Mabel Pines

"Mabel, if there are any magical creatures here, they should all be called devils because we're in New Jersey and New Jersey is the pit from whence all devils came."

Dipper was immensely torn on the issue.

On the one hand, when there were scary shadow things whispering at him some nights that they wanted to essentially eat his soul, the idea of chasing down any devils, let alone any from New Jersey, was not really at the top of his bucket list.

On the other hand, there was still a part of him that itched in the presence of secrets and he still had a strong desire to find things no one else had found.

Ultimately, he did what had become his habit to do - and was his habit back home - and referred to the book.

"The Book says the last known sightings of the Jersey Devil were in 1960, when tracks were found and noises were heard near Mays Landing, New Jersey, but that reputable sources report that the Jersey Devil was killed in that same year by..."

Dipper paused as he read the words.

"By the Easter Bunny." He shrugged. "Sounds about as believable as everything else we've seen this summer."

He looked back up at the other kids.

"So far this book hasn't been wrong once."

Edited Date: 2013-09-03 05:20 am (UTC)

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"The Easter Bunny? Lemme see that." Mabel leaned over Dipper's shoulder to get an eyefull of the book.

Kevin snorted. "Uh, my brother saw the Jersey Devil on our neighbor's roof last week, so it's wrong about this." He delivered a practiced, nearly-eleven-year-old scoff. "And even if something HAD killed the Jersey Devil, it sure wasn't a little bunny."

"The Easter Bunny's not little," cut in Allayna. "My cousins Claude and Caleb saw him. In Pennsylvania. He's like 6 feet tall." She crossed her arms. Her zulu knots were banded with glittery teal elastics, which went fabulously with her green belt when she was in her aikido gi. "Anyway, if the Jersey Devil is real, who says the Easter Bunny can't be tough?"

"Not Jersey Devil tough," Kevin insisted. "I can't believe you still believe in the Easter Bunny. What are your cousins, like, four?"

"Nine," said the 10-year-old Allayna. "And I didn't believe them before," she admitted. She jerked a thumb at Dipper and Mabel. "But then I made friends with ghost twins."

She crossed her arms, daring Kevin to contradict that.

Kevin rallied. "Okay, well, then there's no harm in us LOOKING, is there? Maybe we'll find something new. Something nobody's ever named before."

The other kids looked a little more intrigued by this possibility.

"It COULD be a misunderstood loner brooding at the edges of human society, longing for a touch of warmth and understanding," Mabel mused, her doubts 90% obliterated.

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"Or it could be a monster who was, and I quote, 'known for dragging children off to its lair where they were never seen again.' Unless it's a party cave where those kids partied so much they never wanted to go home, this thing's probably been snacking on them."

On the other hand...

"...Your brother really thinks he saw something? What exactly did he see?"

Edited Date: 2013-09-04 04:43 am (UTC)

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"It was 7 feet tall, with glowing red eyes and big horns," Kevin said. "What does your book say about it?"

"If we're going to hunt something 7 feet tall, I'm going to go get my jō," said Allayna, rising and trotting towards her house, just visible around the corner.

Mabel just looked at Dipper, her expression slightly skeptical as she leaned over to get another look at the book.

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He held up to her to show a picture sketched in ink of a monster...

...with glowing red eyes (rendered in what Dipper hoped was just red ink) and horns. It also had the head of a goat, bat-like wings, some rather nasty claws, cloven hooves, and a forked tail. And it looked about seven feet tall.

"Fits the description."

Dipper sighed.

"So where exactly is this neighbor's house?"

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"C'mon."

Kevin stood up, jogging off to lead them. The other kids followed. As Dipper and Mabel trotted after, Allayna jogged out of her house carrying a short staff and rejoined them.

They drew in front of the house, which seemed normal enough. At least from the ground.

"We have to get on that roof," Mabel declared, a glitter of intent in her eyes. "Aoshima!"

The chattering dolphin appeared. Mabel hopped on. "All aboard who's coming aboard!"

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Dipper hopped on.

"If it really was up there, we'll see..."

Aoshima flew them up over the roof, and down below, they could see the damage.

"...claw marks on the roof tiles. Okay, something big - and clawed - definitely was here. That still doesn't mean it was the Jersey Devil, though. There are a lot of creatures it could be."

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"What else would be leaving claw marks on someone's roof?" Mabel asked, as she inspected them. "Mutant mountain lion? Majestic North American gryphon?"

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"Fearlings?" Dipper suggested tremulously.

They'd definitely been in the area, given how often they chased and taunted him and Mabel.

"Those are the things that are always after you guys, right?" Allayna.

"We're easy targets. Already...not alive as it is," said Dipper. "But they don't seem very strong or all that corporeal. But if they're hanging around people's houses now..."

Dipper sucked in a deep breath.

"Then again, it could be exactly what it looks like. Maybe the book's wrong and the Jersey Devil never really died." He looked over at Mabel. "I guess it's up to us to find out."

In either case, kids might get hurt if they didn't find it and stop it, and they had more power - and in Dipper's case, know-how - to do it than a bunch of human kids did.

He held up a fist. "Mystery twins?"

This was the first time they'd really be hunting something like this down since they died.

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"Mystery Twins."

Apparently one of the new facets of their strange being was that their fistbumps were accompanied by the sounds of synth-keyboard explosions and a slight rain of glittering stars.

(As a consequence, Mabel looked constantly for excuses to fistbump.)

"We'd better get a ton of spray paint."

And rock salt. Rock salt seemed to work for them well.

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"To the grocery store!" Dipper said boldly. "Or someone's pantry! Preferably the last one so we don't have to shoplift!"

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"How do you lure a Jersey Devil anyway?" Mabel asked, as she and Dipper and Allayna (minus the rest of the corporeal kids) raided Allayna's garage. "I mean, obviously we're going to trap him, right?"

Spray paint was great for making trap circles, something the book was helpfully full of.

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"Let me see..." Dipper said, looking into the book. "Apparently, it used to go after livestock, especially chickens. Maybe we can use some as bait?"

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"Where are we going to get a chicken?" Mabel asked.

"I think we have some chicken nuggets in the freezer," Allayna volunteered.

Minutes later, armed with the spraypaint, rock salt, and thawing chicken nuggets, they returned to the group of kids.

"Ready? Great," Kevin said, as Allayna pushed the damp bag into his hands. "We better get going. I have to be home by 6."

"Don't worry," Mabel said, "We'll just go set up the trap and then you guys can go home. Jersey Devils are probably still sleeping all that roof-climbing off at this time, right Dipper? We'll stick around and trap it, since we don't need to eat. Or sleep."

Privately, Mabel almost longed for hunger, and food to satisfy it with, and tiredness and the bed that went with being mortal enough to feel tired.

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"Aww but why can't we come?" Kevin asked. "If it's real, I wanna see it. I mean, it'd be a real, live monster."

"No way," said Dipper. "It's too dangerous. If you want to see it, give me a camera and I can try to take a picture for you, but it's not safe for any of you to get too close, especially since it supposedly goes after kids."

Edited Date: 2013-10-17 04:36 am (UTC)

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"YOU'RE kids," Kevin objected.

"GHOST kids," Mabel corrected. "With magic rainbow kitten powers. Womp!"

She fired off a set of rainbow kitten fists, partly because she needed the distraction from thoughts of being a ghost, partly just because she never missed an opportunity to shoot off her kitten fists.

"Seriously, we got this. Mystery Twins, on the case."

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"We'll let you guys know how it goes, okay?" Dipper promised them. "C'mon, Mabel, we need to put these out in the sun so they thaw out."

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Out in the woods, with the chicken nuggets thawing in the sun and the improvised Jersey Devil's Trap spray painted on the dirt formerly covered by loads of dropped pine needles, Mabel carefully replaced the covering concealing the trap.

"If it's really fearlings, and not actually the Jersey Devil, should one of us be bait too? Just in case those don't look delicious after all." She gestured to the chicken nuggets.

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"I kind of figure that by just standing around, waiting for the trap to be sprung we're both going to be bait," said Dipper, putting the book away in his vest pocket now that they'd put up all the markings that they needed to.

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Unfortunately - or not, in actuality - all the chicken had drawn out so far was an orange cat, or so it seemed. The cat had been tailing them for a time now, opting for now to reveal itself now that the other kids were gone. And now that Dipper and Mabel had decided to try and bait the Jersey Devil.

This is probably not what Diana had in mind when she'd told him to get closer with humanity, but it's not like he had much of a choice at this point.

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"Mr. Fuzzlebutt! You came to help!"

The kids had noticed the cat before. And naturally, Mabel had named it.

She darted over to scoop the cat up. "Look, Dipper! Mr. Fuzzlebutt came to help us catch the Jersey Devil! What a brave widdle kitty - Dipper, say hi to the brave widdle kitty."

Concerned that Dipper was not paying Mabel's favorite feline tagalong enough attention, she held the cat out to him - close enough to squish the cat's face against Dipper's cheek.

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Dipper backed away, mostly because Mabel held a lot of fuzzy creatures in his face and never seemed to really have concern about things like mange. Or rabies.

As he looked at the cat, his eyebrows knitted in concern.

"What's he doing all the way out here? It's not even like he could have followed us. You flew us."

Edited Date: 2013-10-18 10:01 pm (UTC)

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"Maaaaaooooow."

The look on the cat's face was somewhere between completely innocent and 'oh god please save me from this indignity, Dipper'. Because rescuing this cat from your sister is totally more of a priority than wondering how he got here.

Spoilers, it is due to mind powers and the fact that Mabel isn't the only one who can fly, but let's just chalk it up to regular old Cats Defy Physics.

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"It's because he's such a brave widdle kitty," said Mabel, with a hint of a "duh" as she bumped the cat's face against Dipper's once more. And then again.

Fortunately for Mr. Fuzzlebutt, once Mabel tired of shoving the cat in Dipper's face, she cradled him and started scratching his head with absentminded, but gentle affection. "Okay, so, symbols all painted? Traps all covered? Now we wait?"

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"Yeah... yeah," Dipper said, still eyeing the cat. "Now we wait."

Cue scurrying into some nearby bushes.

Even if J'onn didn't have a cat's sense of smell, he still would have been the first to notice something coming. Two minds.

Innocent, though. They had no ill intentions for anyone, only curiosity.

This was because they were children.

Unlike the other kids, Allayna and Kevin had decided to tag along, and so they'd wandered through the woods in the direction Dipper and Mabel had flown off in.

"Do you hear that?" Dipper whispered to his sister. "Something in the underbrush."

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Oh, no. The children from before. This doesn't bode well, on the off chance something actually happens. Clearly, it's time to think up a plan of action, consider every possible thing that could happen, and figure out how he might be able to protect all four of the kids.

...on the other hand, scratchies.

Wait. No. No, that won't do. In his experience, cats don't warm up that easily to people. And, well. If he idled like this too long, that might make things awkward if he has to reveal himself later. J'onn twists and wriggles, using catlike ~~status as a fluid~~agility to worm his way out of Mabel's hold, and move off into a different part of the bushes.

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"Wait, Mr. Fuzzlebutt, come back!" Mabel dropped to her knees to roll despondently in the pine needles. "I love you!"

But she switched back to a rare serious mode when she saw the other kids. "Oh no! You guys, you can't be here!"

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"We just wanted to help!" Allayna said.

"And to see the Jersey Devil!" added Kevin.

"You guys need to get out of here," Dipper said. "It's not safe. Any minute now -"

A long, loud, terrible screech rended the air, seeming to come from everywhere at once.

" - that could happen."

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Well, looks like there's going to be some awkwardness if he reveals himself whether J'onn likes it or not.

He freezes, though, when he hears that screeching noise. His tail foofs up, and then he darts up a tree to try and get a better view of things.

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