1982, Gravity Falls, Oregon

"Stanford?"

All that was left was his pair of glasses that dropped to the floor.

"Stanford, come back!" Stanley ran at the portal, banging his hands angrily against the metal. "I-I DIDN'T MEAN IT!" The fuel gage in the control room went to zero and the rest of the machine shut down. Stanley turned away from the portal and ran at the activation lever. He pulled at the lever with all his might as he exclaimed, "I just got him back! I can't lose him again! Ah, come on!" Stanley shouted when the lever wouldn't budge. "STANFORD!" Stanley's voice echoed through the empty portal hole.

"I'd lost him. I didn't know if he was dead or alive in some distant galaxy, but I knew his journal must have the answer to getting him back. Somehow."

Stanley quickly through himself and journal #1 onto the ground. He skipped over page after page until he found the portal blueprints on the next to last page. The last page gave Stanley very unfortunate news: 'continued in journal #2.'

~~~~~~~~~~

That night, Stanley had settled into Stanford's room, but he lie awake on the couch. Staring at the ceiling, Stanley clutched the first journal and Stanford's glasses.

"I didn't get much sleep that night."

Stanley held up Stanford's glasses to the moonlight and looked at them longingly.

"Or the night after that."

Stanley sighed and let his arm drop, glasses still in hand.

~~~~~~~~~

Over the next few weeks, Stanley had gone through loads of cups of coffee, taken into getting books about code breaking, and had gone through all sorts of Stanford's notes.

"I tried for weeks to turn that dumb machine back on. But without the other two journals-"

But most, if not all of his work, was in vain. Stanley pulled the activation lever he had been working on, only to have the portal spark and not work, letting Stanley down once again.

"-it was hopeless."

~~~~~~~~~~

In the weeks that Stanley had been working, he had been living off the food that Stanford had, but it didn't last any longer than those short weeks. Living like a hermit for a few weeks, he didn't know anybody in town, and he wanted it to stay that way as he walked down the street of town with his coat hood up.

"Finally I ran out of food. I had no choice but to go into town."

Stanley walked into the Dusk 2 Dawn, avoiding eye contact with any of the teens outside the store or any of the patrons inside. He picked up a loaf of bread off the shelf and went right up to the checkout counter. He wanted to get out of there and back to the cabin as quickly as possible.

"Just the bread, then, there, stranger?" Ma asked Stanley. "That'll be 99 cents." She held out her hand for the money.

Stanley had forgotten that things cost money. He dug through his coat pocket, trying to find some money, only to pull out a paper clip, an old sugar packet and a Mexican coin, not worth much in America. It was only 5 cents of a whole dollar.

"Hey, that's no stranger." Stanley looked up when a woman's voice started talking about him. He looked at the woman next to him. "That must be the mysterious science guy that lives in the woods!" Susan Wentworth concluded, catching the attention of every other customer in the store.

Stanley didn't realize that the townsfolk had at least known that Stanford was out in the woods. Although being a liar, he had no idea what to do or what to say. "Uh, n-no, no. You've got the wrong guy," Stanley said, pulling his hood tighter around his face, shielding himself from the stares of everyone.

"I've heard strange stories about that old shack," Toby Determined commented behind Stanley.

"Yeah! Mysterious lights and spooky experiments," Daryl Blubs added on.

Pa came up next to his wife at the counter and put his arm around her shoulders, saying, "Gosh, I'd pay anything to see what kind of shenanigans you get up to in there."

"Oh, me too! Do you ever give any tours?" Susan asked intrigued.

Now the comments had caught Stanley's attention. Yeah, he was broke. Yeah, the sciency stuff was cool. But did he really want to show off something that wasn't his own work? "No. Really I-" Stanley tried to say as people kept crowding. He took a look at the junk on his hand and sighed. He turned around and with a confident smile on his face, he said, "Yes, I do give tours! Ten...nah-no...fifteen bucks a person!" he said, taking the longshot.

Everyone in the store stared at him for a moment before cheering and holding out their money, ready for a tour of the old shack. Stanley couldn't believe his eyes when he saw all the money. He could pay off his debts, pay bills, his greed was starting to take over.

"Sir! What did you say your name was, you man of mystery?" Susan asked Stanley, coming up to his side.

"Oh, uh, Stan..." Stanley hesitated before finishing the name. "...ford. Stanford Pines." He actually felt wrong, taking his brother's persona. But if the people had already known that a person was out in the woods, who's to say that somebody didn't already know Stanford's name?

~~~~~~~~~

Stanley lead the group from the Dusk 2 Dawn into the shack, not really sure what to do. He didn't know the names of half the stuff in the shack, nor did he know how most of it worked. Winging this would've been his biggest challenge yet. "Step right up, folks, uh, to a world of...enchantment, or whatever," Stanley said. He walked up to a shelf and took a small box with a dial and two antennae from it. He turned it on and put it on another shelf, in view of everyone and said, "Behold, the um, nerdy science box."

Susan, who was leading the group, leant down to look at the box, but the electricity flowing between the antennae shocked her eye and she screamed out in pain. "Ah! My eye!"Her eye lid slowly closed shut, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't get it back open.

"Uh, I can assure you, that is in no way permanent," Stanley lied. He had no idea what the box even was, let alone what it did.

The whole group was getting angry at Stanley, especially Susan. "I paid fifteen dollars for this!?" she exclaimed. The group of customers started getting even more mad and muttering bad things about wasting their money.

Stanley knew that he was in a ditch and he had to get himself out of it quick, otherwise that ditch was going to turn into his grave. "Uhh..." Stanley looked around the room, hoping to find something to help him and he got an idea. "You're lucky you weren't part of the last tour group, um." As he spoke, Stanley grabbed a skeleton and started dressing him in random clothes that were around the room. He turned around with the skeleton in his arms, showing that he dressed it like a tourist. "They never made it out aliiiivve. Heheh. Right?"

The group stared with wide eyes, then started laughing at Stanley's joke. Stanley sighed in relief and smiled, realizing that he saved himself.

"And so I came up with a plan. I couldn't leave my brother's house until I figured out how to save him, but I needed to pay his mortgage somehow."

Stanley had figured out a game plan for all the sciency junk that was in the shack. He moved most of it to the basement so it wouldn't freak people out. He knew about the strange oddities of the town from his brother's journals so he started creating different attractions for people and set up a shop in the shack. And of course, Stanley came up with the ever-so-lovely, no refunds rule.

"For once in my life, people were actually buying what I was selling. And so the Murder Hut was born! Later renamed the Mystery Shack."

Over the years, the shack under modifications and constructions to come out as a complete work of abstract and terrible art. His style became different over the years as well, though his fez that he had bought stayed the same over the years.

"Finally I found something I was good at. For once being a liar and a cheat paid off. The old me was dead, and I'd faked a car crash to prove it. By day I was Stanford pines: Mr. Mystery. But by night, I was down in the basement, trying to bring the real Stanford back."

As per usual, Stanley waved to his last tour group as they left the shack happy. But when the door closed, Stanley opened a new one behind the vending machine, continuing his work for over 30 years.

"I couldn't risk anyone learning the truth and sabotaging my mission."

2012, Gravity Falls, Oregon

"So I lied to everyone: the town, my family, your parents, even you kids," Stan finished his story.

"So all this time you were just trying to save your brother. Grunkle Stan, I'm so sorry I didn't believe you," Dipper apologized, feeling guilty for all of his previous actions. Meagan put a comforting hand on his shoulder, well, the hand that wasn't on the broken arm.

"That's okay, kid. I probably wouldn't have believed me either," Stan said, looking down, almost ashamed of what he had done over the past 30 years. He did, however, feel ashamed for keeping so much from the kids.

Their moment was short-lived, though, because from upstairs they heard, "I heard talking! It was coming from downstairs!" They had completely forgotten about the agents.

The group looked at the ceiling in fear. "Oh no, it's too late, the agents are comin' for us!" Stan freaked out.

"What do we do?!" Mabel panicked.

"Aw, man. I was so spellbound by your dramatic tale I forgot all about those dudes," Soos said.

The cogs in Dipper's had started turning when Soos made the comment 'forget.' "Wait, forget," he said and looked at Meagan.

Meagan's eyes widened in realization as she caught what Dipper was hinting at. "That's it!" she exclaimed, as her voice had gotten better during the story.

"We think we know a way we might be able to defeat those agents!" Dipper reached for his bag and pulled the memory erasing gun out of it, giving it to Ford.

Ford had a broad grin on his face at the sight of the weapon. "Of course! I don't know how you got a hold of one of these, but this is perfect!" The group stood up from where they were and ran into the control room. Ford went over to the surveillance station and started pulling some wires out from it. "If I can just amplify the signal to a radio headset frequency..." Ford muttered as he plugged the wires into the gun. He looked through the viewing goggles to see the agents running into the shack from the totem pole view. "There. Now everyone PLUG YOUR EARS! GET DOWN! NOW!"

The group hit the deck and covered their ears, just as Ford had instructed.

Meanwhile, upstairs, Agent Trigger had ran out of the shack to tell Agent Powers about the basement. "Sir! Looks like there's a hidden door behind the vending machine!"

"Excellent! Get me Washington on Line 1! I've been practicing sounds of excitement for this very occasion." The two agents then noticed that the ground started shaking and rumbling. "Hey, do you hear that?" The agents turned around to face the totem pole, just to cringe and cover their ears from the loud wave coming from it. All of the agents heard the wave and all of them fell over, including the ones looking at the vending machine, which accidentally closed it.

Downstairs, though nobody upstairs could hear it, Meagan screamed at the impact as the wave hit her hears as well. As everyone uncovered their ears, Meagan couldn't bring herself to uncover her ears. "Meg? Meagan!?" Dipper turned Meagan over, careful of her broken arm. "Meagan? Come on. What do you remember?"

Dipper, Mabel, Soos and Stan all looked at Meagan as Dipper gently took her hands off her ears. Meagan kept her eyes closed, but she started to speak. "The next time any of you guys suggest to use a high frequency, please warn the girl with super hearing a bit more in advance." The group laughed at Meagan's response, knowing she was alright.

Upstairs, however, the agents were in a different position than Meagan. "What? Where am I? Why am I standing in front of some sort of goofy fun knick-knack house?" Powers asked. Yep, they all forgot about it.

Ford, knowing this would happen, had left the control room, grabbed a few random papers on his way out, and stood in front of the agents on the porch. "Stand down, gentlemen!" he called. "I've been sent with the latest intel from Washington. According to this very real report," which was really just a few of Mabel's drawings which we will not mention, "the power surges in Gravity Falls were actually due to radiation from an unreported meteor shower. A total embarrassment for your whole department. Luckily, I'm here to take this mess off your hands, but I'll need all of your... floppy disks, and 8-tracks...right?" Ford said, not realizing how much technology had changed over the past 30 years.

Powers, confused at Ford's terms, believed that Ford was from Washington and motioned for Trigger to take a flash drive labeled "PINES" out of his jacket. "Uh, everything about this case is contained on this drive," Powers said as Trigger held the drive out to Ford.

"Well, what are you waiting for, a kiss on the cheek? Get out of here before I have your butts court-martialed!" Ford ordered.

Still somewhat in a daze, Powers turned around and said, "Uhh, yes sir. Apologies, sir." He whistled to grab all the agents attentions and shouted, "False alarm, everyone!" On his way to the car, Powers had tripped over a rock and crashed into the car door, still not sure what was happening, which probably wasn't the best way to be to drive. All the agents did leave though and without too much of a hassle.

The Pines family, Soos and Meagan all watched from the shack window as the agents left. The group came outside to see Ford giving Gompers the goat the flash drive to eat.

The twins ran forward to Ford as Soos, Meagan and Stan stayed behind near the door. "Great Uncle Stanford, that was amazing!" Mabel shouted.

"Let's not go crazy; it was serviceable," Stan commented, still bitter about things. Bitter about how Ford had to be the one to save the day, and he didn't even thank Stan for bringing him back from the other dimensions.

Ford chuckled at his niece and nephew's excitement. "Thank you, kids, but please, call me Ford."

"Sure! Thanks, Great Uncle Ford. So, uh," Dipper started fumbling over his words as his inner fanboy took over. He took out a pen and notepad from his pockets and started clicking his pen rapidly. "Would you mind if I ask you a couple billion questions about Gravity Falls?"

Ford actually looked uncomfortable. He finds out he has a niece and nephew, and then his nephew just jumps right into the questions. It can be a bit overwhelming. "Um, well I-uh..."

"Alright, kids," Stan spoke up to the twins and Meagan. "It's been a long day and me and my brother have a lot to talk about. Why don't you hit the hay, huh?" he suggested.

"But, it's the author!" Dipper pleaded. He started clicking his pen rapidly again. "I've been waiting so long to ask questions about-"

Dipper got cut off by Stan taking him and Mabel by the heads and lightly shoving them toward the door. "I said. Hit. The hay! And make sure Meagan's arm is taken care of!" Mabel had a hand on her brother's back and one on Meagan's back, leading them back inside the shack.

"I'll just...let myself out," Soos said awkwardly. He sidestepped away from the shack and as soon as he was out of view, he dialed Wendy's phone number. "Wendy, I've got something amazing to tell you. Clear the next fourteen hours!"

~~~~~~~~~~

"Look at us." Stan and Ford stood in front of a mirror in the living room, looking at each other's reflections. "When did we become old men?" Stan asked as Ford gave him a side look.

"You look like Dad," Ford commented, causing Stan to cringe away from his brother.

"Ugh, uck, don't say that," Stan said and the two laughed together, just like old times. Unfortunately, that sweet moment had to end.

Ford sighed. "Okay, Stanley, here's the deal. You can stay here the rest of the summer to watch the kids. I'll stay down in the basement and try to contain any remaining damage. But when the summer's over, you give me my house back, you give me my name back, and this Mystery Shack junk is over forever. You got it?" he bargained.

Stan gave Ford a hard look of disbelief. "You really aren't gonna thank me, are you?" For a moment, Ford didn't even look at his brother. Then, his look of anger and silence said it all. Stan huffed in anger. "Fine. On one condition: you stay away from the kids; I don't want them in danger," he said, jabbing a finger at Ford's chest. "'Cause as far as I'm concerned, they're the only family I have left." Stan turned away from Ford and started walking up the stairs. He stopped to glance longingly after Ford, but turned back to the stairs.

~~~~~~~~~~

"Did you hear what they said?" Mabel asked Dipper and Meagan, as the three of them were eavesdropping. Sadly, the twins couldn't hear much, but Meagan could hear everything. "I think Grunkle Ford said they're gonna buy us puppies made of ice cream. Might be wishful thinking, though."

Oh, it's definitely wishful thinking, Meagan thought to herself. She didn't have the heart to tell either of the twins what she heard.

"I don't know if this is good or bad. I wanted to meet the author, but..." Dipper trailed off as he helped Meagan wrap her arm and put it in a sling.

"Yeah. I liked the way things were here before. Just us and stan and the occasional goblin monster," Mabel commented as she sat down on her bed.

"Eh, I'm sure they'll work things out," Dipper said, not giving it much thought.

Mabel thought for a moment then asked the question that was nagging at her mind all night. "Dipper, you don't think we'll turn out like Stan and Ford, do you?"

"Wh-what do you mean?" Dipper asked, confused at what his sister was getting at.

Mabel laid down against her pillow and continued talking without looking at Dipper or Meagan. "I mean, they used to be best friends, but then they got all stupid. Can you promise me you won't get stupid?" Mabel asked, finally turning to look at Dipper, who was also laying on his bed with Meagan next to him.

Dipper laughed a little bit. "I'm not stupider than you, dum-dum," Dipper replied. The two shared a laugh as if nothing was wrong.

"Good night, stupid."

"Good night, stupid."

Dipper turned off the lamp and turned away from Mabel, falling asleep, but both Meagan and Mabel were wide awake. They couldn't help but stay up in worry about the younger twins' fate.

~~~~~~~~~~

Meagan tossed and turned, not being able to sleep very long after what had happened that night. Finally unable to bare it, Meagan sat up, gently cradling her arm. She loved the younger Pines twins dearly, so she always wanted the best for them. She just couldn't help but be fearful for the way things would turn out now. After hearing about Stan and Ford's story, the idea that the twins might not be friends anymore was planted in their heads, and it would become a caution, and a fear for all of them.

Next to Meagan, Dipper groaned, feeling Meagan's weight come off the bed. "Ugh...Meg?" Dipper squinted through the dark attic at his girlfriend. "You okay?" he asked groggily.

Dipper could see through the darkness that Meagan had nodded, but he wasn't positive about her 'answer.'

"What's eating you?" Dipper asked, sitting up next to Meagan. Meagan shrugged as she confessed her worries to Dipper. When she was done, Dipper just gave her a smile, thinking she was worrying over nothing. "Meg, you don't have to worry about us. We'll be-"

"Don't say that!" Meagan snapped, earning a surprised look from Dipper. "Dipper, you and Mabel have the greatest siblingship I've ever seen. But we can't tell what the future has in store. Please, please, please promise me something Dipper."

"Anything." Dipper looked Meagan dead in the eyes.

"Promise me that no matter what happens, Mabel will be your most important priority, alright?"

"But-"

"Promise me."

Dipper couldn't help but realize that Meagan was asking him to put his sister above all else, including Meagan. "Alright, I promise Meagan."

"Good. Good, that's what I needed to hear," Meagan said and laid back down on the pillow.

Dipper looked at Meagan and gasped at what he saw in the moonlight. Across her neck were bruises forming. Dipper reached over and gently ran his fingers across the bruises. "Are they bad?" Meagan asked, knowing that she was going to have bruises from Ford for a long while.

"Not really, but maybe in the morning."

Dipper laid down next to her and held her hand.

"I'm sorry."

Now it was Meagan's turn to be surprised. "What about?"

"Yelling at you about the lab."

"Dipper, you already apologized for that."

"I know, I wanted to do it again."

The two laid in silence the rest of the night.  

a/n stop asking for updates. It's not going to help