El is on some serious

by JaceHerondale21

With Hopper tracking down a sick psycho mauling and killing animals for the last year, he's never around, so El turns to smoking weed to get attention from him. AU where El has no powers, and so the Upside Down is never discovered. I will explain why El is still with Hopper, and not her mom, later in the story, so chill the heck out.

8. Bonzo the clown, terror of children

Begin Ch.8

10 months ago, Hawkins Arcade, (begin flashback) "May I present ... Kill Bonzo the Clown!" "Our newest attraction, built by some of our loyalist and most brilliant regulars, this machine features a revolutionary new technology, haptic light guns!" "Now the game depends on your marksmanship, not just your reaction time, and button-mashing skills!"Now, let's actually see how the game works, shall we?" "Would Eleven Hopper and Mike Wheeler step up to play the first game of Kill Bonzo the Clown EVER?!" "So folks, in this game, you shoot Bonzo and his red balloons to get power-ups, ammo, the high score, and most importantly, to Kill Bonzo the Clown!'' (End Flashback)

1987, Mike's room. Mike sighed, walked to the other side of his room, where he had covered all his El memorabilia, taking off the sheet, and picking up the photo of Max, El, and the A/V Club (sans Will, but including Mr. Clarke) at the opening ceremony. He sighed, put the photo back down, and picked up the photo of him and El after beating the game at around 1 AM. It took them about 13 hours to beat the game because while El had done all the voice acting for the female lead, and helped them with the sound effects, she didn't really know the strategy of how you would play the game, so they died a lot. The arcade guy ended up giving them his dummy quarter to finish the game before going home. El stayed doing something that wasn't what she probably wanted to do, just because it was important to him. Just as he went on a 3-day backpacking trip with her and Hopper right on the weekend that the Atari came out, even when all the rest of the party,(except Max, as she was out of town) bailed on when his mom and dad decided that a 3-day trip with minimal adult supervision in an environment where 50 feet was damn near enough privacy as a locked bedroom without another soul in the house, with a girl who dressed in leather and jeans, and smoke weed, without any other kids, was a bad idea, and he had to sneak out. He walked to the photo of them at Uncle (El's "uncle") Murray's hideaway. He picked up the photo and remembered how weird that trip was, from when he first said hi to El before the drive, to the drive back.

End ch.8

NEW PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT/AN: THE WEED THAT EL SMOKES IS 80'S WEED. THAT HAD WAY LESS THC, SO WHILE IT WAS STILL BAD FOR YOU, IT WAS SIGNIFICANTLY LESS SO. NOW WEED WILL MESS YOU THE HELL UP. DONT DO IT. Also, I can hear you saying, "But if it was still bad for you, and El claims to get extremely high every day, how is she not getting messed up?" The answer is that she smokes in public, never in private. She only does it to provoke Hopper. When she doesn't want to do that, she doesn't get high. She was EXTREMELY exaggerating her drug usage there to make Mike look bad. Also, some characters, (not main ones) will use some harder drugs. Honestly, that will probably only be ecstasy. THAT IS A DEADLY AND EXTREMELY ILLEGAL DRUG. EL ONLY PRODUCES IT BECAUSE SHE IS BEING THREATENED WITH SERIOUS PHYSICAL HARM. THE CHEMICAL PROCESSES THAT PRODUCE THIS DRUG ARE JUST AS OR MORE DANGEROUS AS THE USAGE OF THIS DRUG. IT IS FOR SURE MORE ILLEGAL THAN THE USAGE OF IT. LIKE, DEA BLACK-OPS UNITS WITH MACHINE GUNS KICKING DOWN YOUR DOOR IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT ILLEGAL. Simply put, don't use or produce any illegal drugs, and I KNOW you know not to, but just DON'T, okay? Ok, I'll step off my soapbox now. That was mainly for legal reasons. I DO NOT ASSUME ANY LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY CONSEQUENCES ARISING FROM YOUR PRODUCTION OR USE OF ANY ILLEGAL SUBSTANCES.