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spookysummersmores · 7 years

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Mind Heist - Chapter 4

Word count: 3,255

Author's note: Hey there! So sorry that it took me so long to get this chapter out; life got in the way, and once I actually did find the time to work on it, it turned out that this one required quite a bit of editing, mainly because there was some entirely new material I had to write in that was not in the original RP this was based on. All in all, it took approximately 3 days to finish editing this beast...lmao.

Not gonna lie...I got a little bit emotional writing one new part of this. Not to the point that I cried, but...my heart went out to the twins. You'll see why when you read, because you may find yourself engaging in a little game of 'Spot That Parallel'! ;w;

I certainly hope you enjoy, and I apologize again for the wait! Chapter 5 is coming soon!

Please don't tag any ships.

(Just a word of warning: there is some scary imagery and a detailed description of the affects of anxiety on Dipper, so if you need me to tag any specific trigger, by all means, please let me know!)

As Mabel approached the left wing of the third floor - mainly containing memories regarding Dipper's elementary school experiences - she noticed that all had suddenly gone silent. It was almost as if all sound, save for her own tiny footsteps, had been sucked out of the room. Her heart began to beat faster, and she quickened her pace briefly.

Then, something caused her to stop in her tracks. She thought she heard something - something minute and distant, something she couldn't quite make out - but she wasn't sure.

"Dipper...?" she called out meekly. "Where are you..?"

She continued tiptoeing up through various floors of the library, being sure to keep on the lookout for Dipper. Still no sign of him.

And then came the noise once again. Soft and indistinguishable as the sound was...call it twin instinct if you will, but Mabel knew it must have been significant.

Anger bubbled up inside her. "Bill! Wherever you are...what did you do with Dipper?!" she yelled out, her voice ringing through the unsettlingly quiet halls.

She certainly didn't want to talk to Bill if she didn't have to. He deeply and truly frightened her, especially after the 'Bipper' incident...and after all, she had just beaten him within an inch of his life just a few short weeks before then, so there was another reason she wasn't exactly comfortable facing him.

But she had no choice, and she didn't care.

Not with Dipper's life on the line.

Not when Bill had made clear to her weeks earlier exactly what he wanted to do to Dipper.

She was soon surrounded by the sound of Bill's maniacal laughter. It echoed all around her, bounced off of every wall and up and down each and every staircase, so that it felt as if twenty Bills were there with her in one room, closing in on her.

No actual answer to her inquiry came, though. He was taunting her.

Mabel became a bit scared then...and though she had certainly punched the lights (and sometimes rainbow barf) out of dozens of anomalies on her own before, Bill included, she admittedly felt a bit more vulnerable than usual without her twin at her side.

She swallowed her fear, however, and spoke up again.

"Bill...where's Dipper?" she asked for a second time.

Bill suddenly popped up in front of her, startling her. "Y'know, for someone who says she loves fun, you're not much for games!" he said as he spun his cane around his finger. Before she had a chance to do or say anything, he wrapped an arm tightly around her shoulders as if to trap her and began monologuing. "Let's think of this as...hide-and-seek, shall we? But don't worry...something tells me you're about to figure out your brother's hiding spot right...about...NOW!"

Suddenly, through Bill's cackling, off to the right of her, but far beyond the walls of the library...she heard a sound that nearly made her heart stop.

Her hunch about the distant noise had been right.

It was Dipper screaming for help.

"Help! Someone...MABEL!"

Mabel gasped. "DIPPER!" As Bill popped back out of view and freed her, she ran outside as fast as her legs could carry her, and she started bolting after the sound of Dipper's cries for help, letting them be her guide. "Dipper! Dipper, I'm coming!"

She wasn't particularly worried about watching her step in the process - that is, until she tripped over something and fell flat on her face.

"OW! What the fridge-"

Mabel paused to look at the object that caused her fall - a long, crooked, jet-black tree root. It seemed to be slinking along the ground as a snake would, and she noticed that, though the end of it was right under her nose, the rest of it was trailing along the ground before her. As she pulled herself to her feet, her eyes trailed upward...and what she saw about 20 feet ahead of her was the deep, foreboding, black-as-pitch forest it had come from. She stared worriedly at the deep dark woods before her, then glanced back down at the stray root at her feet and cocked her head at the sight.

She noticed that it almost seemed to be...trying to reach out and touch the mind library several hundred feet away. And it was something that certainly didn't seem to have a place in the library.

She didn't have much time to think about that, though.

It then started to move.

"AAH!" Quickly, Mabel thought of an ax not unlike Wendy's and attempted to chop off the branches that were trying to snake their way around her ankles. "DIE, you weird little tree fingers! Eat ax blade!"

Every time she lopped off a branch, two more, longer and more contorted, sprouted up in its place. Then, three more roots began to creep into view - much shorter ones, but they were growing longer with each passing minute.

Mabel happened to notice out of the corner of her eye that they seemed to be taking shape at times. In fact, she could have sworn that one took the form of...the clown from Hannah Fitz's second-grade birthday party?

That...sure took Mabel by surprise. 'What on Earth would it be doing in Dipper's dreamscape, though?' she thought. 'He stopped having nightmares about that guy like...a BAJILLION years ago, and-'

The Mystery Twin gears in Mabel's head began to turn. "Nightmares...nightmares! Wait a sec...!" she wondered aloud as she continued to hack away at the monstrosity beneath her. "If the big library's...mostly just got Dipper's NICE dreams in it - HA, nice try, sucker! - then...this must be..." Her eyes grew wider. "His real bad ones...all the stuff he's SCARED of! Aaaah, and Bill's got him STUCK in there!"

Quickly, she used the ax blade to cut the remaining brambles away from her limbs, vaulted over another before it could ensnare her, and conjured up a bunch of sentient scrapbooking scissors. They began to snip away at the roots as fast as they could so they wouldn't reach the library, but even that was only doing so much good.

"Good enough for now!" she cried as she ran toward the forest. "Dipper, here I come!"

Mabel couldn't help but wonder what exactly those rogue roots planned to do if they did manage to reach the library. If Dipper was stuck in the forest, then what the heck did they want to leave the forest for?

The most important thing was grabbing Dipper, though, and getting him the heck OUT of there, so that thought was placed on the back burner as quickly as it popped into her head.

Her surroundings grew darker and darker with each step she took. Soon, she could barely even see her own hand in front of her face, and she had no choice but to slow down for a minute. Luckily, she remembered that she'd kept a flashlight nearby her as she'd ventured into Dipper's head, just in case, so all she had to do was think of the metallic pink torch, and it clicked on as it materialized in her hand.

"Don't worry, broseph. I'll get you out of here...somehow."

She took a deep, slightly shaky breath, and she ran headfirst into the abyss.

Meanwhile, Dipper, trying desperately to get untangled from the last few puppet strings around him, was panicking. The soul-piercing, glowing eyes of the creature stared him down as it slowly and deliberately opened its hideous mouth, ready to swallow him whole. He had to shut his own eyes; he couldn't bear to look at it anymore.

"N-no, nonononono...y-you don't wanna eat me!" he cried out nervously as he struggled. "I-I mean, I'm...TERRIBLE at anything athletic; I can't possibly have much muscle or-"

Suddenly, he went silent. Far, far off in the distance...he heard something. But surprisingly, it wasn't something scary that time. It was a familiar sound, a comforting sound...and it was getting closer.

"M...Mabel?"

When he opened his eyes back up, the creature had...disappeared. Perhaps it had been scared off by the sound of an unexpected visitor, but he knew that it couldn't be far. That, or if it was a speedy little monster, it was long gone, and it had selected Mabel as its new target. Neither thought was a particularly comforting one.

"Okay...okay, now's your chance..." he whispered to himself. "Find Mabel; just go find Mabel..."

He struggled once more and finally managed to snap the strings binding his ankle. Picking his flashlight up in one swift motion, he began to seek out his sister.

"Mabel! Mabel, where are you?!" he called out through the darkness. "Can you hear me?!"

The flashlight didn't cut through much of the darkness at a time, but he could at least make sure that was able to see what his feet were treading on. As he ran, he heard the whispers of every anxious, self-conscious little voice that had ever spoken to him in times of stress, along with the occasional creature growl or sinister chuckle, and he was certain that eyeballs were staring him down wherever he went.

Mabel's voice beckoned him again, only this time, the sound was much closer. He could hear the simultaneous fear and relief in her cries. "Dipper! Dipper...I hear you; I'm right here!"

Dipper, heart nearly pounding out of his chest at this point, pushed himself to run faster. "Mabel! I'm coming!"

He jumped, though, then skidded to a halt and spun around. He could have SWORN that he had felt the unfortunately-familiar sensation of something breathing directly down his neck.

Not wanting to expose his back to the unidentified source, he began tiptoeing backwards as slowly as he could, shaking a little, shining his flashlight all the way.

He had no idea that Mabel, too, had felt a similar sensation, and she was literally right behind him.

So he tiptoed backward...and bumped right into her.

Two screams shattered the silence.

Mabel almost lost her balance from being startled so, but caught herself...and relief washed over her when she saw him. "Dipper! Oh my gosh, it's you! Are you okay?!"

The second he saw her, relief flooded Dipper's veins as well. "Mabel!" There were only a few seconds of calm, though, before panic took over. A whispered voice repeated back the words dashing through his mind: 'Wait, you shouldn't trust this right away. It IS her...right? Make sure; you gotta make SURE.' The woods seemed to grow darker and the atmosphere seemed to grow more and more tense the more frightened he became. "It...i-it really is you, right?" His voice shook as he spoke. "You're not, like...like that time Bill morphed into Soos, o-or-"

Mabel was startled. "Whoa, bro, no! No way! Why would you-" She stopped before finishing that sentence. "Oh...right. Spooky nightmare forest. Doi..." She looked at him with concern. "What-"

She then found herself blinded by a sudden ray of light.

"Ow! What the heck, Dip?"

Dipper, who had been standing there pointing his flashlight in her eyes, lowered it, and his face had a look that was both apologetic and thankful at the same time. "They're...they're normal. No weird tint or anything, and...and definitely not yellow..." The relief came back. "Haha...it IS you!" He then pulled her into a tight hug, and though she felt him tremble as he held her, she felt his tensed-up shoulders relax.

If this had been one of his nightmares, she surely would have turned into bugs, or transformed into the Shapeshifter and tried to eat him...or the ground beneath them would have disappeared, and she would have slipped from his grasp and fallen out of sight...

But she was still there, and she most definitely wasn't there to harm him. It was really HER. He was safe...even if just for a little while.

He was further reassured when he instantly felt her return the hug, and she began to comfort him, like a little mother, just as she did anytime he had a nightmare. "Hey...why're you shaking so bad? I-it's okay, Dipper...don't...don't be scared; I'm not gonna let anything hurt you. You know that..." Her voice was soft and comforting, though it sounded as if she were about to cry.

Once they let each other go, she made him look her straight in the eye. "Seriously, Dipper...are you okay? For reals? Nothing DID hurt you, did it?"

"Y-yeah; don't worry. I'm okay...or at least I THINK I'm okay. Don't know how I'm doing outside of here, though..." Dipper took a second to catch his breath now that his anxiety had begun to subside. "What...what are you...? Are YOU okay? It's super dangerous to come in the mindscape by yourself; there's nobody to look after you in here..."

"I know; I figured...but...I knew something was wrong! I couldn't just wait for help; it's BILL..." Mabel cried. "I made it safely; it's totally fine! You're the one in trouble!" A troubled look crossed her face. "Bill is here somewhere, though. I saw him for just a sec. So I don't know what he wants, or what he's doing with the kooky black tree things that are all over the place outside..."

"Wait a sec, the wha...?" Dipper looked confused for a second. "Y-y'know what? Never mind, we'll get to that when we get to it." He sighed and began to pace about. "I'm not entirely sure what's happening, either...? But...I do know this. Apparently, he's not the one that MADE me sick, but he HAS been giving me nightmares, because he KNEW I'd end up getting sick from not sleeping, and then I'd be weak enough for him to take me over. He wants me to help him with...SOME kind of diabolical plan, but he didn't give me any details...probably because he wants to try and trick me into thinking it's NOT diabolical..." He found himself running out of breath again after rambling like that, and he leaned his head against a tree.

"Whoa! Dial it back a bit, bro..." Mabel patted his shoulder. "This...all of this is cuckoo bonkers. I swear, when I see Bill again, I'm gonna...use him to eat guacamole or somethin'!" After a brief pause, her voice shifted from angry back to reassuring. "Ah...come on. We should definitely get to a better part of the mindscape. This place is giving ME the creeps, too..." She gently took his hand and began to lead him out of the forest.

Dipper nodded a little, trying not to show how scared he was. "Okay...w-we gotta watch our steps, though. Something...something's been following me." There was another moment or two of silence before he spoke up again. "You...you knew how dangerous this was...and you did it anyway. I can't thank you enough for that." He looked down at his feet. "Plus, I'm...really sorry...about earlier. With the...flashlight and all. I-I knew it was you deep down, but with...all this going on, I-"

"Of course, bro! I know you'd do the same for me." Mabel looked back and smiled at him, hoping to bring him some comfort. "And hey...no being mean to yourself! That was totally understandable; I'd FREAK if I ever saw...BIPPER again..." She shuddered at the thought.

The twins began to make their way back the way Mabel came, following the distinctive footprints her pink hightops had made. They quietly tiptoed through the darkness, doing their best to ignore the creatures of the night all around and keeping their eyes out for anything suspicious...or for an exit. They had yet to formulate a plan that would help them deal with Bill once they left.

It wasn't long before the young twins heard growling off in the distance behind them.

Mabel stopped dead in her tracks. "What the heck is that?"

"That must be what's been after me. If we're lucky, y-you won't have to see it for yourself." Dipper said nothing else about the matter, but internally, he began panicking slightly, and he started breathing faster. He hated feeling so vulnerable, but he just couldn't seem to help being anxious.

Mabel did notice how unusually frightened he was, but she made no mention of this. She simply gripped his hand a bit tighter, and the silent gesture seemed to put him a bit more at ease. Suddenly, her face lit up. "Dipper...look!" she whisper-yelled.

They exchanged a look of excitement, and they ran toward the sight.

There was a light at the end of the trail. They'd almost made it.

And yet, as swiftly and quietly as they had walked...they weren't quite fast enough.

In dropped the mysterious, spider-like horror from out of NOWHERE, it seemed, and it released an inhuman screech as the twins clung to each other and screamed in fear.

#gravity falls #gravity falls fanfiction #gf fanfiction #dipper pines #mabel pines #mystery twins #pines family #bill cipher #mind heist #chapter 5 #update #ichipine #collaboration #Danni's drabbles

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