Dipper emptied his bookbag onto his desk. Two textbooks, three spiralbound notebooks, eight pens, four mechanical pencils, an eraser, a graphing calculator, a flashlight, and his journal tumbled onto the already cluttered surface. He grabbed his journal and one of the pens, clicking it to life and flipping to his most recent entry.

He was ready. Last week, Great Uncle Ford let slip that they had encountered a wendigo in Ontario, and that they were hunting something in the Barents Sea. He did his research; there was no way that Great Uncle Ford or Grunkle Stan cold hide anything about their adventure from him. Maybe he could even figure out what they were hiding in Journal 4. They had promised no more secrets. Did they think he couldn't handle whatever they had encountered? He'd fought Bill, twice—there couldn't possibly be anything worse than that pointy jerk.

They would tell him. No more secrets. Now, if Mabel would hurry up, they could call—

His sister's exuberant squeal echoed from downstairs. He barely heard his mother chastise her for running in the house beneath Mabel's heavy footsteps thumping up the stairs. She burst into their shared room a moment later.

"Mabel—"

She let loose another excited exclamation and stomped her feet.

Dipper sighed. "Mabel, seriously?"

Inhaling deeply, she screamed again as loud as her powerful lungs would allow.

"Mabel!" Dipper threw a pillow at her face, silencing her. "Okay, enough already. What are you even shouting about, anyway?"

Mabel tossed the pillow and her bookbag aside and flew to her brother's desk. She waggled a green bottle in his face. "I got another letter from Mermando!" Beaming, she tugged at the cork. "I sent him pictures of the street we sweaterbombed over Christmas break, and the adorable little hats and scarves we knitted for the squirrels in the park, and I told him all about the sheep we liberated from the farm—"

"You weren't supposed to tell anyone about that—"

She blew a raspberry at him. "Oh, please, it's just Mermando. Who's he gonna tell, the sea cows?"

"…I guess." He frowned. "But don't tell anyone else! I won't be able to make the Monster Hunting Club if they think I'm some kind of delinquent."

Mabel rolled her eyes. "I told you, just break into Principal Howard's apartment. He can't possibly say no then!"

Dipper shook his head. "Okay, Mabel, focus. We need to get Great Uncle Ford to tell us why he keeps marking out stuff in his journal, and we need to be totally focused and—Mabel?"

His sister had thrown herself onto her bed, sending a poof of glitter into the air, absorbed in the letter she finally freed from its glass prison.

"Mabel!"

"Yeah, yeah, Dippin' Dots, I heard." She didn't look up from the paper. "I'm sure it's nothing, Dipper. You scribble stuff out of your journal all the time. Maybe Grunkle Ford is just crossing out stuff because he thinks it's dumb or he's wrong about something or some junk like that."

"But he's always so secretive about it." Dipper clicked the pen a few times. "And so is Grunkle Stan. They're totally hiding something." Mindlessly, he chewed on the end of his pen. "What could it possibly be? Do you think it's about—?"

"Not every bad thing is about Bill." Groaning, Mabel rolled over and gestured to her brother's computer. "Just pull up the thing so we can call them already. It's, like, stupid early over there and they've got stuff to do and junk…"

After turning on his computer, Dipper flopped back into his chair. "I just don't get why they'd be hiding anything, after everything that happened last summer…"

Mabel didn't answer, focused on the message again.

With a few clicks, Dipper brought up the video chat and called their great uncles. "Come on, Mabel, they usually pick up quickly."

While Mabel scrambled to the other side of the room, the video chat picked up. It was only Stan, yawning and stretching in the cabin of the Stan o' War II, still half-asleep.

"Waking up is the worst part of the day," he grumbled as he ran a hand through his hair. Catching sight of Dipper, he smiled. "Hey, kid, what's the word?"

"Nothing, really. I got the highest score on my biology exam." Dipper couldn't help but beam.

"That's great—"

"Hey Grunkle Stan!" Mabel tackled Dipper to get at the screen. "Guess what? I got a letter from Mermando today! And Waddles' taxi license came in, too!"

Stan shook his head. "That pig can't even reach the pedals—how does he drive?"

"I made him little boots with wood blocks."

Stan wasn't impressed. "Who even let him take a driving test, anyway?"

Dipper shoved his sister off of him. "The guy wasn't really…uh…I don't know that he had his own license…and he seemed a little…off…"

"Figures. Who else would give a pig a license?" The humor in Stan's expression faded slightly as he leaned back in his chair to call out to a different part of the cabin, off-screen. "Hey, Sixer, you coming or what? How long does it take to make coffee?"

"I've got it!" Ford's triumphant call was strangely quiet through the video chat. He appeared on screen a moment later, holding out his journal. "The solution to our problem—I've got it right here."

"Your diary is gonna make me coffee?"

"What problem, Great Uncle Ford?" Dipper leaned closer to the monitor, his pen clicking. "It is some kind of monster? I've been doing some research, and—"

"Huh?" Startled, Ford glanced to the computer screen; he lost much of the wild look in his eyes when he registered where the voice had originated. He adjusted his glasses, hemming, and righted himself. "Ah. I didn't realize you'd already called. Greetings, children."

The younger twins waved to the camera.

"Good morning, Great Uncle Ford!"

"Hey Grunkle Ford!"

"So, what problem are you having? Is there anything we can do to help?" Excited, Dipper scooted even closer, nudging Mabel out of the way. "Is it some kind of ghost or restless spirit?"

Ford blinked, confused. "What? Oh, um, well…"

Stan rolled his eyes. "What Poindexter wants to say is that we haven't had any interesting or cool problems. Just having some trouble adjusting to the weird daylight hours up here." He vaguely gestured around him. "We were trying to figure out what to do about that, is all. Wouldn't be so much of a problem if someone—" he looked pointedly to his brother "—would just make coffee when he got up."

Ford scoffed. "You're a grown man, Stanley, you can make your own coffee."

"How are you gonna make yourself coffee and then expect me to make my own? Just make enough for two people at once—or just stop drinking the whole pot on your own." Stan yawned. "Speaking of which, did you make coffee, or just pull everything out of the cabinet and then get distracted with your diary?"

"It's brewing, Stanley," Ford grumbled as he sat down. He dropped the journal on the desk, jarring the webcam for a moment. With a brighter expression, he turned to the twins in the video chat. "How have you been, children?"

"I got a letter from Mermando today!" Mabel made to scream again, only refraining because Dipper jabbed her in the side. "He says they're going to visit the ruins of Atlantis this summer, and that we should visit him there!"

Dipper huffed. "That's just a joke, Mabel. Atlantis isn't real."

Ford hummed. "While there's not much definitive literature on the subject, there is quite a bit of anecdotal evidence supporting Atlantis' existence. I've spoken to a few mermaids about it before—they're pretty secretive about its location, but they all seem to agree that it's somewhere near the Mediterranean."

"Sounds like a good place to spend the summer," Stan said. "Y'know, somewhere warm."

"Yes, yes." Ford waved off his brother's veiled complaint. "We'll summer somewhere warm. I was thinking Belize—"

"What did I tell you about South America, Sixer? Not happening."

"Are we just going to ignore that Atlantis is real?" Dipper glanced between his great uncles and his sister, none of whom seemed remotely concerned. "I have so many questions—"

Mabel's phone chimed obnoxiously. She checked the message and frowned. "Dang it. Mom says dinner is ready." She snagged Dipper by the arm, dragging him from the computer despite his protests. "Bye Grunkle Stan! Bye Grunkle Ford!"

"Bye, kids!"

Apparently, forty years of caffeine dependency hadn't taught Ford how to make a decent cup of coffee. If anything, he seemed to be trying to make each cup uniquely bad. It was weak today, and burnt, and overly sweet. Perhaps Ford couldn't actually taste it anymore. Stan considered complaining about it, but, he supposed, he could have made it himself if he didn't want terrible coffee.

"As I was saying earlier, I've found the solution to our problem." Ford placed his mug on the table and grabbed his journal. "It's so simple—I can't believe it was even an issue in the first place. Behold!" He flipped to a random page and held it up for his brother to see.

Stan adjusted his glasses, leaned forward, and read the entry on the ghost pirates. "I don't get it, Sixer, what am I beholding here? I was there for this."

Flipping through a few more pages, Ford watched Stan's expression. "Notice anything? Anything different?"

"No." Stan's brow raised slightly. "Your diary is going to stop you from writing incriminating things in your diary?"

"Journal, Stanley, it's a journal—how are you not seeing this?" Sighing, Ford shoved the book at his brother. "Hold this." Ford rummaged in his coat for a moment, eventually withdrawing another journal. He opened to a random page covered in ink and scribbles. "Now do you see?"

Stan glanced between the journal in his hands and the one his brother held. "A copy, huh?"

Ford nodded. "Completely sanitized. Everything that was left unharmed, originally, has been perfectly transposed, eliminating the suspicious redactions. The kids will only see the censored version, and I'll be able to keep my journal as I please." He pulled the original journal to himself, glossing over the inky mess of a page. "Perhaps I can even retrieve the lost material…"

"Huh." Passingly, Stan reviewed the copy journal. All of the offending information had been eliminated, as had all references to the redacted sections. "And I assume you have a plan to make sure the kids can't find your journal?"

"Naturally." Gesturing for Stan to follow, Ford went to their bunk beds. He ducked beneath Stan's bunk, shoving as much of himself as he could fit beneath the lower mattress, and removed one of the floorboards. A small cubby had been revealed, just large enough to stow a book. "I can't imagine a reason for the kids to be under here in the first place, but the board fits perfectly back in place, even with the journal inside. Unless they know to look for it, they should never find it."

"You don't know much about kids, do you, Poindexter? But, I guess I wouldn't expect them to try prying up floorboards randomly, so it should be okay." After a moment, Stan frowned, perturbed. "How long has this been under here?"

"I built it in about a week ago. Originally, I thought to simply hide the journal here, but then I worried that Dipper would find it if he weren't permitted to read something…"

"Not sure how you managed that without me noticing, but whatever." After finagling himself out from under his bunk, Stan smirked. "See, Poindexter? I told you you'd come up with something."

"Perhaps not the most elegant solution, but it should prove effective." Ford replaced the floor panel and extricated himself from the small space. "Pleased, Stanley?"

"Until the next time you do something stupid, sure." Content, Stan returned to his chair. Somehow, as his lackluster coffee cooled, it became worse—all part of the mystery of his brother's coffee sorcery. He, again, chose not to complain.

"The confidence you have in me is deeply heartening." Ford moved toward his chair, taking only a step before becoming distracted. "Is that the anomaly tracker?" He didn't wait for his brother to answer; Ford darted immediately to the table and knocked most of his things off of it as he tried to find the device. Beneath the real and copy journals, he found the beeping tracker. His face brightened. "Oh, it's nearby!"

"What's nearby?"

"I don't know!" Beaming, Ford glanced up from the screen. "But it's so close! We should encounter it in an hour or so." He putzed with the device's buttons. "It won't even be out of our way. It seems to be directly in our charted course."

Stan ran a hand over his face. "So, some weird something just popped into existence directly in front of us, and we were just gonna sail right into it, huh?"

"Well, not directly into it, it's a bit north of us—but, yes, it did just 'pop into existence,' as a matter of fact." Ford returned his attention to the tracker. "Fascinating, though. I wonder what it is…"

Sighing, Stan peered into his mug. "I'm gonna need better coffee for this."