Alternative title: J-El-ous
AN: I am dyslexic. To those who don't know this means I have a hard time spelling things, so if you see a spelling mistake in this, or any other chapter tell me. I will correct it and make the whole thing more enjoyable for everyone. Spell check can only go so far, so please chip in.
Disclaimer: I do not own Stranger Things or anything that appears in this story. Even anything original in this I forfeit all rights to.
Coveting Mind
Sunday Night
It was a few years since Will was lost in the Upside-down. Life in Hawkins had been mostly normal. Occasionally interesting. Monsters from beyond the veil, horrors man was not meant to know, and oddities that just defy any kind of categorization. Everybody concerned agreed that those things were not good. Kind of awesome, but not good. Sometimes though, it was worth it. Sometimes the weird happenings did not just take from them. Sometimes they gave back.
El had returned. This time to stay. Officially. All the shadowy government agencies had finally backed off. She was even legally adopted by the Byers.
Eleven Byers. El liked her new second name. It meant she had a family. It meant there was a place she belonged. A place she was always safe. It was a good name. Not a perfect name. She knew of one name she liked better. One name she wanted to call her own, but that could come later. This one would do. For now.
El had grown since she first escaped from the lab only a few years before. Slightly short for her age, her black hair came down just above her shoulders. Her figure could still be described as boyish, but Joyce, El's new mom, assured her that she was filling out nicely. El was unclear on what that meant. Her mom acted like it was a good thing, so El thought it was a good thing.
This was the last night before her first day of proper school. El's new family had worked hard to get her registered and ready for it. Tomorrow she was going to be going to school with her new brother Will. There would be her friends Lucas, Dustin, and Mike.
Yes, Mike would be there. They even were going to have some classes together. The thought made her smile.
El's friends were all at Mike's house right now, playing another one of their tabletop roleplaying games. Normally she would be with them. When it became apparent that El was there for good, the boys decided to invite her to join them in their geekiest hobby. El loved playing with them. Not just because Mike was their game master, so she got to sit next to Mike for hours. Listening to him talk. Staring at him. Yes, she really did love that part, but she thought even without Mike there she would love playing as Elgore, the half-ork barbarian.
Tonight, El was not able to go join them. She had to prepare for school. Earlier her mom sat down with El and went over everything again just to make sure she was ready. They unpacked El's new backpack, checked that she had everything she needed, and repacked it. They went over El's schedule with a map of the school so she would not get lost. Her mom even reminded El that if she needed help that she could always ask a teacher or one of the boys who also in that class. Her mom also reminded her that El should not leave the classroom in the middle of a class. Not even if she wanted to see Mike.
El's friends had known that she was not available and told her it was fine. They would put the current campaign on hold, and would play something else that week. There was a different game they wanted to play, and they thought El would not enjoy that one anyway.
Joyce wanted El to go to sleep early. She told El that it was natural to be nervous, but El should try to relax. El might have been nervous, but she had a way to deal with that.
Eleven lay on her bed clutching a twenty sided die to her chest. Her eyes were closed. Her breathing steady. In her mind she saw a boy. A bit lanky, but hints of muscle suggested that wiry would be a better description. He was sitting down at a table. Smiling he said, "The pink door opens, you hear friend computor say, 'Unauthorized access detected.'"
The boy, Mike, turned his head to the right, clearly listening to someone El did not see. "Correct," he responded to some question that El did not hear. He paused again to listen before saying, "Right, and as the table settles on its side five men each with four arms come running through the pink door." Another pause. Mike raised an eyebrow and asked, "Do you know how to drive it?"
In a basement across town four teenage boys sat around a table. Lucas leaned away from his game master. "Of course not. Such knowledge would be above my security clearance. What I meant to say is I jump behind the metal contraption and shoot at the closest attacking mutant."
Mike nodded and rolled several dice, "He goes down. Will, it is your turn."
Will looked at a note card, careful not to let anyone else see what was written on it, before responding. "I run through the orange door, and hit the purple button."
Mike rolled some more dice before saying, "You manage to make it through the door without getting shot, press the button, and," Mike checked his notes, "The door shuts behind you."
Dustin turned towards Will and over dramatically yelled, "Judas!"
Will smiled and shrugged.
"He left us to die," Dustin said turning to Lucas. "We need vengeance."
Lucas finished writing something on a scrap of paper and passed it to Mike. "Don't worry," he said, "Vengeance will be ours."
Reading the note Mike looked impressed. He nodded with respect at Lucas and said, "Clever."
"What's clever?" Will asked, "What did he do?"
Lucas rested an elbow on the table, leaned forward, and smirked.
"What did you do?" Will asked.
Dustin laughed.
In another house across town, another girl hung up a phone. She stood before a mirror. She was more conventionally attractive than Eleven. Blonde hair, with a fuller figure. This was Jennifer Hayes.
Facing the mirror, she looked herself in the eyes. "This is the week," she resolved, "This week, I will tell him." She was going to tell Mike Wheeler about her feelings for him. She could do it. She had a plan. She had the confidence. Nothing was going to get in her way.
Jennifer had no idea what she was up against. Dustin, Lucas, and Will had no idea how much trouble there friend's love life was going to cause them. El had no idea how much hate she could have for someone not out to kill her friends. This week they were all about to learn.
Mike just had no idea. He could be kind of oblivious like that sometimes.
AN: So the stage is set. Please leave a review to help me stay interested in this story. I don't know how often I'll be able to update, but we'll see. Hopefully this will be fun. I'm happy the show had a throw away girl about the boys age so I don't have to resort to a OC in the first chapter.
For those who are not tabletop RPG connoisseurs like myself, the game the boys were playing is called Paranoia (1st edition published in 1984), which should only be played with seasoned roleplayers. It's a game all about stabbing your fellow players in the back, so if the people playing don't have an easy time separating character from self it can lead to hurt feelings.
