A/N Hi! Thanks for clicking on my story! "Gravity Falls" sadly, is not mine, I write this for fun, not profit. Anyway, I hope you enjoy!

Chapter One

"OK, ready?" Dipper asked, bouncing slightly on his feet excitedly.

"I can totally see up your nose from this angle, gross!" Mabel laughed, making the most of the camera's optical zoom feature.

"Mabel!" Dipper whined, "This is important!"

Giggling Mabel zoomed back and turned the camera around so she was in the shot, "And over here," she whispered in the worst Auzzie accent possible motioning up towards Dipper who stood on a hill looking very annoyed, "we have the Dipperus Conspirious, a very rare species of mammal in its not so natural habitat, the Gravity Falls Forest, always diligent and alert as it hunts the rare and unusual prey that may or may not exist that allegedly dwell in these woods."

"Come on Mabel!" Dipper rolled his eyes, glancing down the steep slope behind him where he had discovered a strange set of footprints. "You can't honestly be playing the skeptic are you?"

"What could possess such a creature to waste its life looking for proof that such 'monsters'," on the word Mabel made a quotation sign with her free hand, "exist. Could it be that he doesn't have a life?"

"Cut it out Mabel, you saw those footprints, you know firsthand that there's crazy things in these woods! If you don't want to help me then go home!" Dipper huffed.

"Oh relax Mr. Grumpy pants!" Mabel shut the camera off, "I'm just adding that for dramatic effect!"

"We may have discovered real, actual evidence that Bigfoot exists, what more kind of drama do you need?"

"Do we even know those footprints belong to Bigfoot?"

"So you really don't think it's possible?"

"I'm not saying that Dipper. Of course it's possible, likely even," Mabel sighed, "You know I'm always happy to help you with these videos of yours, and maybe it is Bigfoot, but would you really call a few footprints proof? I think your audience, if you even have one, would want more than that to go on."

"Some of these investigations take time and patience, but we have what I think is a solid lead," Dipper shrugged casually, "Who knows? Maybe this on this venture we'll be able to find more evidence!"

"Maybe," Mabel frowned.

"Come on, this is important to me!" Dipper reminded her.

Mabel grinned, turning the camera back on, "Well, what are we waiting for? Rolling in five, four, three…" she silently motioned two and one and Dipper got excited again.

"Welcome back to another episode of 'Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained'! So earlier today Mabel and I found these footprints in the woods!" Dipper waved Mabel to follow and she climbed the short hill to join him and then panned the camera down below towards the footprints along the path, "Could it really be Bigfoot?"

"Or some guy with really, really big feet?" Mabel chimed in happily.

Dipper rolled his eyes, "Let's see what we'll find as we check out Anomaly #33, 'The Mysterious Footprints!'"

"Really?" Mabel raised a brow, still focusing the camera on her brother, "That's the title? And where do you get these numbers from? I mean you've only got like what? Six videos so far?"

"Cut!" Dipper growled, "Mabel!"

"I mean, I guess it's all right, but seems kinda unoriginal…"

"You don't see me criticizing your projects and I certainly don't see you trying to come up with anything better!"

"You're right, I'm sorry I'll be quiet now," with her free hand Mabel made the motion of zipping her mouth closed, locking it and throwing away the key.

"Thank you," Dipper grinned, his eyes softening. "OK, rolling again in five, four, thee…" he waited two more seconds and then continued, "so here we have four, count 'em four distinct footprints of an unusually large size," he reached into his backpack and pulled out a shoe, "for the sake of scale I present to you Soos's old work boot, size 13 notice how significantly smaller…"

They both startled at the sound of a branch snapping behind them. Mabel spun around to face the sound as Dipper ran up beside her as a low and strange sounding growl echoed through the trees, "Did you get that?" Dipper whispered excitedly looking around, following the sound, scanning the trees in hopes of seeing something. Suddenly the noise was behind them, moving impossibly fast, and Dipper and Mabel twirled around just in time to see a dark shadow disappear behind a tree, "There! There! Did you see it? Did you get it?"

"I think so!" Mabel exclaimed, moving the camera back and forth to scan the trees. The sound moved again and they followed it.

"In a crazy turn of events, it looks like we may just find whatever creature these footprints belong to," Dipper said half to the camera and half to the trees as he tried to seek out the source of the sound but as quickly as the sound came, it was gone. The twins stood breathlessly, looking around, hearts pounding for any sign of whatever made the sound but there was nothing.

When it felt like the coast was clear Dipper let out a whoosh of air, "Oh MAN! That was awesome! Did you get it?"

Laughing Mabel stopped recording and replayed the footage, "Got it!" she exclaimed and the two high-fived cheering excitedly as Dipper took the camera from her and played the footage once more, laughing when he saw the shaky and grainy image in the background of a mysterious shadow as it disappeared, moving so fast that had they not known where to look already, they might've missed it.

He played it again in slow motion and paused as the image hit the screen and frowned at how blurry it was, too out of focus to make out any features, but it was something! He gave Mabel a huge hug, "This is amazing!"

"I know!" she squealed, returning the hug before taking the camera back.

"Come on! Let's finish this!" Dipper exclaimed excitedly.

"Right!" she held the camera back up, "Aaaannnnd action!"

"So as you guys saw," Dipper narrated, "just moments ago a creature of unknown species appeared over there!" he pointed to where they saw it, "It circled around us, moving really fast, the sound first coming from through here," he pointed and Mabel followed with the camera and scanned the route the creature had made around them, "Let's go to where we saw it, and see if we can find anything…"

The twins finished gathering their footage for the video, and after a few takes with Mabel cutting in with her silly jokes, just to annoy Dipper who was now too excited to be legitimately annoyed, he decided they had enough.

"Well, I'm getting hungry, let's head back for lunch shall we?" Dipper grinned, rubbing his growling stomach.

"Right behind ya, bro!" Mabel exclaimed as Dipper grabbed his backpack with his supplies. He lead the way as Mabel followed, replaying some of the footage on the camera.

For all her teasing and appearances of skepticism, she was for the most part just as excited as Dipper about his film project and was genuinely happy when their attempts to get evidence of some of the craziness in Gravity Falls turned out to be a success. Besides, after getting kidnapped by Gnomes, fighting an army of Wax Statues, getting possessed by ghosts or chased by a monster made of loser candy, it would be too silly, even for Mabel, to be a real skeptic.

"We got some good stuff here!" she said as she trudged along behind him.

"I know, right?" Dipper laughed.

As she walked behind her brother, watching the footage she went to the first video and played it and laughed, "You need to blow your nose brother," she held the camera for him to see the part where she zoomed in on his nose, "those boogers are huge!"

"Gross!" he groaned, subconsciously wiping his nose with the back of his hand.

"This is going on the Blooper Reel!" she declared.

"No! Erase it!" Dipper whined.

"I'll bet it'll go viral!"

"Delete it, delete it!" he begged petulantly, though he was also chuckling in the same breath.

"All right, all right!" she giggled, pressing the trash button on the camera. The menu gave her three options, to delete the one image, multiple images or to erase all images. She highlighted the first option but as she did so she tripped slightly on a root, not realizing that her thumb moved to highlight 'erase all' before hitting 'OK'.

"You OK, Klutz?" Dipper asked, amused as he saw her stumble.

She punched him playfully in the arm and put the camera away in its case, unaware of what she did. They walked back to the Shack in high spirits entering through the Gift Shop entrance where Wendy was sitting behind the counter reading a magazine and Soos was changing a lightbulb.

"Hey guys," Wendy said in greeting, not looking up.

"Hey dudes," Soos waved as he stepped down from the ladder, "How'd it go?"

"Better than expected!" Dipper exclaimed as Mabel handed him the camera, "Check it out!"

Soos stood behind Dipper to look over his shoulder as he turned the camera on.

"The footage we got was awesome and…" he frowned when the screen said 'Memory Card Empty', "wait, what? No, no, nononono!"

"What's wrong?" Mabel asked in alarm rushing up to him and looking over his other shoulder.

He immediately turned to her, "What did you do, Mabel? What did you do?!"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, genuinely confused by his sudden mood swing.

He thrust the camera in her face, "This Mabel! You erased everything!"

She looked at the blank screen with the 'Memory Card Empty' and paled, "Oops," she said quietly.

"Oops? Is that all you can say, is OOPS!"

"Woah, Dipper, calm down!" Wendy exclaimed.

"No, you don't understand! The footage we got…gone forever!"

"I'm sorry, I…I don't know how that happened I…" Mabel babbled, stopping when it dawned on her, "Oh my gosh! When I deleted that one video, I must've accidentally erased everything! Dipper, I am so, so sorry!"

"How could you have let this happen?"

"It was an accident! Look we can go back and reshoot…"

"What's the point? Huh? We'll never get that kind of footage again!"

"What's the big deal?" Wendy asked, "I've seen your videos, you've got some cool videos about other things, so what if you didn't get this one?"

Dipper was too angry to care that it was Wendy who spoke, he still looked at Mabel when he replied angrily, "You don't understand, this is Bigfoot! One of the most famous and elusive modern mythical creatures! People have spent years, years trying to get pictures, evidence, video of this thing, any proof of its existence and I finally get it and Mabel has to go and erase it!"

"There's still the footprints…" Mabel said weakly.

"Yeah well, like you said earlier, it's not enough. But what do you care anyway? You were never really into this!"

"I do care!" Mabel exclaimed, her eyes filling with tears.

Dipper sighed, "I gotta let this get charged." He yanked the camera from her hands. "How could you be so stupid?" Everyone gaped at him in shock as Mabel took a step back as though punched.

"It was an accident! Let me fix this! I'll fix it!"

"How?" he demanded, "It's too late Mabel!"

"Well then, let me make it up to you! What can I do?"

"Haven't you done enough?" Dipper asked coldly.

Mabel's lip quivered as tears began to fall down her face, she regarded a stunned looking Wendy and Soos and then ran back outside, brushing past Stan on the way out the door.

"Wow, she seems to be in a hurry," Stan quipped, shaking his sack filled with money after another profitable day scamming the tourists. He then noticed the shocked looks on Soos and Wendy's faces, and the angry look on Dipper's.

"Harsh, Dipper, harsh," Wendy shook her head in disapproval.

"That wasn't cool at all Dude," Soos folded his arms and turned away.

A part of him realized he was overreacting and that his anger was misplaced as it was obviously an accident, but the part of him so eager to get footage of Bigfoot was too pissed off and defeated to care. He looked at the camera and stormed out, heading upstairs to let it charge.

Still standing by the door holding his money Stan glanced at his employees in confusion, "Wait, did I miss something?"

A/N Thanks for reading! Please let me know what you think! Reviews are like gold. :-)

Also, just as a disclaimer, I'm taking some creative liberties with the show's canon. For example, despite mentioning the shorts "Dipper's Guide to the Unexplained" I'm not necessarily considering the actual shorts themselves canon (except maybe "Stan's Tattoo") because I don't want Dipper to have any actual solid proof of any supernatural happenings in Gravity Falls, at least not here. So if there are any inconsistencies with the show, it's either a legit oversight, or intentional but it's not enough to be considered full on AU either. I know it's a minor detail, but I wanted to get that out there.