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It was the twenty-second of June, 2013, which it meant it was Mabel and Dipper's second chance to celebrate Summerween in Gravity Falls. Thanks to actually knowing about the local holiday beforehand this time around, the teenage Pines twins had been planning and eagerly anticipating for weeks. Their costumes were finished and ready to go. The Mystery Shack and the Mystery Annex (also known as the extra exhibit space with a guest house on the upper floor which Soos had hired Manly Dan to build over the winter) were both decorated inside and out. All that was left to do was sit back and watch monster movies on television while they waited for nightfall and trick-or-treating to begin.
Or, at least, that had been the plan.
"Awww," Mabel whined, "but what do you mean not a single station has any monster movies playing on it for Summerween? What are we supposed to do for fun until Candy and Grenda get here?"
"And now back to our 'The Duchess Approves' Saturday miniseries marathon," the voice on the television crowed with far too much enthusiasm. "That's right, we're playing twenty-four hours straight of nothing but The Duchess Approves! All six episodes, over and over and over again!"
Mabel cycled through the channels five more times at normal speed. Then she did a sixth pass through them all while going extra slow and a seventh time while going extra fast, just to be certain, but the results were always the same. She passed the remote to Dipper and flopped backwards onto the couch in defeat. The force of her landing buried her under the many Summerween-themed throw pillows which Mabel had glue-gunned together out of felt for the occasion. "I mean, seriously," Mabel muttered through a faceful of pillow, "what kind of giant anti-Summerween conspiracy is this?"
"Actually, I'm pretty sure it's just a mini anti-Summerween conspiracy, since it was only ever the one local station that celebrated Summerween to begin with," Soos said from his seat at the far end of the couch. "Or, like, what do you call it when the conspiracy is so small that there technically isn't any conspiring going on because it's all just one guy? Because it's that. Also, it's not really against all of Summerween, just two specific people who are really into it."
Mabel sat up so fast she scattered pillows everywhere as she and Dipper shouted, "Wait, what?!" in unison.
"Who would do something like this?" Dipper demanded, whipping out a notebook and pen to start taking notes.
"Ugh, if it's Gideon in some ploy to try to make me date him again, I'm gonna introduce him to the cute pink knuckledusters Grunkle Ford sent me for Christmas," Mabel said. She smacked a fist into the open palm of her other hand for emphasis.
Dipper blinked in surprise. "Ford sent you those? I thought they came from Stan."
"Stan says he gave Ford the idea when Ford asked him what kids these days liked, but Ford was the one who had them custom machined in my size and then did some kind of science thing to make them extra special sparkly metallic pink," Mabel said.
"Science thing? You mean he anodized them."
"No, when I asked about it, Grunkle Ford said it was like anodizing but way more complicated," Mabel said. "Then he tried to explain it to me and my eyes kind of glazed over and everything sounded like, 'wahwahwahwah,' but he said not to worry about it because he got the exact same reaction every time he tried to explain the process to anyone with less than a PhD in chemistry and a PhD in physics too. He said all I really needed to know about it was that the pink coating won't ever scratch or otherwise leave behind forensically identifiable molecules, no matter what I do to it. That means I don't need to worry about messing them up when I smack Gideon in the face!"
"Whoa, whoa, dudes, calm down," Soos said, waving his arms around. "I never said you two were the ones being targeted."
"Wait, what?" Mabel and Dipper said in unison for the second time in as many minutes.
"Yeah, in hindsight I probably should have led with that," Soos said, "but live and learn I guess. Anyway, from what I understand, Mr. Pines got into some kind of beef with a couple of kids while we were trying to save you guys from the Summerween Trickster last year, and those kids said they were super into horror movies, so as revenge Mr. Pines used some of the treasure that he and Other Mr. Pines stole from the Kracken to bribe the local TV station to play nothing but The Duchess Approves all day today."
Mabel frowned. "Is that supposed to make sense?"
"Honestly, I have no idea," Soos said with a shrug. "I'm just repeating what he told me."
Mabel groaned and flopped back onto the couch again, somewhat more gently than the last time. "If we can't watch monster movies, and we can't righteously fight an established nemesis, what can we do to celebrate Summerween until it gets dark enough to go trick-or-treating?"
The three of them spent a few moments pondering the question.
"We could carve more Jack-o-melons," Dipper suggested.
"I guess we could," Mabel said with a sigh.
"What, has Stan letting us mature teenagers use knives without supervision already lost its novelty?" Dipper asked. He grinned and gently elbowed Mabel in the ribs as he said it, which was kind of awkward given that she was lying down and he wasn't, but, awkward angles had never been enough to prevent one Pines sibling from poking another when the need arose.
Mabel made a halfhearted attempt to fend off Dipper's elbow before retaliating with her own elbow and saying, "Stan always let us use knives without supervision, even last year."
"Yeah, but now we're allowed to admit it to Mom and Dad. Besides, carving Jack-o-melons is the kind of arts and crafts stuff that you love to do."
"Ordinarily I'd love it, but the only watermelons we have left to carve are the super tiny ones that Stan picked out because he could hide a lot more of them in his pockets than regular sized ones. The only reason I didn't tell him not to bother was because I wanted to see how many Waddles could fit in his mouth at once. Or maybe how many I could fit in my mouth at once, because they're that tiny…" Mabel trailed off with another sigh. A moment later she sat bolt upright, almost accidentally headbutting Dipper in the process as she shouted, "But when in the past year have we let something being the wrong size stop us?" She leaped off the couch, pulling Dipper along with her by the wrist. "Wanna carve Jack-o-melons with us, Soos?"
A few minutes later, they carried everything they needed out through the backdoor and into the Mystery Shack's yard, where, unlike the kitchen, post-carving cleanup could be accomplished with a garden hose. Mabel carried the knives, due to being the person least likely to trip and drop them. Soos carried the bowl full of watermelons. Dipper carried the tool which was going to make the whole activity worthwhile: the flashlight with the magic size-altering crystal tied to the front of it. Soos laid out the watermelons in a careful line in the grass. Then it was only a moment's work for Dipper to turn the tiny fruits into normal sized ones.
"I think that ought to do it," Dipper said.
"Well, it could," Mabel said. She squinted critically at the watermelons and drummed her fingers against the flat of one the knife blades. Then she grinned and said, "Or we could make them bigger!"
Dipper turned the flashlight back on and made the watermelons about fifty percent bigger.
"No, no," Mabel said, "I mean way bigger, like this." She set down the knives and held her hands as far apart as she could, then frowned at the too small limit of what she could physically demonstrate. "No, wait, bigger than that. Soos, hold your hands out as far apart as you can! Better yet, Soos, only hold out one hand, and I'll hold up a hand for the other end!"
Soos complied, and Mabel happily skipped away from him. She stopped several yards away and held up one hand.
"That'll make them bigger than Grunkle Stan's car," Dipper protested.
"So? It's not like we're cheating at the vegetable growing competition at the county fair," Mabel said with a shrug. "Why can't we make them as big as we want?"
"For one thing, making them that big before we carve them would be totally inefficient," Dipper said. "It would be way easier to carve them while they're small and then enlarge them more once we're finished."
"More efficient? Maybe," Mabel said. "More fun? Definitely not." She started dragging the watermelons around the yard until they were spaced far enough apart to allow for the amount of growth she had previously indicated.
"How could it possibly be more fun when a watermelon that big would have a rind way too thick to cut all the way through with any of the knives we have?" Dipper waved his hands in the general direction of where Mabel had left the knives. "Think about it, Mabel. It would be an exercise in frustration."
"Or, I guess it could be, like a Zen kind of thing," Soos interjected. "Like, carving away one delicate layer at a time as we contemplate out insignificance in the larger universe. That's how Zen works, right?"
Dipper opened his mouth to answer but then closed it again without saying anything as he realized that he probably didn't know any more about Zen than Soos did, possibly less. Mabel saved him from needing to actually admit this fact by grabbing the flashlight out of his hand, thus providing more than enough distraction for both Dipper and Soos to derail their trains of thought.
"In this case, the watermelons being too big for the knives is the point," she said and started pointing the magic beam at each of the watermelons. "Trust me on this," she added before Dipper could protest.
Dipper sighed. "I trust you as long as whatever you're planning doesn't involve sock puppets and/or glitter."
"You won't be disappointed," Mabel assured him. "You will, however, be very sticky. I'd say, 'Go get your poncho,' but honestly, that's not going to be enough to help you." She handed back the flashlight, having finished enlarging the last of the melons to nearly the size of a travel trailer. The previously open space of the yard was now almost entirely filled with monstrously oversized fruit. "Now," she said, giving Dipper a conspiratorial wink and nudge as she turned to face the Mystery Annex, "behold my genius." Then she stood up straight, took a deep breath, cupped her hands around her mouth to direct the sound, and shouted as loudly as she possibly could, "HEY, GRUNKLE STAN, THESE WATERMELONS ARE TOO BIG FOR OUR KNIVES! CAN WE USE CHAINSAWS INSTEAD?"
"No way!" came Stan's shouted reply from where he was probably lounging in his favorite recliner while watching The Duchess Approves. "I let you kids get away with a lot, but I have to draw the line somewhere. Today that line is letting you two use chainsaws unsupervised, and I'm too busy to supervise!"
"BUT WE'RE NOT KIDS ANYMORE," Mabel shouted back. "WE'RE TEENAGERS NOW! REMEMBER?"
"Oh, that's right!" Stan shouted. "In that case, use all the chainsaws you want. Ask Soos to show you where he keeps them. Just remember, if I have to take either of you to the hospital because of this, you won't have time to go trick-or-treating tonight! Getting a toe sewed back on takes way longer than you'd think it should, and I doubt full arms or legs are any faster. Now, leave us alone for a while unless it's an emergency. The commercial break is nearly over and Ford's never seen this before!"
"THANKS, GRUNKLE STAN!" Mabel shouted. Then she turned back to Dipper and, in a somewhat more normal volume, said, "Now, let's carve some Jack-o-melons!"
Dipper laughed nervously. "Okay, I have to admit, that really is kind of genius, in a terrifying but also intriguing way. So, yeah, let's carve some Jack-o-melons!"
And that's exactly what they did.
And it was the best Summerween ever.
Or, at least, it was the best Summerween so far. They were all certain that they would be able to think of ways to make future Summerweens even better, but those are all stories for some other time.
The End