The morning after, I woke up before Mabel for once.
There was a small barricade on our door, just in case they tried messing with us in our sleep.
I layed there in the partail dark staring at the sealing above me, listening to her breathe, and I thought about the figures. This was my first real obstacle towards my dream of doing whatever I want!
Thankfully I had seen it coming, with my future knowledge I can prepare in advance for sure.
I reached under my mattress pulling out journal three, and flipped it open landing on one of the many blank pages filled with invisible ink. It was a shame I had no clue where the black light was, I had to keep searching.
I needed soda since there was no shot I could bait them out. Specifically enough of it to do some real damage. And I needed to actually know how to fight, which was more complicated because I was twelve, about five foot nothing, and my current physical training regimen was "occasionally running errands."
Besides the first fighting I witnessed on tv I had nothing.
So. Mini Training arc begins! Starting today.
Stan had a list of chores pinned to the kitchen wall that he updated every morning like some kind of Shack warden. Today's on my side of the list read: 'Sweep the gift shop floor. Polish the geodes. Clean up whatever Soos broke in the basement. Don't ask Soos who broke it.'
I read the list twice and pocketed the money I already had into my shorts just to feel it there for a second — yep, still feels good, and decided I could handle the chores AND train at the same time. I had to be efficient. That was the key to everything.
The gift shop floor first. I grabbed the broom and immediately started doing lunges while I swept, because I'd seen someone do this somewhere, I think. Thirty seconds in, I knocked over a rotating rack of postcards.
"Smooth," Wendy said from behind , just clocking in, not even looking up.
She was eating a granola bar and just sat down with her feet on the counter, grabbing a magazine that looked like it had been through three separate rainstorms. Her red hair was pulled back loosely and she looked, as always, chiller than a chiller.
I set the postcard rack back up. "I'm training."
"For what?"
"As a man of course, I have to be strong, how else do you expect me to get a girlfriend." I said pounding my chest with no bashfulness.
She almost spit out her granola bar.
didn't she know I was being serious.
"Tch, you'll see"
After her laughing fit she seemed to be considering something for a moment, then went back to her magazine. "Fair enough."
I swept the rest of the floor in a regular, non-lunge way, since the postcard rack didn't deserve another incident, and moved on to the geodes. Stan had about forty of them on a shelf near the window, and they all needed to be wiped down with a cloth and lemon spray. I wiped as fast as I could. I also started doing calf raises while I wiped, because any available moment was a moment that could be training.
By the time I got to the basement and whatever "Soos" had broken, which turned out to be a shelf unit that had collapsed under the weight of what appeared to be forty-seven cans of mystery soup I had finally worked up a genuine sweat and Wendy had relocated to the doorway with her granola bar, watching me with mild zoological curiosity.
"You're still doing it," she said covering her mouth teasingly.
"Doing what."
"The thing, were you bunny hop."
I stacked a can of soup not even bothering to look. "I told you already, you'll see it payoff in no time."
I heard her lean against the creaking doorframe, and a shadow arms crossed. "You know what my dad always says? He says the biggest mistake people make when they're getting ready for something is they focus so much on getting ready that they forget to actually know what they're walking into."
I turned to her.
I then sighed soon after she wasn't even talking about wax figures. But she wasn't wrong. I'd been doing lunges in the gift shop and calf raises with geodes, and of course none of that would help with my now problem.
I needed to nail that down before I did anything else.
"That's really good advice," I said.
Wendy shrugged. "It's just a thing he says."
She smiled, an easy smile. "What's the thing you're walking into? Or is it a secret."
I thought about how to phrase it. I could just say there are animated wax historical figures in a hidden room downstairs and I need to know how to deal with them before they murder us all in the night. But then again I also could just not. Gravity Falls was weird but some things still sounded insane out loud.
"It's a secret," I said. "For now."
"Respect," she said, and pushed off the doorframe. "You want something to drink? Stan's got a whole flat of Pitt Cola in the back, trust me I'm a veteran he'll never notice it's missing. Dude buys it in bulk and forgets about it immediately."
Pitt Cola.
I stared at her.
Pitt Cola was soda so he's been hiding that all along. and it came in big quantities. And Wendy was offering to give it to me for free out of Stan's completely unguarded supply.
Sometimes Gravity Falls just handed you things. I was almost considering having the gnomes steal some for me, I really didn't wanna see my bucks go so quickly.
"Yeah, I'd love some. Actually — could I take a few cans? For later?"
She squinted one eye at me. "How many is a few."
"Like. Eight." I said giving my politest smile.
"Eight cans of soda."
"This one time."
She stared at me with half lidded eyes. Then she went and got me eight cans of Pitt Cola without another word, because Wendy Corduroy was genuinely one of the most easygoing people alive, and handed them to me in a plastic bag.
"You're not gonna tell me what they're for, don't tell me you started the tradition of throwing them at cars this young" she said.
"Probably not tonight," I said. "But maybe soon."
She accepted this completely, she was just to cool. I'd pay her back eventually.
I spent the rest of the afternoon doing actual research.
Duck-tective wasn't on, which was more of a setback than I thought, but I found a nature documentary about venomous animals that was only tangentially useful and a ten-minute segment on a local access channel about Personal Safety in Uncertain Environments, which was hosted by a man with a mustache who seemed to be speaking exclusively to people afraid of raccoons. Still. I absorbed what I could. Body positioning. Staying low. Using your environment.
I also read up on relevant journal entriesI hadn't touched yet completely locked in after the first attempt. I confirmed what i knew from the show first. Soda when placed on any wax reacted with the wax compound, destabilizing the figures surface and disrupting whatever was inside it. Eight cans was probably more than enough for four or five figures but there where 12 total so I had to be careful
I set the cans carefully under my bed, next to the journal.
just a couple moments earlier I'd set the fire poker in the flame stan left on just in case
I felt, honestly, extremely prepared, as long as I didn't miss Id be fine, stan had planned on revealing the wax next morning but no way I was lettering that happen.
It happened at two in the morning.
with a jolt I woke up and heard them before I saw them — a low creak in the hallway, the sound of stiff, waxy joints that didn't bend quite right. I was already awake. I'd barely slept. I had the bag of cans ready and the journal entries memorized down to the sentence.
I slipped out of bed, left Mabel sleeping, and moved to the doors keyhole.
There were four of them in the hall. Abraham Lincoln, Shakespeare, Genghis Khan, and Sherlock Holmes, who was carrying an axe now and looked deeply inconvenienced about something
They hadn't seen me yet. I had to be cautious.
three of them seemed occupied and entered our top floor bathroom, Sherlock, the most dangerous had his back to me now, I slowly opened up the door.
With a crack the first can was open,
Sherlock turned at the sound.
I threw it and thankfully it landed.
The soda hit him dead in the chest, fizzing and popping, and the effect was immediate, he started to buckle, the wax going soft at the edges, dripping inward. He made a gargled sound that was somehow both dramatic and very sad, like a great detective who had accepted his fate but wanted you to know he wasn't thrilled about it.
The others seemed to here his cried and poked there heads out turning on me.
I threw the second popped can at Lincoln, who took it to the side of the head without even flinching at first. The third got Khan in the knees. Shakespeare I hit last, directly in the face, and watched him slowly fold sideways into the wall.
With the cans I threw I used the rest of the liquid to finish them off.
It took four cans. to defeat the main four.
Sneaking my way downstairs I heard music, peaking around there were six more literally jumping up and down in a circle in unison to the music. Three cans popped open with the fourth already open and as they were distracted, with a wave of my entire body I coated them alland parts of there bodies began melting.
Finishing the job was harder, they all starter to scatter but with my projectile soda it was easy to catch a foot and those missing them already.
I stood in the hallway with four fully intact backup cans still in the bag, looking at four slowly melting piles of wax on the floor, and felt the most profoundly anti-climactic feeling of my entire twelve years of life.
All that training. The lunges. The calf raises. The nature documentary about venomous animals. The personal safety raccoon man. The memorized journal entries. Eight cans of Pitt Cola that Wendy had smuggled out of Stan's supply.
I looked down at the mess.
I put the bag down and went back to bed.
I'd clean it up before Stan woke up. He'd probably just think the wallpaper had sweated again or something. This town was weird enough that stan wouldn't ask too many questions.
I stared back up at the ceiling in the dark for a while, feeling slightly robbed of a dramatic moment.
Then I heard rustling.
"Dipper," she mumbled, mostly asleep. "Did something just happen."
"Nope," I said.
"Okay," she said, and went back to sleep immediately.
I put the journal back under my mattress and chilled and closed my eye.
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Well that was anti-climactic I didn't even get to write a proper fight scene ;-;