#and to get danny acquainted with dipper and mabel (they're totally pushing their favourite lil hoomans together)

[nope-4]

Dipper had his suspicions. After all, more often than not meeting unnatural beings in the forest led to him and mabel getting attacked. However, this creature didn't show any signs of aggression yet... and he knew for sure that at the very least, ford hadn't met this creature yet. After all, he did read through the journals enough times to memorize which creatures were there and how they looked/acted.

...maybe it wouldn't be so bad to approach this creature and see what it was doing here.

----- danny pov ------

it looks like his projected feelings worked? the kids did look less ready to pull out a weapon on him now...

"Hey I'm not gonna attack you!! I didn't know anyone lived near here, where even is this? I didn't mean to drop by here, I just wanted to go on a quick lil flight, get a little break you know? I didn't think I was so tired I would get lost!"

"...so you aren't from around here? you didn't come here on purpose?" the boy asked. Danny thought it was a stupid question. Did he even listen to what he had just said??

"No I didn't come here on purpose! I have no way to get back to my city, I'm too tired and hungry to even think properly!"

At that, the girl (mabel, if he heard the boy correctly) perked up. It seemed like she was thinking up a plan, but sensing the boy's growing dread lead danny to think it was probably gonna be something incredibly stupid. It reminded him of ellie, though he hadn't seen her in a while since she was traveling the world nowadays, only checking in every few months.

"If you come with us we can get you some food!" she exclaimed, smiling brightly

at that, the boy turned to her and whispered sharply "mabel! haven't we been through enough supernatural boyfriends last summer??"

"oh come on dip dop you know I can't give up on love that easily! I'm still searching for my perfect partner, I can't limit myself to humans!"

at that, danny decided to interrupt them.

"hey guys there's no reason to argue over this in the middle of the woods! lets go get that food you offered first..."

look, food was a higher priority right now than preserving these siblings relationship! you'd do the same if you were starving and saw a golden opportunity for food like this.

"I dunno, how do we know we can trust him?"

"comeeee onnn broski! feeding the poor guy won't hurt!"

"I even have some money on me if that's a problem!" danny hurriedly exclaimed, not wanting to miss his shot at food.

"fine! have it your way, we'll talk over lunch."

with that, the siblings beckoned him over and started walking in a seemingly random direction, eventually reaching a worn footpath and some unusual wooden signs? weird.

a/n: I wrote this a couple weeks ago and have not continued it since, so I decided to just post what I wrote

Danny was tired. It was exam season, the ghosts hadn't eased up on their attacks despite the stress he had with school, Jazz was off for college (meaning his parents expected him to pick up the slack and add her chores to his chore list...) he was more than tired. He was EXHAUSTED. You couldn't really blame him for what happened. ...at least that's what he's been telling himself.

Why is be being so dramatic, you ask? Well... he may have... sorta accidentally spaced out while flying and found himself waking up out in the middle of a forest full of pine trees. And this forest looked NOTHING like the forest in Amity park.

Now this wouldn't usually be a problem, right? Amity has such a big ectoplasmic presence, he could sense it from anywhere in the world! Except... as previously mentioned, he was physically and mentally exhausted, had barely eaten 3 sandwiches in the past week, hadn't gotten more than an hour of sleep a night (some nights getting no sleep at all) for over a month now... and to make things even better, he couldn't even ask for directions to a nearby city!

Ever since the whole Pariah Dark incident Amity (as in the city spirit of amity park) had decided that staying in one place was "too dangerous", so she'd started moving amity around the US with no apparent rhyme or reason.

Maybe it was because amity was a rather young city spirit, but this didn't achieve anything other than getting the GIW out of amity (they weren't able to reliably track the city location quickly enough to get there before it moved again, and amity has developed a tendency to leave them behind while moving herself, at this rate they would lose their funding before they managed to develop a way to locate amity quickly enough)

All that to say he's currently lost in an unfamiliar forest in the middle of nowhere, barely conscious, just praying to all the ancients (that he hadn't fought) that he could get some food and sleep before anything hostile could find him in this weakened state.

So far he had only heard a few distant animal noises, and there was no way he was attempting to eat something from a forest (he might have grown up eating ecto-infused food, but that didn't mean he had no standards for the food he put in his body! He wasn't going to attempt to eat something from an unfamiliar forest!

Danny hadn't gotten any closer to civilization from what he could tell, and he was running out of energy way too fast. So in a move of rare intelligence, he decided to find a tree with a strong looking branch, fly up to it, and drape himself on the branch for some hopefully undisturbed sleep. He didn't want any big forest animals finding him while he was asleep after all.

- - - - - - - - dipper pov - - - - - - - -

"hey mabel, isn't it weirdly quiet here today?"

Dipper and Mabel had gone into the forest with hopes of easing their boredom (and more importantly, get away from grunkle Stan and Ford's bickering), but so far they hadn't seen even a single red pointy hat peeking out in between the pine branches.

"maybe there's some new creature in the forest today..." he voiced out loud, a small part of him still wanting to prove himself to ford by finding something he had missed in his exploration of gravity falls.

"if it's scaring away all the other creatures, wouldn't it be better to call ford for help?" Mabel replied, worrying they might not be able to deal with it by themselves.

"nah, we can totally deal with this! we survived bill's weirdmageddon, we can definitely survive some weird new creature! have some faith in our strength, Mabel!"

"yeah, you're probably right, there's no use worrying"