With the adrenaline of a quarter-mile drag race out of his system, Dipper was less anxious and more prescient of the opportunity in front of him. Zoom Comics was always a busy place, and there were a lot of kids his age hanging out reading comics, playing games, or just quietly vegging out to lo-fi beats on their headphones.
As Mabel and Misao went to look at manga, and Shermie went to get his pull list with Nano, he went straight to the café and the girl behind it who appeared to have just gotten started on her shift. Heather, her name tag read, was cute–not a cool redhead with a hatchet or blonde socialite with a redemption arc cute, but easy on the eyes.
She smiled at him as all service industry workers do when he reached the counter. “Hey, welcome to the Zoom Café, what can I get started for you?”
“Do you have any Pitt Cola?” It was a long shot, but he couldn’t find it anywhere in the Bay Area.
Heather’s brows furrowed. “… Is that like a regional thing?”
Oh well, he tried. “If you don’t that’s fine, I’ll have some iced tea.”
“Sweetened or unsweetened?” She was relieved that he wasn’t going to throw a fit.
“Unsweetened, large cup, and heavy on the ice.”
She found that interesting, but also quite nice that she didn’t have to do much for his order. “Let me get that for you.”
As she went to the container to fill up a cup, Dipper rested his forearms on the counter and folded them to lean forward a bit. Heather looked out of the corner of her eye at him, paying particular attention to his arms, up to his shoulders, and then his face. He wasn’t bad-looking at all, though the lumberjack hat on a hot day and the sloppy bangs trying to hide something raised her curiosity.
His gaze wandered around the back of the counter. “So, do you go to school around here…?”
She looked back. “Huh? Oh yeah… I go to Echo Creek Academy.”
“Cool, my sister and I are starting there Monday. My name’s Dipper.”
Recognition illuminated her face. “You’re Mr. Pines’ grandson?”
Dipper glanced towards his grandfather, talking with Nano over a stack of comics at a table. “He’s talked about me?”
“I’ve had to put up with him bragging about you once or twice.”
She smirked. “Sounds like he was dropping hints.”
Dipper’s eyebrows furrowed. “What’s he saying about me?”
“Oh, nothing bad. Just that you helped save an entire town… and that you’re basically a shoo-in for any college in the country because you’re ‘sharper than a bayonet on D-Day.’”
Come on, Grandpa. Dipper thought to himself, before he brushed it off. “He’s exaggerating; I didn’t save an entire town, and my grades aren’t that good–I think?”
Heather brought his drink to him after putting on a cover. “That’s not all he goes on about you, but I guess you don’t want to hear about it.”
“Say no more, please,” Dipper mock pleaded as he took his cup. “I did want to ask, though.”
“What?”
Dipper looked from side to side, like he was worried for anyone listening in, then leaned closer. Heather followed suit, curious, before he asked.
“Do you know anything about weird things happening at school involving… magic?”
Heather sighed. “I guess you would ask about her.”
Taking a straw and opening it, he stabbed it into the cup. “Sorry if it bothers you.”
“It’s cool. Everyone asks about Star Butterfly, but I am so the last person who can help them. I go to school with her, but I’m not in any of her classes so I have no idea what she’s like, but most everyone at school likes her.”
“So you haven’t seen anything she’s done?”
As he took a sip of his drink, Heather’s eyes widened slightly, before she too gave a conspiratorial look around. She leaned back in.
“Okay, that? I’ve seen that. I got caught up in some pretty crazy stuff with her.”
“… Really…?”
“Yeah, the first time was our first football game of the season–she went nuts and turned the football field into a warzone. The second time was during this one girl, Brittney Wong’s, birthday party. She and her friend Marco snuck onto the party bus when it was bombing, and she started doing magic tricks and saved the whole thing.”
Dipper saw the video footage of the first thing, well, the aftermath of it. Star and Marco had been ordered by the principal to repair the football field and get rid of any unsprung magical traps.
Heather continued, “Well, it was going great before a bunch of monsters hijacked the bus and fought Star to get her wand. She kicked the crap out of all of them, but the bus crashed, and we all had to go home after that.”
The proverbial needle scratched across his record of thought. “Come again?”
“Yeah, the only reason nobody died was because Star turned the inside of the bus into a bounce house.” She gave it a second thought and laughed. “Actually? That part was pretty fun.”
Dipper weighed on that and wondered how she could take something traumatic so well. “Isn’t it strange that there’s a magical girl who fights monsters, and people get caught up in it?”
Heather shrugged her shoulders. “Come on, dude, there’s a Cheerleader in Colorado who goes around fighting supervillains, and the 90s were full of dudes in bird costumes fighting sad Russian Clowns and German Strudel makers.”
She laughed again. “The sky could probably open up right now and it’d be just another day in paradise, you know?”
It’d be a lot more dramatic than you think, Dipper thought before he put on a wry smile. “I bet Hollywood would have a crew on every street corner to get some good shots.”
“Like they don’t already? That’s probably why Star’s craziness isn’t a big deal. It’s LA dude; anything that can happen will happen here and as long as someone has a camera pointed at it, it’s just like another movie.”
That was true. There were some things you could write off as YouTube pranks gone horribly wrong (or right), hallucinations caused by bad food, and random mass-psychosis, but the party bus was not one of them–especially as Heather described it.
People should be more alarmed about this sort of thing. He remembered Mabel holding a pet pageant that got the Piedmont Police breaking it up because Waddles was underage.
A magical girl fighting bizarre creatures and rolling a bus full of high school students should be a bigger deal. Why doesn’t anyone care? That was something Dipper would keep in mind for later. “Thanks for the heads up on Star.”
“No problem; that’ll be a dollar for the tea,” Heather reminded him.
Dipper did not forget. He set down ten dollars on the counter, and when Heather looked at it in surprise, he added. “Do what you want with the change, all right?”
There was a little bit more in her smile as she took the money. “Thanks man.”
Taking a sip of his tea, Dipper turned and headed over to his sister and Misao–leaving Heather to watch him go with a smile. Over at the bookshelf, out of earshot of the conversation, Drew had the sort of face one would after seeing his favorite comic ripped to shreds in front of him.
“I changed my mind, he’s the worst,” he murmured.
Jo pulled back from the shelf and folded her arms. “Really?”
Roland slipped back behind the shelf and shook his head. “On my Moms I swore dude was grow up to be an incel or something.”
“He’s just a full-on douchebag…” Drew murmured.
“Being able to talk to a girl doesn’t make you a douchebag,” Jo pointed out before shooting a look at Drew. “Especially since you can’t seem to.”
Drew grimaced and began wringing his hands. “I can talk to her!”
“Yeah, about comics and only when she initiates.”
“It is really hard to strike up a conversation with one of the coolest girls at school,” Drew argued.
Roland agreed as the door chimed again. “Oh for sure; I can’t even act right around Jackie Lynn Thomas.”
Jo rolled her eyes. “What boy at school can?”
“Then you know what I mean! I swear, she lights up any room she walks into, and music follows her out when she leaves.”
Jo frowned at her brother. “Pedestaling much?”
“I’m not putting her on a pedestal!”
“You totally are, but go off.”
“I just like her, okay? I don’t want to worship her like a goddess or something–I want to hang out with her, make her laugh, read comics with her… just… be her guy, you know?”
Drew looked back towards where Dipper was now talking with the other girls he came in with. “I just don’t want to be like that guy, sliding in all smooth and flashing some money to impress girls and having nothing else going for him.”
Jo looked at Dipper again and licked her lips. “Mm… he’s got a lot more going for him than a few dollars.”
“You know what I mean!”
Jo turned back to face her older brother and folded her arms. “Then why don’t you let your balls drop and go talk to her?” She had a great idea. “I know! The make up Spirit Dance is in like two weeks, throw caution to the wind and ask her to it!”
“If I could, I would.” Drew sighed, and cast his gaze downward. “I am such trash when it comes to her.”
“Hey, you said it.”
The sharp voice, dripping with arrogance, made Drew’s face blanch. Roland grimaced, and Jo scowled as two more teenagers Drew and Roland’s age came around the corner of the aisle.
This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Both were dressed in pristine white pants and light pastel-colored shirts, like they had just left a country-club. The slightly larger of the two boys, with brown hair cut into tresses, wore his long-sleeve shirt tied around his waist so he could show off his muscular arms with the sleeveless shirt underneath.
His smaller companion, with curly blonde hair and glasses, still had his shirt on, a very light sweater over it, and carried in his hand a closed manilla envelope. From her counter, Heather noticed the two and for a moment her expression soured.
Across the floor, Mabel noticed Roland and the McCormicks, plus the two preppy boys. “Oh, there he is.”
“Who are they?” Dipper asked.
“No good shtunks; keep your eye on ‘em,” Shermie, still leafing through his pull list, warned quietly while watching the confrontation.
Nano’s expression was harsh, the old woman looking halfway ready to get up and walk over.
Trip Vanderhoff did not disappoint. “Honestly though, the look is missing something. How about putting on another hundred pounds and letting that neckbeard grow in, Andrew? Then at least you’ll look as pathetic as you act.”
“Yeah, you can’t have people mistaking you for someone who isn’t a loser,” his brother Van added.
“Seriously?” Dipper asked.
Mabel winced. “Wow, getting some bad vibes coming from the Northwest.”
Misao checked the directions. “But they are standing to the south…”
Jo liked to bully and annoy her brother, but she was the only one allowed to. “You better not be pulling up just to talk crap to my brother, Vanderhoff!”
“As fun and easy as that is? No, Josephine, I’m here to ask Heather out to the Spirit Dance.”
Behind the counter, Heather visibly grimaced.
Drew soured further. “As if she’d go with you!”
Trip smirked as he taunted him. “Why not? I’m good-looking, I’ve got money, and I know how to talk to a girl without my voice cracking–Drew.”
He walked past him, Van following and lightly checking Drew with his broad shoulders as he passed. Trip looked back out the corner of his eye at Drew with a parting shot. “Besides, I’ve got an ace in the hole. Watch and learn dweeb, and maybe one day when you’re like 40? You’ll finally get that pity date.”
Tossing the envelope to himself, he reached the café counter. Noticing some candy suckers in a glass jar up for sale, he grabbed and unwrapped one to pop in his mouth before leaning against the counter in front of Heather.
Heather was on the clock so she greeted the young man with a warm, professional smile. “Hey Trip, I hope you’re going to pay for that.”
“Oh don’t worry about that, babe. My Dad owns this building, remember?” Trip said aloud, making sure everyone heard.
“How can I forget?” Heather’s tone was light and stiff, if burdened with exasperation.
Dipper shook his head slowly. “He really is one of those guys.”
Mabel grimaced. “It’s like the worst parts of Gideon and Pacifica had a baby and it moved to Hollywood to become famous.”
“Er ist eine kotzbrocken…” Misao seethed.
Heather held true to her profession. “So! What can I get you?”
Trip reached up with his free hand and flicked his curly hair as he offered the envelope to her. “You can get together with me for the Spirit Dance–what do you say?”
Heather looked at the envelope then, dreading the contents, looked back up at Trip. “What is this?”
“Open it,” he insisted, “It’s something you’ll find interesting.”
Jo whispered aside to Drew and Roland. “Five dollars says that it’s blackmail material.”
“He’s not that stupid,” Drew muttered back.
“You realize who you’re talking about, right?” Roland reminded him.
Taking care, Heather opened the envelope and pulled out the plastic-wrapped book inside. In an instant, her eyes flew wide and she dropped it like it were pictures of her parents splattered all over the inside of her garage. “Oh my God!”
Jo looked at Drew. “Just PayPal it to me.”
Heather picked it up again however, her hands trembling. She looked at Trip then back at the book. “No way…”
Slowly, she pulled out a comic book wrapped in its protective plastic. Across its top read its title “Who is afraid of… The Big Bad Beetleborgs” over the trio of insect-themed armored heroes striking heroic poses. In its corner, were the words “Issue #1!” in smaller but no less eye-catching print.
Drew caught sight of it first by a split second. “… No freaking way…”
Roland’s eyes practically fell out of his head. “That’s a first run Beetleborgs #1!”
Trip glanced out the corner of his eye at Drew, before speaking to Heather. “I know how much you love comic books, what with you working here, so I thought: What would be the best gift to court the fairest Heather and invite her to the Spirit Dance?”
Drew could not hold it in. “You just… do you even realize what you’re giving her?!”
Trip and Van both turned their attention fully to Drew as he rushed over to them, with Roland and Jo right behind him. Trip’s smile regained its nasty edge as he shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, why don’t you tell everyone?”
Drew gestured to the comic, barely keeping his composure. “Only two hundred of those comics were ever printed!”
He looked closer, and his eyes got bigger. In the upper right-hand corner, a sticker read “Dusk 2 Dawn” with the price of “$ 0.79” underneath it. The color drained entirely from his face.
Jo and Roland were just as flabbergasted, with the former murmuring. “That’s a Dusk 2 Dawn copy.”
The familiar name caught Dipper and Mabel’s attention, while Shermie and Nano both sat up in their seats, much more alert.
“The holy grail,” Roland said.
“There are only two comics with that sticker in existence,” Jo murmured. “Trip must’ve paid out the nose for this!”
“Exactly two million, one hundred seventy-three thousand, six hundred eighteen dollars,” Trip revealed.
“And sixty-nine cents,” Van added.
Trip offered his hand back over his shoulder to his brother, who gave him five.
“Nice,” they said in unison.
Bringing his hand back onto the counter, he leaned into it. “It took me two weeks’ worth of saving up my allowance to get it; but only the best for the best, you know? So, the dance?”
Heather was frozen where she stood, unsure of how to respond. “Huh uh… what? Whoa, this is um… this is…”
Trip performed a flip of his hair. “Come on, you can’t say no to something like this…”
Heather looked down at the comic, then at his smiling face. “… How can I?”
Misao’s gray eyes looked black as they narrowed. “Vile filth…”
Mabel’s face darkened, so did Dipper’s. “That is so not cool,” Mabel muttered. “Putting a girl on the spot like that, in public?”
Drew gave Heather a long look, then stepped forward and between her and Trip–to the surprise of Jo and Roland. “That’s enough Trip, back off. You know exactly how much Heather cares about the Beetleborgs–so you’re going to dangle this in front of her?”
Heather let out a relieved breath, as Trip jumped in surprise at Drew stepping up.
“Come on, Andrew, I spent over two milli to get this thing and I’m giving it to her.”
“And all she has to do is be your arm candy for the dance, right?”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it like that, but that’s how business works, nerd. I have something she wants, and I'll give it to her for something I want.”
Trip looked towards Heather. “And you don’t want to turn down a piece of history, do you?”
“Lord, why you gotta be testin’ me today? Mmm!” Nano seethed.
Shermie glanced towards his grandkids and their friend. All three radiated an intent to harm that could be seen if one looked hard enough–but Dipper’s stony glare bordered on murderous.
Heather stared at the comic, looked up at Trip, then down at the comic. She tightened her jaw, and gripped the edges of her apron. Drew could see the conflict warring under her placid, barista-trained façade, and her eyes grew watery–like she had to make a choice to either cut her own arm off or die.
Finally, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “I… uh…” She let it out. “I can’t. I already have plans for that weekend…”
That didn’t sound like a problem with Trip. He stepped way too close to the counter. “Well, then cancel. Tell them someone had a better bid.”
She became incensed. “Excuse you? I can’t cancel.”
Trip gestured down to the comic, then at her. “Well, you’d better!”
Drew grabbed Trip by the upper arm to rein him in. “You heard what she said, Trip.”
Trip wrenched his arm free of Drew, and Van roughly pushed him back. “You’re too broke to touch me, trash!”
Heather saw red. “Even if I didn’t have plans, I’d never go with you, Trip!”
He turned and he met her defiant glare, then looked at Drew, his eyes widened behind his glasses as he put 10 and 0 together.
He pointed back and forth between the two of them. “Wait, you’re going with him?!”
Drew recoiled. “Whoa what?!”
Heather had the same dumbfounded look. “No, I didn’t say that–!”
Trip cut her off. “I save my hard-earned money, to buy one of the rarest and most unique pieces of media on Earth, to give to you.” He gestured to Drew. “But you turn it down because you’d rather devalue yourself by being seen with this dweeb?”
Mabel could not cringe harder. “He’s one of those Alpha Dog types, too?”
“Only dog I see him being is a bitch,” Dipper muttered back.
Trip’s composure returned as a disturbing calm settling on his features. He flashed Drew that nasty smile and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, I suppose that’s it then.”
Opening the plastic seal of the comic, he shook the book into his hand… and took it in both. “I guess I won’t be needing this garbage anymore.”
In horror, Drew realized what Trip was about to do, and lunged forward right into Van’s outstretched arm. “NO!”
“You Godless moron!” Jo yelled with him.
“Ayo, hol’ up” Roland shouted among just about every other guest in the shop.
With Drew struggling in vain, Trip let out a loud blowing sound against the paper of the comic as he faked ripping it in half. In the brief instant that followed, Drew thought he felt his heart drop through his stomach and go crashing down until it somehow ended up in his left shoe.
One of the originals… and he just… He thought in a near delirious haze of despair. The haze cleared in the next instant, when Trip held up the undamaged comic.
Seeing the brief instant of light dying in Drew’s eyes was worth it, and he let out a hyena-like peal of laughter. “Psyche~!”
“What. The. Heck.” Mabel murmured, more a statement of bewilderment than an actual question.
Then she and Misao saw her brother move towards the cackling blonde.
“Hahahaha! He got you good, McCormhick!” Van said as he pushed the rattled Drew back into Jo and Roland’s arms.
Trip faked wiping away a tear. “Man, the look on your face! That was just priceless!”
A hand tightly gripped his shoulder. “Wait ‘til everybody sees the look on yours.”
Trip was pulled around, his eyes widening with panic when he saw the stark fury in Dipper’s. An instant later, the taller young man’s fist collided with his jaw–the punch flinging off Trip’s glasses and sending him crashing against the counter. Stumbling, the young man slipped from the counter and crumpled to the floor.
The whole bookstore went dead quiet, everyone involved in the confrontation in particular recoiling as Trip began sobbing like a struck child. Clutching his dislodged glasses against his face, Trip looked up at Dipper, tears filling his eyes. “What the hell is wrong with-?!”
“Shut up!” Dipper yelled. Grabbing Trip by his arm, he hauled him to his feet and shoved the crying millionaire to the doors. “I don’t care how much money you’ve got; you don’t get to walk in here, and be a jackass!”
“Hey!”
He turned around, and there was Van barreling towards him to grab and start punching him like every dumb kid in a fight did. “Get your hands off my brother-!”
Sidestepping him, Dipper effortlessly grabbed and shoved him into Trip, sending both brothers out the doors and onto the sidewalk outside. Flinging them open, he glowered at both brothers.
“Let that be a warning to both of you! If I catch you acting out again, I will beat you like your Dad should’ve! Now get the hell out of here!”
He yanked the doors closed and locked them, fury flooding his thoughts. There is only so much of that crap I’m going to tolerate.
“Dipper!” Mabel walked up to him, her eyes sparkling. “That was awesome!”
She stopped and looked at his fist then his face. “Also violent, what the heck?”
“Tiptoeing around people like them almost got us killed. Repeatedly. I’m not putting up with it here.”
“So, you smack them around?” Misao asked.
“The way I see it; we were going to deal with them sooner or later. I chose sooner.”
All three looked out the glass doors; Trip was being hustled into the back of a luxury SUV by his brother and their personal driver, still clutching his face and bawling his eyes out so loud they could still hear him from inside.
Misao looked up at Dipper, her eyebrows raised, and her lips pulled into a gentle smile. “I like you.”
Dipper’s cheeks flushed slightly. “Heh, uh… thanks.”
The German wasn’t the only one impressed, as Drew, Jo, and Roland made their way over. From everything he remembered about the Pines twins, Dipper just hauling off and decking someone (deservedly no less) was the furthest thing to expect from him. Mabel too, it’d been over ten minutes and she hadn’t made anything weird.
To Drew, Dipper was the coolest and most insane person he’d met since Nano. Like out of a comic book or its live action adaptation directed by someone competent, he just clobbered the richest boy in town and didn’t care!
As for Jo? She now understood her brother’s hopeless mooning over Heather after the most satisfying moment in her life.
Unlike Drew, she already had the perfect line to make herself the sole occupant of Dipper’s thoughts.
Dipper turned to Roland. “Oh, hey Roland.”
“Hey, cuh,” he replied with an edge of awkwardness as he looked between the twins. “And… Mabel…”
Mabel’s smile became painfully strained as she faced him. “Hey… Roland… um… been a while…?”
Roland felt the strain too. “… Yeah…”
Since her brother was already being bold, she decided to follow in his wake. “I just want to start by saying that I am really, really sorry for all the racist stuff I did when we were kids.”
Misao looked up at her with wide eyes.
“I’ve been working really hard at being a better person, and I hope start over on good terms.”
Roland was taken aback. He didn’t expect Mabel to be so up front. “Oh, um… well damn, I–”
“He’s over it,” Jo cut Roland off before he could respond and introduced herself to Dipper. “Hey. I’m Jo, I’m single, whassup?”
Dipper stared at her, then glanced at Mabel–who looked ready to explode with glee at a girl chatting him up–before returning her greeting. “Oookay?”
Jo smirked. Heh, got ‘em. She thought before Roland pulled her back. “Ack!”
“Girl, act like you got some sense,” he warned her.
Drew introduced himself next. “I’m Drew and uh… yeah, you hit Trip Vanderhoff. Not even his own father hit him.”
Dipper shrugged his shoulders. “My Dad never hit me either, but I know better than to act like that.”
Drew wasn’t even sad that Dipper didn’t get the reference, because the response was still funny “So, do you like comics?”
“Sure, but I’m not a regular reader.”
Drew turned to Roland. “Hey, you can help Dipper get a pull list started and catch up.”
Roland was on it. “You read Beetleborgs, cuh?”
“Uh, no, actually,” Dipper replied. “I always wanted to check it out, though.”
Heather came around to the front of the counter. “Well… if you want to read the very first issue? Now is a good chance.”
Dipper, Mabel, Misao, Drew, Jo, and Roland looked at Heather… and their expressions went blank as all sorts of emotions piled up in the rush to get there first.
Heather held Trip’s two-million-dollar comic book, wearing the same blank look.