Gobblewonker Epilogue

Silence reigned over the clearing that the Mystery Shack sat in, giving the ramshackle building a foreboding quality to it. Gompers was taking advantage of the lack of activity to calmly eat the stronger tufts of grass that tried to take back the clearing. At the moment, Gompers was enjoying a small bit of dandelion that Stan had missed in his attempts to rip off tourists; every day the conman would pull up every dandelion on the Shack's property and sell the yellow heads as fairy pillows and the leaves as fairy dresses. Gompers paused in his enjoyment of the dandelion when he heard a sound too low for human ears in the distance.

Normally, Gompers tended to ignore anything going on around the shack, but the sound was getting steadily louder. Before Gompers could decide whether or not to move on, Stan's beloved El Diablo came bursting out of the forest, revealing the noise that Gompers heard was the sound of one teen and two preteens screaming in terror as their elderly driver was squinting to see his way around the trees.

The car gradually coasted to a stop, whether from a lack of fuel or Mr. Pines taking his foot off the gas, Wendy did not know, nor did she care; but once the vehicle stopped, Wendy and the twins were scrambling to get out as quickly as possible.

"Hey, what's your guys' problems? You're acting like I went into the woods or something?" Stan grumbled.

"You did drive through the woods!" the trio shouted at the man. Stan huffed as he stepped out of the car.

"Don't be absurd, if I had driven through the woods, there would be leaves all over the grill of the car." - He stated. He paused as he got a look at the front of the car. There were enough leaves and tree branches sticking out of the grill that a person could mistakenly believe that there was a plant growing out of the car. – "Well, regardless, we all got here safely."

"Barely," Dipper gasped from his place on the ground. Stan glared at the boy for a moment before he rubbed his hands together.

"Anyways, I have some very important things that I need to have done. And by I, I mean you guys." – The con-artist stated. – "Mabel, you come inside with me to make some obnoxiously visible posters for embarrassing the Pisces; Wendy, you clean the car."

"What, but you're the one that drove through the woods." Wendy protested.

"And I sign your paycheck." Her boss stated. Wendy glared at him for a few moments before she turned to the car to start cleaning out the grill, grumbling under her breath as she started removing branches from the formerly clean car. She worked in silence for several minutes before she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned, expecting Dipper.

It was Cipher, his face inches away from her own, with a creepy grin on his face. "Hi."

Wendy was really proud of herself for not reacting other than to shove a fistful of leaves into the demon's mouth. "What do you want?"

It took a moment for the demon to spit the leaves out of his possessed mouth. "Ugh, seriously, why can you meat bags taste leaves you can't eat? That's really weird."

"Focus, what are you doing here? The Mystery Shack's closed and you aren't supposed to be here until tomorrow morning."

Cipher had a blank look on his face. "Hmm…not sure. I mean, I originally came over here for a reason, but I completely forgot."

Wendy glared at him, "I am literally two seconds away from poking your eyes out with a stick."

"Wow, calm down toots. Rough day?" the demon said with a smile.

Wendy grabbed the front of his shirt and held up a stick she had pulled out of the car grill. "Not joking."

Cipher simply grinned, "Now look, I know you're thinking about hurting me, but do you really want to risk being caught by the twins? Besides, this is just a meatsuit, you won't actually hurt me. Just this poor, innocent body. Kind of like when your dad beat Dipper to a pulp."

The memory of watching her dad attacking Dipper's body until it was more hamburger than human caused Wendy to push Cipher away. "Get out of here before I change my mind."

The demon smirked before walking away, whistling some tune she did not recognize. Wendy watched Bill wandered off onto the path leading back to town, imagining a world where she had stabbed Cipher in the eye.

"You guys alright?" Dipper spoke up from behind her. Wendy jumped in surprise.

"What?" Wendy replied. Dipper gestured towards the path that Bill had taken.

"You guys seemed to be arguing there." Wendy frowned as she looked out towards where Bill had gone.

"We've haven't gotten along since we met." Wendy replied. "I saw him beating up someone because they thought he wasn't actually as great as he claimed to be."

She looked back towards Dipper, who was frowning now. "Did you tell anyone?"

"Unfortunately, nobody would believe me even if I did." Wendy answered.

"What? Why?"

Wendy shrugged, "My friends and I are not considered to be very reputable. It gets very boring in backwoods town like this, so we tended to act out. Didn't exactly win us any friends with the authorities."

Wendy sighed, "Look, I'm not telling you to stay away from him, but, just be careful okay?"

She turned back to the car to clean out the rest of the greenery. Before she could start, a pair of work gloves were thrust in front of her face. She looked up at a sheepishly grinning Dipper who had another pair of gloves on his hands.

"Sorry about walking off when you got started, I just remember Grunkle Stan driving through some thorn brushes on the way here, and I thought some gloves might be smart."

"Thanks dude, I probably would've realized I needed them after I jabbed myself, like a billion times." Wendy smiled in return as she took the gloves from Dipper.

The sun was going down when Wendy and Dipper finally managed to finish clearing out the branches from the grill.

"Ugh, finally finished." Wendy groaned as she laid onto her back. Dipper leaned back against the car, sweaty and exhausted.

"That was a bit harder than I expected." Dipper spoke aloud. Wendy snorted as she flipped the bill of her hat over her eyes to keep the setting sun from shining into her eyes.

"A bit? I didn't know that you could thread a tree branch through a car grill like that. It's like Mabel decided to give the car some braids."

Dipper smiled, "That sounds like something she would do."

"What cha guys talking about." Mabel spoke up from beside Dipper. Dipper let out a half-yell – half-screech as he flew through the air to get away from the unexpected surprise. He spent several moments wheezing as he tried to catch his breath. He spent the time trying to catch his breath glaring a Mabel, opting not to speak until the wheezing had stopped.

"Mabel, you know I hate it when you do that."

Mabel chortled, "I couldn't resist. You were just sitting there, completely unsuspecting of my approach, and then BAM! Anyways, what were you guys talking about?"

"We were talking about how difficult cleaning the car was." Wendy replied since Dipper was still glaring at Mabel.

'I wonder what that's about.' Wendy thought as she observed Dipper's behavior. Sure, Dipper had occasionally gotten mad at Mabel, for one thing or another, but it was usually when Mabel deliberately did something that was expressly against Dipper's wishes or when she pushed her teasing of him too far.

"So, how'd the poster thing come out?" Wendy continued as she moved onto what Stan had assigned Mabel to do.

Mabel smiled, "I really wanted to put glitter on it, but Grunkle Stan told me just a blown-up picture would do fine. We printed out like a hundred copies and posted them on every building in town."

Wendy flipped up her bill at this. "That many, did you leave any for us?"

Mabel grinned, "I saved one for the Shack. Stan said that if you wanted one for yourself, you'd have to pay for it."

She reached under her sweater and pulled out a roll of paper that was almost as big at herself. "Feast your eyes on this beauty."

The paper unfurled, revealing the image of the Mystery Shack crew holding up a 200 lb catfish that was as big as Soos. Mabel and Dipper were holding up the tail while Soos and Stan were holding up the middle of the fish. Wendy was holding up the head with one hand while the other was thrust into the air in a classic V for victory. Everyone there was wet to various degrees, but Wendy looked like she had just come out of the lake, which was not far from the truth.

The picture was nice, but there was something off about it that nagged at Wendy. "There's something off about this picture."

"Yeah, I had to photoshop the rash off your arm. I know that you're clearly some forest warrior princess with the scars and all, but Stan said leaving the marks would give the wrong impression about how he treats his employees." Mabel replied.

Wendy looked at her right arm. The fight with the catfish had been fierce, and shoving her arm down the fish's throat had left her arm looking like it had been through a sand blaster. "I really wish that the Gobblewonker hadn't stolen my shirt. I'd probably look less torn up."

"Maybe, but it adds a little more value getting that catfish. Those are marks you can tell to your children." Dipper pointed out.

Wendy smirked, "And maybe add a few hundred pounds to the fish?"

Dipper smiled back, "Why not change it to wrestling the Gobblewonker itself."

"Now there's an idea." Wendy said aloud. "Speaking of fish, what happened to Gilly?"

"Soos took him home. He said that there was no way that the Gobblewonker was going to find Gilly at his Abuelita's house." Mabel answered. Dipper and Wendy stared at the younger girl in silence for several moments.

"You did tell him that the Gobblewonker has a tendency to kill people that take its food…right?" Dipper asked.

"Soos said that since he hardly goes near the lake to begin with, the Gobblewonker will have moved on by the time he comes back near the lake." Mabel replied.

"That's…actually a good point." Wendy pondered. "I wonder if it'll focus on waiting for Soos, rather than killing other fisherman."

"Probably not for long, it has to eat sometime." Dipper pointed out. "I think the missing person count will go down marginally for a little while, but it'll probably bump back up to normal by the end of the week."

This time Dipper was the one being stared at. "You…you guys don't know about how Gravity Falls is like, the unsolved missing person capital in the US?"

"Uh, no. I don't know that and I live here." Wendy answered, curious now that Dipper had brought a previously unknown tidbit about her town up. "When you say missing person capital in the US…?"

"There were 1000 new missing person's cases in Oregon last year, the highest in the nation. I was able to attribute around 700 of those to Gravity Falls before we came up here. That's been the pattern ever since the National Search Assistance Act of 1990 required missing person reports to be filed with the NCIC database." Dipper answered flatly. He put his hand on his chin, briefly tapping it with his index finger. "Before, I thought that the high missing person count was because it's in the forest and people tend to go missing more often when they think they're near town in the woods."

Dipper stood up at this point and began to pace. "What if that's not it at all. I mean, the town is smack dab in the middle of either a caldera or a pseudocrater."

Wendy and Mabel looked at each other and shrugged, neither of them knew what Dipper was referring to. He was too deep into his soliloquy to notice their confusion.

"There's sheer cliffs on nearly all sides, with only one way in and out, the odds of so many people going unfound after being reported missing is..beyond astronomical. It's-" Dipper trailed off, reaching up to adjust his cap.

"Supernatural?" Mabel suggested.

Dipper nodded. "It's the reason that makes the most sense, especially considering what we know now about the existence of the Gnomes and the Gobblewonker. Who knows what else is out there."

The group sat in silence for several moments. Wendy rolled the information that she had just learned around in her mind as she reflected on her life in Gravity Falls. In all of her time in Gravity Falls, she had never heard of people going missing, no posters, no searches…nothing. She'd like to believe that it just never happened in her home town, but considering the information that Dipper revealed about the Gobberwonker, and Dipper's tendency to stick with fact...

'Have I been so self-centered that I never even noticed that things are so awful in Gravity Falls?' Wendy pondered. It was a heavy feeling, thinking that the seemingly lazy backwoods town was so dangerous, and she had never cared enough to notice except when she was directly involved with the twins adventures. 'Would I have even noticed anything if the twins hadn't even come up to visit Stan?'

Wendy reflected on the fact that she had been present for maybe a handful of events that occurred over the summer, who knew how many near-death experiences the twins had gone through when she wasn't around?

'I won't let them face the dangers alone this time.' Wendy promised herself.

"Wendy?" a voice came out of nowhere. The redhead blinked, drawing herself out of her thoughts. The twins were staring at her.

"Huh, sorry. What were you guys talking about?" Wendy asked. Dipper nervously rubbed the back of his neck.

"Well, Mabel had this idea about the journal." Dipper started. Before he could continue, Mabel leapt in, interrupting him.

"We should become detectives!" Mabel burst out.

"What?" Wendy asked, perplexed.

"All those people go missing, and with the journal, we have an edge on figuring out why. We can go out, find out what happened to them, inform the police, and be heroes; like Ducktective!" Mabel explained.

Wendy stared at the younger girl for several moments as she considered it. Wendy knew that the twins would likely still look into the things in the journal, and if she tried to restrict their activities, after telling them that she would accompany them on any mystery they wanted to investigate; they would likely call her a hypocrite and just do it in secret. Not to mention that if Cipher's warning was true, then things would come to them, like with the Gobblewonker, rather than them going to the creatures. And if something happened to Dipper and Mabel because Wendy was not around, she did not know what she would do with herself.

"Okay, so where do we start?" Wendy inquired.

Nighttime; Gravity Falls Lake

Ranger Tate McGucket puttered around the ranger shack as he prepared to go to sleep after the long day of dealing with the opening day of fishing season. No one had expected the Pisces family to lose the opening day competition, especially not to the Mystery Shack. It was a surprise, a rather unpleasant one for him, considering the size of the catfish that they had caught. Usually the contest rendered a small profit for the Gravity Falls Fishing and Wildlife Department; but this year the department actually owed money after costs and the prize money were calculated. It left a sour taste in the ranger's mouth.

McGucket took a look out the lakeside window as he locked the front door, checking for any lights on the lake. He didn't really mind anyone fishing late at night, particularly since he was confident in his ability to identify the various boats and their owners simply by their lights. The lake was clear, but the dock was not. The ranger growled as he threw open the door and walked towards hooded figure, his pen light illuminating the stranger he now recognized.

"Damnit Robbie, it doesn't matter how many times you tell the joke, the Gobblewonker is not interested in your 'tree fiddy'." Tate called out as he approached the figure. The figure stood motionless, staring out at the lake. McGucket grabbed the figure's shoulder, spinning it around as he debated whether or not he should bother calling Blubs to take the obviously high teen home, again.

It was not until the light illuminated the inhumanly handsome face and glittering black eyes that McGucket realized that this person was most assuredly not Valentino.

"Lord Opochtli, I didn't realize that you were in the area." Tate stammered, certain that he was about to be blasted into oblivion. The being smiled at him.

"Have no fear, Tate McGucket. You were not meant to know that I was here; I suppose I lost track of the time and did not realize that you would still be up."

"It would probably help if you carried a watch." A voice spoke up from behind him. The ranger spun around and immediately recognized the person approaching.

"Quetzalcoatl will guide me to where I am needed, when I am needed." Opochtli answered. The man snorted.

"Featherhead couldn't guide himself up a staircase, much less do it in a timely manner." Realizing that he did not want to be between the two men if they started a fight, Tate decided to excuse himself.

"My apologies Master, I'll let you two get to your business." Tate stated, bowing to the second man. The man waved him off.

"Yeah, yeah. I'll come find you if I need you. Chiclet and I have some project progress to discuss; or rather, the lack thereof." Tate eagerly took off, deciding to head into town to get drunk. It seemed like the prudent thing to do after meeting his master face to face; hopefully a stiff drink would get those gleaming golden eyes out of his head.

Sorry for the long wait guys, but between work and trying to figure out what to do with my life, things have been hectic. Actually buckled down to get this chapter out before the finale. Just to let everyone know, I will not drop this story simply because the show ends. I fully intend to finish this story...unless I die, in which case you chumps are out of luck.