Dipper Pines (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ghostharasser) wrote2020-08-30 03:03 pm
ghostharasser) wrote2020-08-30 03:03 pm
Open Post
All purpose open post for Dipper Pines of Gravity Falls. Top levels below
All purpose open post for Dipper Pines of Gravity Falls. Top levels below
Dipper to Dipper communication
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Stupid combination lock. Even when he jiggles the tumblers with his teke nothing clicks.
There is no transition. He's suddenly somewhere else, half conscious, waking up with a head that feels full of cotton. There are metallic sounds - light dinging, like metal chains swaying slightly in air currents and metal groaning and creaking from subtle temperature changes. The smell of rust and dry rot is in the air.
Totally reassuring, normal smells. That's all you're smelling, his semi-conscious brain supplies.
He jolts the rest of the way awake, sitting up suddenly. There's a jangle of metal and his left hand feels strangely weighed down.
With blurred vision, he looks around at an industrial nightmare. An abandoned factory maybe? But there are no windows anywhere.
Totally reassuring normal sights. He tugs at the strangely heavy hand, hears a jangle of metal chain, and realizes it's bound somehow.
...And feels another hand brush against his from the movement.
His head darts to the side, he sees brown hair and for half a second he wonders if Mabel is here with him. If that's the case, it's a good thing. Twice the number of twins, half the escape time.
But It's not Mabel. It's just some guy. The angle he has - and the other person's age - means he doesn't quite get a clear look at his face, not enough to figure things out.
Dipper shrieks at it being a stranger. The shriek quickly turns into a cough-cough-ahem as he tries to pretend he didn't shriek. (Superheroes don't shriek! Or, even when they do, it's a shriek that's commanding, okay? A commanding shriek.) He shakes the weird glowing chain attached to his wrist to rouse the person there.
"Wake up, man. I need to know whether I'm supposed to save you or kick your butt." He waves his free hand in a very bored 'I've got places to be' kinda way. "I'm trying to get to my D, D, & MD club meeting."
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Only rather than slowly coming around, the shriek right next to him is enough to set him off immediately. Years of hyper-vigilance while living in multiple hellscapes kicks in and he's jolting upright and reaching for his (definitely not there anymore) weapon.
Sorry for the sudden abrupt tug on your chained wrist kiddo.
"Whoa, hey, what fuuu-" Oh, that. That's a kid and also the kid looks like him, he immedietly corrects himself as if he can already feel Mabel's swear jar smacking him in the back of the head. "-udge."
...It's not the lighting, right? That definitely looks like a younger him. He still has old photographs from that time in his life. Ugh, and they're attached at the wrist, and this place looks like its a shitty warehouse probably designed to kill them. Cool!! Great! He loves when this kind of crap happens to him!
[Anyway, the lighting is probably dim, and he's clearly an older teen, but the Pines genetics are very clear on Dipper's cuff partner. His voice definitely hasn't changed much (sadly), either.
"Hey, okay, so I don't know what's going on but we definitely need to move. Can you stand?"
It's never a good thing to stay in one spot in a place like this, there's probably something already stalking them.
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Eventually, he realizes what he's looking at. It's the voice that clinches it. Like, it could be, what, coincidence? A psychopath the collects guys that look super alike but isn't picky about ages? But apparently his voice isn't going to change much more in the next few years.
"Motherfucker."
So much for that sparing his baby ears thing. He's used to hanging with a bunch of soldiers from a box canyon who vastly broadened his vocabulary. Hell, even the alien superheroes taught him future swears because the original recipes Legionnaires are the most foul-mouthed superheroes in existence, but space future style.
And Mabel and her swear jar aren't here. He really wishes she were because then she'd probably beat the bad guy in the head with her swear jar or something once they run into them.
"I was really hoping I just got kidnapped by some kind of murderous psycho from my world who was going to try to stick my head in a cage with rats or something but this is interdimensional or time travel stuff, isn't it."
He'd prefer the face rats, he is so done on time and dimensional stuff.
"I already accidentally touched your hand and we still exist and this dimension hasn't disappeared so at least we don't have to worry about that."
He'd read Uncle Ford's updates to the Journal after his dimensional adventures, and the prospect of both dimensional alternates of a person and a whole dimension simultaneously disappearing - was existentially horrifying.
Dipper awkwardly climbs to his feet, looking at the cuff.
"We are so getting hunted for sport." He immediately starts to move, hoping older him will just follow and that they won't do dumb stuff like fight over directions or something. They need to get somewhere less in the open. "I bet this won't be easy to break. On account of it's glowing and that means something stupid is going on."
As they move, he holds up the hand that isn't cuffed to the chain and tries to do...something. It is likely entirely recognizable: absolutely looks like he's screwing up his face and trying to use ESP.
Nothing is happening.
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"Oh, thank fuck, okay," He breathes because now he knows he doesn't need to watch his language. He stands up with his younger alternate and immediately starts to move. While they run Dipper starts trying to get a good look of the place they're been dropped in. No windows, no obvious exits. Hell, there may not be exits unless they clear specific conditions. He's stripped of his weapons, and-
He glances back at Little Dipper to see what he's doing and it only takes a second for it to click. He knows exactly what he's testing and it only takes him another minute to realize why he might be testing it at all.
He lets out a frustrated sigh as it becomes clear to him, too. He's an empath and he's not picking up on anything residual from his counterpart. "The cuff inhibits powers. Great. If we can find where they put my gun we can probably bust it off."
There's a metal steele up ahead and some metal shipping bins that might be decent cover. He doesn't say anything, but he does tug on their cuff and jerk his head in that direction.
"I might have an explanation for why the dimension didn't collapse on us, but it can probably wait until we're out of this place. Do you remember anything before waking up here?"
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"Yeah, I can't use my teke." There are a few sparks of blue light in his palm, but nothing more. He holds up the same hand - bearing a gold ring with an L and the design of a shooting star - in front of them and tries something else. A strange glowing brand etches itself into his skin, but the connecting lines of the design don't fully connect, like something is interfering with the image finishing and it flickers out. "Dimensional travel brand's not working. Flight ring's not working either. Great."
He reaches into a pocket of his cargoes and pulls out a strange little handheld computer of some kind, sleek and nearly impossibly thin, though someone was practical enough to contour it so it wouldn't just slip out of your hands like soap in the bath.
He presses a button and it starts to hover along with them as they move.
"Comm's still got power - thank you, Brainy -" Brainiac 5 had given these things power cells that could probably last until the heat death of the universe. "- but...no reception. Of course." He tucks the comm away. "That's all the powers the weird magic and tech stuff I've got. Unless you've got any tricks up your sleeve, we may have to possibly do this the ol' fashioned way: running around, screaming, and trying not to die."
He had to cycle through his options first before answering the question because if any of them had worked, it could've possibly upped their chances or even led to a quick save. Instead, they get to cower behind some garbage, hooray. He's sure done that before.
"The last thing I remember was being at school. I was about to go to my Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons club meeting. You?"
He pretty much takes the gun thing in stride. He and Mabel had totally grabbed the one they found in Murderworld when powerless, and shot at the motorcycles of the mercenaries during that big road war the group had. They'd crashed and stopped moving and Mabel had declared they were clearly just taking a mid-road war nap, and he tried very hard not to think about it sometimes.
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"No telepathy, no dreamscape, all my blood magics being blocked, and there really isn't a good way to test my healing until we need it. Hey- you don't have a sharpie on you, by chance, do you?" God, when was the last time he's seen a sharpie. Two years ago? Whether or not he gets a sharpie, he'll continue, "No tech from me, the last three years have been spent in either Edgy on Purpose but make it 1830 or one of Soos' JRPGs."
Which is to say all of Little Dipper's gadgets are super interesting and he's mad he can't ask more about them right now. He hasn't seen a smartphone in ages. They communicate with magic notebooks in the Grove. He's dumped all of his stats into magic and gun.
"Heading home from work, it was like I blinked and suddenly we were waking up here. I didn't hear any shitty laughter so it's probably not the vengeful angry false-god that's constantly tormenting my town."Oh man, he was at school. Dipper hasn't been to school in. A while. He sure didn't graduate middle school.
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Blood magic???
"I really wish we weren't getting Drill-trapped right now because I have so many questions."
He knows he shouldn't have watched those movies but honestly a bunch of death traps really weren't that much more scary than some of the things he's seen. Death matches. Killer TV shows used to torture humanity for an eternity by a cosmic nightmare horror.
The part that had made him get sick enough to stop was eventually realizing that the Yellow Lanterns would've loved those movies.
The questions, meanwhile, have to wait. Even though he wants to ask about the weird reality blip. And the blood magic. And the magic notebooks.
Also, does he ever get better at talking to girls? He knows this is a dimensional alternate, but like, he sure wants to know if the capability is there, really. His thing with Pidge is not likely to survive her fighting a space war and them both being, like, teenagers. He knows that, and it's doubtful he can impress another girl by shooting a control rod into a nuclear reactor with teke at 600 miles an hour to impress another girl again anytime soon.
His eyebrows furrow as something occurs to him.
"Are you from a version of Earth with a false god or were you in a different dimension besides Earth?" Gears are turning again. "As in, did this place pull in two dimensional alternates but instead of just being versions who only ever had spent time on Earth, we both had weird interdimensional adventures? That had communication devices of some kind? Did you get powers in yours? Because I bet there are a lot of Dippers in the multiverse that've never left Earth. Like. Statistically. Since most people never leave the dimension they're from generally."
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To his comment about their psuedo-horror movie death trap, Dipper snorts a laugh and nods, uncapping the pen. "You and me both, dude."
Though, most his questions would be along the lines of hey, how's mom and dad? Have you talked to Wendy lately? Hows everyone else doing back home? Mundane stuff. But also the superpowers, too. Like, what's going on there? That's a lot of crazy tech?? Is he back home in Piedmont while also communicating with aliens?? UGH, they need to get through this stupid horror-game, first.
"I'm from Earth, but I'm currently in another dimension, though not the dimension that gave me my powers," he says, drawing what looks like a weird magic circle on the ground once they're behind some cover. Some of it's weird but Dipper might pick up hints of Nordic runes, too. "But you'd be surprised how many weird dimensional pockets exist that draw in people across a multiverse and trap them. I've started calling them Multiversal Nexus Points. I've been stuck in two so far. That we've both seen the multiverse could be a common denominator of how we got plucked out of the ether to play a murder-game. Its as good a guess as any, until we find more of a pattern."
After a moment, Dipper waits, putting his hand near the circle. He sighs, handing the sharpie back to Little Dipper.
"We can cross out magic from external sources of influence, too." Annoying!!!
Anyway, how quiet has it been all this time? Any creepy feelings of being watched? Did their yapping alert the creature in this building?
no subject
Dipper hunkers down, briefly directing a long-suffering look at his counterpart. Of course something creepy is coming their way when the place drips creepy.
Time to stay hidden. And then maybe run and scream if appropriate.
Dipper peeks out between a gap in the junk and waits.
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The expression is appropriately mirrored in his older counterpart, and he also hunkers down to try and get a look at what might be coming their way.
Something big, something heavy probably. Something dragging a weapon, or maybe a monster that's big enough it's dragging part of it's limbs. He looks around for a moment trying to put eyes on something they can use as a weapon. Is there any debris around? Hell he'd be happy with a pipe or a wrench.
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The scrape of metal gets closer.
Shhhnnnk. Shhhnnk. Shhhnnk.
Through the cracks they can see that their pursuer is...
A boy in shorts with a hat with a pine tree on it.
It's another one of them, younger, scraped up and bleeding, seemingly exhausted. His clothes are torn and bloody in places, and singed in others. Blood is dribbling down his chin from a bloody nose. His eyes are hidden by the brim of his hat. His head is hanging like he can barely stay conscious. The metal sound is the sound of a rusty crowbar, clutched in a hand, scraping against the ground with each stride.
Little Dipper starts to inch around the junk pile, face knitted with concern.
If two of them are here, that means more of them might be, right?
His instincts are slightly different than they once were, refined into something more reckless than they were in Gravity Falls - a place where he'd already run towards trouble all the time. The moments of 'I am the one that faces the trouble. I am the one that fixes things' can sometimes entirely supersede his instincts for self-preservation.
Because who else will stop the monsters? The Legion had been all there was, in a wildly dangerous universe, with multiversal annihilation looming. Even just in that universe, there had also been whole planets counting on them - sometimes on just him and a few others, like when he and Pidge'd been forced to save the planet Freep from nuclear oblivion and planetary genocide, just the two of them.
Despite the obvious creepiness and the fact he knows this is probably going to end in the baby Dipper unhinging his jaw and trying to eat his face, he starts to edge around the junk pile, pipe gripped in his hand.
"I'm gonna go talk to him."
no subject
Oh. Oh, he does not like this one bit. While it's very true there could be a thousand explanations for what they're looking at, and the easiest would be that there are just more versions of him running around this place, too much about it is setting off red flags. A trap, obviously, it could be an illusion, a construct of this place meant to test or torment them. It could be a monster, definitely.
But it could also just be him, and this even younger Dipper, in the state he's in, it's enough to make him nod and agree. They can't go very far without each other right now anyway, he'd rather not fight him, and instead be ready just in case.
He might not have the sheer scale of Little Dipper's personal responsibility, but he knows what it's like to have an unfair decision settled on his shoulders. How their misguided choices killed a little girl that had been hurting under the weight of her own uncontrollable abilities. Even with that harsh lesson, he's not about to leave someone to suffer if there's something he can do.
"Alright. Be careful."
And he will follow close behind, pipe held at the ready.
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"Hey, man, you look like you're in bad shape. Do you need help?"
The other Dipper slowly lifts his head and slowly opens his eyes.
The blood on his face is not from his nose. It's from his eyes. They have clearly been gouged out. But instead of bloody tissue, in the voids there is something that looks like crackling TV static.
A voice comes out of his mouth that isn't his, staticky and wrong, too creaky for a human voice.
"Final is the form. Final is the form. Final is the form."
There is the sudden droning shriek of an emergency alert system that fills the room, coming out of other Dipper's mouth, vibrating the walls.
"ANNND HE'S A MONSTER. WE'RE LEAVING!" Little Dipper cries over the noise, shoving Big Dipper towards the other exit from behind the trash pile, as the young Dipper runs towards the side they were peeking out from.
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He moves without needing to be shoved very hard, luckily. He is up on his feet and he is running so hopefully Little Dip can keep up with him. If not, do not think he is above throwing him over his shoulder. Should the Monster Dipper get too close, he swings with his pipe not unlike someone with actual sword training. Hopefully that's enough to keep him away. Monster or not, he isn't thrilled about the notion of having to kill someone with his face.
Final is the Form is standing out to him, though. He'll have to think about that later when there isn't a head-splitting siren screaming at them from all sides.
Regardless of what might be coming after them, Dipper will try and direct them far from being anywhere out in the open, sticking to the steel debris and scrap metal around them. If there's an alarm going off then it stands to reason there may be points of entrance that whatever the alarm is trying to alert would use to descent upon them.
"Keep your eyes open for some kind of door or hatch!"