Mornin', fellow Fallers! SP here, with another chapter in my Gravity Falls fanfic. Hope you enjoy!

Dipper's P.O.V.

I was wandering the woods where I had found Journal 3 last year when I heard two girls coming towards me, conversing quietly. One of the voices I recognized as Elia's, the other one was...Pacifica Northwest's?

I walked towards the voices. Sure enough, Elia and Pacifica Northwest were walking through the forest towards the Mystery Shack, conversing. As I watched, Pacifica cracked a joke, and Elia chuckled, a smile lighting up her features.

"Pacifica?" I said, stepping out to where the two could see me.

Both of them jumped. Then, after seeing that it was me, Elia sighed in relief Pacifica gave a cry of "DIPPER!" and tackled me in a hug. Awkwardly, after my brain had processed that Pacifica Northwest was actually glad to see me, I hugged her back.

Over Pacifica's shoulder, I could see Elia smiling wanly at the pair of us. She looked horrible; the shadow of a bruise on her jaw, tired eyes, and bandages covering her forearms. Not unlike McGucket.

"You two look nice together," she said softly. "You're lucky to have Pacifica as your friend." She started walking away, towards the Mystery Shack. "You two can 'ave a bit o' time to yourselves."

"Elia, stay with us," Pacifica pleaded. "You and Dipper… You two are the only people who really know what my parents are like and what I'm going through."

Elia stopped with her back turned to us. Turning her head so that we could see only part of her face, she looked at us sidelong, studying us. I shivered. The cunning glint I could glimpse in the one eye I could see scared me a little.

"I hear that there's a creature down at the lake," she said. "Wanna stop by and check it out?"

"A creature in the lake?" I said, memory drifting back to the early events of last summer. It seemed like another life. No worries, just me, Mabel, and Soos on an lonely island, looking for the purported Gobblewonker lake monster. It had turned out to be an invention by the then-still clueless McGucket; still, the rumor of another monster, a new monster, piqued my interest.

Pacifica punched me on the arm. "Well, nerd?" she asked. "Are we going?"

I smiled awkwardly.

"Well?" Elia called. "You two comin'? I ain't going to wait for you."

I thought over the other possibilities: working at the Mystery Shack, a place that I didn't really want to be; or going on an adventure with Pacifica Northwest and Elia MacGibbon. The choice was kinda obvious.

"I'm in," I said. "Let's go."

Yeah, a bit of Dipicifica (or however you spell it), but I thought that it would be a nice addition to the story. As always, stay tuned, review (criticism is always helpful), and read my other fanfics.

SP out.