Percy Jackson, Brother of Dipper and Mable Pines

As The Summer Pulls to an End

It was a nice morning. The Mystery Shack was open again, and Bill Cipher had been defeated. Mabel sat at the kitchen table, eating her pancakes. Dipper sat across from her, and Stan next to him. Ford stood nearby, reading over a lab report of some sort.

"It's still hard to believe it's all over. Bill is really gone!" Dipper said.

"I know! Now we have the last few days of summer to ourselves!" Mabel kicked her legs back and forth under the table. Dipper smiled, but it faded. Mabel noticed and asked, "What's wrong? Did I not put enough M&Ms in your pancakes?"

"No, no... I just... nevermind," he turned away from her.

"What's wrong? You can tell me. We've practically been through hell together anyway."

Dipper looked away from her. "I just wish Percy could be here." Mabel's smile faded. Stan sighed and Ford glanced up from his papers, confused. "Sorry for souring the mood."

Ford put down his clipboard, "Percy? Who's Percy?"

Dipper looked to him, "Oh, right, you never met him. He's our brother."

"Your brother? I have another great nephew?"

Dipper nodded slightly. "Mom and Dad adopted him when we were eight and he was twelve, but they went missing about a year ago. We haven't heard from them since. The authorities have given up looking because there were no leads."

Ford lowered his head. "Oh. I'm so sorry. Was there no evidence at the crime scene?"

Dipper shook his head. "He was at a summer camp. They attend-" Dipper looked down, trying to hide the tears filling his eyes, "-attended it every year. He slept in a cabin by himself. One day when everyone woke up, he was just... gone. All of their belongings still there. No sign of a struggle."

"Could he have ran away for any reaso-" Ford didn't realize he was being insensitive until he was interrupted by a sniffle. He looked over to see Mabel with her head in her arms on the table, shaking slightly with tears. A few drops fell from Dipper's eyes onto the table. Ford's face fell, "I'm sorry. That was insensitive of me."

Grunkle Stan put a hand on Dipper's back in a way to comfort him. He never got to know Percy too well, so he wasn't impacted nearly as much as Dipper and Mabel when he disappeared. Most of his knowledge of him came from stories, but in those stories, he always seemed like a really good brother to the twins. And he knew how hard losing a brother was.

That night, Ford sat in his lab, typing away at his computer. Usually he researches and documented the strange anomalies that he studies in Gravity Falls, but now he was studying a different kind of anomaly. He was researching the anomaly of Perseus Jackson. He managed to find the police file. There was a photo was of a boy with russet brown skin and very vibrant bluish-green eyes. A very noticeable streak of gray ran through his messy black hair.

Ford read through the files, and found that he was involved in a kidnapping that had killed his mom a few years back. Just a few days after that his stepfather had disappeared. Just like he had. But as Dipper said, there wasn't much about his disappearance over the last summer.

Ford decided to take a deeper look into the incidents prior to his adoption.

The step-dad's car was found crashed at the side of the road, and the mutilated body of their mother not too far away. Detectives said that the injuriescouldn't have been caused by the crash, so something else must have done it. The authorities first thought it was Percy, but later deduced it must've been the kidnapper.

Percy was 12 when he was kidnapped. He commited several acts of terrorism while he was kidnapped, but it was later discovered that the kidnapper had forced him to do it. The biggest act being blowing up the gateway arch. Two other kids were with him, both also being kidnapped victims. Annabeth Chase and one who was never mentioned in the report. Strange.

There were multiple photos of him and the two other kids during that time, including a blurry photo taken after he supposedly blew up a bus. The photo was so blurry that Ford couldn't make out any details, but it was obvious that he was holding a weapon of some sort. A baseball bat, maybe?

There was also a, much clearer, photo of the kids at a diner with a man in a leather jacket in sunglasses sitting across from them. One of the few photos of the kidnapper. Ford noticed the kid's expression. Percy didn't look scared at all. He looked angry.

Another strange thing, during the interrogations, neither Annabeth nor Percy gave any details about the kidnapper or what he did to/with them. The only thing they really said was that "his eyes had fire" which was certainly an interesting response.

There was a video that a bystander took when the arch was detonated. It was shaky, but a figure standing on the ledge of the arch and then falling off was visible. The cameraman was yelling, thinking it was a suicide.

Ford furrowed his brows. Even though they landed in water, there was no way they could have possibly survived a fall that height. There wasn't any mention of this fall or the unlikely possibility of him surviving anywhere on the report. No one was talking about it.

That was the final nail in the coffin that something strange was going on. Well, strange as in paranormal. As for the step-dad, there was nothing. Not a single clue as to where he was. The only thing of note being that it was only a few weeks after Percy returned.

Ford searched through his journals, hoping to find something that could have done this. Could the kidnapper have been possessed by Bill? The kids did say that he had "eyes like fire" and Bill's victims had reptilian eyes when they were possessed, but that wasn't exactly "like fire." Was he a vampire? A troll? A bunch of gnomes in a trench coat? And how did Percy survive that fall? And why was no one talking about them surviving the fall? Ford rubbed his temples. None of this made any sense.

"Grunkle Ford?" Ford was shaken from his thoughts by Dipper, who stood in the doorway holding his box of Dungeons, Dungeons, & more Dungeons. "Do you want to-" he saw Ford's computer screen. "Oh." His voice dropped as though he was scared someone was listening, "...Did you find anything?"

Ford sighed. "Not much. Although, I am almost 98% sure that this was caused by something similar to what we've been dealing with."

Dipper blinked. "You think it was Bill?"

"I don't think so. On the file of his kidnapping four years ago, he said during the interrogation that his kidnapper had 'eyes like fire' and as you know, when Bill possesses someone their eyes turn yellowish and reptilian. My best guess is that it's either another dream demon or something else entirely that we've never seen before."

Dipper nodded along as Ford explained his theory. "Do you... do you think we'll ever get him back?" Dipper asked, voice quiet.

Ford looked at him for a moment before sighing. "I'm sorry." Perseus had been gone for almost a whole year, the chance of him still being alive was very low. The chance of him coming back was even lower.

Dipper looked at the ground, trying not to let someone he looked up to so much see the tears in his eyes. "Oh," his voice wavered. Ford's heart squeezed at the sight and he leaned down and hugged him. They stayed there for a while.