Ghost in the Falls

Chapter 5

Danny decided to join in on the fun. There was no shortage of stuff to chuck at targets, and it was nice to be able to aim at targets outside of training.

The cans and boxes were repeatedly pelted with pellets of metal and plastic by the gang of cheering teens, then propped back up to endure another round of shots.

Danny was surprised by how good Dipper's aim was, as a small nerd, Danny had expected him to be about as good as he was before he got practice fighting ghosts, but Dipper was yet to miss a shot; he had a look of concentration before throwing, when you could practically see the cogs turning in his head as he calculated the ideal way to throw the object, considering the weight of the object, the distance, and the wind speed.

Mabel on the other hand was more erratic, and seemed to be throwing automatically, hitting the targets most times, and missing horribly other times. At some point she had started using a grappling hook to hit the targets, which only seemed to be noticed by Danny, the others not batting an eye at a young teenager firing a potentially dangerous hook all over the place.

Wendy had a killer aim, and was cheered on by her friends more enthusiastically than any of the others when she took a shot at the makeshift targets. Danny made a mental note not to get into a fight with her, she would undoubtedly wipe the floor with him under normal circumstances.

Danny was accustomed to target practice with ectoblasts, but had not had as much practice with throwing objects, thankfully he had inherited his mother's aim, hitting the cans on the dead centre nine out of ten times.

"C'mon Jazz, you're missing out on the fun over here," said Danny, looking over to see his older sister on her phone, trying to keep out of the chaotic target practice.

Reluctantly, she pocketed her phone, and shuffled over towards Danny, grabbing a stone on the way. "Fine, I'll play with you," she conceded.

Jazz spent a good minute doing mental calculations and adjusting her arm position before actually throwing, missing all the targets by at least a metre. There was no doubt in Danny's mind that she had inherited her father's aim.

The fun continued for at least an hour, with the sun dipping lower in the sky, casting stretched shadows that emphasised the scrapes and chips in the ground from rogue shots. The sweaty, laughing teens all seemed to come to the mutual agreement that it was time to go home, which was heavily supported by a few growling stomachs.

• • •

The trip to the Shack was mostly uneventful, the walking pace slowed significantly by excited chatter from Mabel and Dipper about what they wanted to do over the holiday. The smell of food wafted through the air, making the quartet of Mabel, Dipper, Danny and Jazz pick up their pace, galloping towards the promise of delicious food.

Stan was hunched over the stove, frying sausages in a pan of grease, with a bowl full of mashed potato on the surface next to the oven, which had a thorough coating of burnt fat and oil. A salad, which was unsurprisingly tiny portion compared to the other food items, sat on the middle of the table, in the centre of the kitchen/ dining room. Jack was blathering on about ghosts to an obviously bored Stan, who humoured him with grunts of 'okay' and 'm'.

"Hey kids, lay the table and we'll eat very soon," said Stan, cutting off Jack's happy drone. At those words Jack ran off to the living room, like an excited puppy going to fetch a stick.

Dipper grabbed the plates, while Mabel danced over to the cutlery drawer. Dipper neatly placed the plates, roughly equally from each other, seeming to make a point of shuffling away from the cutlery drawer on his way to the table. Mabel, on the other hand, practically hurled the cutlery across the room (Danny was now grateful for the fact that she had had target practice earlier, or else he might have been impaled). Jack returned with Maddie and Ford in tow, discussing improvements for their ghost hunting weapons, as the children dragged out chairs in anticipation of Stan's cooking.