Gravity Falls smells like pine, damp earth, and secrets that don't want to be uncovered.
Stan—Ford, to the world, but Stan to me—greets me like no time has passed at all. His home is cluttered in a way that only brilliant minds manage: stacks of papers, half-finished devices, chalkboards layered with equations that spiral into symbols that shouldn't work but somehow do.
We sit at a small wooden table with steaming cups of tea between us.
"You won't believe half of what I've found," he says, eyes shining.
"I probably will," I reply gently.
He laughs, assuming it's confidence.
Then he brings it out.
The journal.
Leather-bound, worn already despite its young age, its pages dense with sketches, equations, warnings written in a hand that switches between excitement and fear. Journal One. The beginning of everything.
He hesitates before handing it to me.
"I don't show this to many people."
"I know," I say, taking it carefully. "Thank you."
I read slowly. Thoroughly. I don't skim—not because I need the information, but because I respect the man who wrote it. This journal is Ford's first confession to the universe that it doesn't make sense—and that he intends to fix that.
"This is incredible," I say honestly. "You're documenting a hidden ecosystem. Not just creatures, but rules."
His shoulders relax a little at that.
"I knew you'd understand."
I agree to help him investigate.
Not permanently. Not recklessly. But for a time.
We catalog anomalies. Track strange readings. Interview townsfolk who swear they saw things they absolutely did see. I keep my magic hidden, my Titan blood sealed and silent. This isn't the place for that—not yet.
Gravity Falls is dangerous enough without me tipping the scales too early.
But there is something else here.
Something I need.
The Perceptroom.
I don't mention it to Ford.
A mushroom so rare most entries dismiss it as folklore. When refined into a translucent jelly and applied to the forehead, it enhances intelligence to a staggering degree. Not just memory or calculation—comprehension. Pattern recognition. Creative synthesis.
I need that.
Not out of greed.
Out of necessity.
To survive beings like the Collector.To outmaneuver Bill Cipher.To build safeguards, counters, plans within plans.
I've seen what raw intelligence can do in this world.
Waddles—a pig—once became intelligent enough to design a machine overnight that could cure every disease known to man. Intelligence here isn't incremental. It's explosive.
With that level of clarity… I could do incredible things.
Glyphs enhanced by engineering.Magic stabilized by physics.Power built on understanding, not impulse.
I've already made my decision.
When I reach the Boiling Isles, magic will be my foundation.
But science will be my weapon.
For now, I keep helping Stan. We explore abandoned mines. Measure electromagnetic spikes. Log sightings that don't fit any taxonomy. I steer him gently—never away from the truth, but away from the most dangerous angles.
Bill Cipher remains a shadow at the edge of my awareness.
Unspoken. Unnamed.
Not yet.
At night, alone, I look out at the forest and feel the hum beneath the ground—the same hum I felt in the graveyard years ago. Old power. Patient power.
The Perceptroom is out there.
I know it is.
Just not yet.
Not until I'm ready to pay whatever price intelligence like that demands.