Chapter Text
As the three approached the study, raised voices could be heard, words muffled through the walls but the spirit of frustration unmistakably clear. Dipper, who had been leading the way, stopped at the corner and held out an arm behind him to keep the others back. He tried to listen, strained to catch some substance, but just then the conversation had thinned, silence spreading.
He turned and tried to mouth out and mime his intentions, but his companions clearly weren’t getting any of it, since Mabel had misunderstood his instructions to mean, ‘Let it rain glitter’, somehow. Soos was absorbed with trying to see how much he could catch in his mouth.
Dipper did an impression of a much older man bringing a palm to his face without actually slapping himself. “Guys! You stay here, I’ll scout ahead,” he hissed at them, as quietly as possible.
The glitter-fest was put on hold for Mabel to stare worriedly at her brother, hands full of the flashy but apparently edible stuff still in the air and slowly leaking. “Are you sure, bro-bro?” she whispered, between licking sparkles off the side of her cheek. “Soos could-“
But he didn’t wait to hear her idea, stepping around the corner and out of sight.
“Woah. Dude’s sure got more energy now,” Soos observed, sticking his head around the turn and blinking in surprise when he saw no one in sight.
Mabel watched the glitter flutter down out of her hands. They left little pin-pricks of light scattered all over the rough timber floor, shining up at her like so many tiny, twinkling stars. “He’s always been like that about, well, everything outer space…”
As soon as he was hidden from his sister and Soos’ point of view, Dipper took a deep breath, pressing himself up against the side of the wall, and concentrated. He drew his forearms up in front of his body and lowered them slowly, exhaling. He saw through his fingers before they finished passing his eyes.
Looking down, most of his torso was invisible, but from his knees he began to phase back into visual existence, with his feet looking entirely solid, and he knew from the lack of tingling that his head was also.
He tried harder, pressing his hand into the wood at his back until the throbbing built up so much that Dipper really thought he might be murdering his hand with splinters. But this time, when he opened his eyes, he saw nothing at all. The heavily grooved wood beneath his feet, sure, sprinkled with specks of glitter, but nothing more. If he bent his head over enough, he could see straight behind him, through where his chest should be, without ever turning around.
Dipper only realized he was grinning when he wondered why his cheeks were starting to ache. He quickly dropped that, and started to sneak forwards, the first steps always being the hardest, until he remembered one last thing.
His hat. Its rim was still biting into a large chunk of his vision. Dipper took it off his head and stared for a moment, at its blue and white design. Unlike the rest of his clothes, the cap wasn’t part of his form; it was an object of nylon and polyester from this world, like the things Mabel wore and… What everyone else did, too. He set it down on the floor, then padded carefully towards the study door on his invisible feet.
The door which suddenly flew open, one disgruntled grunkle quickly storming out. Ford stood in the corridor for a moment, regaining his composure, before noticing the hat.
Dipper stood stock-still, pressed up against the wall as Ford walked past, shoulder just barely missing the gem’s nose on the way. The man picked up the cap, sighed something indistinguishable, then walked back past Dipper and into a room to the right, the beach shop.
Ford made for a strange sight there, a dark, earthy mass of brown and grey amidst all the bright, enthused colors of summer by the sand and sea. It made sense that he didn’t want to linger, staying only enough time to hook up the hat with the others like it, then leaving through the front door. Dipper finally allowed himself to breathe as the bell rang on Ford's way out.
Edging back towards the other side of the corridor, Dipper peered into the study, where his other great uncle was busily digging through several of the drawers, searching for something. He was muttering something along the lines of, “… talking to the mayor, I can totally talk old person… Really old person!”
... What? His grunkles had argued about that? This alien thing had to be serious, then.
With a triumphant, “Aha!” Stan retrieved a roll of glossy yellow and black, and punched it into the air like a hero might a legendary sword, having slain a dragon or demon or something. It was “POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS” tape.
Dipper frowned, realizing the plan, and hastily stepped to the side as Stan followed his twin brother out, presumably to go rope off the crash site. This could make their mission a little more difficult. After restoring his own visibility, Dipper returned to Mabel and Soos to tell them about the turn in events.
By use of the shining crystalline warp pad in the center of the temple, it took only a split second, a stream of blue light rushing around them like a waterfall, and a noise like the chiming of gemstones for the three of them to disappear from their beachside home… And instantaneously rematerialize back on the pad on the hillside.
Having in his excitement forgotten all the fanfare that came with teleportation, Dipper scanned the green waves of grass warily- and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw his Grunkle Stan’s deep burgundy car, the Stanmobile, sitting pretty nearby.
However, he relaxed when no-one else was around to be seen, and Mabel tapped on his shoulder to remind him, “Grunkle Stan can’t take the warp pads normally, remember? He must have left his car here before,” she reasoned, and Dipper nodded, pleasantly surprised by her rationale.
“Aw dudes, that was so rad,” Soos was fawning over the warp pad, even though he must have seen and done it a thousand times by now. “Can we do it again?” he begged the gems. “Please?” his eyes sparkled like something out of an anime.
But as Mabel promised him, that would have to wait, since Dipper had jumped down off the gleaming platform and headed in the direction of the smell of burnt ozone. Like lightning, something soggy, ash, black toast and a whole cocktail of chlorine and other chemicals Dipper couldn’t identify. Honestly, the scent was a little bit of everything, and rather overwhelming, as the smog had spread all over the field and still seemed to be coming, though not in an obvious pillar as before. Fortunately, there was no great need for directions, given the breadth of the destruction. As soon as the group climbed a slope, the path to the crash site was clear.
And so too was the danger.
“Look!” Mabel pointed unnecessarily, “Stan!”
“What?” Dipper clamped down on his tongue to stop himself from cursing- because his sister hated that- as he stared at the distant figure in disbelief. “He shouldn’t be here already!”
Soos was watching with the kind of childish awe that would be best reserved for someone who wasn’t going to be in an immense amount of trouble if the guy in question caught up to them; “Dude walks FAST,” Soos observed, chuckling only a bit nervously, as the man steadily and speedily approached, and might even see them if he looked up and to his left. Luckily Stan had his arm full of little stands with which to rope the area off, not to mention there was the masking quality of the crash's smoke, so he had anything but unobstructed vision.
Still. “Come on!” Dipper prodded them forward, towards the crash site, and when Mabel tried to point out the perils of doing so, with a worried, “What if-“, he interrupted, saying, “Let’s just get there first,” to which she agreed. They all really wanted to get there first.
So they ran, and made a bit of a race out of it. Mabel won of course, standing on the edge of the crater before anyone else, with huffing Dipper a close second. Soos naturally came in third, and fourth was… Soon going to be Stan. Who seemed to have sensed movement, even if he hadn't properly caught it, because he was calling out into the cloud of thick, black smoke that had descended and enveloped the area. “Who’s there? Don’t tell me it’s the damn alien on the loose…” he muttered, trying to squint and wave away the heavy, dirty air obscuring everything.
“Shit…” Mabel was struggling with the cough in the back of her throat, and Soos hadn’t a clue what to do, but was getting panicky as Stan got closer towards the crater, trying to glimpse the shape he’d half-seen again.
There was only one place to hide. So Dipper pushed, and the three of them half-jumped, half-rolled into the three-meter-deep pit, landing hard in a disorganized heap at the bottom.
He sat up, yanking a leg out from under someone else, and twisted his fingers painfully in the hope that Grunkle Stan hadn’t heard them over the low roar of spacecraft burning. His wish seemed to get answered, since peering upwards, the shadow overhead lingered just a few moments before retreating back, away from the edge and probably further.
Dipper heaved a sigh of relief. Then he saw it. Something was lying on the torn-up ground nearby, and it wasn’t burning debris. It was distinctly person-shaped. Ignoring Mabel’s choked-out warning, he edged closer, and closer, until he was leaning over the still unmoving body.
It had dark, black limbs, like the soot the field had been reduced to, and a bright yellow torso, that reminded Dipper of the searing light of the comet and the fires still dancing around them. In fact, the color scheme was reminiscent of the tape his Grunkle Stan was just that moment setting up around the crash site. Danger.
There were distinctly angular shoulders, a thin waist and only slightly wider hips, these were all things Dipper had seen of the silhouette on the spaceship. The parts were all a little thicker than Dipper’s own, but form was much longer, that much was apparent, the alien had to be at least a head taller if they were both standing.
The strangest part was perhaps the forearms, which were disproportionately bulky to the rest of the physique, as the lower legs were furnished in a sleek pair of boots. There appeared to be… An odd lack of hands, like big solid sleeves ending with only the fingers sticking out, only those were more like bright yellow claws.
Finally, Dipper studied the face. A pointy nose and chin, lips that seemed to smile unconsciously, a shapely eyebrow and fully-lashed eyelid… The other side was hidden by a chaotic mess of golden-blond hair, that looked so fine and soft and bothered Dipper so much that he just had to touch it, about to brush it aside-
He jerked back, pulling away just as the visible eye twitched and slowly opened, revealing an iris of vivid amber.
In his shock, Dipper had instinctively turned transparent, and when he looked over his shoulder, Mabel and Soos had disappeared around the side of the spaceship, probably not wanting to crowd the new visitor right off the bat. Actually, Dipper thought, more than slightly nervous and panicking now, maybe their grunkles’ idea had been right, and it would be best to first observe the alien’s behavior, and then determine the level of threat. He began to inch away, trying to avoid the blond stranger’s attention…
The alien leaped to their feet lithely, swiping the accumulation of dirt and ash off their back whilst making a weird expression; it came away cleanly, leaving them looking entirely too polished. And they started pacing about, taking big strides and examining the walls of the crater.
Safe for now, Dipper let go of his invisibility and slipped around the side of the crashed spaceship to join his friends out of view, breathing heavily. Mabel grabbed his hand, looking concerned, and was about to say something, possibly suggest backing off, when-
He heard it. They all did. A voice. It was… Singing, energetically, vibrant with a passionate quality it would be hard to match. “What is this?” Although perhaps fatigued and bewildered, it was still irrepressibly upbeat.
“Where am I? Last I remember I was flying high…”