꧁Skull Rock꧂

꧁003꧂

"Not to be a wimp but can I stay in the car for this visit? 'Cause this is gonna totally and royally suck."

"It'll be fine."

"I can't stand to see those dull little eyes break again. I really, really can't." 003 rolls her eyes at the group's, mainly Robin's, dramatics.

"He's a grown man not a puppy." 003 comments.

"At least he can drink himself into feeling better."

"That's what my mom does." 003 glances at Max. 003 knew most of the kids had been living in misery since mall "fire" but, she didn't know the extent of how bad things were.

"Why don't we give it a trial? 'Hey Eddie, uh, good news first this time. We got you some Dustin-approved junk food and that six pack you requested. Oh yeah, and we found Vecna. Bad news is that he's in that other, darker, dimension, and the gates closed, so there's no way of getting to him. He's entirely shut off from us, so basically you're screwed. And, no, I knew you were screwed, but now you're doubly, triply screwed." Robin says.

"Does she always ramble like this?" 003 asks no one in particular.

"Yes," Steve and Dustin say at the same time.

"Wait. Maybe we don't put it like that. 'We're one step closer to Vecna.' That's what's important." Nancy says.

"See Robin? A positive spin can make all the difference." 003 snorts and shakes her head.

"What, you disagree?" Dustin asks 003.

"I'm Russian, of course I don't believe in positivity." 003 says to the boy sitting next to her.

"Hey, are we just completely going to breeze over the fact that Three's Russian?" Steve asks.

"We'll circle back to that-"

"Never," 003 interrupts Nancy. "My past is none of your business," she snaps at him. Nancy stops the car and 003 notice all the cars in front of the house.

"Oh shit." Well that doesn't look good.

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  "As many of you know. The Roane county line received a call a little after midnight... reporting a homicide here on the lake."

"Told you he was killing someone," 003 mutters to no one in particular.

"Officer Challahan here and myself arrived first on the scene. We made our way to the shore of Lovers' Lake, about ten yards from that house you see behind me. It was there that we found the victim, an 18 year old senior from Hawkins High, Patrick McKinny. His limbs... his body it was disfigured... there were witnesses on the scene... we have also identified a person of interest. Eddie Munson. We encourage anyone with information to come forward."

"Oh man."

"This is not good. Really not good."

"Dustin, Can you hear me? Wheeler?" A voice says from Dustin's walkie.

"Eddie. Holy shit. Are you okay?" Dustin asks whoever's on the other end of the walkie talkie.

"Nah, man. Pretty... pretty goddamn far from okay." The voice, Eddie, says.

"Where is he?" Nancy asks.

"Where are you?" Dustin asks.

"Skull rock. Do you know it?" Eddie says.

"Oh, yeah. That's near Cornwallis and-" Dustin says but Steve interrupts him.

"Garrett, yeah. I know where that is." Steve interrupts.

"Hold tight. We're coming. We're coming." Dustin says to Eddie.

꧁✯꧂

"Dude I'm telling you, you're taking us the wrong way." Steve says and 003 rolls her eyes. They've been arguing since the group had started walking and it was starting to get on 003's nerves.

"It's north. I'm positive. I checked the map." Dustin replies.

"You do realize skull rock is a super popular make-out spot?" Steve asks him and 003 can't help but wonder why he's even bothering. The kid's not going to listen to him.

"Yeah, So?"

"Well, it wasn't popular until I made it popular. Alright. I practically invented it." Steve says and stops walking.

"Somehow I doubt that," 003 remarks.

"You weren't here how would you know?!" Steve snaps. 003 throws her hands up in surrender and walks past him and Dustin.

"We're heading in the wrong direction." 003 turns around in time to watch Steve start walking in a different direction.

"Steve. Where are you going? Steve!" Dustin whines.

"Stop whining. Let's go. Trust me." 003 rolls her eyes at them. She survived thirteen years in Kamchatka and now she was gonna die because of two halfwitted teenage boys.

After some time a clearing appeared.

"Oh, boom! Badda bing, badda boom. There she is, Henderson. Skull rock. In your face, man. In your stupid, cocky little face." Steve says as they walk into the clearing.

"Doesn't make sense." Dustin says, looking around.

"Yeah, yeah. Even with it staring you right in the face, you can't admit it. You just can't admit you're wrong, you butthead." Steve says as a man, Eddie, jumps down from a rock.

"I concur. You, Dustin Henderson, are a... total butthead." Eddie says. 'This is the guy we're trying to save?' 003 thinks to herself.

"Jesus, we thought you were a goner."

"Yeah, me too, man. Me too." Eddie says.

"You идиоты are so dramatic," 003 says rolling her eyes.

꧁✯꧂

"When I got to shore I tried calling you guys but uh... my walkie was busted man. Drenched. So, uh, I did the thing that I do now apparently, I ran." 003 sighs and crosses her arms. Not only is she saving a group of insolent teenagers but now she's gotta save their skittish friend too.

"Do you remember what time this was? The attack?" Nancy asks.

"Yeah, no, I... I know exactly what time it was. My walkie wasn't the only thing that got soaked." He says holding up his watch and tossing it to Nancy.

"9:27." She says throwing it back to Eddie.

"Same time our flashlights went kablooey." Robin adds.

"Which means what, exactly?" Eddie asks and 003 rolls her eyes and can't help but think everyone here is completely incompetent.

"That that surge of energy was Vecna attacking Patrick."

"Uh, I told you guys that at the Creel house," 003 says slightly raising her hand and then flipping it upwards when everyone ignores her.

"Well, We're one step closer." Nancy says.

"We know where Vecna attacks and where he attacks from. So we just need to sneak down into his lair in the Upside Down and drive a stake through his heart." Robin says.

"If he has a heart." Max remarks.

"A stake? Is he like a vamp- is he a vampire?" Steve asks and 003 rests her forehead against her hand and shakes her head.

"Okay there's no way this guy's being serious," 003 says looking up at everyone.

"No, I think he is. Wait, who are you?" Eddie replies.

"003."

"Three like Eleven?" Eddie asks and 003 is internally confused. How could he know Eleven? 003 knows everyone else does, but Eddie's new new to the group.

"Eleven's-"

"Can we stay on topic? Please? We'll worry about who she is later. All that matters is she might be able to help when we fight Vecna," Nancy interrupts.

"Um, of course I can," 003 says.

"Prove it," Eddie says. 003 raises her eyebrows at him and he does the same back. 003 focuses her energy on the tree directly behind her and pulls until the entire thing is pulled out of the ground, roots and all.

"Boom," 003 whispers and the tree blows up and shards of bark rain down on the group without ever hitting anyone.

"Holy shit! She has powers like El!!" Dustin yells.

"And she did it without moving!" Lucas joins in. 003 shrugs her shoulders.

"That's nothing special. And it's a metaphor Steve." 003 says.

"Yeah, the point is we go down there and kill him," Robin says.

"A bullet should work on him, right?"

"I say we chop his head off."

"I second that," 003 says nodding her head.

"All of the above, but we can't do any of that 'till we find a way into the upside down." Nancy says.

"We need El to get her powers back."

"Everything was way easier."

"We had this girl. She had superpowers." Steve tries to explain to Eddie.

"Superpowers. Yeah, you mentioned her." Eddie says, sounding annoyed.

"Wait. We don't need El to get her powers back, we have Three now," Robin says. They all look at 003 and she sighs.

"Unfortunately I'm unable to open a door to Обратная сторона. People like me and... El, as you call her have different abilities. Eleven can open gates to..." 003 says trailing off, trying to remember what they called the other side.

"The upside down," Steve says.

"Yeah. I got it, thank you. She can open doors to the upside down and I can sense other people with superpowers as well as one other thing but that's only used in emergency situations." 003 finishes explaining.

"Wait so you're like a superpower metal detector?" Lucas asks.

"Essentially, yes. It's how I knew Vecna was about to kill again before you guys did." 003 reply's.

"Well, that's off the table," Nancy says.

"Hey, uh, Henderson's not, uh cursed is he?" Eddie asks. 003 looks over at Dustin to see him pacing and muttering to himself.

"Cursed? No. No. He's fine. Mental? Absolutely." Steve responds.

"Boom! Bada... bada... boom. I was right. Skull rock was north." Dustin says.

"Oh not this shit again," 003 says, looking up at the sky.

"Seriously? You're serious?" Steve asks incredulously.

"Mhm." Dustin says enthusiastically.

"This is skill rock. Okay?" 003 rolls her eyes and sits on a rock behind her and grabs a random stick on the ground, resting her head on her other hand.

"Mhm." Dustin says again.

"Let me know when they're done," 003 says to no one in particular and start drawing lines in the dirt.

"You're totally, absolutely, 100% wrong. Right now." Steve says.

"Yes.... And no," Dustin says. Dear Lord, make it stop.

"Oh my God."

"This worked correctly when we left the wheelers'. Correct when we got in the car on Curly. But it started to slip the further east we went," I look up at Dustin, dropping the stick. "Now it's way off. When I was leading us here, I wasn't wrong. The compass was."

"So you're using faulty equipment. You're still wrong." Steve says pointing at the compass.

"Except it isn't faulty. Lucas, do you remember what can affect a compass?" Dustin corrects.

"An electromagnetic field." Lucas says.

"Yep."

"Sorry, I must've missed that lesson." Robin says.

"In the presence of an electromagnetic field the needle will deflect towards that power. So either there's some really big magnet around here or..." Dustin says trailing off.

"There's a gate," 003 whispers. Dustin smiles and points at her.

"But we're no where near the lab."

"But what if, somehow, there's another gate? A gate we don't know about. It'd have to be smaller. Way less powerful. Snack-sized gate." Dustin says.

"How? Why?"

"All you'd need is a connection to the upside down to open one. Hawkins is the biggest connection, that's why my father moved our project here," 003 says. She can't tell them everything about her past but she does have to at least pretend to be open about her past.

"Your father?" Dustin asks.

"Yeah, General Stepanov, he created Starcourt mall." 003 says.

"What?" Robin says surprised.

"He's dead now, so it's not important. What is important is this gate could have been opened recently." 003 says, wanting to be done talking about her father.

"All I know is something is causing this disturbance, and the last time we've seen anything like it, it was a gate," Dustin says. "And I hope it is because then we'd have a way to Vecna. And a shot at freeing Max from this curse." Dustin starts to walk away.

"Where are you going? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Eddie's still a wanted man. We can't just go for a hike in the woods," Steve says.

"Yeah, Dustin we need a plan first," 003 says as he turns around. "Then we can go for a hike."

"No," Steve says, looking at 003 like she's crazy. She shrugs and stands up, walking closer to Dustin.

"This little steel capsule might be the key to saving both Max and Eddie. What say you, Eddie the banished?"

"I say you're asking me to follow you into Mordor, which, if I'm totally straight with you, I think is a really bad idea. But, uh, the shire... the shire is burning," Dustin starts jumping up and down, smiling. "So Mordor it is."

"What is Mordor?" Steve asks but everyone ignores him and follows Dustin. 003 stays behind with him to wait for Eddie and he looks at her. She shrugs and watches Eddie struggle to grab his things. "Get your stuff, dude. Let's go." Eddie jogs after everyone else, Steve walking behind and 003 takes up the rear.

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This one was longer than normal but so far I love the dynamic between characters! Three is a little secretive 👀👀

♥︎Bayler♥︎