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Harry had seen so many weirdest places in his life that he didn't feel entirely sure, by now, that any particular one was the weirdest. Even thinking it to himself felt somehow dishonest. That said, Gravity Falls? It was definitely in his weirdness Top Five. He had heard the stories, of course. All wizards had. Back when he was young and inexperienced, he used to think - like most people - that they were a mix of old wives' tales and made-up jokes that senior wizards used to troll their apprentices. By now, Harry knew far better than that, and he went into the town expecting every single thing he'd ever heard about it to be very much the truth.
The little guys in the mini-golf course were still a surprise.
The best part was that this shouldn't even be his job. The only reason he was here was that, by some ancient technicality that no one had bothered to explain to him, gnomes counted as the Winter Knight's problem. So of course he was here, trying to get them out of the mini-golf. Except these things he was trying to argue with weren't even gnomes at all. They called themselves Lilliputtians, and the fact that they had picked that name before he could do it himself only made him even more frustrated. He kicked a tiny pirate away from the Eiffel Tower and decided that, actually, this town belonged in the Top Three.
He didn't want to hurt the little guys if he could avoid it - they were annoying, but seemed pretty harmless aside from that. But he did need to make them stop yelling at each other long enough to figure out what was going on. After a quick look around, he came up with an idea. It wasn't going t be one of his greatest moments, but it would have to do. He was aiming for speed over flair this time. With only a couple of steps, he climbed on top of the Eiffel Tower like some kind of French King Kong, and once he was there he whistled really loudly.
The Lilliputtians actually did stop fighting and looked up. Huh. Even Harry himself was surprised that it had worked. Of course, now that he'd got their attention, he needed to keep it.
"All right, guys, if you pick a representative and tell me what's going on in less than two minutes, you all get free pizza," he said. It didn't even matter if they were capable of eating pizza or not. It was always a great incentive.
A bunch of Lilliputtians started shouting all at once, which was just what he had expected to happen first. They never picked a representative on the first try. On the other hand, he had a stroke of good luck here, because they all shouted the same thing.
"It's an ancient feud!"
"Well, you're on your own with that. I'm not messing with anyone's ancient feuds," said Harry. "But you'll have to do your fighting somewhere else, because I'm getting paid to clean up this mini-golf course."
"We know," said a tiny pirate. "We're paying you."
"To get rid of the gnomes," added one of the French guys.
"... wait. You what?"
"We've got gnomes bothering us all the time!" a little miner guy explained. "They say they want a Queen or something."
"And you couldn't have explained this earlier?" Harry asked. "Like, when I arrived?"
"We were busy," the pirate said. "You know, with our feud."
"Yeah, well. The pizza is coming from your payment. Now, where are those gnomes anyway?"
* * *
As it turned out, the Lilliputtians could work together when they set their mind to it. It also turned out that they had known where the gnomes had been hiding all along, which meant that by the time Harry kicked down the windmill, those little bastards were almost ready to run away with an even littler princess. Because the universe sometimes did balance itself, Harry managed to get rid of them with just some flaunting of his title and the threat to freeze their beards off if they ever returned. In the end, he got paid, bought several pizzas (for the Lilliputtians and for himself), and decided to stick around and have his late dinner at the mini-golf course. If he could get more info on this town, it might prove useful later.
"All right," he said, as he began to pass around miniature pizza slices, "tell me about this ancient feud of yours."
Once again, everyone started shouting at the same time. Harry should probably start taking notes if he wanted this to make any sense. Or he could relax and eat his pizza, which right now seemed like a much better plan. How many chances did he have to stop and slow down, after all? The great mystery of Gravity Falls could wait until the Lilliputtians managed to talk one at a time.