The Lost Piece Ch. 2

It was a cool summer morning and the kids were shooed out of the shack early on. Stan had some work that he wanted to get done so he dropped them off at the diner for breakfast. "I'll be back around five. Don't do anything I wouldn't kids!" He gave a wink and a laugh before driving off.

The two ordered their meals from Lazy Susan and while they waited, Mabel thought out loud about some things they could do for the day while Dipper began to think about last night.

Stan specifically closed the Mystery Shack today; why? He was acting weirder than usual. Again, why? Is something important about today to Stan? If so, what? And from what he said last night, he almost seemed...depressed.

He might be able to convince Mabel to listen if they could do something to cheer their uncle up. "Hey Mabel."

Mabel stopped stacking the coffee creamers into a pyramid. "Yeah bro-bro?"

"Do you think Stan's acting weird?" he then thought about it for a second. "Well, weirder than usual?"

Mabel balanced her straw on her upper lip. "He seems like his normal weird to me. Why?"
Dipper scratched the back of his neck. "Well before I went up to bed he said something to me and seemed kinda...sad."

The straw fell as she opened her mouth. "What?! Sad?! We gotta do something to cheer him up!" The sweater-clad girl then took out a notepad and started scribbling furiously. "I say we throw him a party with all his favorite things. We'll need money, soda, older ladies--"

"I don't think it's something a party can solve," Dipper interrupted.

Mabel crossed her arms. "Party-pooper..." she mumbled.

Not too long passed before Lazy Susan brought their breakfasts to them. Chocolate chip pancakes for Mabel and French toast for Dipper, both with sides of bacon. "Here ya go kids. Enjoy!" They both thanked her and started chowing down.

When they had finished breakfast, the duo went to see Soos. He's known Stan the longest of all of them so he might know something. They made their way to the arcade and saw him at the pinball machine with a bag of quarters and a determined look on his face. His score was pretty high but not beating the high score just yet.

"Come on...come on...!" Soos mumbled as he hit the levers and turned the knobs. The ball tossed and turned until eventually it went in the hole at the top, scoring the points he needed to win. "I did it! Whoo-hoo!"

"Yay Soos!" "Way to go man!"

The handyman turned to see his two best friends in the world cheering for him. "Hey dudes!" he greeted, giving them both hi-fives. "What brings you here?"

"We wanted to ask you something," Dipper started, "but we didn't want to interrupt your game."

"You did awesome!" Mabel added.

Soos grinned sheepishly. "Thanks dudes," he laughed before taking out his phone. "Can you take a pic of the score? I wanna show it to Melody when we talk tonight." Mabel agreed immediately and took several pictures of Soos next to the machine, asking him to try out different poses before handing him his phone back.

"Thanks Mabel. So whatdya wanna talk about?" Soos inquired. "Um, maybe we shouldn't discuss this here."

The trio went out back behind the arcade so they could talk privately. Dipper started the conversation. "There's something weird going on with Grunkle Stan and it has to do with today. You've know and worked with him the longest. Do you know anything?" Dipper asked. Soos blinked a few times before taking out a packet of gum and slowly unwrapped it.

"Sorry dude. I don't know much." he said before he began chewing. "It's best not to ask about this stuff, y'know?"

Dipper raised an eyebrow. "Wait, so something DID happen?" "Was it bad?" Mabel questioned.

"Dudes, I swear I don't know anything. In the ten years I've known Mr. Pines he always gets sad around this time of year and wants to be alone," he quipped, chewing loudly.

Dipper pondered this for a moment. This was something big that he had to figure out. If he and Mabel could learn what happened on this day years ago, maybe it'd help Grunkle Stan.

"Soos, when do you have to meet Melody?"

Soos pondered. "Five o'clock. Why?"

Dipper gave a wry grin. "We're going to the library."