I'm back with a third mini tale! This one's been floating around in my head a while but for the longest time all I had was the basic "hangout" idea and I had no clue what they'd actually be doing together in the story.

Then, this came to me. It's a fun one! Time for Eleanor to get some more spotlight!

ARCADE ESCAPE

Eleanor's POV

"Score! I win again!" I announced, holding the air hockey paddle in the air with a wild grin on my face.

"Darn it! That's like the 15th time!" My varsity jacket wearing pal set his paddle down in defeat. "I'd play you again, but I'm all out of quarters." He ran a hand through his stylishly kept blonde hair.

I stuffed my hands into the pockets of my teal, mint, and lavender swirl overalls. "Don't worry, dude. I know I have a few more." I told him, as I my fingers clasped around the coins. I pulled three of them out of my pocket and slotted one into the arcade air hockey machine.

"Sweeeet." He picked up the paddle again. He had a surprisingly chill attitude for a guy with anger issues who just lost to me 15 times.

I scanned the table waiting for the machine to spit out the puck so I could leap into action and defend my goal. "Ready to lose again?" I taunted my friend and opponent, playfully.

"I dunno." His lips curled into a sly smile. "This time maybe you'll be the loser." A look of panic crossed his face. "Not that I'm calling you a loser in a bad way….I just….mean like….you won't win. Is that clear?"

"You're fine, Derek. I know what ya meant." I told him. I knew he usually got freaked out and overcorrected if he thought anything he said sounded the least bit like bullying. Especially when I was involved. He respected me as a person so much that he was always scared of accidentally trash talking too hard.

You see, if you didn't already know, Derek Smalls used to be the biggest bully in our school, mainly because his dad was a trash human who taught him to bully others. Once he was removed from his dad's custody and placed with his aunt, he started to slowly work his way up to being a better person.

However, because he's no longer the head bully or even a bully at all, now we have a new head bully named Ray Ray. Funny how things change a lot, but somehow life still feels nearly exactly the same. But I'm not complainin'. Without bullies around, I wouldn't have as many reasons to use my self defense skills. I have VERY good self defense skills.

"Oh phew." Derek murmured under his breath.

"Trash talk is my thang." I quipped, throwing on a weird accent for fun. "It's all good."

ZING! The puck shot out of the mechanism and I lunged at it with my amazing chipmunk reflexes. My paddle connected with it and sent it sailing toward Derek's goal.

"Oh no you don't!" The human boy reacted quickly and sent the puck sliding back in my direction.

I countered it before it could dip into my goal. We continued like this for a while. We seemed evenly matched, but I knew I had the upper hand.

You see, I had practiced on this air hockey table many many times with my sisters and Theo. None of them were very good, but it gave me time to study how the table worked. The key was in the angles. If you could bounce the puck off the side of the table in a few exact spots, it would sail behind your opponent's paddle and into the goal.

Game, set, match, in 3….2….1…..WAIT A SEC!

I reacted as fast as I could to Derek's last attempt, but I was seconds too slow. The puck sailed into my goal and the human boy jumped a foot in the air.

"YES! HA! I BEAT YOU! I FINALLY BEAT YOU! IN YOUR FACE!" He stopped his celebration to hold out a large and faintly scarred hand. "Good game, Ellie."

I shook his hand. I'm no poor sport, even though I knew I should have totally had that round in the bag. "Good game, Derek. Ya finally got me. Congrats."

"Now what do we do?" The teen asked me, resting his elbow on the side of the air hockey table.

"I have two more quarters." I said, holding them up. "So we could play two more rounds orrrrr…." I pointed to the various other arcade games. "We could play something else."

"They have a virtual wrestling game." Derek said, walking away from the air hockey table. "Wanna try that?"

"Heck ya! I'm in!" I handed him a quarter and then pounded my fist into my opposite hand. "I love wrestling and nobody ever wants to wrestle with me. Or even virtual wrestle with me." I grumbled.

Derek looked at me sympathetically. "Even nerdo?"

"Which nerdo?" I asked, chuckling. "Simon or Alvin?"

"Alvin." He stated, rubbing his thumb and forefinger on the edges of the quarter.

"He's….not really interested either, no." I admitted. It had been a long time since Alvin and I played any real OR virtual sports together. "Too busy with his nose in some sci fi book."

"Bummer." The former bully walked up to the wrestling arcade game. "At least you still have Simon to play sports with. Never thought I'd use the words Simon and sports in the same sentence." He laughed.

"Eh, besides basketball, he's not really into sports either." I revealed. "I wish I could get Britt to play football. She'd be so good at it. But she's too busy worrying about her hair getting messed up."

"Well,..." Derek reached down and offered to lift me up so I could reach the controls for the game. "At least you've got me."

"Yep. Thanks for taking a chance on me." I hopped into his hands and he set me down on the ledge where the joystick was located. "You know, most people are afraid of me."

He inserted the quarter. "Most people are still afraid of me too. Like Kevin and Warren, and Cheeseball." He frowned. "Honestly, can't really blame 'em for not wanting to give me a chance yet."

I nodded. "The wounds are still fresh." My attention was grabbed by the flashing "start game" logo on the screen. "Anyway, let's get down to business."

"Get ready to taste the pain!" The teen clasped his joystick in both hands and started to move it around from side to side, while pressing the buttons on either side of the joystick to throw punches.

I did the same, with a small disadvantage from the controls not being my size. I had to really press hard to get the buttons to work. For Derek, pressing them seemed effortless. The joystick was luckily easier to maneuver, but I needed the buttons to really get that total KO I was hoping for. (Yes, I know, that's a boxing term and not wrestling, but I feel like it still applies here.)

We played that wrestling game for about 50 minutes, locked in an eternal stalemate. Neither one of us could manage to overpower the other. And then….the lights went out. Oh crappity crap.

"Derek…" I asked, my voice seeming to echo in the inky blackness. "When does the arcade usually close?"

Derek turned on his phone and used the screen brightness to light up a small bit of his face. "I'm thinking 9:00." He said, showing me that the time on his phone read 9:02pm.

"Oh man oh man oh mannnn." I punched the arcade machine, annoyed that we'd been locked in because we weren't watching the time.

"This doesn't make any sense though." The teen said, flicking the brightness up further with his finger and making his phone a powerful flashlight. "Why wouldn't someone come by and warn us we had like 5 minutes left til they close up?"

I sighed and took out my own phone, copying Derek and making my phone a flashlight too. "Because they didn't notice us at all. Being unnoticed is my special skill and because I was with you, I pulled you into my stealth zone."

"Huh?" He waved the phone flashlight back and forth, lighting up small sections of the arcade. "That doesn't make much sense either, but...maybe."

"We gotta get out of here." I jumped carefully down from the arcade machine I'd been standing on.

"Yeah. My aunt is going to be so mad if I break curfew again this week." My teen buddy moaned.

We moved slowly and carefully through the dark, mazelike arcade. "What do you mean again?" I questioned.

"Sooo...there was this all night party at Jesse's house..." in the dim light, I could see Derek rub his neck sheepishly.

I rolled my eyes. That explained it for sure. "Say no more. I get it." I shifted into crisis strategy mode. "Okay, I've got a plan. I'm going to pick the lock on the door and then we just….walk out."

"You can't." He said with a worried tone.

I groaned. "Why not?"

"Because the alarm will go off." Derek pointed to a flashing alarm system panel by the door. "And then the police will show up thinking we broke into the arcade. And I don't know about you, but I have a not so great record with cops."

I gulped. He was right. We couldn't just take the easy way out. Plus, well, I'd had several little run-ins with the cops myself over the years. Actually, more than several. I may be in good graces with Dangus currently, but that is all subject to change.

"My record isn't too good either." I admitted. Derek was my friend and he deserved to know.

"Wait, really? But you're….you." He scratched his head.

"There's more to me than meets the eye, dude." I suddenly got a brilliant idea. "I bet I could disable that security system."

"Okay, now I know you're joking." The varsity jacket wearing boy looked at me with disbelief.

I cracked my knuckles. "Oh really? Watch me." I boasted.

"WAIT!" Derek shrieked. "I believe you, but….if they find the security system hacked, won't that just cause more problems?"

"Oh come on!" I squeaked, frustrated with the situation we'd found ourselves in. "Do you want to go home tonight, or not?"

"I want to. I do." He said softly. "But not if we're gonna set off alarms or disable security stuff."

"Then we've gotta put our heads together and think of a way out." Upon finishing that sentence, I hurried off to check the bathrooms for any windows we could climb out of. No luck. They were all sealed tight and wouldn't budge.

I returned to the main room of the arcade. "Windows are a no go." I reported.

Derek sat down in defeat on one of the chairs near the small dining area of the arcade. "The back door's got a fire exit sign, so I'm sure an alarm will go off there too." He added.

"Think we could dig a tunnel out of here?" I asked, half joking, half so exhausted and annoyed that I was hoping I had the capability to actually tunnel out of the building.

"Doubt it." He stomped his foot on the carpet. "There's a hardwood floor. We'd never get through."

I jumped up on the table. "There's gotta be some other way."

Derek's phone flashlight suddenly dimmed. "Crud. I'm out of battery." He sighed, beginning to accept there was no way to escape. "Too bad we can't just teleport out of here."

DING DING DING! I gasped and smiled. I knew exactly how to get us out of here. "That's it!"

"We CAN do that?" He raised an eyebrow.

I nodded frantically. "Yes! We can! Simon and Alvin made these force field bracelets together that also have a teleportation feature. They only work 3 times an hour, but 2 times is all we need. One time to teleport in to us, and the next to teleport out."

"Are you serious!?" Derek was clearly surprised and a little weirded out, though I detected a hint of fascination.

I punched Simon's number into my phone. "Dead serious."

I waited a few moments until Simon picked up the phone. "Hello?" His voice was groggy.

"Hi, Simon, it's Eleanor. I need you to help teleport me and a...friend out of the arcade. We're kinda locked in." I didn't say the friend was Derek, because I know Simon's still got some negative feelings toward the guy and I didn't want those feelings to influence him NOT to help us.

"No." He said firmly. "It's almost my bedtime. You got yourself locked in, you can get yourself out."

"Okay, okay…" I expected the conversation to go like this and I had prepared for it. "I guess I'll just disable the security system to get us out instead."

There was a pause and then some shuffling on the line. A heavy sigh followed. Finally, Simon answered with. "I'll send the bracelets in. Which arcade are you at? The one downtown or the one near the roller rink?"

"Downtown." I replied.

Derek was getting angry and impatient now. "Is he gonna help or what?"

"He's gonna help." I whispered.

I could hear the soft thuds of Simon walking down the stairs. Then some beeping and some mechanical whirring. "Okay, I have plugged in the coordinates. The bracelets will arrive in 3...2….1….and….there you go."

Two bracelets, one blue and one red with multicolored buttons and a tiny screen on them appeared out of thin air and landed by the door.

"Thanks, Simon. We got them!" I told him, relieved that we'd be free soon.

Simon yawned loudly. "You're welcome. Goodnight." And the line went dead.

I sped over and picked up the blue bracelet, tossing the red one at Derek. He caught it and then looked confused. "How do we use these things?"

I fiddled with the metal bracelet on my wrist. "You can add coordinates or go to programmed places like our house and school." I explained.

"How do I set the coordinates?" He poked at a random button.

"Not like that." I climbed up onto his shoulder and fiddled with the device on his arm. I chose one of the preset locations by pressing the green button 2 times "There, all set for our house. Your aunt's house isn't that far away, is it?"

He shook his head. "No, just a block I think."

"Okay, now to activate it, you hold down on the red and yellow buttons at the same time." I told the non-tech-inclined human.

He followed my instructions and vanished in a poof of cyan and red glitter. I activated the bracelet on my wrist and vanished in presumably just a boring flash of blue light. Simon's bracelet didn't have any extravagant flare to the activation process. It was cool enough without the glitter, if you ask me.

Seconds later, Derek and I found ourselves standing in the driveway of the Seville house. Well, Derek was standing. I was flat on my belly because I had been on Derek's shoulder when we teleported. At least I didn't hit the pavement too hard.

"That was….totally sick!" Derek looked at the red bracelet on his wrist. "Do you guys use these a lot?"

"Nah." I slipped off Simon's bracelet. "They're still a work in progress. I'm sure the nerd twins will work out the kinks eventually. Get them to work more than 3 times an hour for starters."

The tall teen slipped off the red bracelet and handed it to me. "Cool. Well, I guess I should get going. I'll see ya soon, Eleanor. Lookin' forward to beating you at more games." He teased.

"Not if I beat ya first." I winked.

"Haha! We'll just see, won't we?" The boy zipped up his open varsity jacket.

"I totally could have won that wrestling game if the power hadn't gone out." I quipped.

"Suuure." He reached down to pat my head condescendingly. "Keep tellin' yourself that."

I growled and he took his hand off my head. I calmed myself down and waved at him as I headed for the treehouse steps. My bed was calling. It'd been a long day.

Derek waved back and then stuck his hands into his jacket pockets and hurried away down the sidewalk. I hoped he'd make it home before his aunt was too worried. Although, maybe he should count his blessings he's got someone who DOES care enough to worry now.

Before I entered the treehouse, I looked up at the stars twinkling in the sky. It was such a peaceful night. I was glad I didn't have to spend it stuck in the arcade. Although, the spooky vibes were pretty awesome. They were sort of giving me a Halloween Haunted House idea. But that, dear readers, is a story for another time.

Oooh, what's Eleanor cooking up? Something for an upcoming Halloween themed story maybe? Who knows?

I have been wanting to do a story with Eleanor and Derek for a while because I love their interactions together and how much he respects her on a level he doesn't quite respect the rest of the munks on yet. Ever since the paintball game in the episode It's My Party when she went nuts shooting all his teammates and him, he's like "this chick's alright!"

Please review if you want to read more mini tales soon!