But seriously, imagine Mabel and Dipper’s first day back at school.
They get off the bus. Mabel’s about to run up to the school and say hi to her friends when she hears a loud, wet thwacking sound. And you know, after the summer she’s had her reflexes are pretty damn fast so she spins around and sees some bullies have thrown a half-eaten cupcake at Dipper’s head.
Dipper’s frozen in shock. He went face to face with a chaos god this summer. He underwent rites of manhood with the Manotaurs. He leaped off a friggin’ cliff and smashed his way into a giant robot to save his sister this summer. He’d forgotten what it was like at school. The surprise of the blow coupled with the cognitive dissonance of the familiar shame rising up in him left him speechless.
Mabel’s not speechless, though. She marches right up to the kid that threw the cupcake and grabs his arm. Mabel’s strong--she’s always been strong, but this summer her muscles have practically doubled in size with all the climbing and tumbling and testing of her strength she’s been through. Despite his superior size, the bully lets out a pained squeal when she grabs his wrist.
“Do you know who that is?” She locks eyes with the bully, pointing at Dipper. “If it weren’t for him and me, you wouldn’t be riding a bus to school. The bus would have come to life and grown tentacles and it would be destroying your house! Your mother would be a two-headed goat monster! Your brother would be a tacky lampshade! And you would be an ugly, sticky wad of pre-chewed gum!”Â
Mabel leans in close, yanking the bully’s arm downwards so she can get right up in his face.Â
“Do you like not being a wad of pre-chewed gum!?” she growls.
“I--wha--” Mabel twists the older boy’s wrist and he cries out “Yes! Yes, I like not being a wad of gum!!”
Mabel uses all her considerable strength to toss the older, taller, larger boy on the ground at Dipper’s feet.
"Then thank him.” She says.
Dipper stares, first at the boy on the ground then up at his sister. She smiles at him. He gives her that look. You know the one. Where he looks at her like she’s his whole world. And he wonders how he could have ever considered spending his teen years hundreds of miles away from her.
He wipes a glob of icing off his cheek and grins down at the boy on the ground in front of him.
“Yeah.” he says, hands on his hips. “Thank me.”
