How about something with Henry AND the triplets – and Mabel!
…
It wasn’t all magic and adventure and weirdness and life-or-death stakes; sometimes it was just lying around in the living room (which, though small, was always somehow just big enough for everyone to feel comfortable, even when it was holding seven Pines, Soos the honorary Pines, Candy, Grenda, Grenda’s slightly shellshocked-looking but smiling boyfriend, Candy’s arsenal, a loudly complaining Pacifica, Wendy hogging half a couch to herself, and Waddles Junior the Second) watching old episodes of The Price Is Trite and new episodes of Viewer Discretion Advised, depending on whether or not Stan would relinquish the remote and how guilty Mabel was feeling about not being a responsible enough mother that week.
But life in Gravity Falls – life with his family – would never lose its charm for Henry, its mystery (‘Hank, what are you looking a- oh. Oh, wow, your new friend sure is…slimy’), its adventure (‘Acacia no Acacia sweetheart don’t brING THE FIRECRACKERS INSIDE -’), its danger (‘Will, it’s nice of you to offer and I know you’ll be able to cut around my antlers but, uh, I don’t think I really need a haircut yet’), or, of course, its weirdness (‘Henry Henry Henry Henry Henry! Look, I shaved all of our initials into the side of my head! It’s a symbol of our family! Don’t worry, it’ll totally grow out before that speaking thing…ie at that college next week!’).
And Henry wouldn’t have it any other way.
Tag: candy
Ford never grows accustomed to the Transcendeced World. Too much like the realities he ran from. Tastes too much like failure. It can’t be victory because he didn’t have anything to do with solving the problem. That said he still finds an unexpected ally.
Candy doesn’t hate her glasses exactly. They’ve been a part of her face since she was four and all attempts at contact lenses have just ended with her twitching in defeat with her eyes watering. She always has the option of wearing an even bigger bedazzled pair over her standard black frames (courtesy of Mabel Pines).
But she’s also a weapons
expertenthusiast. Candy knows that experimenting with the recoil of a new magicked machine with glass near her eyes is a poor life choice. Squinting at the target without them is equally unwise. Dipper (via Mabel) offers to ‘improve’ her vision in exchange for – well- she’s not sure what because she always turns him down.(Dipper will always be the twelve year old who drew a pamphlet to her greatness. Dipper is a demon and she doesn’t want him near her eyeballs. Mabel would be furious if Candy ever said it out loud. Dipper probably knows the reason already.)
So eventually she goes to the Mystery Shack and through the secret passages down to a laboratory where an Author with no family sits. His glasses always have one cracked lens. His weapons use energy from realities that died before she was born.
They talk for a long time.
Prompt: Henry meets/spends some time with Candy and Grenda early in his relationship with Mabel.
Henry had been going out with Mabel for two weeks when he met her best friends for the first time.
He read the sign over Candy’s small downtown storefront, as he pulled the truck into the parking lot.
“‘Blades, Bombs, and Bazookas’? Mabel um, I’m pretty sure two-thirds of that is illegal.”
Mabel pshawed. “Henry, it’s like Grunkle Stan always told me; ‘everything is legal when there’s no cops around!’”
Henry pointed silently to the cop cruiser parked outside.
“Durland likes all the B’s in the sign and Blubs collects knives; he’s the seventeen time jack-o-melon carver in town after all,” Mabel explained nonchalantly, waving to an enrapt Durland sitting in the cruiser.
Henry gave up.
They got out of the truck and stepped inside. Instantly Henry was surrounded by weapons of mass and individual destruction. Every square inch was crammed with guns (ranging from flintlock to laser), blades of every conceivable length and width, bombs, bats, brass knuckles, balaclavas and gun holsters knitted by Mabel…. Before he could get completely overwhelmed, Mabel had grabbed him by the hand and begun to drag him through the store.
“They’re out back in the Proving Grounds!”
“Proving Grounds?” Henry asked weakly.
“Well, it sounds a lot cooler than just saying the empty lot out back. Duh silly!”
—
“CANDY! GRENDA!” Mabel ran over to her best friends, arms windmilling, and Henry tried not to grin from how… well, how adorable his girlfriend was.
Grenda, a pumpkin under one arm, waved as she stepped out of her shop, PETS! (which was the name of her pet store, capital letters and all) and into the shared yard. Candy waved, or did her best to wave under an armful of guns and oh god what if she dropped one. Henry tried to remember that a woman as smart and capable (and running a weapons shop) would have them all unloaded and the safety on.
He looked across the yard as the other two women placed their stuff on a battered old kitchen table that had obviously spent time in the yard and hugged Mabel. All along the fence line and in the grass were hundreds of tiny char marks, from laser fire…or, knowing what he had been told about Candy, regular fire as well. Henry smiled to see that the large pine tree in the yard had a tire swing hanging from it, for when Soos brought his kids over. Set up against the fence was another battered Formica table, with five or six pumpkins on it, each pumpkin bearing a target tacked or painted on.
“What are we trying out today ladies?” Mabel asked, quivering with excitement as she looked at the pile of guns.
“My latest prototype,” Candy replied, no small amount of pride in her voice. “It shoots five lasers out at once, and it should be able to hit all the pumpkins on the table in one go.” She frowned at the pumpkins.
“Mabel, I forgot to grab our aprons and safety glasses. Can you go inside and get them please?”
“Of course!” Mabel gave Henry a squeeze then skipped merrily inside. As soon as the door shut behind her it felt to Henry like the temperature in the yard dropped fifteen degrees. Candy and Grenda were standing shoulder to shoulder, a unified front. Suddenly, Henry had an idea what this was about.
“You know, we’ve met all of Mabel’s girlfriends and boyfriends,” Candy said conversationally, picking up the prototype and sighting down the barrel.
“I, um, that makes sense.”
“We didn’t like any of them!” Grenda joined in, tossing her pumpkin up and down in the air.
Henry kept silent.
“You know why we use pumpkins for testing Henry?” Candy sweetly asked.
He saw where they were going but played along. “Because they’re cheap at the store?”
“Because they’re like human heads!” Grenda answered. She squeezed and the pumpkin in her hands exploded under the force of her arms.
“Yes, what Grenda said.” With no warning, Candy turned and shot the prototype at the remaining pumpkins on the table. Five lasers emerged from the point of the gun, hitting each pumpkin square in the middle of the target. Pumpkin seed and flesh flew everywhere, coating the table, the fence, the grass, and their shoes in pumpkin goop.
Candy looked at Henry, who despite himself felt his mouth drop at the pumpkincide. “Since I’ve started the shop I have learned many things. Like the every weakness of the human body. And I know how to use every weapon in my shop.”
“My toy chimaeras like to eat human corpses!” Grenda chimed in. “It’d only take them seventeen seconds!”
Candy poked a finger into Henry’s side.
“You understand what we are saying and…and…” Candy frowned. “Why are you smiling?”
“You should be quaking with fear and unadulterated terror!” Grenda bellowed.
Henry tried to force the smile off of his face but found he couldn’t.
“I’m sorry Candy, I’m sorry Grenda but I’m just… I’m just happy that Mabel has friends that care about her and love her like you two do. I can’t promise that we won’t break up or that we won’t hurt each other but I promise that if I ever do leave Mabel’s life-” He paused at the pang in his heart and stomach that came at that thought. “If we do break up, I won’t break her down or make her think less of herself.”
Candy and Grenda looked at him for a second, and then at each other.
Finally, Candy turned back to Henry and offered him her hand. “Let’s start again. I’m Candy Chiu.”
“And I’m Grenda!” Grenda said, claiming Henry’s other hand.
“It’s nice to meet you both,” Henry said, shaking both their hands at once. “We should probably clean this up before Mabel comes back out though.”
“No, it’s okay! We’ll just call it a weapon malfunction. Besides, I have a bow and arrow we can try out on the tinier pieces.”
(Several years later, when it came time to toast Henry and Mabel at their wedding, Candy gave the full story to Mabel for the first time, and was pleased to see Henry blush bright red.)
Short and Sweet
I took the Candy after the Transcendence prompt for the ficathon and immediately went “How can I make this about California?” Turns out, it was pretty good fit!
This takes place a while after the event I like to refer to as The Sinking, which is basically when California went to shit, so Candy is ~forty or so. That doesn’t make her any less badass however.
Height had always been Candy Chiu’s worst enemy.
When she was young, everyone assured her that she’d catch
up, but while her friends grew like weeds, she stayed an adorable four feet
eleven inches.In no way was it the catastrophe that she had made it out to
be when she was twelve, but just about everyone being taller than her made it
hard to forget that she was a shrimp. And nowhere was that more obvious than
Port Aldrose, California.Formerly just plain Aldrose, Port Aldrose was famous for
being a hub for scavengers all along the Californian Archipelago. While the
entirety of California had been wholly unprepared for the cataclysmic events of
April 29, 2038, Aldrose had been even more so taken aback by its sudden status
as beachfront property and its ideal real-estate for traders. As such, it
looked like it had been thrown together on the spot, even years later.Buildings were joined together with sheet metal, broken
walls acted as storefront windows, oil drums supported sagging roofs. Rats and
dogs scrapped in the gutters. Hagglers bellowed from every street corner.It wasn’t the kind of place Candy would visit for pleasure,
which was good, because from the minute she had arrived she was all business. Or
she would be as soon as she found the harbour.
Everything She Ever Wanted
Not really a ficathon prompt but happy anniversary anyways @transcendence-au! It’s kinda some background on my fic Happily-Ever-After.
When she was eleven, Grenda found out she had ovarian cysts. It was harsh news and it hit hard but at least she was notified early on. She cried for hours.
Happily-Ever-After
This is my contribution to the TAU Anniversary Ficathon! I picked a prompt on what Grenda and Marius were doing after the Transcendence and expounded on that. Now, while it’s not much of a fanfiction and more of a world-building thing, I think I did the characters justice, yanno?
Anyway, I hope y’all enjoy.
Grenda’s wedding
was everything she had ever dreamed about as a young girl: a lavish reception,
a gorgeous gown, all her friends and family were there, and she had a
soon-to-be-husband who loved her with all his heart. She was ecstatic. She was
terrified. She was in love.
Meat Cute, 9/9
Or where there is finally, finally, a wedding. Buckle your seats kids. This one’s a long one.
Several thank yous are in store now that this is finally finished! Thank you @zilleniose-chu for being a wonderful human being, for creating TAU and the blog, and letting us all play with your idea babies. Thank you @marypsue for all of your amazing writing advice and help, not to mention letting me spaz on you on the reg. Thank you anon on the blog who sent in these two asks and let me use ideas from them. Thank you @randumbdaze for the art and thank you to the rest of the mods for letting me moan and groan at you.
And of course, thank you, my readers, for actually reading! I never would have imagined a year ago how big this would get or that people would want to read about my babies! So thank you, thank you again, and happy anniversary!
—————————————–
As Henry explained
to the triplets when they asked years later, he had never officially moved in
to the Shack. He had never asked and Mabel had never offered. It was just
assumed that it would be a thing that happened.So by the first month of them going out Henry had a toothbrush in Mabel’s
bathroom, and some of his underwear and socks in a small folded pile on a chair
in her room. Five months and some of his favorite books had found their way
onto various side tables and shelves. His stays went from overnight to two or
three nights, to a week at a time, and Uncle Tyler constantly giggled at him
and told him to “Get it!” (Which in turn made both Henry and Uncle Dan blush.)Henry went ahead and moved the remainder of his stuff into the Shack three days
after he proposed to Mabel, when a brand new room appeared overnight on the
side of the Shack.
One Year Anniversary
It’s a year after the end of the world and Mabel Pines is talking to herself.
Because most everyone things she’s been talking to herself, thinks her mourning has turned to chatter, and only now when she’s in Gravity Falls again is it true.
Because Dipper was summoned somewhere far away and her Grunkles would worry if they knew. So she continues to talk to him with him despite everything. Right now he’s letting her win at checkers. He’s so thoughtful that way.
Mabel loves her family with the intensity of a forest fire.
It’s a year after the end of the world and Stan Pines complains there’s nothing good on television anymore. It’s a year after the end of the world and Ford Pines has invented a device to allow you to watch television from any alternate timeline. The brothers watch an old Harry Claymore movie instead.
In the kitchen Soos Ramirez and Wendy Corduroy make small talk: arguments about popular music, discussions about the metaphysical implications of ghosts, romantic entanglements.
Wendy leans back in her chair. “Do you even wonder if your Mom might come back now that-”
“No way, Dude,” says Soos. “I’ve been a zombie. Not something I’d want to spread around.”
They go back to arguing about pop songs.
It’s a year after the end of the world and Pacifica Northwest has cut off all her hair to see if she’ll turn into someone else. Her head feels lighter but her face is the same. She decides she’ll have Mabel do the next makeover.
In another part of the town Candy Chiu is live tweeting her dinner with a Kumiho. The Kumiho only tries to murder her a little.
Grenda Thompson shouts at her boyfriend over the phone about her day. Her enthusiasm is loud enough that Mayor Cutebiker gives up on privacy and eavesdrops to his hearts content. He really thinks those kids are going to make it.
It’s a year after the end of the world and Dipper Pines is summoned by someone else’s wheel. And now there’s blood on the gloves he only just decided to start wearing. He could remove it, easily, but he watches it turn from bright red to dark brown against the white of them instead. He just saved twenty people. He just murdered a man.
There’s a part of Dipper delighted to discover all the things that now exist inside him. There’s a part of Dipper that will always be twelve and anxious about this face. He goes home.
It’s the end of the world and they’re still here. Still fighting.
He should be there too.
The Scouring: Chapter 09
On AO3: Start Here, Current Chapter Here
On FF.net: Start Here, Current Chapter Here
The Pines weren’t the only ones who needed rest, as it turned out.
After their first burst of cleaning, breaking magic circles and
bringing out the dead, the town of Gravity Falls simply shut down.The members of the Dinner Club (and quite a few of those who weren’t,
technically, part of them but had come to aid anyway) that didn’t
need as much rest as the others stayed awake to guard the
Anti-Transcendence Alliance – its leaders in particular – as
everyone else either forced themselves to eat before they collapsed
or went to friends and family homes to rest, too tired to eat.The Shack was too far for the Pines to go to, not now, while
everything was still unsettled and they could be needed at a moment’s
notice. They bunked down at Soos and Melody’s home instead, in the
Rameriz living room, curled around each other as best they could
manage with all of them on the king sized air mattress on the floor.
(Grunkle Stan claimed the couch, pretending it was because he was too
tough to join the cuddle pile instead of being too old and in too
much pain, while everyone saw through that and proceeded to haul the
air mattress to butt against it, where they could reach him, and he
them.)Dipper woke up before the rest of his family, as he didn’t need sleep
the way they did. Still, he’d been exhausted enough, body, mind, and
soul, to need some now, buried under their bodies at the bottom of
the cuddle pile (and grateful he was in the Mindscape and didn’t need
to breathe or it would have been highly uncomfortable).He’d thought his bloodlust would die down after the first rush of
blind anger, but lying here, under the heavy, warm, alive
weight of his family, it was just as strong and hot as earlier. As
much as he’d like to deny it, becoming a demon only strengthened the
darkness he’d already had, that Grunkle Stan had warned him about.And right now, he didn’t care.
Those people tried to take his family from him. They wanted to kill
everyone he cared about, destroy their way of life, and enslave his
sister. It may have been the demon, may have been the dark streak in
him, but…He wanted to see them suffer.
The Scouring: Chapter 7
On AO3: Start Here, Current Chapter Here
FF.net not available, keeps giving me 503 error when I try to get into my account. Will update with link later, when it decides to cooperate.
Dipper was screaming.
Mabel fought against the straps on her chair, leather digging into
her skin until she bled, her family fighting as hard as she against
their bonds. Even as they fought the townspeople surged against the
barrier, taking it down with sheer numbers and swarming over the
shocked cultists who swung to respond. Up on the platform, The
Woodsman’s axe missed Gideon by a hairsbreadth, all spurred to action
in protective fury.Dipper was screaming.
Mabel felt the strap over her right wrist give as someone reached her
chair, a knife snapping the last strands holding it to the chair
before the surging crowd pulled them away, the voices of the cultists
still able to chant rising as the armed ones fought to keep the crowd
from the chanters, the lights of the outer circle merging with the
light pouring from the cross and circle holding her brother.Dipper was screaming.
No matter what else happened, Mabel’s mind kept focusing on that one
fact, that one sound over the rest. The screams were muffled and
desperate, and Dipper had only sounded like that once before, one
horrible, terrible day when Mabel had nearly lost him forever and she
was not going to let that happen again she was not going to lose him
not now not like this they couldn’t have her brother!
backup 