Little Girls in Middle Earth: A Meta Fan Fanfiction Fiction

"You can't do that. I'm the only one with Darkvision." Dustin huffed and slapped his meaty adolescent hands down on the table top.

"Not true, Dwarves have darkvision too." Lucas chimed in, puffing out his chest to prove a point against his feisty best friend.

"But there's no Dwarves in our party, so I'm the only one that can see the Hill Troll in there." Dustin pointed at the crudely drawn cave outline on the paper map between the 6 of them. Lucas sat back and crossed his arms, staring off at the wood paneling and pretending not to care.

"Ok, I don't see the troll, but I throw my sword at it anyway." Max was slumped over, her red wavy hair curtaining her face from the rest of the group.

Dustin chuckled at her, "Good luck."

Max gently rolled a small blue die. Lucas, Will, Mike and Dustin leans forward enthusiastically to see the result.

"Whoaaaaa!" said Will, "that's 4 twenties in a row. There's no way..." Slowly each kid turned to face Eleven, who was also sitting at the table, slumped and as uninterested as Max.

"Eleven, you didn't um, help? Did you?" asked Mike gently, knowing that his new-not-said-out-loud-but-definitely-because-they-kissed-that-one-time girlfriend, could get angry quick.

"Help what?" Eleven asked genuinely.

"What are you saying? That I can't win at this without cheating?!" Max stood up from the table quickly, knocking over the little plastic figurine that represented her player in the cave drawing.

"No, I didn't think that-" Mike said, putting up his hands knowing that while Max wouldn't snap his neck with her mind, she still had a mean punch.

"This game is stupid! Why would anyone play this when you can play an actual game at the arcade that's just like it?" Max's face was getting redder as she protested. Lucas, her not-boyfriend-even-though-they-kissed-once-because-she-said-so tried to reach out to calm keep her from leaving.

"You can't win, Max, we all play together as a team, so-" Lucas started, but was interrupted.

"We can play this at the arcade?" asked Eleven, unphased by Max's outburst.

"Well, Gauntlet is kind of like this, but not really the same." Mike reached over to prop up the knocked over figure.

There was a loud knock at the top of the basement stairway.

"Kids! It's time for the girls to go home now!" Will's Mom's voice skipped down the stairs.

The tension didn't leave the game table as Max yanked her denim jacket from the beaten up couch and stormed upstairs. Lucas ran after her. Eleven stood up and scanned the boys left behind, Dustin looking offended, Will shrugging, since he didn't really understand teenage girls or his friend fascination with them either. She turned to Mike.

"Ok, well, I'll see you tomorrow." She said.

"Yea, of course definitely. I'll just call you when I get up and we can ah, make plans, to ah, do stuff." Mike spilled out.

"Night." said Eleven, then she turned briskly and left.

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The Indiana nights were getting particularly foggy lately, with distant sounds that could have been mistaken for horses, but were probably just branches rubbing together. They were noises that Max chose to ignore, even when they scared her, because after chasing down dimension hopping demons and dealing with her jerk of a brother, it was easier to deal with the mysterious darkness of the Indiana woods.