Gravity Rises (S2)

HW: Part Two

Mabel Pines awoke long after the sun had risen — which was saying something, considering that the sun rose fairly late in wintery Oregon. She rolled over onto her back and looked up at the splintering ceiling, oddly content. She'd slept well last night, better than most nights these days, and she'd woken up happy. Her foggy mind tried to figure out why that was.

Mabel shot up in bed.

The portal!

They'd gotten the first Journal — they'd escaped the Order — they'd gone down to the basement — Ford had turned on the portal! They were going to rescue Stanley!

Mabel jumped to her feet and ran down from the attic, feet pounding on the stairs. She'd slept in late, Ford was probably already down there!

"Shh, Mabes."

Mabel stumbled to a stop as she saw her brother, sitting cross-legged on the floor of the living room with a pig in his lap. She wasn't used to being quieted by Dipper; usually she was the one telling him to be quiet. "What?"

Dipper's eyes flicked from Mabel to the couch. "You'll wake. . . oh, too late."

Melody Ramirez's head lifted, her eyes peering blearily at Mabel. "Morning," she said, the word punctuated by a yawn.

"O-oh, sorry, I didn't mean to. . . you slept on the couch?" Mabel asked.

Melody sat up and stretched. "Yep, it's my bed when I stay over. Usually I'm the first one awake, so you kids never see me sleeping here, but. . . well, let's just say I was kept up by a certain paranormal researcher."

Right! "Oh, yeah, where's Ford? Is he already down in the basement?"

Melody gave a short laugh. "I sure hope not. He should still be asleep. I finally convinced him to get some shut-eye a few hours ago." She yawned again. "Let him sleep, okay? He needs it."

Though the housekeeper had a very different perspective on sleep than Mabel and Ford did, even Mabel could agree with that. If he really only had fallen asleep a few hours ago, that meant he'd been up for almost twenty-four hours. Ford needed to have a clear mind in order to reactivate the portal.

Plus, Ford being asleep meant that Mabel could go read the Journals.

"Okay," she said to Melody. "Can I go down and get one of the Journals? I can take Dipper with me. I wanna read them when Ford's not using them for the portal."

Melody considered this, then gave a careful nod. "All right. Take Dipper with you, and don't touch anything except for the Journal. Anything," she reiterated. "If Ford wakes up to find that we ruined something, he'll never sleep again. Go in, grab the Journal, come straight back up here. Can you do that?"

"Will do," Mabel said. "That okay, Dip?"

"Yep!" Dipper nudged Waddles off him, then jumped to his feet. "Which one do you wanna grab?"

"The first one," Mabel said immediately. "I want to start from the beginning."

The twins went into the gift shop, opened the vending machine, and took the elevator down to the basement. A friendly hum greeted them as the elevator doors slid open. The portal wasn't all the way on — the doorway to the other dimension hadn't opened yet — but it was in active stasis while it waited for Ford to complete it. Mabel hurried from the elevator to the control station where the Journals lay open, flipping the covers up until she found the first one. She gathered it in her arms and smiled through the observation window at the portal. "Hang in there, Stanley, we're close," she said. Then she headed back to the elevator.