Are You Sure You're Free?

Chapter 9

A/N: before I start, I just wanted to say that the reason I'm putting in Not What He Seems into here is because I wanted to bring a nice six-fingered person along on this crazy.... Journey. And here. We. Go:

"Stan Pines dead?" I asked out loud, pacing back and forth.  "Then who have we been living with? It doesn't make any sense?  This whole summer I've been looking for answers and the biggest mystery was right under our noses!"

Mabel joined in on my self-conversation,  "Dipper, calm down.  This isn't you!"  She tried to calm me down by placing a hand on my shoulder but I brushed it off.  "There's gotta be some kind of explanation in here somewhere.  What the, secret code to hideout?"  She said pulling out a tiny paper with numbers on it.

"Let me see that!"  I opened the journal searched the pages to try and decode it, followed by my black light shining down on the pages.  Nothing added up.  "A-1-B-C-3?  I've never seen a code like this before."

"Wait I have!  Dipper it's the vending machine!"  Mabel announced.

"Of course!"  I shouted.  I pulled her out of Stan's room to find the gift shop surprisingly empty, except for, "Soos?!" We said in unison. 

"W-what're you doing here?" I asked him.

"Stan gave me a mission to protect this machine," he said, "heh, and I thought I loved snacks!" He said to himself.

"Soos, listen.  Something huge is going on.  If Stan is hiding some dangerous secret, we need to find out what it is," I said to him, moving a bit closer.  "I need you to step aside."

Mabel approached as well.  "Yeah, just let us through so we can prove this is all just a big misunderstanding," she said, trying to stay positive again.

"Guys, I know this seems crazy, but, I promised Stan I would guard this with my life," he said with determination.  I nodded at Mabel and she knew what to do.

"I'm sorry Soos," and with that, she blew a cloud of glitter in Soos's eyes.

"Ah! Attack glitter! It's pretty but it hurts!"  We charged at him, trying to get him to move.  I'd never thought this catastrophe would lead to us fighting our good friend, family.

"Soos! Let us through!"  I eventually pushed past him and punched in the code.  The vending machine swung open, knocking us back in a puff of dust.  We all gasped.

Soos grabbed the lantern hanging from the wall and we followed him downstairs.  We glanced around the long staircase and made our way to an elevator.  It took us to the third floor and what I saw, made no sense at all. 

Machinery, flashing lights, security videos everywhere, and buttons and switches, but the thing that really caught my attention was a blinding light coming from straight across the "lab".

"It's just like that bunker in the woods," I suggested.

"But what is it doing underneath the Mystery Shack?" Soos replied.

"Okay, okay, so he's got a huge gigantic lab! That doesn't mean anything bad, everyone's got secrets!"  Mabel said nervously.  She picked up a picture frame with us on it. "It's still Stan, and he loves us! And we love him, right?"  I paid no mind to her words, only glancing at what laid in front of me.