Alice followed Stanley up the creaking porch stairs, glancing around at the shockingly normal house, say for the shrunken heads poised on top of the empty fish tank. As the Pines family led her into the house, Mabel snagged Alice's phone and quickly put her number in so that she could call 'whenever', as the little girl told her.

"Um... Stanley?" Alice started, only for Stanley to hold out his hand.

"Just Stan- Only my brother calls me Stanley," He said, gesturing to the living room. "This part's the house, but just outside that door's the Mystery Shack. Hey- You ever been to the Mystery Shack before?"

"Um... No actually," Alice muttered, letting her bags thud onto the floor next to her feet. "I did see a bumper sticker while I was on the road and got curiou-"

"HA!" Stan cries out, his hands forming into excited fists. Annie jumped, her eyes widening as Stan started to speak, a more than triumphant look on his face. "Those bumper stickers were a good investment! And Sixer says they're too 'plain' and 'graphically simplistic' and 'don't even have an address on them Stanley how is anyone supposed to find the place'. Sixer! Did'ja hear that?"

"Well, they are graphically simplistic," Ford stepped into the room, his expression less than amused. "I don't know how she found the place, let alone thought 'What is the Mystery Shack' was compelling."

"I kinda liked it?" Alice piped up.

"See?" Stan sneered at his twin, satisfaction practically seeping from every sense of him. "She kinda liked it! I like you, Alice. How about I give you a tour sometime tomorrow, regular price."

Regular price? Alice felt dazed again, maybe she had hit her head.

"Tomorrow?" Alice jumped as Mabel suddenly appeared behind her like a brightly colored tornado of energy. "Then I'll have to squeeze all my get-to-know-you questions in today! Alice! Tell me: Capybara? Yes or no."

"Um- Yes." Alice suddenly said. "I studied them in college for a little bit."

"YOU STUDIED THEM IN COLLEGE?" Mabel shrieked again, a massive grin spreading across her braced face. "WHAT WERE YOU STUDYING?"

"Zoology-" Alice suddenly found herself laughing. Child-like excitement seemed far more impressive when told something interesting, like that the stranger staying in your house was a zoologist.

"Dipper, my boy!" Ford called out as a young boy who looked suspiciously like Mabel passed in the hallway. "I'm surprised I didn't see you run out to the scene of the crime."

"Crime? What crime? I have an alibi, I swea-" The boy panicked, suddenly noticing Alice standing in front of him. He was about the same height as Mabel, perhaps a little shorter with fluffy brown hair and the same big eyes. Although Alice happened to notice, this boy looked like he hardly got any sleep, perhaps reading into the night if the book under his arm had anything to say about that. "Oh, you have someone with you."

The boy, Dipper, what a strange name, laughed. A sudden sweat broke over his forehead as he reached up to scratch the back of his head, maybe something he picked up from Ford.

"Hey! Ha... I'm... not suspicious at all..." Dipper laughed awkwardly, quickly averting his gaze from Alice and focusing on Ford. "Did you see that car in the side of the Shack? For a second, I thought the manotaurs were back with a grudge."

"Oh no-" Alice said with a shake of her head, "that's mine."

"Ah... Yes." Ford muttered lightly, a guilty look crossing his face. "About that. Dipper, meet Alice. I've, ah, stranded her car here by accident."

"That's one way to put it," Alice said, a good-natured smile crossing her face. Dipper stared in horror at his uncle? Alice wasn't sure what the relation was, but there were similarities between these kids, who looked like twins, and the men, who were twins.

"She's staying here for the time being," Ford continued.

"Sorry, 'stranded her car here'? You crashed it?!" Dipper gawked at Ford, his eyes somehow growing even wider.

"Yeah-" Mabel grinned, her hands clutching at Ford's sleeve as she dipped around him like an overgrown feather boa. "The 'S' in 'Shack' fell on it and everything. And the widows are cracked-"

"Window-" Alice amdened. "The windshield."

"And Alice was lucky enough to make it out alive!" Mabel continued as if Alice hadn't said a word.

"She's fine. No injuries, thankfully." Ford said, glancing between the kids and Alice. She almost felt bad for him, being chastised and teased by these two kids. She gave him a small smile. "The magnet gun's rather safe despite never having been tested in a formal setting."

"Yeesh, Grunkle Ford," Dipper said with a wince, pulling the book under his arm closer to his side. "Did you not, like, take safety precautions or anything?"

Ford gave the young boy a withering look, "The irony of the situation is that I was trying to install a safety precaution."

"Hey hey," Stan interrupted with a glare at his twin. "If you two are gonna do your nerd talk, I'm gonna get Alice set up."

Alice couldn't help the real smile that crossed her face. This family was the kind of loving disaster that she wished she and Carson could have been for Ella. The kind of family that came together and solved a problem, still teasing and caring about each other the entire way.

"Mabel, sweetie, why don't you show Alice around?" Stan said to his niece, glancing down at the glittered girl, who somehow, had a bout of the stuff in her hair. "Let her stay in... Uh... The storage room. That's still empty, right?"

"I'll make it empty!" Mabel grinned, winking and pointing a playful finger gun at Alice, before she dashed off, disappearing behind a wall.

Alice glanced up again, Ford and Dipper enthusiastically chattering about magnetized fields and something about an adhesive in an alien ship. She raised her brow, glancing at Stan with a curious look.

"Yeah- That's pretty normal 'round here," Stan said with a roll of his eyes, his arms crossed over his chest, "Sixer and the kid get all wrapped up in their nerd crap and forget other people are in the room."

"So..." Alice said, trying to casually switch the subject. "Why do you call him 'Sixer'?"

"You didn't notice?" Stan glanced at her, an amused look suddenly crossing his face. She felt like she missed something as the shaggier twin started to chuckle, raising his hand. "He's got six fingers."

Alice felt like that would have been obvious if she had taken the time to look at Ford's hands. So she did, peering over at the other twin as he spoke with Dipper, his hands waving slightly as he talked. Alice's eyes widened as she saw it.

"Polydactyly," She mumbled under her breath. "I've seen it in birds before."

"Don't tell me you're a nerd too," Stan chortled. "I was startin' to like you."

"I'm a zoologist," Alice explained lightly. "I went to school to study elephants and got married to birds instead. Something about migrational patterns just really did it for me."

Stan let out a laugh, his hand pressing against his forehead and glasses. Alice found herself chuckling too, shaking her head and glancing down at her feet.

"Wow," Stan suddenly said. "You're a riot, aren't you?"

"I like to think of myself as adaptable," She said with a shrug as Mabel made a grand and glittery entrance into the room.

Alice found the rest of the day would consist of Mabel showing her the storage room she'd be staying in, then the kitchen, the living room, the hallway, and the bathroom. The comprehensive tour of a mundane and regular house was made far more exciting by the energy of the young teen.

Eventually, she found the family was far more extended than the two great uncles, or Grunkles, as the younger twins called them. The decorative doilies laced across the house when Alice found out that a grandmother normally lived there with her grandson 'Soos'. Or was his name Zeus? Whatever his name was, Alice found herself looking forward to meeting him when he came in for work in the morning.

When Mabel dragged her up to the attic, grandly opening the door to her and her twin's room, Dipper was sucked into a book. Or, she thought he was until Alice caught him glancing up occasionally, almost suspiciously, as he pretended to read. Alice had nearly jumped when the next member of the family bumped against her leg: a round pink pig, who Mabel declared as his best friend and partner-in-crime, Waddles.

Alice found them perfectly matched, right down to their chubby cheeks and very boop-able noses.

Despite her disbelief over the state of her car and the unusual circumstances, The Pines family created her like she was a normal guest at the home. They'd portioned out dinner for her and invited her to watch TV with them afterward. After dinner and TV, Alice returned to the storage room Mabel had shown her, an air mattress waiting for her with more pillows and sheets than a summer night warranted.

She smiled, letting out a light sigh as she closed the door behind her and settled on the air mattress. She felt herself bounce, only being able to stabilize herself when her hands smacked against the wall behind her.

It was less than ideal, and she was far too aware of that. But how often did something good happen to her? How often did people treat her like the Pines family were? Alice laid back on the mass of pillows, pulling the blanket over herself, curling toward the walls, and closing her eyes.

Maybe this change could be a good thing, even if she was stuck here.