Sweetheart, darling, it’s Stan. Of course he has! 😉 And Dipper loves it too! It’s an opportunity to show Stan what he’s learned, and of course, all the deals and bad luck and fucking people over and it is simply delicious.
(He doesn’t tell Stan that last part, doesn’t tell him of deals made with desperate gamblers who need just one more stroke of luck, only a few dollars more and they’re going to strike this time for real-)
Thing is though, casinos in Vegas aren’t stupid. They have whole departments of staff dedicated to sniffing out the faintest hint of cheating. And as both Stan and Dipper are chagrined to find out, this includes demons helping their old con man uncles.
They go back two or three times under new disguises, but after they get busted under four different personas, both Stan and Dipper eventually accept that this rig is up.
(Unlike all the other suckers around him, Stan Pines knows when to risk it all and when to fold.)
There is such rampant cheating going on at that table, and while Alcor really thinks he should have an advantage (having played against an older and wilier Mabel in his own past) somehow it just isn’t working out the way he expected.
He was a demon. Day by day, he could feel power continue to flow into him, pooling into an endless reserve that he could tap into. He had more titles than he knew what to do with already, and it had only been two years since the Transcendence. He had gone to the Moon, to the Mariana Trench, and touched the Sun (and paid dearly for that last one but not the point here).
He should not be scared of Grunkle Stan.
And yet-
Stan looked at him. “What did you just say Dipper?”
Dipper, who maybe had said something along the lines of “You got more nose hairs than years you have left,” looked down, shuffled his feet, and muttered, “Nothing, Grunkle Stan.”
Stan, dressed only in his gross, sweat stained undershirt and boxers, put the slipper that had been in his hand back down on the ground, and re-grabbed his magazine.
@seiya234 said: For the request: James G. meeting Stan or Henry?
This ended up…longer than anticipated. XD
James Gallucio had only briefly met Henry Pines, the man
hovering in the background of the library as James was dazzled by Mabel
Pines and struck senseless at learning that the Dreambender was hovering
around the Library.
Mostly, James had gotten the
impression of someone rooted, someone grounded and steady, and had found
himself glancing down at the tall man’s feet for actual roots.
But
beyond that cursory introduction, James really hadn’t gotten to talk to
Henry. Mabel was bright, and vibrant, and took up all his attention at
the time.
The Stanley Pines Memorial Library had
all of the magical books to be found in town – or at least, the ones of
any real substance – but what James needed at the moment was more along
the lines of the history of the town.
The statue in the
center of town claimed it was founded by a Nathaniel Northwest, but,
well, James had his doubts about that. Still, if that was the story the
town wanted to claim…well, he was still going to dig into it but it
would likely be what he used for his reports and his show.
What
it meant for right now, though, was that James was checking up in the
Gravity Falls Pubic Library rather than the Pines one.
He
had basically commandeered a table, though not intentionally. It had
simply happened as he gathered more books and took more notes, made more
photocopies, had more and more information spread out around him.
Several
of the older patrons of the library, who gave James the impression that
they came to the library on a daily basis, were watching him with
various degrees of amusement, although one or two seemed a bit irritated
with him, in that older verses younger generations way.
“It
looks like you’ve got quite the project going there. Are you doing
okay, or do you need help finding anything?” a voice, quiet and assured,
asked from behind James.
James spun and found himself
face to face with Henry Pines. Or, well, face to mid torso, as Henry was
ridiculously tall and James was still seated.
“It looks
like something my brother would do…or at least, used to do,” Henry
said, face clouding for a moment. “Did you find everything? Oh, you were
the one who came to the Memorial Library the other day, aren’t you?”
“Ah,
yes, I was,” James said, adjusting his glasses and wishing he dared go
into interview mode, but he was keenly aware of his audience. “Actually,
I’d kinda hoped to talk to you there, but, well, your wife
is…vibrant.”
Henry smiled, slow and proud and so full of love James felt an answering smile tug at his lips. “Yeah, she is that.”
“I’d
still like to interview you, if that’s okay,” James said. “You know, as
someone who came to live in Gravity Falls after the Transcendence? And
became really a core part of the town without having magic ahead of
time? At least I’m assuming so and I really shouldn’t assume things and
I’m babbling again and so how about that interview?”
Gompers found a tin that Sad Smell One Eye threw out into the yard and began to chomp on it. He was worried about Sad Smell One Eye. For a few brief months, there had been kids (even if they were weird furless kids with soft hooves and messed up eyes) running around, and Sad Smell One Eye had turned into Happy Smell One Eye.
Gompers had approved of the change. He tolerated Sad Smell One Eye, but it was nice to see him happy, if only because he stunk better.
But then there had been the Wrong Bad that had ripped through his home, and while it was fun being big big and wreaking havoc and terror on all he surveyed, at the end of it what had been two kids had suddenly become one-
Gompers finished the tin and started to sniff around the yard for another one. There were a lot more tins out here than there used to be.
Lots of tins, sad smells, weird broken noises coming from One Eye; everything had gone back to normal, like from before the kids had come.
Gompers didn’t like that.
He’d have to have a word with what his boy kid had become to fix this. He’d miss the tins, but some things were worth the sacrifice.
On one hand, there is Dipper. But technically, Dipper never learned to drive, and honestly has little to no interest in driving so his potential reign of terror has been thankfully cut short before it began.
Mabel is terrifying, true, but we should consider who taught Mabel to completely regard all traffic laws, treat her vehicle like a battering ram, and all in all drive like a blinding con man.
Even more snappily dressed than usual Alcor is tracked down by a
demon hunter while pretending to be human then proceeds to attack said
demon hunter.
and @nevergonnalookdown: Alcor is found be a demon hunter, after killing a cult. She attacks
him. He realizes it’s Mizar. So he says “I’d kill you if it wasn’t you.
She thinks he’s flirting. Awkward moment ensues.
Mercy’s sister, Sincerity, is a Stan reincarnation. Just a little note there.
Mercy Blakemore had been low key following Tyrone Sapling for months.
It
might have been easier if she’d had some of the equipment she’d heard
demon hunters of old had access to, but, with technology the way it
was…she’d take what she could get.
As it stood, she
still did have better equipment than most other demon hunters, thanks to
her family’s legacy of hunting. A legacy that meant they had been doing
this for generations, had the summonings and the spells and the weapons
to fight the strongest of demons.
Demons and their ilk
had been a scourge upon humanity ever since the Transcendence, the
apocalypse that had been lost to history, but her family was going to be
the one to decrease their numbers, to eradicate them from the earth.
As
for Sapling, he’d been around for awhile, no one could quite say for
how long, part of the social circle Mercy’s family moved in, always
impeccably dressed and with cutting repartee sharp on his tongue, a
glint to his eyes as if he knew things humans didn’t, as if he were
watching them all for his own amusement.
There wasn’t any
one particular thing that set Mercy’s internal radar buzzing, but a
dozen tiny things, little moments where it seemed like Tyrone’s humanity
was a mask for something darker, something more powerful, hiding just
below the surface and waiting to pounce.
Admittedly, in
the circles Mercy and her family often traveled in, such things were not
always so uncommon. Cutthroat politics and people who smiled as they
lied to your face only made Mercy happier she had chosen the demon
hunting path, unlike her sister, who worked the circles for funds and
information.
So Mercy couldn’t say just what it was about
Tyrone Sapling that set her to watching him, but she’d caught him
watching her more than once, out of the corner of his eye, never
anything she could prove…and it was never the sort of looks that made
her want to haul off and punch the watcher. She’d had enough of those to
know the difference.
No, it just…unnerved her.
Something was off about Tyrone Sapling, and she wanted to know what, but
nothing she tried was getting her any results, and she was getting
frustrated. Enough so that she set to her sister to find out all the
gossip a determined flirt like Sincerity could find out.
And while usually, Sincerity could find out anything about anyone, this time…she was coming up short.
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