Hey everyone! This is probably a little overdue on my end, but I'm finally going to lump all future "Future-Pines" fics into one easily manageable collection, starting with this story here.

For folks new to my little AU, it's pretty simple - the twins are grown, Dipper and Wendy are hitched, Mabel has two kids, they still visit Gravity Falls occasionally, madness continues to occasionally ensue in their lives. All the past separately posted Future-Pines stories (separately listed on my profile for reference) are all part of the same timeline as the ones that will be posted here in the collection.

Also, important note: Sorry for any possible confusion, but like my past future-stories, these aren't going to follow any exact chronological order. Instead they're still going to jump all around in time depending on the story, hence for example why Mabel's kids will be mere babies in one story, three-year-olds in the next, and then suddenly two years old in the one after.

Hope you all continue to enjoy them! Reviews, critiques, and also any story suggestions are always greatly appreciated! - SGA

"...So I think I'll be home around….probably seven, maybe seven thirty. Sound okay?"

"Totally. I'll get some pizzas delivered by then for everyone." Wendy replied back over the phone. "Seeya later, dude. Love you."

"Love you too." Dipper hung up, and a near- dead silence returned to the room. With the museum closed for the evening, the young man was one of the few left in the the entire building. It was more than likely that he was the only soul remaining in the labyrinthine back rooms; he hadn't heard a sound in the past half-hour. Carefully he shelved a collection of cleaned and catalogued amulets when a loud thud suddenly echoed ominously.

"Hello?" Only a deafening quiet replied. That was rarely a good sign. Instinctively every muscle in his body tensed. Warily the young man crept his way towards the next room.

"Hello?" He repeated himself. "Hello? Who's-"

A scream filled the air, and suddenly he found himself staring deep into a set of empty white eye sockets. In his haste to get away Dipper ended up falling flat on his back with a yelp. Shrill laughter proceeded to bombard his ears.

"Hi there!" Mabel poked her smiling face around the corner. As she playfully flapped the jaw of the ancient saber-tooth tiger skull in her hands like it was a puppet, fresh alarm spasmed through her brother.

"Hey, put that back! It's not a-" Dipper didn't get far before his two-and-a-half-year-old niece and nephew tumbled in and excitedly rushed him. The two triggered a hoarse grunt from their uncle when the literally tossed themselves onto his scrawny body.

"Uncle Dippeh!" Gladys threw her little arms around his neck for a chokingly tight hug.

"Uncle Dipper, that was funny!" Finn chirped in delight. Foiled by the aggressive cuteness assault, he could do little at the moment save try to recover both his breath and dignity. Mabel meanwhile smirked triumphantly before putting the skull back where she found it.

"You were supposed to call me when you got here." He wheezed as he gave each of the little ones a welcoming pat on the head. "How'd you even get inside?"

"Easy! You accidentally left one of your spare keycardy dealies at our place." Mabel whipped out a plastic card and pressed it to his forehead. "Boop!"

"How long have you been holding on to-" He changed his mind. "You know what, I don't think I want to know."

"Good!" She was cheerily unrepentant as ever. "That means we can get straight to Tour-Time! Ready to see what awesome stuff Uncle Dipper has in store for us today, sweeties?"

"YEAH!" The toddlers whooped ecstatically as they crawled off of him. Despite his still-aching stomach, Dipper was soon sporting an enormous smile. He couldn't lie; he almost enjoyed these secret after-hours family tours more than the kids did. The elder twins took a tot each by the hand.

"What are we gonna lookit today?" Gladys squeaked as she bounced along at his side. Her uncle's chest automatically swelled.

"Okay guys, we got some real cool stuff from some recent digs." He guided them towards a table covered with an eclectic assortment of items. "See these? These are some old stone knives. Now look at the designs here on the handle. Cool, right?"

"Oooohhh…." His niece ran her tiny fingers down the intricately carved designs. Mabel gasped when it was her turn to handle the gorgeous artifact.

"These are bea-ut-i-ful! Did you find these, bro?"

"Uh-huh!" He answered proudly. "Remember that dig I was away at last month? I found them by-"

"Uncle Dipper? What's this?" Finn hadn't been able to stay with them for more than five seconds. There were far too many intriguing things lying around to explore. That, and being the child of Mabel Pines definitely didn't do anything for his attention span, although it did wonders for his sense of curiosity. He had wandered across the room where two large rectangular boxes sat upon a sturdy table. The child pushed a step stool into place and hopped up for a peek inside.

The color drained from Dipper's face. In the blink of an eye he had bolted over and set the confused little boy right back on the floor. "Uh, nothing! It's nothing. That's….that's just where we keep all...our...uh, dirty tools! You know, everything we used to dig. You really don't want to look at that, buddy. Trust me, it's just a bunch of boring, dirty shovels...uh, yeah."

"Ooohhh! Lookit heah!" Gladys had already toddled into the next room where she now intently examined part of an excavated totem pole. Finn immediately forgot all about the strange containers and eagerly scampered off after his sister. Mabel waited until they were both just out of sight. While her children's attention was temporarily occupied, she seized her chance.

"...Can I look at them?" It didn't take her long to guess what her twin had been hiding. The young woman bit her lip like an over-excited child as she shifted hopefully from foot to foot.

After double-checking that the little ones weren't in eyeshot, Dipper opened the lid. Lying inside were the stained remains of a complete skeleton. The young woman's eyes sparkled brightly with fascination.

"Haha, creepy!" She irreverently poked at the bleached bones. "So what's their deal?"

"Well for starters, they're both kind of dead." He gazed down upon the macabre sight. This particular find had held a sort of curious fascination for him ever since it had shown up. " One of our out-of-state digs brought these two in just this morning. They think they might have been a pair gold miners, or a pioneering couple, but no one's really sure just yet. All they found were the bones in some rotten coffins."

"Ooooh, a mystery!" She chirped. "That's totally our jam, bro-bro! Any clues?"

"Actually..." He pointed to the array of long, rusty slivers of metal sticking in the back of the ribcage, then to the large metal spike stabbing clean through its shoulder.

"Whoaaa, what are those?"

"Nails. They were found in both bodies. It honestly looked like they were keeping them in place in their coffins."

"Weird." Her brow crumpled. "What for?"

Dipper held up a packaged scrap of wood. "Hopefully I'll learn soon enough. This is one of the biggest coffin chunks they excavated. See the writing scratched into it? I should start the cleaning process on this tomorrow-"

"Oh, it's just a little dirt!" She snatched it right from the bag, and to the professional archaeologist's horror she started vigorously rubbing it with her bare fingers.

"MABEL!"

"It's okay, I'm an art teacher! I'm used to getting a little messy!" She laughed. "Ah, there we go! See? Just regular old timey English!"

"Why would you...hey, you're right." Dipper's curiosity was too piqued to stay upset. Now that the writing was clear, he took it back and went over the scrawled words. "'Today we rid our community of these two servants of evil. To any who come across these followers of the black arts, stay away. Let them be, and do not call upon their dark master like so….'" The next few lines were a mess of old Latin that the young man fumbled through.

"Huh." Mabel cocked an eyebrow. "What's all that biz about? That sounds like-"

A low moan suddenly filled the air. The unimpressed young woman gave her brother a disapproving push. "Oh, laaaaame! Seriously Dipper, you gotta try a lot harder than that if you wanna scare me back."

"Uh…." Dipper had frozen up stiff as a steel beam. As much as he despised sounding cliched, he honestly didn't know what else to say except, "That….wasn't...me."

She read the fear in his face, and her jaw dropped. An all too familiar sense of dread swept over them. They quickly put two and two together just as the collection of supposedly lifeless remains suddenly lurched upright. Together the terrified siblings instinctively slammed the top of the container down as hard as they could. The crate started to move about as its occupant tried to get loose.

Unfortunately, now the top of the other box shifted with a second spine-chilling groan. Before the other heap of bones could try to escape, Mabel shut it tight, muffling the inhuman wail that the abomination managed to make despite a distinct lack of lungs and lips.

"Getting up!" She yelped. "Crazy skeleton thingys, getting up right now! Why are they getting up?"

"Why would they write the words you're not supposed to say right there on the coffin?" He exclaimed angrily. "Seriously, who does that? Who?"

"Being too careful, I guess! But talk about overkill-WAUGH!" Mabel's skeleton managed to get a hand loose, and the young woman just barely kept from getting her face clawed.

It wasn't long of course until the ruckus attracted the children's attention. Finn was the first to pipe up curiously from the next room.

"Mommy?"

"Uh, it's okay!" Mabe's mind raced. "Everything's fine! We're just...uh, just…."

"Helping me clean up!" Her brother added, just as his ghoul tried started pounding away with its bare knees.

"Yeah! I'm helping your Uncle Dipper clean up the dirty shovels and stuff from the big toolboxes! Absolutely nothing weird going on here, just boring adult stuff! Oh, it's sooooo stupid and boring and not fun! No worries, we'll be with you in a sec!" She said reassuringly.

One of the skeletons let out a horrific shriek, which of course proved to be immediately confusing for the tots.

"Whazzat, Mommy?" Finn piped up.

"It's….it's just me!" Dipper followed up his lie with his own horrifying yell. "I'm just...uh, just…."

"The singing contest!" Mabel creatively chimed in. "He's warming up for a Long-Distance Singing Contest! It's us versus you guys! Whoever can sing the loudest wins, okay? ONETWOTHREE GO! Sunny days, sweepin' the clouds away….on my way, to where the air is sweeeeeet! Can you tell me how to get, how to get to…."

Thankfully her tots never turned down a competition, and they eagerly joined in. Together they drowned out the bulk of the nightmarish screams, along with the unsettling sound of Dipper's knuckles striking bare bone. After beating down his skeleton back into its crate for the fourth time, the young man crawled onto the table and desperately threw his body onto the lids of both boxes.

"Stairwell!" He gasped as he held on tight. "Right when you get out the door, on your left!"

"On it!" Mabel shot off, temporarily leaving Dipper alone to hold back the cursed horrors.

"Did we win, Unca Dippeh?" His niece chirped in her squeaky lisp.

"N-no, not yet!" The young man gasped. Not too far away there was the sharp crash of breaking glass. "Keep going! Try and beat me, okay? 'C-can you tell me how to g-get, how to get to Sesame Streeeeet! Come and plaaay, everything's...'"

Both the undead monstrosities seemed to redouble their efforts in unison, sending the poor man bouncing up and down. Still he tried his very best to continue with the 'contest'.

"...Friendly neighbors there, that's-OW! That's-OW! OW! OW!"

"Uncle Dipperrrrrr!" He could hear his nephew groan in disapproval. "Those aren't the words!"

"Sorry! Okay, we'll start again! Sunny-OW! Sun-OW!"

"Sunny days, Uncah Dippeh!"

By some miracle he managed to get through the whole next verse without being bodily bucked up before his sister returned. Mabel bounded back in wielding a fire axe high above her head. Dipper hurriedly shoved the lid of the first box aside.

"Die! Die! Die! DIE! Die you evil skeleton monster, die!" She brought down the weapon hard. Moving like a well-oiled machine, the two repeated the process with the next thrashing horror. Completely decapitated, both promptly collapsed into loose pile of inanimate bones. But this didn't stop her from frantically swinging the blade down several more times on each one for good measure. "DIE! DIE! BOTH OF YOU, DIE!"

Just to make sure they stayed lifeless, Dipper hurriedly wrenched out a couple inches of neckbone and stowed them away in his pocket. He'd thoroughly dispose of those later. For now though, the two needed moment to recover. Their hearts were jackhammering so hard that they could practically hear them pounding against their ribcages.

"W-where…." Mabel gasped. "Where the heck did you guys find these?"

"No idea. Hold on..." Panting hard, he reached for the attached report. "Okay, let's see here...Male and female remains. Mid-nineteenth century. Found at Silver Spring, abandoned settlement at site 3B-5, central Oregon, near town of Gravity Falls…"

He did a double take at the all too familiar name. There was a moment of dumbfounded silence before he smacked his forehead. "Oh….oh you have got be kidding me."

"Huh." His sister was immediately satisfied. "Well that makes sense!"

Blissfully unaware of what had just transpired, the toddlers bounced back into the room. Little Gladys tugged on her uncle's leg. "Did we win now?"

"Huh? " Dipper wearily grunted. "Oh, uh….y-yeah. Yeah, you win the contest. C-congrats."

"Uncle Dipper? Uncle Dipper!" Finn impatiently tugged on his arm. Now that the game was over, they had more pressing matters to attend to. "Uncle Dipper, can we go lookit the dinosaurs now?"

"Dinosaws!" Gladys chorused. "Pleeeease? Can we?"

"Rawwrrr!" Her brother bared his teeth and playfully growled, and then went right back to pleading adorably. "Please? Can we lookit them?"

"Yeah! Of course Uncle Dipper can take us to go see the dinosaurs!" Their adorable enthusiasm helped speed their mother's recovery along tenfold. In no time her spirits had buoyed back to their normal bubbly level. "Right?"

Dipper still needed a good half minute and at least a dozen more long, deep breaths. "Y-yeah, that….that sounds good...c'mon, let's go look at the dinosaurs."

With ecstatic cheers, the tiny twins skipped on right ahead. Soon the clan had made their way to an enormous cavern of a room. Mabel's toddlers were now surrounded by so many fossils that as usual, they barely knew what to do with themselves. They dashed about and enjoyed themselves to the very fullest alongside their mother. The three gawked, laughed, and playfully mock-roared at one another to their heart's delight.

Only Dipper remained left out. The exasperated young man slumped on a bench, still recovering from their earlier incident.

"Whop!" Mabel snapped him to the present. After poking him in the gut, she sat down beside him. "What's your deal?"

"Sorry. Give me another minute. I just…." He let out a heavy sigh. "How are you feeling better already?"

"You mean from those dead guys? Pffft! It was only two measly skeletons. We've had to handle stuff a thousand times weirder than that. Sometimes even a million times weirder!"

"I know, but..." He shook his head. "That? That was all a total Gravity Falls thing. It's something we're only supposed to deal with when we visit up there, not around here at home."

"Pfffft! Like I said, it was just two bony jerks." She cheerily dismissed his concerns.. "No problem for total pros like us, right?"

"I guess. But it's not the kind of thing that-"

"Nuh-uh! Sorry, but there's no getting upset during Dinosaur Time!" She declared loudly. "Isn't that right?"

"DINOSAUR TIME!" Her children joyously repeated on cue, triggering a brief smile from their uncle. For a few minutes they just sat and watched the little ones bound about, marveling at the prehistoric reptile fossils. Mabel passed a glance and saw that her brother was still looking a little haggard.

"Buck up! Look, my babies are having the time of their lives, all thanks to their Uncle Dippingsauce!"

"I'm trying, I'm trying." He groaned wearily. "I'm just-"

"Just what?" She pried. Dipper mulled over how best to put it.

"You ever get those moments where our lives just feel sort of...I dunno…I don't want to say 'cursed' or anything too strong like that but…" He shrugged awkwardly. "You get what I mean, right?"

As usual, his eternal optimist of a sister was ready and waiting to balance him out. Mabel slung an arm around his shoulder, comfortingly crushed him close and topped it all off by flashing the toothiest smile she could muster. "'Exciting.' The word that you're looking for is 'exciting' bro-bro..."