If you're looking for writing ideas, how aboutttt. Hmm. Crime twins Stan teaching either Mabel or Dipper how to pickpocket
ehehehehe my crime pines......
(just a reminder that stan and ford have aliases and go by "gabe" and "harvey" respectively, lol. don't be alarmed by these strangers.)
"Alright," Grunkle Gabe muttered to Dipper and Mabel, the sound swept away from anyone else's ears by the ambient noise of a busy San Francisco street, "gimme the three Bs again."
Dipper and Mabel both sighed at being nagged about it again just as they were on the cusp of actually trying out some pickpocketing for real, but they each dutifully recited them in an undertone. "Bother, bump, bounce."
Mabel added one of the non-B parts, which was, "And it's not as fun since the 70s, 'cause everyone uses cards now, not cash."
On the other side of the younger twins, Grunkle Harvey sighed mournfully. "It really isn't."
Alongside other criminal know-how, it had been impressed upon Dipper and Mabel how great cold hard cash was for the local thief and scammer. Once the cash was in your hands and you weren't in public, it was way easier to make sure only you had access to it, not the sucker you stole it from or the police. And unless you stole a lot of cash, you could use it pretty much anywhere and it'd be a hell of a time finding it all--compare credit cards, which could be cancelled and tracked via where they got used. They both agreed it was quite a tragedy that they weren't born in the age of purely physical money that had existed for hundreds of years.
Still, there were still some options for the enterprising pickpocket. Grunkle Harvey tapped them on the shoulders, pointing to a promising specimen. An older woman with a heavy, long-strapped purse that she had hanging so it was more at her backside than to the front. She was wearing huge chunky sunglasses and an old, cared-for coat.
A real good option, Mabel ascertained immediately. A bag she could easily reach into without stretching, away from the woman's line of sight, and held by a lady who was probably pretty old-fashioned about her money. A couple twenties worth, probably, or even a fifty or a hundred dollar bill if she'd just been to the bank today and hadn't had a chance to spend and break them. It wasn't a Sunday, so it was possible.
She was standing a little ways from the moving crowd of the sidewalks, near the fenced patio for some sort of brunch place, seeing as the space was entirely empty later into the afternoon as it currently was. By the way she was looking around the streets she was either trying to get her bearings via the buildings on the block or looking for a friend.
Mabel nudged Dipper, "Rock-paper-scissors?"
The game was an honored tradition in deciding who got to pick what they wanted out of two divided options, while the other accepted the leftover choice. But Dipper shook his head.
"I'll bother," he said. "You bump. If she notices you, you can play it off like you just really like her purse in a way I can't."
It made sense, and better yet, it let Mabel do the exciting part of the scheme. She nodded vigorously.
Each of them was bolstered by a pat on the back from a grunkle, and then they detached from their little group to head towards the woman with the rest of the crowd. Grunkle Gabe and Grunkle Harvey hung back and made a show of examining the glass display of a record shop where they could still glance over at the younger twins.
Once they were closer to their target, Mabel started to hang back too. As the one bothering the target, Dipper needed a second to get her attention on him before Mabel approached, just so she didn't notice Mabel right away.
Dipper came up to the woman suddenly and rudely. "Hey! Hey, I think my mom knows you!"
The woman turned, startled, but Dipper swung around her so she was back to looking away from Mabel's direction. He slumped against the black fencing of the patio, squinting up at the woman with as much childish stubbornness he could muster. The woman stared back from behind her huge sunglasses.
Mabel stepped just behind the woman, and leaned herself against the patio fence a little too, so that to outsiders it looked like the pair were both supposed to be there. Another advantage of her being an older woman, and the two of them, kids. Most people would assume from a glance that they were probably kids with a relative.
As Dipper began to argue his point that their supposed mom did know this woman, Mabel's hand went for the bag. It was hanging just around the curve of her hip, out of the view of the corner of her eye. The flap to open it wasn't clasped, letting Mabel slip a hand in quickly. She kept her touch light and gentle; going too quick would risk the woman feeling the shift in pressure.
Dipper was saying something about a non-profit organization to the woman's increasingly irritated denials; he also had wisely claimed that their mom was in a shop down the street in the direction the woman was facing, so she was peering that way, looking for someone to foist this child onto, rather than looking behind herself.
Breath held--this was the delicate part--Mabel's fingers sought anything wallet-like. A thin crinkly plastic wrapping, either for tissues or a snack, a hard plastic tube containing make-up of some kind, some sort of paper card--ah! Her fingers caught on cold metal. Did this woman carry a necklace loose in her bag?
Apparently so. Mabel wasn't willing to waste a chance for a gold necklace, so she tangled it around her fingers as best she could without touching the wall of the purse against the woman's body. The movement of her fingers helped them find a textured fabric she was pretty sure was the wallet too. She gently seized it.
Just as her fingers closed around it, the woman jerked forward to say something to Dipper in a pitched voice. Heart racing, Mabel tried to use the woman's movement to pulled her spoils out with the cover of the purse moving anyway to disguise the feeling.
Her treasures in hand, she hastily stuffed them into the front pocket of her sweater. Just in time, too; the woman turned a little, maybe at the feeling of her purse moving more than she expected, maybe just to look around for their mom. She jumped at the sight of Mabel, who from her perspective appeared out of nowhere.
"Louis," Mabel said, addressing Dipper. It was a completely random fake name she'd picked on a whim. "Grandpa's got something for us."
Dipper made a show of brightening, shoving off the fence, then shoving past the woman harshly, which she responded to with a cut-off curse and an irritated scowl. The twins darted for the crosswalk and stoplights just a little bit ahead of them, passing to the other side of the street and cramming themselves into the perpetual crowd of walkers. They went down the block and met their grunkles at the crosswalk on the other end, their relatives having guessed their path.
"Alright, far as we can," Grunkle Harvey muttered, and they wound about five more blocks from the woman until they were satisfied.
Once they where out of her sight as surely as they could be, Grunkle Gabe grinned at Mabel. "What's the pot, sweetie?"
Mabel withdrew the objects in her sweater, seeing them properly for the first time. A pink clamshell coinpurse and a silver necklace with what Mabel thought might be a ruby on it. Gabe let out a near-silent whistle. The items were swiftly taken from her--Gabe got the coinpurse, Harvey the necklace, each stored in their pockets.
Another "B" of pickpocketing: bundle. It was best to get the spoils out of the hands of the one that did the actual sticky-fingered deed and into someone else's as soon as possible, in case the target chased after or identified them later.
So Dipper and Mabel had to stew in the question of how much they'd really gotten out of the trick until they were in Gabe's car, where it was easier to conceal topics of conversation. But before that, they did get a blanket "Good job." from both of their grunkles.
Good enough for now, Dipper and Mabel agreed.