Story [Gravity Falls] A Shadow Over the Pines, One-Shot

Basically this is the first attempt at any kind of fiction writing for a while, looking for feedback to see how I'm doing
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Sunlight illuminated the tops of the trees deep in the centre of the woods. It was an average sunny afternoon, like so many others. What wasn’t so average was the creature moving through the trees. It was if a strange shape, almost imperceptible, was moving its way across the uneven ground. As it passed each tree, the bark would seem to twist and undulate behind it’s hulking form. The light from the sun couldn’t penetrate down to the forest floor, and it made a perfect place for the creature to hide. Most of the usual wildlife that called this part of the forest home were strangely absent, scared off by whatever this new apparition was. One small jackrabbit had dared to stay, either through some courage or just its inability to comprehend a thread. The rabbit moved into a small clearing between the pines, drawn in by a strong smell. In the clearing’s middle was a small blanket, on which was placed some berries. The rabbit moved directly towards the food and began nibbling at the easy meal. That was when the glitter bomb exploded in the rabbit’s face.



A short time later, a pair of gangly legs weaved their way into the clearing. “Uh, Mabel, I think we got the wrong creature.” Dipper Pines kneeled to examine his ‘catch’. The rabbit had been knocked out cold and was covered in shiny golden circles. The last few years hadn’t gifted Dipper with much in the way of strength, and he still possessed his ‘noodle arms’. He always dressed casually in a flannel hoodie, which had ample pocket space that he relied on. He scratched the tufts of stubble on his chin. “It looks like a rabbit, not exactly what we were after.” Dipper sighed, pulled a small blue book out of his jacket pocket and started to scribble some notes. It had a golden tree embossed on the cover. “You can come out of ‘camo mode’ now”, he called into the bush behind him.

Slowly emerging was the form of a 17-year-old girl, hair shaved on one side, dressed entirely in black, except for a few twigs and leaves wrapped on her head. Mabel was going through what she described as a ‘super dark and tormented’ phase at the moment, and had committed to it 100%, that same way she did with all of her brief passions. Black clothes, black eyeshadow, black lipstick. Dipper was just thankful she’d grown out of the ‘cover herself entirely in fluorescent clothing’ phase, which had made stealthy excursions nearly impossible. Her all-black gear at least helped blend into the darkness of the woods. Mabel karate chopped her way into the clearing and threw in a few kicks into the air for good measure.

“Hee yah! Ka chow! Did we get it Dipper!”. She glanced down at the shiny prone woodland creature at Dipper’s feet. With a big grin growing on her face, she exclaimed “Wow, it’s a lot smaller than I was expecting! This was an easy capture. We need a trickier mission next time.” She knelt down and gave a few pokes to the rabbit’s side.

Dipper huffed and briefly stopped his sketching to rub the bridge of his nose. “Mabel don’t poke it, it might be hurt. And no, this isn’t the cryptid, it’s just a rabbit”

Mabel’s grin vanished instantly, and her pokes turned into stroking the rabbit to see if it was alright. “Oops, I guess we forgot that animals like to eat too”. It had been Mabel’s idea to set a trap for the creature stalking the woods. A simple glitter bomb to startle whatever came to eat, which had the extra use of marking the beast in unmissable reflective gold.

Dipper put his journal away, having recorded their efforts to catch the monster so far. They’d heard reports about a ‘something’ spooking the local animals from a concerned letter in the newspaper. It was right up their alley, so they jumped in Dipper’s pickup and drove to the quiet town. Questioning the locals had led them to this stretch of the woods.

After a few minutes of the two teen siblings awkwardly standing around, the rabbit eventually regained consciousness. It shook off some of the glitter, then bounded off back out of the clearing. Mabel gave it a wave. “Goodbye little bunny! Sorry that you walked into our trap!” Dipper shook his head and smiled. Even when Mabel had tried to go ‘super-goth’ she couldn’t stop being her usual upbeat and caring self. Dipper glanced around the clearing, and briefly consulted a compass. “Ok, so we saw those strange scratches on that log a bit east of here. Since we haven’t seen any more like them, we should head back in that direction.”

Mabel sighed audibly and threw up her hands. “Dipper, we’ve been looking for this thing for 3 hours now, can’t we just go home”

Dipper frowned. “Mabel, this is our chance to find something concrete, finally get a proper catch.” For the last few weeks Dipper had been obsessed with tracking down something, anything, weird. He’d scoured local papers from all the nearby towns, consulted cryptid message boards (most of which were occupied with discussing which movie version of Bigfoot would win in a fight with Godzilla), and had even called the police a couple of times, asking if they’d had any ‘encounters with the unknown’. They’d just threatened to blacklist his number. Mabel knew why Dipper was getting so desperate. Now that they were old enough to go out on their own, he was dreaming of carrying on his Great Uncle’s legacy, finding supernatural societies or hunting monsters. Dipper just wanted one ‘Big Score’ to make his start. Mabel could sympathise, as she too longed for more excitement like they’d known during those summers in Gravity Falls, fighting dinosaurs, or fending off angry gnomes.

So, Mabel just sighed, and started to follow Dipper. “Fine bro-bro, we’ll keep looking for a bit longer. But we’d better not attack anymore cute woodland creatures. I don’t wanna waste anymore glitter.”

“When are you even gonna use it, I thought black was the only ‘deep’ colour you used these days?”

“Hey, I might need for another art project. You never know when the inspiration will hit you.”

Dipper just shrugged at this and kept on walking. He knew the creature had to be somewhere in this area of the woods, and he was determined to find it no matter what. He was so determined on scanning ahead for the creature, that he stumbled on a hole in the ground, and fell in the mud. He groaned, as he knew what was coming next.

“Ahahaha! Did you have a nice trip? I’ll see you next fall… AHAHAHA! I’m hilarious!” Mabel’s laughter bounced around the woods, and Dipper just rolled his eyes and picked himself up off the ground. As he was rising, he noticed something odd about the hole he’d tripped in. “Woah, Mabel, look at this!”

She bent down to examine the strange hole. “It looks like a footprint… with two really long toes!”. She started grinning widely, and Dipper could only grin too. “We must be getting close to it, we just have to follow its tracks.”

Brushing the dirt of his chest, Dipper stared at the surrounding mud and spotted another indentation made by the creature. He turned to show Mabel, but her smile had disappeared, replaced with a more uncertain look. “Dipper, if this is the size of the foot, then how big is the rest gonna be!?” Dipper started to wonder as well.



After 10 minutes of staring intently at the forest floor, and hesitantly following the creature’s tracks, the twins came to a huge pile of earth with hole as tall as Mabel on one side. Dipper got out his journal again and started sketching the mound. “Looks like some kind of burrow, must come back here to sleep at night.”

Mabel was idly glancing around the trees, tossing another glitter bomb between her hands. The sun was starting to dip behind the distant hills beyond the forest, and that worried her. “Earth to Dip-Dop, it’s nearly night now!”

“Relax Mabel, we just need to set another trap by that hole, then when the creature comes back to nest it’ll get stunned. Simple”

Mabel narrowed her eyes. “Simple like that time you were convinced that the librarian was a demon, so you had to purify her with holy water?”

Dipper blushed and looked away. “That was one time I was wrong ok! And at least the worst that happened was that her clothes got damp. This time I’m sure this’ll work.”

Mabel crossed her arms and looked doubtfully at him as he finished his doodle of the burrow. He tucked his journal away and took the glitter bomb from Mabel’s hands. He crept slowly up to the large hole and gently placed the bomb down on the ground, before running back to Mabel as fast as he could. “There, all sorted, now we just need to find another bush to hide in and all will be ready.”

Mabel started searching for nearby foliage, but as her eyes briefly passed across the edge of the clearing, she thought noticed something odd about one of the trees. Squinting back through the darkness, she saw that halfway down the trunk, the wood appeared to bend and shift, like she was staring through water. As she watched, the bark shifted some more before returning to how it should normally look. She was about to mention the anomaly to Dipper, when she saw that more and more of the forest behind him was starting to shimmer and change.

All of a sudden Dipper cried out and flew up into the air by the back of his collar. Mabel quickly traced the Shimmer attached to him and made out the rough shape of an arm. Dipper squirmed in the grip and tried to break free. “Mabel! Help, what’s happening!?” He continued to thrash about in the air, his arms and legs flailing wildly. Mabel noticed that the creature just appeared to be watching Dipper, almost studying him. Then one of Dipper’s limbs connected with the Shimmer (as Mabel had decided then to name the beast), and it let out an inhuman screech. Mabel threw her hands to her ears and moved back as Dipper fell to the ground. The two of them ran towards the burrow, hoping to barricade themselves in from the beast.

Feeling a tight grip on her ankle, Mabel suddenly fell to the ground. “Oof! Ah, it’s got me!” She kicked wildly out behind her, hitting the amorphous shape a few times before she was let go.

Running out from behind, Dipper stood between the Shimmer and Mabel, standing up to his full height. “Hey, stay away from my sister!”, he shakily yelled at the creature he could barely make out in the low light. Mabel had two thoughts right then, firstly that she was impressed by Dipper’s bravery, and second that he was a massive idiot with noodle arms, who couldn’t put up a fight with anyone.

Feeling hopeless, Mabel tried to wiggle away on the ground, when he outstretched hand suddenly felt something. She gripped it tight, grinned, and shouted at the Shimmer, “Hey monster! Eat some of this!”, before tossing the glitter bomb straight at it.

Dipper was caught in the flurry of glitter, blinded for an instant and half covered in the stuff. Great, he thought, this is going to be a pain to clean off. As his vision returned, he stared upwards at the full might of the Shimmer. There was glitter clinging to the beast’s whole body, and as he drew back his head in fear, Dipper saw a slender bipedal form, with a round head and sharp claws on the ends of its arms, standing several feet taller than his 6 feet. Suddenly feeling a lot less brave in the face of danger, he turned and started to run towards Mabel.

She was still standing by the entrance to the burrow, staring back at the Shimmer. “Mabel, what are you doing?! We’ve got to get out of here before it recovers!” Dipper started to drag her by the arm, but she just shook him off and continued staring at the beast. Dipper turned to see what she was so entranced by and saw the full shining bulk of the creature, writhing around in pain.

“Dipper, it’s so confused. We just came into the poor thing’s home and started hitting it!”

Dipper looked incredulously at his sister. “Um, Mabel, did you forget it’s a 9 foot tall killing machine!”

Mabel stared back at him defiantly. “You don’t know that! It could be a herbivore for all we know.”

Dipper shook his head and groaned. “Ugh, what do you want us to do then? Give that thing a bath?”

A sudden crack of twigs and the two turned back to the Shimmer, who it seemed had finally cleared the glitter out of its slit like eyes. Dipper whispered desperately out of the corner of his mouth. “Mabel, we should run now, before it lunges at us!”

Mabel continued to stand her ground, and angrily whispered back. “Let’s just wait and see what it does.”

The Shimmer started moving towards them, walking on its knuckles like a gorilla, though it was much less bulky. It eyed the twins warily, watching for signs of another glitter attack. As it got closer, Dipper started to sweat even harder. “Mabel, this is a very bad idea!”

“Shh shh, bro, you’ll spook him!” Now that the beast was closer, Mabel could see that its claws, though sharp, were retracting slowly back into the creature’s paw. The Shimmer was getting very close to Mabel, and she was starting to relax.

Seeing it suddenly raising a paw, Dipper pushed in front of Mabel and shouted at the creature. “Stay back!” The Shimmer recoiled slightly, but Mabel just shoved her brother out of the way. The paw came down on her shoulder and started lightly nudging her to the left.

Mabel’s eyes widened. “Oh, you just wanna get into your burrow! No problem!” She eagerly moved to the side, and the creature shuffled towards the open hole of its home. Settling in the middle of the mound, the creature began to lie down, and both Dipper and Mabel let long breaths out.

“Phew, that was close. We were lucky your herbivore theory was right sis”

“Of course it was”, Mabel said icily, and Dipper was taken back by how cold she sounded.

Then a grin started forming on her lips, and she started giggling “I’m always right bro-bro!”

Then Dipper laughed too, and the Shimmer just tried to ignore these annoying creatures.



The twins finally got back to their pickup, and Mabel was glad of a break. For the entire walk back through the woods Dipper had been scribbling notes in his journal and going on and on endlessly about the Shimmer. “And it seems he’s some kind of ‘Shadow-form’, like a Chameleon, but much more effective, and on such a large creature! No wonder he kept hidden all this time, you can barely see him! And being a herbivore means he wouldn’t attract any attention from wildlife kills. I’ll have to ask Ford when we next speak whether he ever catalogued something like this.”

“Hmm, oh sure sure Dipper.” Mabel nodded like she had been listening, then sat down in the pickup’s passenger side. Dipper got in and started the drive back home to Piedmont.

“Well Dipper, was that your ‘Big Score’ that you were looking for?”

“Hmm, I don’t know about that, it was certainly an interesting find, but I don’t think it’ll make headlines” Dipper smiled though. “At least we found something, now we know there’s always more out there.

Mabel grinned, happy that their mystery hunting days were back. She looked at Dipper, glad that he was happy with how the day went, then started to chuckle.

“What?” Dipper asked with a grin.

“At least you came back from today looking fabulous bro!”. Mabel gestured down at Dipper’s chest.

“Oh. That” His body was still encrusted with layers of glitter. He’d been so wrapped up in writing down his observations that he’d barely noticed. He picked up a tried to pick up a handful of the stuff, and then stuck his hand out at Mabel, getting glitter on her black top too. She just grinned and grabbed more of Dipper’s glitter until she was as covered as he was.

The two laughed together and shined gold as drove off to find more adventures waiting for them.

 

Any future chapters will go here:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17589107/chapters/41458232

I've already written a second chapter, A Trip to the Gym

 

Thanks, you're actually the first feedback I've got on this fic so far

I'm glad you like the main duo, I tried to keep them in character as best I could, it helped that they were very well defined in the show.

Let me know if you read the other chapters in the link (I'm up to 4 so far), I'd love to hear any thoughts about them.

 

Ok, so I'm up to Chapter 13 of this thing now (not a One-Shot anymore, that's for sure), left it on a cliffhanger for a 'midseason finale':
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17589107/chapters/41458232

 

Well, this is definitely far from a one-shot, it's now a 26 chapter, 110,000 word beast:
https://archiveofourown.org/works/17589107/chapters/41458232

If anyone wants to give it a read, now would be the best time, since it's all complete now. I'm working on a follow-up 'season' as well.