A/N: Woohoo more chapters! Thank you all for the favorites it quite literally makes my day. Just a heads up I will not be updating for the next few days as I will be out of town but I will keep working on the story. I also made some allusions to real-world things (brownie points if you name them) and this chapter contains A FLASH BACK (doctor who theme) in which I mention everyone's favorite semi-demented gnome SCHMEBALAUCK! Expect a few more of these in the future. Now please commence reading and feel free to rate and review :)!

It was early the next morning and Stan, Mabel, Dipper and Kat were sitting around the kitchen table slowly consuming the waffles Kat had made for 'rent'. It was slightly more believable that Kat was Stan's daughter at this point in the day ,as she sat in her pink and yellow striped pajama pants with a very worn Mystery Shack t-shirt cut into a tank top protectively crunched over a large mug of black coffee occasionally taking bites of waffles. Mid-yawn Kat's phone began playing the Perry Gardner theme. She stood up quickly and excused herself to the next room.

"Hello Katarina Pines-Lake speaking." She said with a wide smiling trying to put some form of energy into her voice as she walked into the next room.

All Dipper, Stan, and Mabel heard after that was a shrill squeal and a few uhuh's and okay's. As she came back into the kitchen doing a happy dance similar to the one she had done the evening before Stan raised an eyebrow at her.

"Who was that?" he said sipping his own mug of coffee.

"My editor." She said happily.

"For your magazine doesn't the he know you're on vacation?" Stan grumbled.

"No, Dad my book editor, she called to tell me that the publisher that we sent the excerpt of my book to wants to read more and has a genuine interest in publishing it." She said excitedly.

Mabel smiled wide in excitement.

"You write for a magazine and are writing a book?!" Mabel squealed.

"Mhmm." Kat said over her cup of coffee.

"What magazine do you write for?" Dipper asked curiously.

"Interstate Topographic." she said after another mouthful of coffee and waffle.

"Cool, what is your book about?" he asked

Kat smirked over her coffee.

"That is a secret, but I can tell you it is fantasy related and is based on my childhood." she said

"Your childhood?" Dipper said suspiciously, looking at Mabel then back to Kat.

"Yup, I had a wacked out imagination, remember all those crazy dreams I used to have dad?" Kat laughed

"Yup." Stan said nodding his head slightly uncomfortable.

***(19 years ago)***

"Daddy? Daddy, wake up please. Daddy come on get up!" a small voice whimpered to Stan.

Stan sighed, he was a fairly deep sleeper and he had ignored these whispers ,assuming they were a dream, for the past 5 minutes. He very slowly opened his eyes groping for his glasses and saw a pair of big green eyes staring at him from a figure crouching on his chest.

"GAH!" he shouted sitting straight up and fumbling to turn on his lamp and find his glasses.

After finding his glasses and finally turning on the light he saw his six year-old sitting at his feet nearly in tears clinging to a tatty red blanket that she always insisted she take in the forest to protect her from monsters because her imaginary friend said it would.

"Kitty what are you doing up, it's gotta be two in the morning or something." He said rubbing his eye.

"I...I...had..had a bad dream." She sniffled rubbing the blanket against her face.

"You had a bad dream?" he asked picking her up and setting her in his lap.

"Mhmmm, 'bout the not ," she said putting her head against his chest "and there was a monster too."

'the not animals' were a term Katarina had used since she was very little to describe fantasy creatures. It didn't generally mean the creature was bad ,she had called the fairys in her story books not animals until she had an actual name to give them, but it meant if it was a lesser evil. The word monster was reserved for things that could scare even the most hardened adult.

"Oh," Stan said "well should we go to your room and talk about it?"

He lifted her off his lap, stood up, and offered her his hand. His daughter frowned and put her arms out in front of her.

"No Daddy, carry me." she said.

Stan sighed lifting her up with grunt.

"You are getting to big for this Kitty." he said as they started to walk to her room.

The little girl crossed her arms and frowned.

"Nuh-Uh daddy I am still little, I'm only six, when I'm seven I'll be too big." she said fiercely shaking her little head long messy brown hair flying around hitting Stan lightly on the face."

"Then I must be getting too old." Stan snorted brushing her hair out of her face.

Stan was now forty-four years old and more often than not he was sure he was too old. He had barely been a part of his two oldest kids lives and hadn't done as good of a job as he would have like with the time he had with them. Now he had a six year-old little girl full of adventure, energy and ideas that he spent half the year trying to keep up with all on his own. Just last week she had nearly driven his car into a fence while he was filling it up and just this morning she had wandered off into the woods and came back with a gnome ,shmeba-something-or-other, that was trying to convince her to go back into the woods with it and Stan had thrown it back into the woods before it called a bunch of other gnomes and have them cart her off. He had to spend an hour convincing her that after it hit a tree it had run back into the woods ,though he wasn't sure if that was true, to get her to stop crying. Sometimes he wondered why he hadn't suggested a custody agreement that was more manageable for him, like weekend visitation or something.

Katarina smiled a little at her dad

" Silly daddy," she said rubbing her nose against his "you aren't old, as long as I count how old you are you still be my sweet little daddy."

Now he remembered why he had been happy when Annabelle had suggested this, and why he had fought so hard for this with Deb.

"Oh really?" he said raising an eyebrow " Show me."

The little girl grinned and put her hands on her hips sassily.

"I will," she said stubbornly "one, two, three, four, five..."

by the time they reached her room she had gotten to forty.

"Forty, forty-one, forty-two, forty-three, forty-four! TADA!" she said putting her hands up in triumph

Stan laughed

"Good job," he said setting her on her bed "how'd you learn how old I was?"

"Mama told me when I was making your birthday card." She said crawling under her covers.

"Ah, so lets talk about that bad dream then huh?" he said laying down next to her on the bed.

Originally the beds in her room were Markus and LeAnn's but since they had moved out last summer, she had moved in, and Stan had absolutely zero gumption to move them the little girl had two beds meant for teenagers in her room ,one of which she used as a combination trampoline fort thing.

"Well I was walking in the woods with Gummy, and the eye-ball not animals with wings where flying around us and chased us into a cave,"she whispered progressively becoming more scared, snuggling close to him "We walked in the cave for a while and then a the wendigo monster came and it chased us and tried to eat us."

Stan frowned down at his daughter.

"A wendigo?" he asked

"Mhhmm, they are all grey and bony and have yucky lips and they are super fast and they get that way cause they eat people." she whispered horrified

"I know, I know what they are honey but where did you hear about those?"

"In the book with the one and the funny looking hand on it" she said lifting up her left hand and placing fingers from her right hand next to it so they equaled six.

"Where'd you find the book honey?" Stan said slowly becoming mortified

"In the basement...except it wasn't the basement. Gummy showed me. We went behind the vending machine and then down a bunch of stairs and then we found it and she read some of it to me."

Stan bit his lip. Two things had become very apparent to him just now. The first being beavercorns were obviously real,his six year-old having befriended one that was getting her into trouble. The second being he needed to be more careful with supernatural things around his daughter. "Kitty, there is nothing behind the vending machine, you must have just imagined it " he said smoothing her hair " and besides wendigo's aren't real, their just made up, you don't have to worry about it."

For once Stan was being honest, well mostly, about the supernatural. The only wendigo that had ever been in Gravity Falls had been an anomaly and had been killed by the writer of the journal as soon as he discovered it.

"But Gummy said that everything in the book was real." she said sleepily.

"Honey, I think Gummy has just been getting you into trouble, if she keeps bringing it up you should tell me and I'll turn her into a hat." he whispered.

Kat yawned and swatted gently at her dad's arm.

"Be nice daddy." she mumbled

"Kay, " he whispered kissing her forehead "I love you Kitty-kat."

"Love you too daddy." she whispered kissing his nose smiling clinging on to his arm till she fell asleep.