"Hey shes Alive!" A loud voice ripped through the quiet mumblings of the occupants of the house. El Recognized the boy from last night, he had been the one who appeared almost dog like. This was the first time she remembered that her encounter with the boys had been quite strange. Had it all been a dream or did these boys have abilities as well? The boy bounded towards her, he was on the shorter side, and a bit rounder than the other kids. He had a light brown, curly mop of hair that spilled out from under a baseball cap. His smile was huge and inviting, and El quickly noticed his teeth, or rather the lack thereof. He extended his hand toward the girl and she looked at him shyly, not knowing the meaning of the gesture. He cooly pulled the hand back and scratched his head.

"Um she's kinda shy." Mike said letting go of Els hand. She realized that he had been holding it since they left the bedroom. It made her feel safe.

"Right I guess that makes sense, we didn't exactly meet under the best circumstances." The boy flashes a toothless grin. "My name is Dustin, and i'm the ideas guy, and the ladies man."

"Oh shut up Dustin! Since when have you ever been the 'ideas guy'?" A tall dark skinned boy from across the living room said with a grimace. El recognized him as the boy who had somehow grown a ball of light in his hands.

"Yeah or a 'ladies man'?" Asked Mike, matching the darker boys scowl.

"Hey hey she doesn't know anything about me, so I thought I would try to embellish the truth a little bit, okay? Sue me!" Dustin shrugged, and the other boy punched him in the arm.

"Well Im Lucas," The final boy stepped towards El. "Sorry I hit you yesterday but you got me pretty good with that rock." Lucas pulled up his shirt to show a large purple bruise covered in broken blood vessels and deep scrapes. El gulped.

"Sorry I hit you too." El weakly croaked, looking down at the ground.

"Its okay El, you were just scared." Mike leaned down to try to catch her gaze, and he smiled at her warmly.

"Yeah she wasn't the only one." Lucas crossed his arms.

"That was pretty cool though Lucas, you have to admit." Dustin smacked his friend on the back. "So you can move rocks with your mind? Can you move other things too? Or just rocks?"

El shuffled nervously. She could do a lot more than just move rocks. The truth was that she could kill everyone in this rooms with just a twitch of her head if she focussed hard enough. Her gut turned at the memory of snapping the necks of two guards in the lab. The horrible crunching sound and shallow breathing, and the sickeningly prideful smile Papa had given her. Before she had escaped her 'training' had grown more and more intensive until she was forced to manipulate more than physical objects as well. El could find, hunt, see, and almost even touch anyone, anywhere in the world with nothing but a newspaper clipping photo. 'Eleven you are our best resource for keeping the country safe, you are our most important weapon against evil.' Her Papa would tell her over and over. Her head swam with the terrible memories and she staggered for a moment and looked to Mike for reassurance. He nodded at her and smiled shyly.

"Anything." El said, hoping it was enough to answer Dustins questions.

"You can move anything?" Dustin asked excitedly.

"Prove it." Lucas smirked.

"She doesn't have to prove anything, Lucas!" Mike shoved his friend lightly.

"What!? She could have killed me, the least she can do is show what she is capable of!" Lucas yelled.

"No she doesn't, Lucas." A firm voice bellowed from the other end of the house. El jumped, she hadn't been aware that anyone else was in the house. The boys stopped arguing and turned to look at the open entry way into the kitchen where a large man was now standing.

"Now everyone calm down and give her some space. She is probably scared enough as it is." The tall man walked towards the group of kids, followed closely behind by a teenage boy with voluminous and flowy hair.

"Why don't you have a seat, kid. We need to have a talk." The man gestured for El to sit down on a cozy looking couch. El looked at mike who gave her a slight nod, and they sat down together. Dustin sat criss crossed on the floor, and Lucas leaned against the arm of the couch, opposite El. The man sat in a large arm chair across from the nervous girl and gave a hesitant smile.

"Great. So let's start with your name." The man took out a cigarette and patted his pockets. He sighed and turned toward Mike. "Help me out here kid."

Mike let out a small chuckle and then flicked his finger at the tip of the man's cigarette. Instantly it ignited and the man took a deep puff, then exhaled and sighed. El was stunned, what she had seen last night in the woods wasn't a dream at all, these people were like her.

El held up her wrist the way that Papa had instructed her to show the man. His eyes flew open and he took another long drag.

"But we are going to call her El!" Mike interjected, reading the tension. "Short for.. Eleven."

"Wait wait wait, this little girl's name is Eleven!? Like the number!?" The teenage boy yelled, pointing at El. She turned away embarrassed.

"Yeah, like some kind of freak." Lucas scoffed.

"Hey! I don't want to hear anything like that." The man yelled at Lucas who got up and walked to the kitchen. The man sighed and furrowed his brow. This child was as pale as a ghost, and skinny as a rod, and he had certainly never seen any 12 year old girl with a shaved head. Something terrible had happened to her. "Okay kid, El. Got it. Well my name is Jim Hopper but you can call me Hop. The kids all do. And this here is Steve." The teen smiled. "Now, can you tell me what you were doing alone in the woods last night?"

El looked at her hands for a moment, unsure of how to answer. She had a lot of reasons to be in the woods, but she wasn't sure who she could trust, or how to explain her feelings.

"Ran.. Ran away." She finally said still looking down. "From bad men."

"Bad men?" Hopper asked sternly.

"They hurt her, Hop." Mike added. "Show him El, its okay." El looked at him and he smiled.

She took a deep breathe and revealed for the second time that day the dark bruises on her arms. Hopper looked in disbelief and the room fell silent, all of the boys mouths dropped. Then taking another step forward, El lifted her shirt just slightly to show to almost completely black bruises on her stomach and ribs from being kicked. Hopper stood and placed a hand on the frail girls shoulder. Els eyes filled with tears and she lowered her shirt again. She didn't know how to express the severity of her shame, or fear. So she choked out the only words she could think to let this man know how desperate she was.

"Please... Stay here." She collapsed to the floor and cried harder than she had in a long time. She needed these people to understand that she couldn't go back to where she had come from. Hopper did seem to understand when he lifted the small girl up from the ground and pulled her into a hug. She felt uneasy with any amount of human contact, but she didn't try to pull away. She actually felt cared for in the arms of this gruff stranger.

"I'm not going to let anyone hurt you like this. Do you understand?" Hopper hugged her tighter, and then pulled away to look into her eyes. She nodded weakly.

"Yeah El, you are safe here with us." Dustin stood up and walked toward the small girl. "We all had pretty crappy lives before we met each other, now we are like one big happy family."

"Fam.. Family?" El knew what a family was, and she knew she had never had one.

"Yeah, kid. We watch out for each other." Hopper smiled at her, and she smiled back. She believed him.

El sat back down in her place next to Mike, and Hopper returned to his chair. Everything was silent for a moment before Steve broke the tension.

"So... You can move things with you mind?" El glanced up at the teen and nodded.

"Well then, sounds like you'll fit in well here." Hopper said standing up. "Lets see what you can do, kid."


"Alright, El. The boys tell me you can make rocks fly." The group was standing outside in the unseasonably warm fall weather. Hopper lit another cigarette with Mikes help and watched the young girl. She took a deep breath and stepped forward. She was used to using her powers under the supervision of spectators, but this time she didn't feel like a lab rat. This time she felt good... almost happy.

El focused on a pile of spare tractor tires and scrap metal. She lowered her gaze and lifted a hand at the pile. Slowly several pieces of metal and rubber floated up into the air and danced around in the fall breeze. El lifted them higher and higher and forced more energy into lifting the largest, heaviest tractor tire until it too joined the synchronized dance. She heard a few gasps from behind her, and then a chorus of cheers, and it broke her concentrations. The objects fell back to the earth in a clatter and she turned around smiling shyly. Her face was flushed and she could feel the familiar trickle of blood running down from her nose.

"Hey it's okay, El." Mike grabbed a tissue from his pocket and handed it to the girl. She wiped off her nose and remembered a word Papa had taught her. Telenetic? Tele-... she wracked her brain searching for the word when it hit her.

"Telekinetic." El stated excitedly.

"Telekinesis? Like a superhero!" Dustin beamed.

El didnt know what to say, she often did not have the right words but this time she wasn't sure if the right words even existed. Superhero? El new what a hero was. A hero was a great person who saved others. People had called Papa a hero for his work with Eleven, for his creation. El knew that a hero was the opposite of a monster, so how could Dustin call her one? When she had never saved anyone. She had only hurt people, hurt those who were just doing their job. Hurt Papa's, hurt these strangers in front of her now? She felt tears fill her eyes and she looked at the ground. Mike stepped closer to he, he didn't know what El had gone through, or where she had come from but he understood the look on her face.

"Its okay El. I know it must have been hard for you, wherever you were. We have all been there. People treat us like monsters because we are different." Mike rubbed the burns on his knuckles.

"Yeah we get beat up in school, and everyone in town thinks we are freaks.. Even our own parents are scared of us." Lucas said crossing his arms.

"You... what powers?" El looked up at Lucas and Dustin. She didn't know how to ask what they were able to do.

"Well I am a shapeshifter." Dustin jumped up and put his fists on his hips, trying his best to look like superman.

"Shape.. Shifter?" El asked.

"Yeah it means I can turn into any animal living or dead. Watch." Before her eyes, Dustin began morphing into a shaggy, light brown dog. He barked once and sat up on his back legs. El was stunned. It was the most amazing this she had ever seen. Then in a blink of an eye he morphed again into a orange tabby cat and jumped around in the tall grass. He rubbed against Els legs and she she giggled. Papa had asked her to hurt cats before but she never could, she knew they were too kind and didn't deserve it. She shuddered at the memory.

"God Dustin I hate it when you do that!" Mike yelled as his friend had turned into a humming bird and was flying around the boys head.

Dustin flew onto the ground and morphed back into his normal, boyish self. He was laughing so hard he coughed. El smiled.

"Yeah yeah yeah he can turn into a flea bag, but I am the real superhero." Lucas stood and heald his hands out in front of his chest, as if he was holding a sphere. Slowly a red ball of light formed in the space, and a buzzing sound rumbled through the field. The ball grew and grew, as did the noise, and then he turned and aimed it at the tree line. The kids all turned as the ball hit a far off tree, and several huge branches cracked off and fell to the ground. A round of whooping and cheers rang out and the boys patted Lucas on the back. He looked proud.

"Its called an Optic Force Blast. It's basically a manipulation of light particles, making them dense like a solid object." He said looking down his nose at El. She stiffened and forced a small smile. "And as you can probably already tell, Mike is a Pyrokinetic." Lucas gestured at the taller boy.

"Pyro..." El struggled with the new word.

"Pyrokinetic. It means I can manipulate fire." Mike said shyly. He normally would have been just as eager to show off his abilities as his friends, especially to someone who would understand what weidling such power was like. But El made him feel different and strange; He didn't want to do anything to embarrass himself. El looked at him inquisitively so he lit a small flame in the palm of his hand and held it out for her to see. She waved her fingers around the fire cautiously, and marveled at the faint smell of smoke now drifting on the breeze.

"Hey guys what the hell? Was no one going to tell me she woke up?" A tall thin older girl came running down the back steps with her arms crossed. El felt her breath catch in her throat. This was by far the prettiest girl she had ever seen. Her hair was long and flounced as she walked toward the group. Her features were sharp but in a way that made her look like a sculpture. El tried to hide behind Mike, he was still radiating heat and it made her feel safe for some reason.

"You must be the new recruit. My name is Nancy, whats yours?"

El looked up nervously at Mike who gave her a reassuring nod. "El."

"Well El glad you're here." Nancy stepped forward and put a hand on Els shoulder. She jumped at the touch, not just because contact make her uneasy, but because the older girls fingers were icey cold.

"Oh yeah El, Sorry guess we should have warned you. This is Nancy my sister." Mike rolled his eyes.

"Yeah she is a cryokinetic." Dustin looked the teen with puppy eyes. "She is Mike's opposite. She has ice powers." Els eyes widened.

"Yeah, but i'm not a huge show off like you guys." Nancy chuckled.

"But you are the coolest!" Dustin yelled. "Get it guys? Coolest? Because she.. You know" The other boys groaned and rolled their eyes. Lucas shoved him.

El couldn't believe everything she was hearing. Her head was swimming. She had gone her entire like thinking she was alone with her abilities. That she would always be an experiment gone wrong, and that no one would ever understand her or make her feel accepted. But she was in the presence of several others who all had wonderful and amazing abilities. They all cared for each other and maybe, just maybe it meant that they would care for her too.

"So Hop, do you think she can stay here.. With you?" Mike asked the gruff older man. He paused for a moment. He Knew this little girl was in some kind of serious trouble, and he was worried that the people she had run from might come looking for her. He considered El for a moment, and saw the pleading look on her face. He sighed, of course she could stay, and if anyone came for her they would leave in a body bag.

"Sure, Kid. Glad to have you." He gave her a heartfelt smile. The group cheered, even Lucas, and Mike patted her softly on the back.

This entire world was unknown to her. She had a lot to learn, an unfathomable amount to learn. But she wasn't scared. For the first time in as long as she could remember, El wasn't scared. She liked these people, and she liked that she wasn't alone. She was ready to learn, and even excited for the future. This was a new feeling for El, and she didn't know what to call it. She pondered, looking over the smiling faces of her new.. Friends? Yes. Friends. She reveled in the moment, the laughter, and the warm sun beating down on her for the first time and she understood this feeling. El was hopeful. And it felt amazing.