Reverse Falls [DISCONTINUED]

Inconvenience Store: Part Three

This was a disaster.

Just five minutes ago, Gidoen had been conceiving a truly evil plan to trap Robbie and Wendy in a room together and alone. 

Now he had somehow climbed to the top of a shelf stocked with food, trying to escape Mabel's embrace of death.

"Gideon!" Mabel called. "You know that hiding from me is useless!"

"You don't have your amulet anymore," he pointed out, fear welling up inside of him. "Pacifica told me that your brother took it."

"Ugh, she told you that?" Mabel rolled her eyes; then she changed her tone of voice so quickly that her previous attitude was nonexistent. "I'm not even dangerous, Giddikins."

Gideon gagged at the sound of his new nickname. What kind of nickname was that? He couldn't even think about it without cringing and trying not to throw up. 

"Come on," Mabel crooned. "Just think! We could have a date to make up for our ruined one!" 

"Failed?" Gideon raised an eyebrow. "More like I didn't show up because I don't like you like that."

"Pacifica's distracted with hallucination candy. No more distractions or false things from your evil cousin." Mabel smiled up at the Pines boy. 

Evil? "You think Pacifica's evil?" Gideon said, feeling annoyed at this new information. "You really think she influenced me to hate you?"

"Of course! What's her evil charm? I can get rid of it for you -"

Gideon eyed Mabel warily. Then, to break the tension, he jumped off of the shelf and ran as fast as he could.

"No!" he heard Mabel cry. "Come back!"

Affectionate embrace? More like the sweet embrace of death.

"Pacifica!" he called, running past his blond-haired cousin. "Get Mabel off my back for me!"

Pacifica mumbled something in reply that Gideon couldn't hear. 

He skidded to a stop. "Pacifica?"

He rushed over to his blonde-haired cousin, ignoring Mabel's call for him, and stared at her. What was wrong? Why was she -

Her eyes.

They were a bright, neon green.

Gideon waved a hand in front of her face. Nothing. She didn't even blink, staring wildly into the distance. 

"Pacifica?" Gideon repeated, worry worming up its way inside of him. "Hey. Hello. I'm going to call you Paz for the rest of your life. Paz -"

Suddenly, as if she hadn't just looked like a crazed lunatic, Pacifica shot up onto her feet, put a fist in the air, and shouted, "Onward, Aoshima!"

Gideon stared at her.

Fear bubbled up inside of him. Did Pacifica hit her head? Did she suddenly go insane without any explanation? Why the heck were her eyes neon green? Had she met some kind of monster, or -

Ford.

Ford would know what to do.

"Stay here," Gideon told Pacifica. He rushed all around the store, keeping an eye out for a telephone - aha, there!

He eagerly punched in the numbers to the Mystery Shack gift shop phoneline and pressed Call. 

Nothing. 

His heart sank when the connection cut off. The store was so old that there probably wasn't any WiFi, so any chance of contacting relatives was out of the question.

What a night this was turning out to be. His ex-girlfriend was still obsessed with him, Pacifica had lost her sanity by some mysterious means, he couldn't call Ford or his aunt or uncle - why did they even let him and Pacifica come on this trip? All because of that stupid bet with Robbie, the one that Pacifica had made, that was why -

Clever.

Gideon jumped and turned around. Had the wind just whispered to him?

Okay, no. That couldn't be true - there was no wind in the store. There wasn't any wind in Gravity Falls right now, not in the beginning of summer. Just frustrating humidity. 

So why was Gideon hugging himself, shivering from the sudden breeze? 

Dipper gave up on having fun a long time ago.

Mabel was most likely still chasing her crush of the month, who knew what the Southeast was doing, and the whole night hadn't been a success. 

Even that dumb ghost did a good job of hiding himself. The amulet usually gave Dipper the ability to see ghosts (could Mabel's do that? All he knew was that her amulet was better at wiping memories than his was), but he hadn't been able to spot one single spirit all night. 

Maybe that Cipher had something to do with it.

Dipper ran into an empty storage room, far away from everyone else's prying eyes. If he himself didn't know how to see the ghost, then Will would surely have an answer. 

He snapped his fingers.

Not seconds later did Will pop into existance, right in front of Dipper. 

"Hiya, Pine Tree!" Will said, twirling his cane. "You called?"

"You know the powers of amulet, right?" Dipper demanded, pointing to the amulet hidden underneath the sweatshirt tied around his shoulders. 

"Sure," Will said, shrugging (as best he could). "Telepathy, telekinesis, clairvoyancy - to name a few -"

"If I have clairvoyancy, then why can't I see the ghost in this dang store?" Dipper shouted, stomping his foot in the most unchildish way he could.

"You - there's a ghost?" Will looked confused. 

"And he's doing an awfully good job of hiding from me," Dipper snapped. 

"Look, uh, Pine Tree - I can't force ghosts to interact with your kind. Ghosts are their own free spirits." 

"Are you good for anything, then?"

"I'll remind you that I'm working on a master plan to reverse Gravity Falls," Will informed, crossing his arms. "One that no dimension has ever seen before. One that will fuse other -"

"Okay, great," Dipper interrupted, waving Will away, "but can this explain why my amulet isn't working?"

Will's eye widened, focused on something else behind the boy, and he disappeared without warning, leaving nothing but a solid pop. 

Dipper growled, but he stopped once he heard a voice behind him. 

Someone panted from lack of air. "Help!" the voice gasped. "There's a g-gho -"

Dipper whirled around to see the white-haired pipsqueak - Mabel's latest obsession. "Ghost?" he said eagerly, a dangerous spark in his eyes. "Where?"

"By Pacifica - it got colder, and things started floating -" Gideon Pines paused, taking a deep breath to steady himself. Then he continued in a rush - "The store - it might be haunted!"

A/N: Well, NaNoWriMo is going differently than I expected . . . I realized that I probably won't stay on task with that project, so I'm going to be working on other projects and counting that as NaNoWriMo! So there'll probably more updates than planned for Reverse Falls :D