Camp Rises [an AU of Gravity Rises]

Chapter 1: Welcome to Camp Rises

(Narrator)
Mabel Pines hated summer camps.
Mabel Pines especially hated summer camps with a) camp t-shirts, b) mandatory sing-alongs, and c) Gideon Northwest and Pacifica Pleasure.
And when her parents shipped introvert Mabel and her hyperactive twin brother Dipper off to their great-uncle's "Camp Rises," it was d) all of the above. Although she had to admit, the sing-alongs were the worst. And not in the kind of way you say jokingly to your friend, "You're the worst!" No, Mabel Pines had veritable nightmares about the horrors of sing-alongs and social interaction.
(...)
The horrors, I said. Stop laughing.
(...)
Who's telling the story here? That's right. I am. (Finally...)

~~~

(Mabel)
As mentioned, Mabel Pines definitely did not like summer camps. And it didn't look as if she'd like Camp Rises much, either.

There was around... maybe 15 people? Which was, at times, already too many for Mabel to handle, although by Dipper's standards, this was tiny. Which it kind of was. Still, there were people, and Mabel let out a tiny, involuntary whimper as she thought of spending an entire vacation here.

Dipper elbowed her in the side. "Look at all these people!"

I know, she thought glumly.

"This is gonna be great! Right, Mabes?"

"This is going to be horrible," she whispered.

"But look on the bright side! We might make new friends!"

"Or not." Mabel tried to put on a brave face, for Dipper's sake, and scanned the crowd.

There was a girl with her blonde hair piled high atop her head, wearing a fancy purple dress and wrinkling her nose delicately at the t-shirt her father held out to her.

There was a small Asian girl with glasses, standing next to a boy with an iguana perched on his hat.

There was a boy with shockingly white hair, wearing a cape for some reason, standing near his obviously rich parents and looking at the rest of the people with disdain. He glanced briefly at the Pines twins and turned back to his parents.

There was a woman over by the main building, talking to...

Mabel's heart skipped over a few beats. That old man - that had to be Stanford Pines, renowned family genius and famous monster hunter. Well, famous to her at least - and he was standing right there. Mabel would have shrieked in excitement if she wasn't so nervous of these new people. Her stomach was suddenly filled with hundreds - no, thousands - of agitated butterflies. (Possibly swallowtails - those were native to Oregon.) Ever since her parents had mentioned the words "Stanford Pines" and "monster hunter" in the same sentence, that had been the one thing Mabel had been looking forward to this summer.

Maybe it wouldn't be so bad after all.

Then a water balloon hit her shoulder, and she had enough time to turn around and see Dipper holding another three before he threw another one that hit her right on the pine tree on her shirt. Mabel laughed, dropping her sweatshirt and backpack and grabbing a few balloons from the bucket.

"Oh, you're on, Dip!"

~~~

Somehow, Dipper managed to get the entire camp into the water balloon fight, except for the disapproving girl with the dress and the hairdo. Even the rich kid (what was up with his hair?) threw some at the right moment to keep the fight going, a small smile occasionally breaking through his strange mixture of boredom and disdain. Surprisingly, Mabel was having fun. At a summer camp, no less! Well, she was until Dipper accidentally-on-purpose threw a balloon at Stanford, who yelled at them to go to their cabins and stomped off. Mabel decided to be optimistic - maybe he was just grumpy.

Grumpy or not, he had overlooked the fact that none of them knew where the cabins were. Fortunately, the woman who had been talking to him earlier (her name was Melody, and she smiled at everyone) directed them to their cabins, which weren't that far away.

Mabel looked around before stepping inside. The girl's cabin was just behind a few trees, barely out of sight of the lodge. She could hear birdsong coming from the trees, which would be nice to wake up to in the morning.

If she ever got to sleep in the first place. She had a hard time adjusting to different places sometimes.

Oh, and Pacifica Pleasure being in her same cabin didn't help much, either.

This was the girl with the ridiculous hair. She hadn't participated in the water fight, probably to keep her blonde locks in place. She immediately claimed the entire bunkbed closest to the door, dumping her lavender sheets on the bottom bunk and storing her three suitcases, two backpacks, and a duffel bag on the top bunk. Mabel decided to avoid her drama and take a shower.

And of course, the water was freezing. Mabel shivered all the way through rinsing out her long, rather tangled brown hair, and had to swat clumsily at the water controls five times to turn the shower off. Then she went to brush her teeth, only to find that Pacifica's stuff had taken over the one sink in the cabin.

Overall, not quite the best first night at Camp Rises.

It took a while for Mabel to get to sleep.