A New Girl // Stranger Things (after season 2)

Chapter 8

I woke up really early and got ready. I washed up, ate an apple, drank some water, then got down to setting up the targets and knifes and bow and arrows. I warmed up by skating around the block as usual and came back in time to test out the perfect distance for a beginners throw.

It was 9 am. They all showed up as promised. They looked at the knives, intimidated. I demonstrated to them a throw and they all got a turn. Lucas was the best thrower out of all of them; Max came in second. Eleven cheated on one of her throws and almost broke the board. Mike had terrible coordination and Will had bad aim. Dustin was okay, he wasn't particularly bad or good.

I let Max and Lucas have the board to themselves while I brought the others to archery. Strangely, Will was much better at this than knife throwing. Mike still didn't do that well and Dustin had an average performance. I had another task of Eleven so it didn't really matter.

After some time, I called for a break and we all went to sit down. I gave them some water bottles and they sat on my porch.

"How did you start doing knife throwing and archery?", Max asked.

"After being kidnapped and moving to New York, my parents were scared that the Lab would find me and kidnap me again. They just found whatever defence class they could find around the city. I started with karate and archery at 5 years old. After a while, I chose to drop karate because it was boring and tiring. I still continued archery because I like it and we kept a bow and a few arrows in my room just in case. When I was about to go to elementary school, my mother taught me how to handle a knife in case people tried to kidnap me and my father bought me a small butterfly knife. I kept it in my pocket when I went to school everyday.

Later, when I was 8, my father met someone who knew how to throw knives and was willing to teach me. Having some archery for about 3 years, my aim was pretty good and I picked it up really quickly. After a few years, I attended competitions, both for archery and knife throwing and won a lot of medals. Now, I am pretty well known in the archery and knife throwing community in New York," I told them.

"So you're like an athlete," Dustin asked.

"Yeah but I don't dream of going to the Olympics. But that would be really cool if I actually do," I said, looking at the ground.

"Well, you should. You are pretty good," Lucas said.

"Well, my bullseye to arrow ratio is only 1:3, while the Olympics athletes are like 1:1.5 at most," I explained.

"But that's still pretty good," Dustin said.

"I guess," I said but before standing up.

"Let's continue, Max and Lucas, you can go try archery. The rest can choose what they want to do," I say.

Max was actually better at archery and Lucas could stick to knife throwing. I guess that means that Will and Max will be the archers and Dustin and Lucas could be the knife throwers. I was thinking of another task when I remembered the Lab. It was still standing for some reason.

"Mike, Eleven can I ask you about something," I asked.

"Sure," El said. She tapped on Mike's should and he turned around.

"I went to the Lab, well not inside the Lab, but outside of the Lab, and I realise that it was still fully built. Like it was not demolished or damaged  it was still fine," I told them.

"It's government property, the government decides on what they want to do with it," Mike explained.

"But if there is no use for it, why are they still keeping it? Even the sign boards with the Hawkins Lab logo were still there," I asked.