. At the heart of the machine was a funnel where Raz figured on a normal day, Mabel could put ideas in to create new ones—fuel, basically. Only now it was clogged, piled high with merchandise that all featured Gideon’s face.

“Ugh, could this guy get any more selfish?” Raz sneered, pulling a plush of the kid out and examining it with disdain before sticking it in his bag, figuring Mabel would want to see the cause of the problem. Then, focusing on the pile of junk, he thought of the most satisfying way to get rid of it.

The heap burst into tall orange flames, quickly reducing into ash. The machine shuddered, and for a moment Raz wondered if he was safe—he could hear something whining as it warmed up, and the hamsters squeaked as they began running even faster. He hurried out and shut the maintenance hatch just as the Create-o-matic started up, back at full power. Raz pumped his fist and turned to head out of the room only to recall getting out the way he’d come would be impossible, and frowned. Considering his luck before though, simply asking for help just might work.

“Uh, hello? Mabel? I could use a way out of here…” he called, voice echoing around the room as he waited for something to happen.

A giant bubble squeezed out of the doorway behind him, its surface swirling with prismatic color, and wrapped around him. Then it floated up with him inside, and he chuckled while it carried him up through the dark room and out. The storm still loomed overhead, but the rain had slowed to a light sprinkle. He expected the bubble to drop him off in the park, but it kept going, all the way up to the castle tower where Mabel waited on a balcony wearing an eager look.

“My spark’s back! What did you do?” she asked as the bubble landed and burst in a puff of confetti.

“I found this machine clogged with Gideon stuff,” Raz replied, pulling the plush out of his bag, and Mabel recoiled, hissing like a cat.

“Evil! Get that thing out of here!”

“With pleasure. Wanna throw it for me?” he said, holding the loathsome thing out. Mabel took it and hurled the plush as hard as she could, sending it high over the castle. Taking aim, Raz hit it with a psi-blast, and the Gideon plush exploded in a cloud of stuffing and bubbling turquoise energy that evaporated—Gideon’s hypnosis was gone entirely.

“That was awesome!” Mabel cried, tackling him into a hug. “I feel almost one hundred percent me again! Now we just gotta get rid of this storm cloud…”

“Yeah… Aoshima tried to fight it but didn't have much luck. He actually… disappeared trying to help me.”

“Aw, whaaat? We've gotta fix that right away!”

The armed dolphin was instantly beside her on the balcony, and they hugged briefly before turning to face the storm again. Raz was glad to see things could be rectified so quickly— that cloud was probably no match for Mabel at full imaginative capabilities.

“So punching didn't work, huh?” she asked her animal friend, and he nodded severely.

“Nope. Not even a full assault.”

“Hmm… maybe we could blow it away, with like a hairdryer or fan or something,” Mabel wondered.

“I think we’re gonna need something really big and powerful—like really big,” Raz input, and the others nodded.

“Definitely. Umm… I've got it!” Mabel said, grinning broadly.

A shrill roar echoed through the sky, and a shadow passed overhead. Raz looked up to see an enormous dragon, but of course, this was no typical fire-breathing behemoth. Its body was shaped like a hairdryer, with a short, rounded head that blended smoothly into its neck and large circular vents on its shoulders; even its tail tapered into a plug. Coated in gleaming pink plastic scales, it soared on purple wings and gnashed jagged, almost cartoony teeth at the indigo cloud.

“What are you waiting for, Bernadine?! Sic ‘em!” Mabel shouted, and her dragon roared again as it flew at the nebulous menace and unleashed a stream of hot, dry air. The cloud withered under the blast, whole tracts of vapor dissipating as Bernadine systematically swept through until all that was left were a few pathetic puffs, and those evaporated on their own. The trio on the balcony cheered as the dragon gave a victorious bellow, then looped around to join them.

“Excellent work, Bernie. Take five. Actually, you too Aoshima, you’ve worked really hard today. Gold stars for both of you,” Mabel said, patting a gold star sticker on each of their noses and waving her creatures off. They nodded and soared off together, and the two watched them vanish into the sky.

“So… feeling better?” Raz asked, and found his feet leaving the ground as Mabel squeezed him in a bear hug.

“So much! Creepy ‘I-might-actually-love-Gideon’ thoughts are gone and the muse is back! I’m gonna make so much stuff now, it’ll be great.”

“Awesome. Well, I’m off to help your brother. Let me know if you need anything,” Raz said, but paused as Mabel frowned.

“I can’t believe I forgot about my brother… he’s in trouble too!” she cried, grabbling him by the shoulders and shaking him violently. “We’ve gotta save him Raz!”

“I know, don’t worry. You just rest,” he managed to say through being rattled around, and she seemed to calm down.

“Okay. It’s just, Gideon hypnotized him first, and I could feel what happened to him the whole time. He’s always been kind of paranoid, but Gideon made it like, a gazillion times worse, and the rock stuff was already giving him a killer headache…. I don’t want him to be stuck like that,” she explained sadly, twisting a bit of hair in her hands.

“I could kinda tell that’s what was going on… but don’t worry, I’ve helped people in a lot worse shape. He shouldn’t be too bad,” Raz replied with a smile.

“I hope so…” Mabel trailed, biting her lip.

“C’mon, we just got over being sad. Once I get your brother fixed up, I promise we’ll all go kick Gideon’s real-world butt, okay?”

“Oh yeah,” Mabel giggled, brightening at the prospect. “Sorry, it’s just, he’s my twin. I can’t help but worry about him sometimes. Thanks Raz.”

He returned her smile, then let his presence in her mind fade. Stretching, he pulled the goggles off for a moment and let his eyes adjust to a world that wasn’t full of neon color. Mabel’s mental world reminded him a lot of Milla’s, and for a moment he wondered how the two would get along if they ever met—famously, no doubt. He’d have to introduce them when this was all over. At least he seemed to be getting close; turning to Dipper, he realized the room felt quieter—the empathy loop had broken at last. There was just one more thing to do and then Gideon would get what he deserved. Raz cracked his knuckles and put his goggles on for what would hopefully be the last time today, and got to work.

--------

Norman woke, parched and a little dizzy. He was still exhausted, but at least the sensation of his mind tearing itself apart was gone. Rubbing his eyes, he looked up to see the kid he thought maybe he’d only imagined seated between the twins’ beds, deep in concentration. It was good to see he’d kept his word, but Norman couldn’t help but still be worried for his friends. Seeing them unconscious, limp…. He frowned, hugging his arms to his shoulders and heading downstairs, convincing himself they’d be alright. After all, Raz had helped him. From what few snatches he remembered, he’d been in pretty serious trouble. Lightning flashed through his thoughts, and he grimaced, wishing he was only remembering Aggie.

“Dude, you’re alive!” Soos cried when he noticed him come down the stairs, and lifted him in a giant hug. “How’re our other dudes doing?”

“I… I dunno,” Norman gasped, and Soos released him. “I think they’re okay though. Or they will be, Raz isn’t done yet.” He shrugged, but Soos nodded solemnly.

“A master at work. Check out this spoon he bent with his awesome psychic powers!” Soos pulled the utensil from a pocket, and Norman admitted it was kind of impressive how it was folded almost in half. But a creeping lightheadedness told him he had more pressing things to consider. Maybe there was something to his grandma’s favorite medical dramas after all.

“Cool. But I got up because I’m pretty sure I’m dehydrated.”

“On it!” Soos saluted, and hurried to get him something to drink, even if he could have done it himself. Taking a seat in the worn chair in the living room, he leaned back and rested, trying not to think about his friends or the pounding in his ears. The house seemed weirdly quiet too, even with Soos messing around in the kitchen, and he knew it was missing the people that gave it life.

“Okay dude, figured water would be best,” Soos said, pushing a glass into his hand. “I’ve been keeping an eye out for Gideon; little guy hasn’t shown his mug yet but I bet he will soon. Heh, Raz stuck him on his roof. Bought us a few hours so far,” the handyman explained while Norman enjoyed what seemed like the best-tasting water he’d ever had.

“Maybe he’ll leave us alone,” Norman muttered into his drink, but knew he was wrong. He just wanted to be able to catch up on all the sleep he’d been forced to miss, that they’d all missed. At least what he’d gotten so far was solid and dreamless— what his grandma would probably call a dead sleep. He chuckled to himself, then finished the water off and let Soos take the glass when he headed back upstairs. Nothing had changed in his absence, and he desperately wanted to know how things were going, but Raz was probably hard at work and shouldn’t be bothered. All he could do was stretch out on his sleeping bag and hope Soos could keep them all safe.

Aaand just in case any of you missed it, just gonna leave this here.

We will be streaming the episode tomorrow on Livestream, a day before it gets posted on the ‘net!  See you there!

You kids didn’t really think you all met by chance now, did you?

Not actually sure if this is done yet; I might add some things, but for all intents and purposes it’s presentable at least. :3

Mystery Kids: Ruse

What's this? Another short fic? Of course! Another silly one, though not for the same reasons as the last one. ^^ And... I guess I'll do summaries now? Summaries are cool.

Summary: When a tourist demands to see the local child psychic, Stan Pines isn't about to let his competition cash in on his customers. He has a solution, but the parties involved aren't entirely pleased...

------

“Dipper! The shelves in back need reorganizing again!” Stan bellowed into the rest of the house, keeping an eye on the bus full of tourists that had just pulled in. There was no reply, and the old man growled to himself, straightening his tie and flipping the eye patch down before heading out to greet his next victi— customers. He’d get the kids to organize merchandise later. With a flash and cloud of smoke, the show began. A well-rehearsed spiel kept folks laughing and spending their money before they had a chance to think about what they were really buying; though he was certain many came specifically for the tourist trap experience. People were weird like that, but hey, it kept his pockets lined with cash. What did he care so long as they kept coming for more?

               “And now, to your left you’ll see— ”

               “Is this where the child psychic lives?” a woman asked, interrupting his line, and for a moment Stan grit his teeth.

               “Please save all questions for the end of the tour,” he replied gruffly, and continued what he’d been in the middle of describing. “As I was saying, over here we have a creature so horrifying, the few who know its name dare not speak it. Ready your cameras folks, this is gonna be good. Behold, the—”

               “I want to see the child psychic! He’s the whole reason I came here, I‘ll leave if I don’t!”

               The grizzled con man stiffened and whirled on the tour group, squinting at the woman who’d interrupted yet again. He thought for a bit, mind racing as he tried to make the most of the situation. He saw the wrinkled flyer in her hand, that pale chubby face winking at him from between her fingers. He wasn’t about to tell her to take her business elsewhere, and especially there.

               “Will any kid psychic do?”

               “Well… I wanted to see this one, but…” She looked at the flyer for a moment, and shrugged. “I guess so.”

               “Anyone else wanna see the kid psychic?”

               There was a cheer from the crowd, and Stan saw something that always warmed his heart— people waving handfuls of money.

               “Very well. I’ll let him know he’s on, and you lovely folks make your way to the gift shop, down that hallway. I’ll be right back.”

               The group seemed agreeable, heading happily to the shop while he went in the other direction. Time to put Raz on the spot, whether he liked it or not. He was some kind of government agent and a performer, he could handle the pressure. The best part was that he wasn’t a fraud, and what better way to one-up the resident ‘child psychic’ than with an actual child psychic? It was perfect.

               “Grunkle Stan, the floor is lava!” Mabel’s shrill voice greeted him as he entered the living room. The floor was actually still forty-year-old carpet and boards, but for some reason the kids he was in charge of were perched in peculiar places. Dipper balanced on the back of the recliner, Norman was on a chair laid on its side, Mabel balanced over the aquarium, and Raz… was clinging to the stonework on the wall?

               “Acrobats,” Stan hissed under his breath, but the young psychic gave him a look. Stan simply returned it, and grabbed him off the wall by his jacket.

               “Hey! We were in the middle of some serious volcano exploring,” Raz protested, and the old man scoffed.

               “Yeah, well I’m in the middle of some serious tourist exploiting, and I need your psychic kid powers.”

               “But I’m not supposed to—”

               “Save it for someone who cares. I just need ya to read some minds and bend a couple spoons, that’s it. And look cute too, I guess. Your competition’s Gideon so it shouldn’t be too hard, am I right? Hah!”

               Raz rolled his eyes. “I might’ve been raised in the circus, but that doesn’t mean you can make me your personal sideshow attraction.”

               “Under my roof, under my rules, kid. Now get out there and give the people what they want or you’re outta here.”

               “Fine,” Raz huffed, and Stan let him walk. Rather than head straight to the gift shop though, they wound through the museum to a platform Stan had at times used to exhibit a ‘pre-teen wolf-boy’ and the ‘question baby’, and would now be the stage for the Shack’s very own child psychic. Pulling some free-standing curtains from one of the other exhibits, Stan set them up and adjusted the spotlights before shoving Raz behind the thick velvet drapes.

               “Okay, I’m gonna get the tourists and you come up with some snappy little song or something. I’ll be back.”

               “But I can’t sing!”

               “You can learn. Now get ready, you’re on in a minute.”

               “Ah jeez,” Raz said with a sigh as Stan hurried off to fetch the group. If he’d been asked to do an impromptu acrobatic gig, he could probably come up with something, but a psychic show? He didn’t know anything about how to put one on. Well, he supposed he knew a little; it was probably a bit like a magic show, minus pulling rabbits out of hats and sawing beautiful ladies in half. Maybe he could just levitate some stuff and the people would be happy. But that wouldn’t be as much fun… and Milla always said to make the most out of any situation you found yourself in. Raz grinned and sped off to where he knew Stan kept spare smoke grenades. Mr. Pines wanted a show? Oh, he’d give him a show alright.

               With the crowd of tourists following dutifully behind him, Stan returned and positioned himself just to the side of the curtain where it’d be most convenient to pull aside. An improvised speech already in mind, he hoped Raz was ready. Eyeing his audience, he noted they at least looked excited for yet another scam. Ironic then that this was the real deal.

               “And now, as requested, I present to you, the Mystery Shack’s own child psychic!” He drew the curtains back, catching for a brief instant that no one was there-- then the stage erupted in a flash and a cloud of smoke before he could storm off to berate the kid for leaving his post. Apparently he knew more about showmanship than he’d let on. As the smoke cleared, a figure slowly came into view, doing the classic psychic stance and goggles obscuring his eyes. The crowd gave a collective ‘ooh’, and Stan knew he was onto something good already.

               “My name is Razputin,” he began in a low voice that held the group captive, and relaxed from his pose. “I know what you’re all thinking-- I can’t really be psychic, I don’t look like a psychic, what’s with the goggles…” He paused to let his words sink in, because they were in fact things the crowd had thought, and the realization seemed to set in as jaws slackened and eyes grew wide. Mind-reading was pretty easy, and how he’d learned he was psychic to begin with; and now, it’d be his main billing. “I am here today to show you, however brief, a glimpse at the power of the mind.” Assuming his pose again and with a little concentration, he lifted a man’s camera out of his loose hands and took a photo of the group with it, then set it back without laying a single finger on it. There was an awed gasp from the rest, then others started waving their cameras and begging him to do the trick again.

               “Don’t you wanna see what else I can do?” he said over the clamoring tourists, and they went still. The answer was of course, yes.

               An hour and about 200 dollars later Raz took a bow, and the show was over. A busload of happy tourists rode into the late afternoon sun, and the Shack was quiet at last. Stan’s eyes practically glittered as he counted up the earnings, and he grabbed the psychic by his helmet before he could walk off.

               “You’re a goldmine kid, a natural. We are gonna go places!”

               “Uh, thanks, but no. I already have a stable, fulfilling career as a Psychonaut.”

               “Yeah, well, you could go into showbiz with what you did on that stage. I might incorporate you into the regular tour. Hmm, have t’ think about that.”

               Raz left the con artist to his ramblings. As much fun as the performance had been— he really did like making people smile and amazing them— he wasn’t so thrilled about it becoming a regular thing. Scamming people was an abuse of his powers, and didn’t sit well with him at all, but there was no convincing Stan otherwise once he had a real moneymaker on his hands. He sensed his friends had moved on from volcano exploring and trudged upstairs to join them.

               “Hey man, how’d it go? Stan can be a real pain,” Dipper said when he entered the room, and he nodded.

               “The actual ‘putting on a show’ thing wasn’t so bad, considering I’ve been performing most of my life. It was kinda fun actually, the people really liked it.”

               “Well duh,” Mabel said, flopping upside-down over the edge of her bed. “You’re only the most amazing psychic ever.”

               “Thank you, thank you,” Raz said, taking another elaborate bow and making the others laugh. “The problem is, Mr. Pines wants me to make it a regular thing now.”

               “Oh…” Dipper said with a grimace.

               “Kids!”

               They collectively flinched at the call, then got up and headed down to see what their guardian wanted, filing into the dining room where Stan had a notebook and an adding machine set up. He was looking quite pleased with himself, and the kids had a sneaking suspicion why.

               “Okay, so I’ve been doin’ some figuring. Raz raked in a pretty good haul, and his act beats Gideon’s by a mile. But then I thought, what’s better than a kid psychic? A kid psychic and a kid medium in a headlining double-act! It’s flawless!”

               “What?!” Norman exclaimed, his jaw dropping in shock. “But— but I can’t do anything!”

               “Sure ya can, you talk to dead people right?”

               “What, you mean like— hold a séance or something? But that’s not how it—”

               “Look, it doesn’t even have to be real. We’ll get you a Ouija board and Raz here can move it around, make the table levitate or something.”

               “Then why not… just have me do it?” Raz suggested, even though he was still against the idea, and the others backed him up.

               “The more mystery at the Mystery Shack the better. In three days you guys are holding your first show. Dipper, Mabel, you guys are in charge of advertising. I want flyers up all over town where people can see ‘em. Raz and Norman, you come up with an act, get some snazzier clothes and names, the whole thing.”

               “Names?”

               “You know, stage names. I guess ‘Razputin’ is alright, but no one’s gonna come see a medium named ‘Norman’. I’m thinkin’… Morty, as in ‘mortician’ or mortuary’. Sort of a play on words, ya get it?”

               Norman got it, but was far from okay with it. But the man’s mind was made up, and he sent them off with their new jobs weighing on them. The whole thing was unfair, but then, Stan wasn’t known for upholding equality or child labor laws.

               “This is ridiculous,” Norman mumbled, hands stuffed in his pockets and looking sullen. “Unless these people have ghosts following them I can’t do anything.”

               “‘Morty the Medium’ sounds like some kind of cutesy puppet guy. He’d be all sad all the time because all his friends are dead, and no one wants to talk to him because he’s all gloomy except for maybe this one other guy who always tries to cheer everyone up,” Mabel rambled, grabbing a notebook and sketching the characters in question before holding them up for everyone to see.

               “Uh…” Norman trailed, narrowing his eyes. “How about no.”

               “I’ve got it!” Dipper sat bolt upright, smiling. “We sabotage it. We make it go so badly no one wants to ever see it again, and Stan has to give up on it.”

               Three days, five mirrors, seventeen feet of fishing line, and two terrible stage names later the tourists left the Shack with pockets still at least half full. Stan couldn’t understand what had gone so horribly wrong. He could’ve sworn he had a superstar on his hands, a ticket to the high life; but now he was forced to watch as the busses and cars pulled away with hardly a case of chintzy knickknacks sold. He looked at the four kids gathered on the museum floor before him and shook his head, thoroughly disappointed.

               “Look, if you’re gonna make something terrible, it has to be so bad it swings right back around to bein’ good. Not whatever you did. Guess that shows me to put you knuckleheads in charge of anything again. Now clean up this mess, I’ve gotta come up with some new, not-terrible exhibit.”

               They watched their cantankerous guardian leave the room and waited until they figured he was beyond earshot to cheer and exchange high-fives, but froze when he stuck his head back through the door and eyed them suspiciously.

               “That doesn’t sound like cleaning to me…” he growled, and the group leapt to work. He watched them for a while longer, then trudged back to the living room to relax now that the business day was over. Undoing his tie and casting off the eyepatch, he leaned back into the recliner, dug out the remote from between the cushions, then paused as something thudded back in the museum and Mabel’s “I’m okay!” rang through the house, which set him thinking. The kids had looked awfully cheerful to be told to clean up the first time…

               “Almost like they were happy not to be doing that show…” he wondered aloud to himself, then shook his head. “Nah. Kids can’t act.”

I'm bored. People should totally send me writing prompts.

Just remember the only pairings I'm comfortable writing are canon (and noooo nsfw please), but I like having all the different characters interact, so I guess if you're wanting some fluff this is the place. :D

I'll open questions on this post in case people can't find the ask box?? So what do you want to read?