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In the woods of Gravity Falls, a few miles just outside of town, surrounded by nothing but thick woods, sits a slightly rundown cabin with a large sign overcasting the words The Mystery Shack. The cabin itself looks uneven, crooked and titled, not quite parallel with the ground its on. A few letters of the sign are a bit more crooked, looking almost straight compared to the building, than others, particularly the K at the end is hanging on by a thin wire, looking one good whack away from falling off.
Inside the cabin, Dipper sweeps the floors, with nothing in particular on his to do list. He already sat out the residual peace offering to the gnomes in the back, though he is tempted to ask them to climb up and knock the k off the sign for good. He dusted. Cleaned. He scared off the raccoons in the back with a broom. Relit some of the candles that never seemed to widdle away despite burning for hours. All with a bit of bitterness in the back of his mind that Mabel is already out in town with Soos, probably having a fun adventure of their own. Maybe she won another pig - he really hopes not. Maybe they are stuck somewhere and need help. Maybe Gideon is annoying her. Or, most likely, she is already fawning over some random boy she found in town while Soos is playing video games.
Man, he wants to play some video games too. But he is stuck here. There’s only like one customer here anyway. He thinks bitterly. He never really understood how any of them fell for his Grunkle’s scams, but when he glances toward the sole customer, they are taking pictures with awe. None of this stuff is real anyway. Well. At least the stuff on display is not. The stuff in the back, he had his suspicions, and he knows for sure the stuff in town and in the woods is definitely real.
“Hey Dipper, look at me!”
Dipper’s bitterness softens when he turns, remembering exactly why he did not go out with Mabel and Soos. Wendy, he thinks with a sigh. She looks so pretty tonight. Wendy stands at the cash register,looking elated as she balances two pencils on the tip of her nose. Her eyes are crossed to focus on the accomplishment, her tongue sticking out slightly. Dipper laughs, but he is not sure how much of it is because it is actually funny and how much is because it is Wendy .
The back door slams open, hitting the wall violently enough to make it shake. Wendy’s pencils fall off as she mutters a “ oh man” in disappointment. Unknowing, and likely uncaring, that he had ruined Wendy’s ‘accomplishment’, Grunkle Stan hurries through the shack.
He barely spares them a glance as he quickly goes to shut the blinds and turn off the lights in a rush. Dipper really knows something is wrong when his Grunkle practically shoves out the only customer they had, kicking them out the door before slamming it in their face. After a moment of thought, he opens the door back up, hands the customer a business card, and then slams the door again.
“Go home.” He spares a peak from under the blind of the window, seemingly looking up at the dark night sky. “We’re closed.”
Dipper snorts, “Since when?”
Grunkle Stan barely spares him a glance, closely watching outside with paranoid eyes.
“Since Mothman came back to town, now shoo. Turn off all the lights on your way out and don’t shine anything too bright over here.”
Dipper spares a look to Wendy, who just shrugs. She is not about to complain or fight her boss on taking an impromptu day off, especially considering how rare it was. She hops over the counter with ease, and they both ignore Grunkle Stan in the corner as he grumbles over his unpaid debt. His eyes never leave his spot at the window.
“Hey, hey - the lights.” He hisses a reminder.
Dipper sighs, but obeys. He shuts off all the main lights, including the shop’s main sign, as he exits the shack and follows Wendy out.
“You ever think your grunkle’s gonna pay off his debt,” Wendy asks teasingly as she nudges his shoulder.
“Grunkle Stan?” Dipper snorts. “There’s no way. He owes like half the town money.”
And like half of whatever is in the forest, he thinks. Probably even half the state. Wendy just laughs, but quiets quickly when she realizes that they are left just outside of the shack in the dark. She makes a face as she kicks up a stone, watching it go flying into the distance. She lets out a small ow when she hears something in the distance that sounds suspiciously like glass breaking.
“So what do we do now,” Dipper turns to her for advice, but she seems just as bored and unsure as he is.
“Cow tipping?” Wendy suggests, but Dipper makes a face.
“Or we could do some more ghost hunting,” he offers instead.
Wendy scratches at the back of her head, “I don’t know, man. Last time it got pretty wild.”
It did, but he learned a lot so it was worth it. Wendy sucks at her inner cheek making a popping noise as she kicks up the dirt. She is more careful of the stones now, eying the distance as if she is waiting for some crazy townsfolk to run up to her and yell at her for breaking their window. She snorts. Like it would matter anyway.
“Maybe I’ll call up my friends. We can do something together.”
Dipper panics, trying to scramble for something that they can do. If he does not think of something soon, then he will have to share Wendy. Or worse, she will just go off without him. Her friends will push him out without much thought. Either situation is not great for him and he does not feel being treated like a little kid by a bunch of teenagers.
Something twinkles in the corner of his vision. Dipper looks up at the night sky with a squint. Grunkle Stan’s warning of Mothman is present in the forefront of his mind, but honestly the cryptid never really does anything but ask his grunkle for money; he also doesn’t remember Mothman being that fast. Which meant that whatever that small dot was that was soaring through the night sky, and prominently getting bigger, is most definitely not the cryptid ‘stalking’ his relative.
Wendy looks at Dipper and then tries to follow his gaze into the sky. It takes her a moment before she spots what he sees. Unlike Dipper, however, something about the vaguely humanoid figure soaring in the sky is oddly familiar. OH. Wendy’s eyes widen in realization as her face breaks out into a grin. She hits Dipper in the shoulder, nudging him a bit too hard, “Get ready.”
Dipper looks at her with furrowed brows, but he never gets the chance to ask what she means. The humanoid figure that is getting dangerously closer and larger, finally lands in front of them with a big flourish. Dipper reels back as a woman lands in a perfect blind landing, her feet firmly on the ground, a large smile on her face as she outstretches her arms parallel to the ground.
“Ah ha, I knew I’d find you somewhere! Hey there, kiddo!”
Oh. Wendy and the odd woman know each other then. That does not surprise him as much as it should; and he can not really complain about it since Wendy looks thrilled. Dipper looks between the two women for a moment before it dawns on him who she must be. Wendy has not talked about her mom often, but she has mentioned enough that he can put the pieces together.
When he looks at her a bit closer, he can see the family resemblance. Despite the woman having long, blonde hair (that looks way too well kept for someone who was just flying through the sky), he can see the resemblance in their face. Wendy’s bright red hair seems to be the only thing that she inherited from her father, everything else is definitely her mom to their shared petite, upturned nose and green eyes. Though her mom’s eyes are halfway hidden by thin framed, large, round glasses. Picturing this woman with someone like Manly Dan is admittedly hard. She is a bit taller than Wendy, but just as thin and gangly. She does not even wear the signature Corduroy plaid. A long green dress with swinging bell sleeves that practically swallow her up, paired with a matching beret. Her pristine white heels seem out of place in the woods, but she looks like she would much rather be relaxing by the beachside, not in the deep forest of Gravity Falls. The large, fat cigar hanging from the corner of her relaxed smile seems a bit more like what he would imagine from a woman with Manly Dan, but she seems too… normal (despite the whole flying through the sky thing). He can even spot the maple leaf symbol on the side of the large cigar, which seems a bit more what he would expect from a Corduroy.
But then he watches as the cigar hanging from her mouth goes down to a pulp, and she swallows it without blinking an eye before pulling out another. Yep, there it is. Nothing and no one can really be normal around here, can they?
“Hey kiddo!” The woman gives a big grin to Wendy as she pulls out another cigar seemingly from nowhere. “Who’s your little buddy?”
Dipper bristles at the nickname. He is ready to correct the woman, or at least say something. But he relaxes when Wendy just wraps an arm around his shoulder. She has the woman’s smile, he realizes. Both of their grins are large, inviting, and warm. Their smiles light up their faces and make them look genuinely happy. Nothing like Grunkle Stan's forced smile of all teeth that he gives the customers or his sister’s more careless, wistful smile that does not quite match her eyes.
“Mom, this is Dipper. Dipper, this is my mom.”
She sticks out a hand and when Dipper grabs it, she gives it a strong, wild handshake that is enough to make his arm hurt. His arm goes up and down violently.
“Mercy Corduroy, pleased to meet you! Any friend of my daughter’s is a friend of mine!”
The more she talks the more he can hear the distinct accent; her voice leans toward something more French-Canadian. Dipper pulls his arm away with a quiet bow , rubbing his hand trying to soothe it. He can see how she is with Manly Dan now; she definitely has the strength for it. He can easily see her dragging Manly Dan away by his ear or punching him in the arm with ease.
Wendy just laughs, “Why were you searching for me, anyway?”
“Ah, that’s easy kiddo. I had a question for you.” The cigar in her mouth wiggles up and down as Mercy speaks. “You and your little friend want to come with me to go blow some stuff up?”
Her glasses gleam, hiding her eyes from view. The smile on her face changes and shifts into something a little more unnerving. Not malicious, just uneasy. It reminds Dipper of a mad scientist, like she is about to bring Frankenstein back to life on a table. He almost expects thunder and lightning to crackle behind her when she grins like that, her glasses still dangerously shining.
Dipper pauses, scratching at the back of his neck. Going with the somewhat crazy woman most likely meant staying with Wendy, which is a plus, but it also meant going with the somewhat crazy woman who just appeared out of nowhere from the sky. He glances over to Wendy, who is wide eyed as she pumps her fist in the air, her grin more carefree and joyous.
“Heck yeah! Come on, Dipper! Mom’s got the best explosives!”
He does not have much of a choice anymore as Wendy grabs his arm and drags him away to follow her mom.
Dipper is just glad that they are actually walking through the woods instead of being shot through a cannon to get to the supposed demolition site. He is not sure he could take being shot through a cannon; he is not even sure how Wendy’s mom does it. But she talks about it nonstop during the entire walk.
Mercy is very animated about her passionate job. He supposes that Gravity Falls had to have some sort of demolition expert, but he did not expect it to be the same woman he also sees stop to try to pet almost every animal they see during their walk. He does not see how it connects to being shot of a cannon, but she insists that she would travel the world that way if she could. ‘Maybe even to space,’ she had said with a twinkle in her eyes, laughing as she did so.
“I would have offered my cannon to save us the walk,” Mercy comments offhandedly, “But I still need to set one up near the Mystery Shack. Just about got one in every other spot in town though. The one near the Greasy’s got me all the way to you though! And I do have one set up near the site already so we can give that a shot when we’re done!”
He is at least relieved that Wendy looks a bit uneasy about the idea of being shot out of the cannon, so he is not alone in his discomfort at the idea. Her mom, however, just lets out a loud laugh as she lights up yet another new cigar, doing so with a small flamethrower she seems to keep on hand solely for that purpose. He tries to count how many cigars she swallows, but he quickly starts to lose interest in the small activity as the shadows of the forest start to creep around them, seemingly following them everywhere they go.
The more the walk continues, the more he almost wishes that she did have a cannon near the shack to use and the more that he bemoans how cheap his Grunkle is to have only gotten one golf cart to ride aliens town - said golf cart having been taken by Soos and Mabel earlier, leaving no alternative choice aside from the cannon to walk. He has walked through the woods before, sometimes by himself, but usually with at least one other person. But it never gets any easier. Especially at night and with this long of a walk. Wendy and her mom seem unbothered, but Dipper can not shake the shiver that keeps going down his spine.
From the corner of his eye, he can just almost spot a figure that keeps darting behind the trees each time he turns to try to get a good look at it. Hide Behind, he notes. Or at least, he hopes that is what it is. The Hide Behind never seems to do much, despite the feeling you are being stared at. There are, however, other and much worse things that sneak around the woods and don’t want to be seen head-on. Things that do much more than just give you that shiver down the back of your spine and that feeling of being looked at. Maybe even things that are not in the book. Things that no one has even seen yet. He eventually stops trying to look when he realizes that it is probably best that he does not get a good look at it.
He watches as Mercy lights up her next cigar with a lit dynamite fuse. The longer she takes to do so the more Dipper starts to panic. But right before the fuse is done, she finishes lighting the cigar and tosses the stick of dynamite into the woods. Dipper flinches when he sees it hit a very large, humanoid treelike appendage that shakes the explosion off and moves.
“Does she - uh - typically do that,” Dipper leans toward Wendy, whispering the question like he’s scared that her mom will overhear.
“The dynamite?” At Dipper’s nod, Wendy continues, “Oh yeah. You should see her fish with it. Turns out fishing is a lot easier when you just, ya know, blow up the lake.”
Dipper really regrets asking, scratching at his arm.
“Oh man.” Dipper slaps at his arm at the bugs that nip at his skin, the bites already swelling and itching.
The tiny little red dots seem to spell out the word Scars on his skin, making him squint. Well that doesn’t sound that good. Wendy catches him looking at his arm intently and grabs it before he can stop her. She reads the bites aloud and just laughs it off with a shrug.
“Maybe that just means the bites will actually scar over this time.” Wendy nudges him before lighting up, “Oh! Maybe you’ll get some badass scar scar from the trip! Oh man, you’d look so cool!”
Dipper flushes, his imagination starting to run wild. He could imagine himself having some cool scar over his eye, maybe one that warrants a genuine eye patch. He shakes that thought out of his head when he realizes that it would just make him look too much like his Grunkle. Besides, scars look cool - the way you get them, not so much.
“Here it is, kiddos!” Mercy bellows out, hands on her hips as she observes the large building in front of them with wonder and excitement. “The old Gravity Falls observatory has seen its last day - well, night.”
The large abandoned observatory in front of them seems to have been untouched for a long time. The large dome is taller than the pines, seemingly going up forever. There are spots in the building that are missing, creating giant holes of exposed beams and wood. It is a bummer though. If Dipper knew about it sooner, he would have loved being about to check it out.
He spots a large beam fall down. Well. He would have loved to check it out when it was actually still in service anyway.
“Alright kids.” Mercy stands over one of her cannons, beside it a series of boxes and bundles of dynamites. “Come get your explosives. We’re gonna spread ‘em out then make this place go out in one big bang!”
Her glasses gleam again. He notices that they do that every time she mentions blowing something up specifically. She pops open one of her boxes, before handing out explosive devices. Wendy takes them eagerly, not having any trouble, while Dipper stumbles, struggling to hold onto to how many devices Mercy shoves into his arms.
“Go wild, kiddos! Remember don’t let them go off yet, can’t have the place tumbling down on us too soon. Oi - sacrament!!*”
Dipper spots a wild scampfire scrambling toward the devices. Mercy immediately spots it as she tries to shoo it away. It backs up a bit from her, its flames flickering wildly with a fiery hiss of the embers. It takes a cautionary step toward the devices again, testing its boundaries to see if it can get away with it. Mercy just continues to shoo it, this time reaching in one of the boxes before pulling out a spray bottle, presumably filled with water. She handles the scampfire with ease, squirting at it with the bottle. The fire hisses as its embers flicker with the spray of water before scampering away.
“Dang wildfires.” Mercy makes a clicking noise of disapprovement. “Things seem to like my explosives, gotta keep an eye out for them.”
Wendy gives her Mom an unimpressed look, “Or maybe they’re attracted to you since you keep leaving out offerings to them at home.”
He wonders what one offers to scampfires. He eyes the dynamite poking out from the box and thinks to the fact that her husband is a lumberjack. Either option he can think of might work. Even if he is not sure why someone would set out stuff for the wild, feral fires in the first place.
Mercy gives a big, unbothered grin, the large, fat cigar hanging from the corner of her mouth, “Ha! Maybe you’re right!”
She does not acknowledge the statement other than that, leaving Wendy to just playfully sigh. Mercy ignores her daughter, or does not even notice her rolling her eyes, as she digs into the boxes. She tosses Dipper an extra water bottle for him and Wendy to use.
“Either way, don’t let ‘em catch the fuses! I’ll catch up with you eventually, go out and have fun!”
Dipper flinches as another visible beam collapses and seriously reconsiders his decision to join them.
The observatory is just as on the brink of falling apart as Dipper expected. There are stairs and ladders connecting layers of exposed beams and uneven floors. He is not sure if the building just never even got completed in the first place or if the place is decrepit that it’s just decaying away. Dipper glances at the explosives in his arms. He is less sure that they even need them in the first place to bring the place down. A good wind looks like it could take the building out.
“Come on, Dipper! If we get this done, Mom will let us push the button.” Wendy urges, unphased by her surroundings. Dirt and debris falls near her, but she side-steps it easily. Dipper is starting to see the resemblance between her and her family more and more.
He takes a deep breath and then a big step, following after Wendy. He flinches each time he hears something scatter in the distance or any other type of scratching noise. Something creaks above them. Dirt falls on his shoulder and he tries to shake it off awkwardly.
“So, uh, you like your mom, huh?” Dipper tries to ask, eager to fill the silence with anything but the creaking under his feet.
“Oh yeah.” Wendy agrees immediately as she starts to set up one of the devices, “Mom’s the best. She’s really sweet, you know?”
Dipper supposes that makes sense. Someone in the family has to balance out Manly Dan’s, well, manliness. “I guess I’m just surprised she’s not like a lumberjack like your dad?”
“Psssh,” Wendy blows a raspberry, “Like Mom would ever willingly hurt nature.”
Dipper makes a face at that, thinking back to the tree that got very willingly blown up by her mother just on the walk there.
“Besides, there’s only three things she loves more than us -” She counts them off on her fingers as she goes, “-Cigars, being shot through a cannon, and blowing things up.”
Dipper uses the water bottle, a bit more frantically than Mercy did earlier, to scare away the scampfire he spots trying to hide from them. Unlike her mom, he continues to spray until the fire fizzles out completely. He eyes the wooden beams all around them cautiously, spraying a few wooden spots that just look a little off to him.
“Yeah, what’s that about anyway,” Dipper questions, “The cannon thing, I mean.”
Wendy shrugs, “Says it’s relaxing.”
He guesses he can’t argue with that, since he’s never really been shot through a cannon before. Wendy continues to talk, forcing Dipper to carry all the explosive devices as she takes them from him as needed. He wouldn’t mind being the mule if it wasn’t for the cargo.
“I don’t think she’s blown up an observatory before,” Wendy muses. “Let’s see… there was that restaurant. The gas station - that ended up being, like, a whole thing. An airport. OH! She blew up a canyon once, that was pretty cool!”
Wendy starts to head up one of the ladders, tossing the explosive devices to the floor above her as if she is not worried about them accidentally going off. She takes Dipper’s from his arms and tosses them up there too before he stops her. He sighs deeply before he concedes, following her to the next level of the observatory. Dipper goes a little slower, testing each step with a press of his foot before he puts his full weight on it. Wendy, however, scrambles up the ladder quickly, dust shaking off the ladder with each step.
“How many are left,” Dipper coughs, trying to wave the dirt away from his face.
“I don’t know, like ten maybe? You take that side, I’ll take this side.” She glances above them to the very exposed, very open missing ceiling. The night sky above them twinkles unsuspectingly. “Let’s hope it doesn’t rain, but it looks like a pretty clear night.”
Dipper glances up, but she is right. It does look like a pretty clear night, the stars all in clear view with no sign of any clouds. He makes a point to ignore the large dark silhouette that looks suspiciously like Mothman that flies across the sky. After all, he is not the one that owes money to the cryptid. He could use his cellphone and warm Grunkle Stan, but honestly, he does not feel like doing that to the man who was too cheap to get a second golf cart.
He just had one more explosive set up, the work being fast and almost boring. He is careful of every missing plank, tests each step before he puts his weight on it. He focuses on trying to balance on the places that feel uneven and trying to ignore the fact that there is nothing between him and falling off the edge of the level.
“Hey Dipper, come check this out!”
Wendy’s voice rings out, calling out to him like an angel. He quickly finishes up, putting the last device in the first spot he sees before trying to spot her in the dark. A flash of metal gets his attention and once his eyes adjust, he can spot Wendy waving him over from the other side of the room. Something metallic hidden under a sheet is beside her.
“What’d you find?” Dipper eyes the hidden object with a cautious curiosity.
Wendy’s eyes are lit up with excitement, having clearly already peeked under the sheet, but waited for him to do the dramatic reveal. “That’s the best part, check it out!”
The sheet is removed with a dramatic flare to reveal a large, human sized cannon, pointed right up at the night sky. Dipper furrows his brows, looking it over carefully, and glancing around to find any other clues as to why there was a cannon of all things in an observatory, but only spots a lone telescope nearby, pointed in the same direction as the cannon. At least that’s somewhat normal in an observatory. He looks toward the night sky, I have to wonder what they are pointed at specifically though.
“Mom is gonna love this,” Wendy gushes, “She’s gonna be so thrilled. It doesn’t even look like her other cannons.”
Dipper tilts his head. I guess. If Wendy says so, he trusts her judgment on it since she’s the one whose mom apparently has cannons all over Gravity Falls. Wendy is still gushing over her discovery, thrilled to have found something her mom would like, and spewing ideas of how they can get it out of the observatory for her to use. Something shifts in Dipper’s gut, uneasy about the whole thing.
He spots something scurrying around, the floor creaking, but doesn’t get the chance to warn Wendy as one of the scampfires tries to climb into the cannon. Wendy jumps back in alarm, batting at the sleeve of her plaid button-up to put out any stray embers that fell onto her. The fire falls into the cannon’s shaft, causing them both to look at each other with uncertainty. The fuse at the end of the cannon seems to ignite on its own. Dipper starts to reach for the water bottle again, unsure if he should be aiming for the scampfire or the fuse, when the cannon fires, causing them both to jump back in alarm as a wild flame shoots out of the cannon and up through the missing part of the roof.
They stand there for a moment, watching the flame go up and up and up before seemingly disappearing into the night sky. At its vanishing point, a star appears, twinkling among the sky as if it has always been there. Dipper grows more hesitant about the cannon, nerves bundling up in his gut, but Wendy’s eyes just seem to get bigger.
“MOM!”
“So one of them fires just climbed in,” Mercy recaps, musing slightly as she taps out the ash in her cigar before putting it back in her mouth. “And then whoosh! Right up in that night sky it went?”
Wendy nods enthusiastically, gesturing toward the telescope, “You can still see it up there too!”
Dipper is at a loss for words as Wendy and her mom go over what they witnessed to her. He watches as Wendy shows her mom how to use the telescope to share their discovery. He can still see it clearly in his mind - the scampire just there. In space. Still on fire. Perfectly fine, as far as he can tell since it is a fire. He looks up at the night sky with wonder, his mind not quite comprehending the what and how of it. He moves his hat aside to scratch at his birthmark before putting it back on, adjusting his hair back over the mark.
Maybe some things in Gravity Falls do not need to be explained. He would no’t even be sure where to start with this if he tried.
“Well, I guess that settles it then!” Mercy grins as she starts to climb into the cannon with no hesitation. “ Beam me up, Scotty!”
The dated reference makes him flinch, though Wendy does not even seem to notice it. She is immediately more visibly concerned with the fact her mom is climbing into the cannon that goes into space.
“Woah, woah,” Wendy’s arms flail, “Are you sure about that, Mom?”
Mercy pauses, already halfway in the cannon, “Sure. Why not, kiddo? Tell you what, if it makes you feel better, your little buddy can come along with me and you can keep an eye on us with the telescope.”
Dipper’s eyes are blown wide as the woman grabs him and starts to put him into the cannon with her. No, no no no no. He scrambles, protesting, but it falls on deaf ears as they fall into the cannon. The fuse at the end of it starts to ignite by itself, the spark quickly trailing up toward the cannon.
“ Attache ta tuque!*" Her mom cheers out.
Dipper screams. He screams until his voice sounds raw, squeezing his eyes closed, but eventually, he realizes that despite the feeling of air against his face, he is not combusting or blowing up or falling back down with a splat . Instead, it feels weightless. Like he is flying , going against gravity itself. He starts to smile. The fact that he must be far from the ground is in the back of his mind like a distant memory.
In fact, he feels rather weightless.
He opens his eyes.
Wendy’s mom is floating there, smiling that big, warm smile of hers. Her cigar is still in her mouth and she uses one hand to hold her beret to her head. Dipper notices in that moment that his own cap is floating just a foot away from him, the pine logo staring back at him. He snatches it back quick, forcing it on his head and holding it there as he looks around.
Where are we?
That is a dumb question. He knew where they were. He just did not want to believe it. But here he is. In space. There is denying, though he is trying. He is trying to come up with some excuse, some reasoning, something that actually makes sense. But that is hard to do when he sees that the moon is right there , about the same size as his own hat. He experimentally nudges it, poking it with his finger, and watches as it makes the waters of a nearby, similarly sized, Earth squish and wave. He giggles before covering it with a manly cough.
He glances over to Mercy, who is leaning against Mercury with her elbow as she lights her newest cigar on the fires of the Sun. When he looks closely, he can see the scampfire from earlier curled up and content on the center of the Sun. The creature seems to be perfectly okay with no intentions of moving. Good for it, Dipper supposes, since it seems happy there anyway.
Mercy blows out a large ring of smoke from her fat cigar. Dipper watches as it takes the form of a maple leaf, matching the symbol on the side of her cigars, and dissipating when it hits Jupiter. The planet seems to absorb the smoke itself into it. Mercy catches Dipper’s eye and gives him a big wave, cigar between her fingers.
Dipper waves back before floating around aimlessly. He takes a deep breath, surprised he even can, his body floating upside down with ease. It feels relaxing. Peaceful even. Maybe the most peaceful he has felt since coming to Gravity Falls in the first place. He can practically hold the Earth in his hands. He leans over it, watching the shadow it casts over its surface before pulling back. He can see the clouds hovering over the surface like fog.
Maybe we have it all wrong, Dipper thinks in amusement as he spins one of Saturn’s rings. Maybe all the planets really are the same size as we see them on Earth. He muses. Or maybe we’re just as big as they are. Maybe if he saw whatever Wendy noticed that made the cannon so different from her mom’s he could piece it together. But none of that seemed to matter that much when he gets to spin Saturn’s rings like a top, watching them go round and round.
Mercy flicks the ashes of her cigars over Venus. Dipper watches, the closer the ashes get to the planet, the more they seem to shrink. If he watches closely, he can see the small dots of ashes falling to the planet’s surface like asteroids. Mercy seems just as interested, leaning close to him as she watches them fall down curiously.
It seems like it lasts only a second and forever before he feels something pulling him back. Like a rope tethered to his waist tugging him somewhere. He watches as the scampfire, trying as it might to scramble back to the comfort of the sun, gets pulled toward the Earth, disappearing down to its surface. He shares a look with Mercy and she shrugs, only offering him a playful salute before she gets yanked back to the Earth.
He doesn’t scream as he quickly follows suit.
In theory, it sounded cool, Wendy would even admit that. She backed off pretty quick when her mom wanted to go into the cannon; she knew that she would never be able to stop her mom from getting into a cannon anyway. She feels a little bad for Dipper, especially seeing his panicked look for help before he disappears into the night sky.
But that feeling disappears when she spots them in the telescope. She sees her mom waving and smiling, though she is not sure if her mom is waving to her or to Dipper. She watches as the night sky seems to get darker when Dipper’s face takes up the entire telescope view; she really needs to get him some skincare products, she saw way too much of his face than she really wanted to. The more she watches them, the more she starts to think of one question that they didn’t ask before they shot off into the night.
How do they get down?
Wendy can feel herself start to panic. She is not prepared to explain this to anyone, especially her dad. She can not bring herself to look in the telescope anymore. Not until she knows how to get them down. The panic is just starting to set in as she spots two large streams of light in the sky. Two shooting stars. How ironic. Maybe she should wish for Dipper and her Mom to be back on Earth? She has no other ideas on how to get them down. Despite the ridiculousness of it, knowing that she hasn’t done it since she was a little girl, she wishes on the shooting stars for them to come back.
Then the shooting stars get bigger and closer. Wendy wobbles as the two objects clash into the earth outside, creating an aftershock that rumbles the ground, shaking everything in the observatory. She rushes out of the old building as fast as she can. She really hopes that it is not some sort of monster or something. She can handle herself, sure, but Dipper was the one with the know-how of that sort of stuff. He would know what sort of monster would come crashing down from space and hopefully how to stop it.
Man she really does not feel like dealing with aliens right now.
The sound of her mom laughing takes her off guard. Her shoes dig into the dirt as she slides to a stop outside. Her mom is standing there, fixing her hair as the butt of her cigar tumbles back into her throat. Dipper looks a little more frazzled, but oddly relaxed as he fixes his own hat, tucking his hair back into place.
“Oh hello there, honey!” Her mom grins, waving her over, “Looks like you didn’t need to send some sort of spaceship after us after all! The night’s getting short, if we want to see this place go up with a bang , we should do it soon!”
Wendy lets out a big sigh of relief and thinks maybe she should wish on shooting stars more often as she slips back into her neutral, relaxed expression. She shoves her hands into her pockets to hide the way she fiddles her fingers.
“We’re still blowing it up?” Dipper looks at her mom in shock, but her mom doesn’t answer as she is working on setting up the box with the button.
Honestly, it makes Wendy relieved that her mom is letting her love of blowing stuff up come first this time. At the very least, she wouldn’t have to worry about her mom coming over here again.
“Alright, kiddos!” Her mom steps back, “On the count of three, you both give that big button a push! You ready?”
Dipper is not ready, but he gives up quickly as the count down already begins. Wendy drags him over to the button, grin big and wide. He is almost bummed out to see the place, and the cannon, go. But he guesses that it would be the best thing to do. He shivers at the idea of Mabel stumbling into the cannon and messing around in space.
“1, 2, 3!”
They push the button together, and then immediately go to plug their ears. The observatory tumbles down with a loud rumble. Dipper watches it fall with a melancholic smile before glancing toward Wendy’s mom, her glasses gleaming as she watches the fires start. He’s not even too startled when she eases her way over to the large explosive fire, holding her next cigar over a piece of fiery debris.
Well. he guesses that Mrs. Corduroy was right about one thing.
It was relaxing being shot out of a cannon.
*Sacrament - dammit
* Attache ta tuque - hang on tight