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Mabel Pines [10:35 am]: hey hey hey ritsu are u and ur older bro doin anything today??
Mabel Pines [10:35 am]: if u r then u better CANCEL cause we r goin on an adventure!!! :D :D :D
Ritsu squints at his phone, trying to translate the mess of English and abbreviations that Mabel has sent him. It’s been around a week since their second meeting at the diner, and more often than not Ritsu has found himself holed up in the attic above the tourist trap their “Grunkle” runs. He found himself surprised to find that Dipper Pines was interesting to talk to and they even had a shared love of writing, although with radically different topics. Ritsu could understand and empathize with Dipper’s fascination with the supernatural. Ritsu did spend his whole life wishing to have psychic powers after all, and Dipper has proven to have interesting theories about what little Ritsu has shown him of being an esper.
On the flipside, his brother has taken a shine to Mabel. Even though Ritsu often has to translate for Mabel, she seems to have taken it upon herself to teach his brother more English so she can be with Shigeo without having to have Ritsu on standby. He has his doubts about how much language is being taught in these lessons, however, after coming across the scene of Mabel chattering while painting Shigeo’s nails with glitter-filled purple nail polish.
“Hey, Ritsu, you ever gonna stop staring at your phone like a creep, or are you gonna answer it?” Dimple says, floating closer to leer at Ritsu. Ritsu shoots him a glare and texts a confirmation to Mabel before getting up. Ignoring Dimple’s mutter of “tough crowd,” Ritsu texts his brother to meet him at the road leading to the Shack before pulling on his hoodie and exiting the room with Dimple in tow.
A tour was leaving just as Ritsu and his brother (plus an annoying spirit) were arriving at the Shack. Ritsu could see Dipper and Mabel’s con man great uncle leading the pack of tourists into the woods, shouting about… rocks? He honestly didn’t care. Dimple snickers from his spot by Shigeo’s head.
“Reigen and that guy would get along like oil and water; wish he was here so we could introduce him.” Dimple says, and Ritsu can’t help but agree. A meeting between them would be highly entertaining, if not good for the world at large. Ritsu is about to disagree on principle, but Dimple is already floating off to follow the group. Ritsu thinks about tugging him back, then decides he doesn’t really care about whatever havoc Dimple might wreak upon the hapless tourists.
A crash echoes out from inside the shack, and the door flings open to reveal Mabel holding a large basket. She beams at them and holds it up. Ritsu can see her twin behind her, talking to the redheaded cashier and holding two journals. He leans to the side to try and catch a better glimpse of the aforementioned cashier, but the door closes before he could. Dipper hasn’t introduced them properly yet, but Ritsu can already tell how much the other admires her just from how he mentions her near constantly. He almost sounds like Hanazawa whenever someone mentions Ritsu’s brother, which… Ritsu blinks, then shakes the thought from his mind.
“Hi you two! We’re going in the woods to look for a pond that Dipper says has a thingie in it! I made us lunch since we’re going to be out there for a while.” Ritsu’s horror must show on his face, because Dimple breaks out into howling laughter.
“No, I made lunch, Mabel. You just added a container of sprinkles and gummy worms to the basket and called it a day.”
Dipper pushes past his sister with his head already buried in the red journal. He passes the black one to Ritsu without comment, and Ritsu takes a moment to flip through the first few pages. Dipper showed this new book to Ritsu a few days ago, and he can honestly say he’s impressed by the detailed notes on Ritsu’s powers Dipper has already filled the pages with. Mabel covered the cover and back of the journal with stickers of cutlery and breakfast foods, which was surprisingly fitting for Ritsu, at least. (This bit is so cute, omfg)i As they set off in the opposite direction the tourist group took, Ritsu takes the time to read the new notes Dipper had added while Dimple looks over his shoulder.
Ritsu can feel the shift in the energy surrounding them as they venture deeper into the woods. It didn’t feel overly malicious, but Ritsu still feels tense as it prods at the aura shifting under his skin. Shigeo doesn’t seem to notice, busy as he is talking to Mabel about knitting, so Ritsu tries to ignore it. The energy recedes after another moment, and Ritsu breathes out a sigh of relief. The woods felt alive in a way Ritsu has never felt before and he wonders if it's just because of how truly new he is to being an esper, or something entirely different. He’s not sure if he wants to know the answer.
“Okay, the journal says we’re about halfway there.” Ritsu startles at Dipper’s voice. The boy had barely spoken the entire walk and instead kept his head stuck in the worn journal, and Ritsu had already placed his bets on at what point Dipper would run into a tree because of it. Mabel pauses from her conversation with Shigeo and hoists the picnic basket high.
“Can we eat? Please? I'm so hungry, I might just eat your nerd book.” She mimes eating a book without dropping the basket, which was a feat in and of itself. Dipper rolls his eyes and stuffs the journal into his vest, and Ritsu wonders at the fact that he can’t see the outline of it through the material. How deep was that thing? Ritsu has the sudden urge to stick his hand in the vest and find out. Before he can, Dipper resumes walking at a slower pace, and the rest of their group follows.
“Yeah, the next clearing we find we can stop and eat. You have been marking trees, right Mabel?” The girl grins and brandishes her can of spray paint at her brother. Ritsu has to admit it was a good way to mark what way they came from, even if Mabel spends five minutes creating each mark and Shigeo waits for her before continuing, causing mild panic for Ritsu whenever he finds them missing.
Mabel cheers and surges forwards, dragging his brother by the hand. The two of them pass Ritsu and charge off into the underbrush, and Ritsu despairs for his brother’s general safety. Dipper doesn’t hesitate to take off after them shouting and leaving Ritsu to bring up the rear of the group. The forest hums with energy as he chases after his brother and… friends? Ritsu hopes so, and despite the wayward branches tugging at his pants as he jogs after them, he feels at ease in the woods for the first time since arriving.
The chase continues for another five minutes before Ritsu stumbles into a small clearing situated by a pond. Mabel and Shigeo are already on the ground, one laughing and the other panting from exertion. Dipper is standing over Mabel and poking her side with his foot and armed with a look of pure exasperation. Ritsu can strongly relate, considering he’s friends with one Suzuki Shou. Ritsu walks over and settles himself on the ground by his wheezing brother before reaching into the nearby picnic basket and pulling out… a sandwich stuffed with gummy worms and chocolate sauce.
“Mabel, why .”
Lunch is a rowdy affair, highlighted by Mabel shoving her chocolate monstrosity into Dipper’s mouth while he reads out loud from the journal entry on the kelpie they’re searching for. Dipper retaliates by flipping her grass-infested hair over her head and into her mouth, and Ritsu feels such an intense pang of longing that he has to focus on his own lunch until he can breathe normally again. Shigeo seems slightly bewildered by the twin’s antics. Mabel shakes the rest of the dirt and bugs off her face and bounces over to his brother, tugging him to sit a few feet away. Ritsu is confused until he sees her pull out yarn and needles to hand to Shigeo.
“She’s gonna teach him to knit, I think? They’re the beginner set so it should be fine. Probably.” Dipper says before reaching over and grabbing the small notebook resting by Ritsu’s leg. Ritsu contents himself with reading over Dipper’s shoulder as he picks up where he last left off with notes on Ritsu’s psychic abilities. Ritsu can’t help but feel a stab of pride when he sees how many pages are filled.
“Let’s see… we went over the weight limit, and how many things you can focus on at once,” Dipper mumbles, and Ritsu silently takes his pen away before he can start clicking it, “ we should finish off the general section with details. How good is your precision? Like,” Dipper pauses to grab a stray strand of yarn from the ground, “could you tie multiple knots into this string at once, for example?”
Ritsu blinks- he’s never thought of things like that before, to be honest. He was more focused on how powerful he needs to be, how much he can withstand, to think about finesse. Well, it couldn't hurt to try.
Ritsu lifts his hand and reaches with his powers to float the string from Dipper’s hand- who already looks thrilled by the casual use of telekinesis, watching with eager eyes. Ritsu closes his eyes, picturing in his head the simple bow he wanted to tie and how the ends of the strand would weave around each other.
Dipper makes an interested noise beside him and Ritsu blinks his eyes open to a perfect bow in the string. Dipper snatches the pen from its place beside Ritsu and furiously begins writing.
“Oh! Cool, Ritsu!” Ritsu glances over at Mabel and nods at her praise, fighting off a blush. She beams at him before sitting up and grabbing the picnic basket, rummaging around and withdrawing a pair of scissors. Both Ritsu and Dipper watch in bemusement as Mabel cuts multiple strings of yarn off a ball. “Here. Dipper wants you to test nerd stuff, right? How about you tie all of these at once!” Mabel thrusts the hand holding the strands out at Ritsu.
Ritsu opens his mouth to protest the possibility of tying so many knots at once, but the complaint dies in his throat when he glances at his brother’s face. Shigeo is watching him intently and Ritsu knows he could never deny his brother anything, even if the question is unspoken.
He sighs before extending his hand to the strings, allowing his power to lift them gently from Mabel’s hand. Five strings float in the air and Ritsu repeats the process of imagining the bow he wants to make of all of them. He doesn’t close his eyes; half expecting it to not work, and half hoping it will anyway. The strings are limp for a moment, then Ritsu watches in shock as they each begin tying themselves separately in bows. Mabel hollers and flops to the ground as Dipper stares in awe.
“Oh my gosh- wait, hang on, try different knots for each!” Ritsu obliges the request and is even more surprised when the strings straighten themselves out and begin again, each strand tying a different type of knot. Ritsu… is confused. From the way Hanazawa, Suzuki, and even his brother, talk about telekinesis and how difficult it was to do anything more complex than lifting and throwing objects, he expected doing something as precise as tying different types of knots in separate strings to be more difficult. Suzuki in particular always complains about the limitations of his telekinesis whenever he breaks into Ritsu’s house to do his homework, often trying and failing to use a pen to write his answers on the sheets.
“Ritsu, you’re so cool.”
Ritsu jerks out of his thoughts and stares at Shigeo, before blushing furiously and turning away.
Ritsu pauses from his corrections on Dipper’s notes and glances up, frowning when the clearing reveals no answers as to why he was suddenly pulled from his concentration. A few feet away, Shigeo has also stopped his shaky attempt at a scarf to stare at the pond at the other end of the clearing with a frown on his face. Ritsu couldn’t name a cause the sense of wrongness that suddenly permeates the area, until he realizes one simple thing: the background noise of the birds has faded away to eerie silence. Both Dipper and Mabel eventually realize that neither Ritsu nor his brother are listening to them, and they too stop their tasks to look around in confusion. Ritsu pays them no mind, instead following his brother’s gaze to the pond. It seemed normal enough, but if Shigeo thinks there was a problem, then there was.
“You can come out now. I can feel you.” Ritsu tenses at Shigeo’s voice and out of the corner of his eye, he could see Dipper looking at him intently. To anyone else, Shigeo’s voice would sound impassive, but Ritsu has lived through enough dangerous situations with his brother by his side to recognize the underlying threat in his tone and the steel in the gaze currently locked on the pond. Ritsu could feel the sudden electricity in the air, and he has a feeling that his brother was currently in a silent battle of wills with whatever was lurking in the pond. A long moment passes, and just when Ritsu is about to snap with tension, the water in the shore nearest to them begins to ripple. He nearly jumps out of skin when a gnarled hand shoots out of the water and grips the grass, leveraging the body it was attached to slowly out of the water.
“Human children. And yet, you could sense me. How… peculiar.”
Ritsu narrows his eyes at the old man that stops just as his body is halfway out of the pond. His entire demeanor is off, and Ritsu would think he’s an evil spirit except for the simple fact that both Mabel and Dipper are staring in shock at the sight of him. Ritsu could see Dipper in his peripheral vision stiffening and slowly reaching into his vest to pull out the red journal he was consulting the entire trek into the woods. Ritsu can’t see what, exactly, he was trying to find in it, and decides that it isn’t important; the malice dripping off of the old man in front of them takes precedence. The gaze of the man was locked onto his brother, who Ritsu can tell is tense with his hand slightly lifted and ready to call upon his powers at any moment. The man’s gaze drops to the hand as well, and chuckles. Ritsu winces at the gravelly tone and the way it makes his entire back seize with dread.
“I was planning to make a feast of you who stumbled so willingly into my territory. It has been so very long since I have seen a human, and even longer since I have tasted one. However, I have a feeling,” the man looks at each of them in turn before settling his sights on Shigeo, and Ritsu nearly snarls, “that this is a fight I will not win. I had thought the psychics that once patrolled these woods had died off decades ago… but alas, I was wrong.”
The man jerks and Ritsu’s hand flies up instinctively, already grasping at the power building under his skin, but the man merely flops over and lies on the grass. Ritsu watches in disgust as the body shudders and moves backwards into the water as if something were dragging it into the depths.
“Run along now, little psychics. I am not the only thing that lurks in these woods, you know.” Just before the head of the man submerges, it elongates and transforms into a… horse? Ritsu blinks, but the man is gone and suddenly he can hear the sounds of the woods beyond their clearing. The silence between the four of them remains, until Mabel makes a noise of disgust and backs away from the pond. Ritsu can’t help but agree, and it seems his brother does too, because he is already silently lifting the items they’ve strewn across the clearing back into the basket. Ritsu narrows his eyes at the show of power but decides against mentioning it. Dipper is silent, and when Ritsu looks at him he is staring into the forest pensively. The journal is resting open in his hands and Ritsu could make out the word “Kelpie” scrawled across the top of the page.