[text / action for Goldenrod / go ahead and make mingley top levels if you want]

[meteorman]

A. Text

To whom it may concern,

This is an invitation to a casual Hanukkah celebration to be held tonight at the Skellington House in north Goldenrod. Food will be provided, though if you wish to bring some to share I'm certain that no one will object.

No RSVP necessary. Anyone who would like to is welcome to stop by*. In strange times and places it pays to be able to find common ground in what little may be familiar.

- Dr. Stanford Pines

*Except for Rick Sanchez, unless he promises to behave himself. There will be children in attendance.

B. Action

[The mansion is hard to miss, partially because it's awfully large and partially because beneath the Christmas decorations the Halloween ones still appear to be up. Add the menorah in the window and the combined light the place gives off is probably visible from space.

As promised there is food: it's not a proper sit-down dinner, considering he figures people will keep trickling in as they have the time, but there are latkes and sufganiyot (he may have asked for Mabel's help with those) along with more Johto-appropriate foods and some things that fall squarely in-between. There are also driedels available, with markings that appear to be painted on in glitter, for people who would like to play or at the very least learn how.

It ought to be a nice night.]

Comments

[sneezelikeakitten]

We kinda got thrown into it, too, when we moved to Gravity Falls.

[Excuse you, Dipper was... yeah, he was twelve. And because of this world he spent an entire month being thirteen before fourteen hit. And it's a skipped a generation family thing.]

Oh, the usual. Gnomes, Big Foot, vampires, zombies.

[Though some of those actually came right to them.]

[schachmeister]

[Somehow it had almost been his birthday when Armin had gotten here, and though he hadn't celebrated it, now he isn't even certain if he should be calling himself fifteen or sixteen. He's in birthday flux. He won't ever grow older. Puberty will never come for him at this rate.]

I've never heard of any of those.

[Come to think of it, their world doesn't have that many monster stories. Maybe it is because of the titans. Everybody is kind of sick of monsters.]

... is a Big Foot what it sounds like?

[Because to Armin it sounds like there is just a huge disembodied foot rampaging around.]

[sneezelikeakitten]

[Dipper. Is.... just gonna stare, the dreidel now forgotten entirely.

He sighs.

Let's do this.]

Big Foot, also know as Sasquatch, is a large, humanoid creature that resembles an upright ape. He has big feet. Like, huge feet. There's been so many people going after him, but not a single researcher has ever found concrete evidence on this creature. I aim to change that.

[schachmeister]

[When Dipper says large humanoid creature, Armin can only think one thing: titan. Big feet? Well, some titans certainly did have larger than average feet. Or heads. Or arms. Most of them looked as if they were thought up by someone with only the barest realisation of how humans are supposed to look like.

He leans in, clearly interested.]

When you say big, how big exactly?

[Are we talking a three meter class, seven meter class, fifteen meter class or some sort of aberrant here? In fact, the Colossal titan had some pretty huge feet itself.]

[sneezelikeakitten]

Maybe about 7' or 8' feet? Sometimes people swear it's a lot bigger than that, but how can you hide a Big Foot that's supposedly 20' or more feet tall?

[Seriously. Seriously.]

[schachmeister]

I see.

[Only 7 or 8 feet, too small to be a titan. Unless, perhaps, its is a rather small aberrant.

Only one way to be certain.]

Does it attack people?

[sneezelikeakitten]

[Wait a moment while he ponders this. Which is a second.]

It's one of the most peaceful cryptids. He's more likely to run away and hide than attack. He just wants to live a quiet life as far as we know.

[schachmeister]

[Definitely not a titan.]

When you first described it, it sounded a little like a [monster] creature from my world, but its behaviour is really different.

[Still though, he honestly looks intrigued. He's not just showing a bit of interest to be polite, this is the real deal.]

Do you have any plans for finding evidence of one? If it is as peaceful and shy as you say, it doesn't sound like an easy job.

[Armin, for one, is totally in favour of big dreams of hunting down mysterious stuff and trying to make certain if it exists or not.]

[sneezelikeakitten]

So you've got something super violent in your world?

[It's been a while since he's had a captive audience. Dipper is excited.]

Of course! I'm looking at tons of research from other people trying to find him. It helps that my grunkle Ford and Stan live in the area that it's seen in. Yeah, he's a Washington staple, but he goes south to Oregon sometimes.

[schachmeister]

That is... one way to describe it. The world I'm from is dominated by creatures we call titans. They are large humanoid creatures. [which should explain why Armin thought this Big Foot might be one, at first] Most are between three and fifteen meters tall, though we have recorded some exceptions. We honestly don't know a lot about them yet. We don't know where they are from, or how they function as they do, but the one thing that's unmistakably clear is that they have a single-minded desire to eat humans.

[sorry. Did Armin just completely kill the pleasant conversation? He has a tendency of doing that when he gets far too serious.]

[sneezelikeakitten]

[Dipper doesn't look too horrified. Well, maybe a little horrified. Then again he's come across things just as strange, just not that- scratch that, yes, that tall and that weird.]

Kind of sounds like that one monster I came across that was literally just a grown mans head attached to an arm that kept asking people if they could climb into his mouth to eat them.

[schachmeister]

[Dipper, what is wrong with your world? Who hurt it so?]

An arm... and a head? And it talked?

[Armin is trying to picture it, though he's not having much success. Somewhere in the back of his head, he hopes squad leader Hange never finds out about this. Somehow, he feels they'd be far too excited by the idea of it. Terrifyingly excited.]

What did you do with it?

[sneezelikeakitten]

[Weirdness is what is wrong, and it's all centered in Oregon.]

Really loudly. Dragged itself along the ground to chase people.

[It's a long story.]

It's a long story.

[schachmeister]

[Guess who loves long stories.]

I have the time, if you don't mind.

[sneezelikeakitten]

Do you wanna hear it from the beginning or just from what happened to make that guy show up?

[Either way, this isn't Gravity Falls, so there's no "Don't talk about it" order.]

[schachmeister]

Would it make more sense to hear it from the beginning?

[If yes, give him that.]

[sneezelikeakitten]

It might. But if you wanna hear it from the very, very beginning, you'd have to ask Ford about it. His story happens way before mine does.

[Like, by thirty years.]

[schachmeister]

[Are you handing him an excuse to asking Ford Pines more about his life on a silver platter, Dipper? Is that what you are doing here?]

Do you think he would mind me asking? I wouldn't want to if it is too personal...

[sneezelikeakitten]

[Everyone should ask Ford Pines about his life. It's utterly fascinating, and if Dipper still had the journals, then Armin would see that too.]

Personal? Not at all! I don't think so at least.

[schachmeister]

[If only Dipper had his journals and Armin had his grandfather's old book. They could do a trade of sorts that way.]

Then I'll ask him.

Where does your part of the story begin?

[sneezelikeakitten]

When I went to Gravity Falls for summer vacation. Mabel and I are twins, so we both went to spend it with who we thought was Stanford Pines. He owned a tourist trap called the Mystery Shack. Made Mabel and I do some pretty weird things. I found my Grunkle Ford's journal in a tree, and that got me into searching the mysteries of Gravity Falls!

[There's a lot more to it.]

[schachmeister]

Who you thought was Stanford Pines?

[There is pretty much no way Armin's curiosity isn't piqued after a line like that. Especially when he knows--]

Mr Pines told me he travelled through various dimensions for several decades. Did you run into an imposter?

[sneezelikeakitten]

Nope. Turns out Stan was actually Stanley, his twin brother. Took Ford's place in order to find a way to get his brother back.

[Thus the birth of the Mystery Shack.]

[schachmeister]

He must have cared a lot about him if he went to such lengths to bring him home. They must have been close.

[sneezelikeakitten]

[Well, about that.]

No they were not. Not at that point.