There was a knock on Stanford's door, and he looked up, blinking much like a startled owl might. No one ever knocked on this door, aside from the mail man when he had something that had to be signed for. And it was far too early in the day for it to be him – it wasn't quite eight o'clock yet – not to mention the mail man had quickly learned that he had to pound on the door if he wanted a reasonable chance of Stanford hearing it. This knock had seemed almost hesitant, and Stanford probably wouldn't have noticed it at all, if he hadn't happened to be in the same room. Certainly not if he had been down in the basement. He really should think about getting proximity alerts in place for the outside doors, he'd just never bothered to do so yet because normally no one ever came to call.

Except for now, it seemed, because whoever it was knocked on the door a second time. It wasn't a hesitant knock after all, he decided, just soft, as though the being on the other side simply lacked the muscle power to make the sound any louder. Well, if the gnomes were actually deigning to knock, rather than just breaking into his kitchen and stealing whatever they wanted from his cupboards, then that was behavior that ought to be encouraged. So, Stanford stood up and went to answer the door.

It wasn't gnomes. Standing on Stanford's front porch were two tiny children: a boy and a girl who were probably siblings, possibly twins, and looked to be between the ages of… three and seven. They both had somewhat curly brown hair – not unlike Stanford's own, in fact – in cuts that were medium-long for their respective genders and incredibly shaggy. They were dressed to ward off the morning chill, the girl in a sweater that looked like it had once belonged to a full-grown woman, the turtleneck creating a kind of cowl on her and the hem dropping below her knees like a dress, and the boy had on a pair of jeans that stopped short at the ankles and a sweatshirt that stopped short at the wrists. They also each had on a backpack, the straps of which were fraying with age. In fact, there didn't appear to be a single thing about the two that didn't look worn or frayed or unkempt or all three at once.

The girl had her left hand poised in the air, with a sweater sleeve flopped over it, like she were about to knock on the door again. Her right hand was holding on to her probable brother's left hand, or so Stanford assumed, since that hand was engulfed in a sweater sleeve as well. The boy's other hand had a tight grip on what appeared to be a letter.

It wasn't the strangest thing Stanford had seen since coming to Gravity Falls, not by a long shot. But it existed somewhere in that uncanny valley of strange, the almost normality of it making it far more perturbing than it would have otherwise been.

"Where are your parents?" Stanford asked, looking around behind the children as though expecting the adults that belonged to them to suddenly appear.

"Our mama left. She said to give you this," the boy answered, offering the letter up to Stanford.

Stanford took it from the boy. The envelope was unsealed, with Stanford's name, first and last, written on the front. Inside there were three sheets of paper. Two appeared to be official documents of some sort, printed on stiffer paper that was almost cardstock, and the third, which had been placed in front of the other two, was a handwritten letter that had been penned on motel stationary. He read that first.

Stanford,

You probably don't remember me. I know I wouldn't remember you, except for the circumstances. We met about six and a half years ago in a crappy little bar. Your friends had dragged you out to celebrate that you finished writing your grant proposal to study weird shit in Bumfuck, Oregon. You were drunk, I was curious about the six fingers, and we ended up spending a night together that I'm pretty sure was terrible for everyone. I didn't know until a couple months later that you left me two little surprises behind. Their names are Mabel and Mason. Since neither of them came out with six fingers, I'm sticking their birth certificates in here as proof.

They're good kids. Too good to deal with my shit any more. You're smart and respectable and all that, you'll do a better job taking care of them than I can.

Steph

P.S. Mabel says to tell you Mason's name is Dipper now. She started calling him that a couple weeks ago. I don't know why. She's a weird kid. They're both weird. Good, but weird.

With a growing sense of apprehension, Stanford looked at the two birth certificates. They were for Mabel Stephanie Pines and Mason Stanford Pines, with his own name on the line for the father. Their date of birth was August 31st 1975, which, when Stanford did the math, would line up with the night he vaguely remembered that he had spent with a woman that very well may have been named Stephanie.

Stanford slowly lowered the documents to look at the children again. His children. He had a son and a daughter and how was that even possible? Well, technically, Stanford understood the mechanics of how it was possible, but his brain couldn't seem to wrap itself around how it could have happened to him. He'd had sex one time, failed to see what all the fuss about, and went back to dedicating himself to his work, which is what he had wanted to be doing all along, but Fiddleford had insisted that Stanford spend at least one night of his entire college experience having the stereotypical "college experience." And now Stanford had two children. It was like something out of a bad after school special.

The boy, Mason – Dipper? – Mason looked about as nervous about the whole thing as Stanford was, but Mabel flashed him a grin full of crooked teeth and waved, the sleeve of her sweater flopping back and forth wildly as she did so. "Hi, Daddy!"

Oh boy.

Well, well, well. Sixer's got himself a pair of mini-Sixers. Now this could be interesting. And possibly problematic. Hmmm….