#dipper shall never fly a spaceship

[gosecretscribbles]

Diptember 2018 Week 2: Supernatural

“DipperDipperDipper!” Mabel raced up to him, her face shining with excitement, weaving through piles of used clothes and knick knacks.  She'd spotted a yard sale on their way to school and insisted they check it out.  “Look what I found!”

“Is it something that will make us get to school faster?” Dipper asked.

“It's a music box – look!”  She held up her hands.  Resting on her palms was a pale green music box shaped like an egg, with a thin gold line running lengthwise along the seam and several highly stylized flowers carved into the top.  

He squinted at it.  “Those flowers look weirdly familiar...”

“The lady said it never worked, so she gave it to me for free!”  She grinned slyly.  “I'm thinkin' if I made a certain culinary creation, my nerdy twin bro would be able to fix it right up!”

“If you're talking marshmallow grilled cheese then we so have a deal.”

He started on the music box late that night, after they'd finished homework and their parents had turned in.  (They knew Dipper always stayed up late, and they'd long since given up trying to get him to sleep at a timely hour.)  Waddles had stayed up with him for a while, probably because he thought it was an Easter Egg like the ones Mabel had given him to snack on.  But the pig had long since retired to its bed in the corner, leaving Dipper alone to work at it.  And the more he did, the more frustrated he became.

“Dipprrr?” Mabel slurred, waking up after he'd nearly stabbed himself with a screwdriver.  “Wut're you doin'?”

“Are you sure this thing is a music box?” Dipper asked, sitting on his bed and glaring at the thing.  “It has no hinges, no nails, no clasp – and yet there is a tiny gap all the way around the seam except the long part so there really should be hinges and there aren't!”

“Pretty sure.”  Mabel rolled over and rested her chin on the rail of the top bunk.  “I mean, I know the lady said it didn't work, but when I shook it it made this really pretty chiming sound.”

Dipper held it up to his ear and shook it.  “I don't hear anything.”

“Well not like that,” she said with a snort.  She climbed down the ladder and he handed it over.  “Here – you gotta shake it like this!”

And she immediately started shaking it like a maraca.

Dipper huffed.  “Mabel, what are you even –”

“TADA!”

She shoved the box right next to his ear.  He jumped, startled, but then he heard it: a thin, silvery tune, a breeze wafting through slender chimes.  But he'd no sooner heard it than it faded completely.

“It stopped – can you do it again?” Dipper asked.  

Mabel gasped with delight.  “An invitation to dance?!  Why Dipper I'd be delighted!”  She grabbed Dipper's hand, yanked him out of bed and started pulling him around the room, laughing.  Dipper allowed it, half-smiling at his sister's typically crazy antics.  The silvery sound grew in volume. Waddles woke up and snorted curiously.  

Dipper grinned.  “Amazing!  It must be motion-activated.”

“More like fun activated!”

Dipper laughed – until he noticed something else about the music box.

“Mabel, keep dancing, but look!”

She looked.  It was hard to tell because she had to keep shaking it up and down, but the weird flowers on the lid were changing shape.  For a second Dipper thought the flowers might be 'dancing', too, but then the egg started glowing a pale yellow, and the slender lines of the flowers became more and more familiar, until they almost looked like –

“Alien code!” Dipper shouted, just as the egg turned red.  The soft silver chimes abruptly changed to a loud claxon blare, so loud Dipper could feel it in his teeth.   Waddles squealed and tried to burrow under the bunk beds.  

Mabel clapped her hands to her ears, dropping the egg.  “OW!  WHAT IS THAT?!”

“I DON'T KNOW!” Dipper shouted back.  He tried to cover it with a pillow, then two pillows and himself, then just plain smashing it with a hammer.  But he couldn't turn it off or even quiet the sound. Their parents slept like the dead, but the sound was so bad it was bound to wake them up eventually!

“TURN IT OFF!” Mabel shouted.

“I'M TRYING!”  He looked around quickly and grabbed his journal – he'd started one this summer and included a lot of the codes he'd found in Gravity Falls.  He hurried to flip to the page where he'd stuck a photo of himself and the alien text he'd seen at Crash Site Omega. “OKAY!” he shouted.  “I THINK I CAN DECODE THE TEXT!  IT SAYS – uh...”  He double-checked the translation.  “IT SAYS 'REMOTE SHIP ALARM'?”

Suddenly the klaxon shifted to a high-pitch screech, then broke off into someone speaking.  

“– told you we dropped it around here somewhere!” said a voice, which sounded very oddly like a rubber duck.  “If you hadn't forgotten to charge the battery we would've found it ages ago!”

“Oh, don't blame me just because you can't keep track of things,” grumbled a second voice.  “We don't even need it, we always find our ship without it.”

“Don't forget that one horror story about the ship that never returned!  If we didn't find this one I was going to fly us back to Centaur A for a new remote!”

“I'm not going back there, that wefleki kept looking at me funny –”

“Uh, hello?” Dipper said.

There was a brief moment of silence.

“Oh great, someone found it!” the first voice burst out.  “Listen up, whoever you are, drop what you're holding and walk away, or we'll – we'll alien abduct you so hard you'll be seeing lights in the sky for years to come!”

“You mean, like the stars?” Mabel asked.

“Ye – I mean no!”

“And who made a remote control that's dance-activated, because that is awesome engineering!”

“It's not 'dance activated,' the voice said indignantly.  “When else would you flail your arms except in panic because you can't find where you parked in the intergalactic space mall?”

“Wait, are you really aliens?” Dipper said, leaning forward.  “Which star do you come from?  Are you here on vacation?  Do you have a spaceship?  Can I see it?”

“He actually really wants to drive it,” Mabel told the egg.

“And can I drive it just for like two seconds!?”

“Wait,” said the second voice.  “Are you 'Dipper-bottom-line-Pines-bottom-line-Paranormal-bottom-line-Investigator'?”

“Yes! Yes, that's me!”

“I've seen your petition online!”  There was a clear smile in his voice. “I was impressed that you were able to outmaneuver the drone.  That kind of flying definitely comes in handy when you're flying through clouds of carnivorous space comets.”

Dipper leaned forward eagerly.  “And I can totally do that!  I think. D'you want a demonstration?  I can show you how!”  

“Or you could just buy crunchy peanut butter,” Mabel said.  

Dipper elbowed her and made a sh!!! motion.

But the second alien sounded intrigued.  “Peanut butter, you say?”

“Sure! Just throw a scoop at any ol' space rock, and they'll eat it because peanut butter, and then their jaws'll get stuck together and presto!  No more ship-munching!”  She paused.  “Unless they're allergic to peanuts, in which case molasses should do the trick.”

“Fascinating.”

“But,” Dipper cut in, “if you still wanted those extremely high quality aerial lessons as, you know, back-up, I could totally help you out with that!”

The alien hesitated.

“Well I'm doing it,” the first voice said finally.  “The peanut butter plan is sheer brilliance, but I want a back-up plan in case it doesn't work out.”

“As long as it gets me out of visiting Centauri A,” the second one grumbled.  

“Stay where you are,” the first alien told them.  “We'll home in on the remotes signal!”

Dipper's face lit up with excitement.  He looked up, caught Mabel's eye, and the two of them dashed outside.  Waddles was close behind.  

The backyard quiet devoid of life, save for the creepy-looking gnome in the rose bushes.  The twins looked up.  One of the stars in the sky was growing brighter by the second, until a disk-shaped spaceship the size of a city block was descending slowly above their house. Waddles oinked at it.  

“Omigosh, look!” Mabel squealed.  As the UFO put on its brakes, jets of superheated gas hissed out of the vents on the bottom, searing strange designs into the grass.  “It's lawn art, Dipper! Space-shippy lawn art!”

“And it just melted that creepy garden gnome,” Dipper said giddily, still clutching the spaceship's remote.  He stood back a little farther to let the bottom dome of the ship touch down.  His parents would probably think they pulled some crazy prank on the lawn, but who cared?  He was about to drive a spaceship – an actual, real-life, still-functioning space ship, with actual aliens inside of it!  He was about to make First Contact, at least in this dimension!  

He was so thrilled he was practically dancing on the spot, clutching the space egg with excitement.  “Oh man, oh man, this is gonna be so great, I can't wait to tell Great-Uncle Ford, I've gotta take pictures –”

Abruptly the spaceship stopped descending.  The remote glowed.  “Did you say 'Ford'?” the first alien asked.

Dipper blinked.  “Uh – yeah?”

“Ford Pines, the human?”

“Um, yeah!”

“Four limbs, one head, twelve phalanges, also known as Sixer – that Ford?”

Mabel gasped.  “OMG you know him!!  Are you his interdimensional space buddies?!”

“Oh no we're not!” the alien barked, and the whole spaceship turned red.  Metal cylinders jutted from the ship, and before he could blink, a wall of red laser fire light up the grass at his feet.  He and Mabel jumped back with a yell, nearly hitting Waddles.  The pig squealed and pressed into Mabel's leg.  

“HEY! What was that for?!” Dipper demanded.

“We're not letting the family of an interdimensional criminal aboard just so he can steal our ship for spare parts!” the alien shouted.  

“Interdi – but – we're not criminals!”

“Tell that to all the people he stole from to build his so-called quantum death thingie!” the second alien spat.  

“You're not so much as touching our ship!” the first alien growled.  “And forget trying some other alien marks – we'll be making a very strongly worded post on the Space Lizard Forum, warning everyone about exactly what kind of scam you're trying to pull!”

“But – but –”

The spaceship fired, so suddenly that Dipper, Mabel, and Waddles were all thrown tumbling back onto the porch.  Heat seared their faces and light flashed through their closed eyelids.  Waddles squealed.  

When Dipper opened his eyes, the lawn was a charred mess, and it looked like his mom's roses had melted right along with the creepy old gnome.  

He stared at the carnage.  “Tell me that didn't just happen.”

“Well...” Mabel sat up slowly, one arm around Waddles.  “I could, except that I'm trying to wrap my brain around the fact that both of our Grunkles have actual criminal records.  D'you think crime runs in the family?”

“I think the aliens thought it did,” he said numbly.  “He did say Ford, right?  Like actually Ford, not Stan pretending to be Ford?  I didn't even know Ford had a criminal record!

“Well if crime is inherited then I wanna be an art thief, or – oh!  Maybe a masked vigilante!  With rainbow powers!!  Rainbow powers of JUSTICE!”

He groaned.  “I was this close to being in an alien spaceship...”

“Hey, Dipper, look!”  She pointed.  The space remote was still sitting on the burnt lawn, untouched and shiny as ever.  “They left their thingie behind!  We could call them and try to get them to change their minds!”

He reached for it, but before he could touch it the remote made a dull thump noise and black smoke poured out of its seam.  It had self-destructed.

“Ah,” Mabel said.  “Well...maybe they won't post on all the Space Lizard Forums?”

“Aaaauuuuggghh!!!”

AN: Thus ended Dipper's dream of driving an alien space ship.