Steve looked around the room and hoped someone had an idea, because he was all out. Making sure the house was safe was about as far as he could get. When it came to the more complex plans, he was happy to help, even add a suggestion or two, but he was pretty sure they had many better strategists than him. 

"We stay together," Joyce said before anyone else could speak up.

Hopper looked distinctly torn about that.

"Until we know what's going on, I want to know where you all are," Joyce added. "Do we have any way to contact Jon and Argyle? They need to be warned."

"We don't have any way of contacting anyone at the moment," Mike said. "The phones are down, and a jammer is blocking the walkies."

"Then that should be our first priority," Hopper said. "We need to..."

A very loud bang interrupted the conversation.

"What the hell was that?" Steve heard his mom ask.

Hopper and Wayne exchanged a look.

"That sounded like a large calibre weapon," Hopper said, and Wayne nodded.

Steve had no idea what military experience Wayne had, but it seemed as if he knew what he was hearing.

"Nobody move," Hopper said and headed into the room to the right of the front door.

It was the only downstairs room that had a good view down the drive. Steve put aside the small amount of mac and cheese he had left, sitting forward as his appetite deserted him. When Hopper came back, the man's expression was grim.

"There's a heavy armoured car on the driveway," Hopper said. "I think they just put a warning shot over the house."

"Holy shit," Eddie said.

This was part of the shit-show the Upside Down brought that Eddie had never had to deal with; the stupidity of their own government. Steve couldn't say he was shocked, nor that he blamed Eddie for his reaction.

"They're trying to intimidate us," Erica said, as always, wiser than her years.

"It's working," was Gareth's comment on the matter.

"They must have followed us from our house," El said, sounding guilty.

"They were probably already watching this one," Steve said, hoping to nip that in the bud. "If they were following Nancy, they were probably following all of us."

"At least with most of us in one place they can't pick us off one by one," Dustin agreed.

There was a momentary, high pitched whistling sound.

"Surrender the girl and this will be over," came the distorted instruction from outside the house. You have twenty minutes to comply."

Another crackle and there was silence once again. Everyone in the room shared a look.

"That was him," El said, confirming what they had suspected.

The day was not looking up. Steve was not privy to all the details of what had happened with project Nina, but he knew enough. This colonel was very bad news.

"Do you have any guns in the house?" Nancy asked, looking at Steve.

He in turn looked to his mom, since he didn't know of any. His dad was more into golf than hunting or anything like that.

"There's a rifle in the lock box in the front garage," his mom said, "but I don't know how much ammunition there is. David is a terrible shot, so it's only ever been for show on the odd business hunting trip."

"Can you show me?" Joyce asked.

His mom stood up with a nod and took the other woman to find the gun.

"I have my service weapon," Hopper said, producing the handgun from under the back of his jacket like it was a perfectly normal place to keep it.

"I have three bats and plenty of nails if we need to improvise weapons," Steve revealed, "and I'm sure there's stuff in the second garage that we could use for Molotovs."

"Three bats?" Lucas asked.

"I wanted to be prepared," he replied. "They're under the bed in Eddie's room. They're mostly meant for monsters, but they could come in handy if the standoff doesn't last."

"Do you think this colonel will risk a frontal assault?" Dustin asked, and sounded for all the world like he was discussing a strategy for Dungeons and Dragons.

The fact that the kids looked the least likely to panic out of a room full of older teens and adults said so much about their screwed-up world. Steve would have liked to meet their currently faceless enemy with his old bat for putting them all through this again after it was all supposed to be over. It simply wasn't fair.

"The neighbourhood is mostly empty," Steve said. "Not many people have come back yet. They're probably waiting it out in their beach houses until everything's back to normal."

He didn't bother hiding his contempt for his neighbours. It had been a long time since he held any of them in high regard.

"Yeah, but this house is not a secret government base, and it's full of innocent American citizens," Hopper pointed out. "That's a lot harder to cover up, especially when you're not the only government team on the field. That should make him more inclined to negotiate than come in all guns blazing."

"They covered up Russians under Starcourt," Robin pointed out.

"They were all on the same side then," Will said.

"So, we need to get working on contacting someone before that changes," Dustin said, sounding as confident as ever. "Steve, do you have any kind of radio equipment we could use to boost the walkies?"

The kid sounded so completely confident in his own abilities that Steve wished he had an easy yes to the question.

"Nothing springs to mind," he said, "but you can look."

"Would a cellular phone be of any use?" his mom asked, reappearing with Joyce carrying his dad's rifle. "There's no coverage in Hawkins, but I have one in my bags if it could be helpful."

Dustin's face lit up.

"I bet we could modify it to patch into the government systems via Cerebro, or, or, Murray. He always has ears on," the kid said, clearly all sorts of ideas flashing behind his eyes.

"Then we could call in the cavalry," Mike added.

Steve couldn't help being amazed as his mom disappeared again, this time to grab the phone and the kids went into action. His house might be about to lose some electronics, but it was a small price to pay.

"Operations Comms is a go," Hopper said.

"Now we just need to hold off the insane army colonel until help arrives," Nancy said.

"If I go out to distract..." El started to say.

"No," was the resounding opinion from every direction.

El looked kind of shocked at the vehemence. Hopper slung an arm around her and pulled her close.

"No noble sacrifices on my watch," Hopper said very firmly.

"We can take out the armoured car," Will said, looking at El and trying to sound confident.

El nodded.

"You need to be careful though," Joyce spoke up. "We don't want what happened to El after Starcourt and the battle with Henry Creel to happen again. I know you're stronger together, but a stroke is very, very dangerous. You can't push too hard."

"What if they can," Steve said as a lightbulb went off in his head.

Several sets of eyes stared at him as if he had gone mad.

"You can heal it before it happens," Robin said, of course immediately getting what he was trying to say.

He nodded.

"How can you be sure?" Hopper asked.

"Because I was trying to do the same thing to myself earlier today," he replied. "I'm fed up of getting blood out of my clothes, okay?" he added as several people eyed him. "I didn't get as far as healing myself because I didn't have time, but I figured out what was going on. I could see where the pressure was."

El was giving him one of her very serious looks.

"You are not just talking about the nosebleeds," she said.

"No," he agreed. "The pressure inside."

He was pretty sure no one else except Will really understood what they were talking about.

"Show me," she said, stepping towards him holding out her hand.

"El," Hopper said, but she looked back over her shoulder at the man, and something must have passed between them, because he backed down.

Steve reached out and took El's hand, feeling the familiarity of her presence as soon as he did. Closing his eyes he let his healing power rise, giving his instincts free reign as he focused on El. He knew then she had been right, he had healed her before, because he sensed the same level of familiarity he had when he had returned to finish healing Max.

"Ready," he said.

He sensed it as El slipped into the Void, but he ignored the urge to join her, remaining in the half state, focusing on El's physical body. It was like sparks along his spine as her abilities rippled through her physical form. He did not need to smash through the barrier for this, not yet at least, El's own body was quite capable of healing itself from the damage being done. His instincts knew what to do, boosting El's own healing and preventing the injuries almost before they could begin to form and before they could cause harm.

The crackle of El's carefully controlled power was awe inspiring as he observed it at such a fundamental level. She was amazing.

When that power was pushed back down, he opened his eyes to find El already looking at him. As soon as their eyes met, she smiled.

"Steve is right, he can heal us," she said.

"He forgot himself again though," Robin pointed out.

"Well healing someone else and healing myself at the same time is hard and going to take way more practice than we have time for," he replied, pulling out the Kleenex he had in his pocket to deal with the slight dribble of blood from his nose. "And healing doesn't cause the same intense pressure as moving things or going to the Void, I'll be fine."

He left the 'I hope' off the end of that.

"Try me," Will said, standing up and walking over to offer his hand.

As he had done with El, Steve took Will's hand. This was familiar, they had worked together a lot over the last few days, but he had never healed Will. He allowed his instincts to rise once more, carefully feeling out Will in a way he hadn't needed to with El. Simply letting his instincts rule was not an option for this, he needed to be in control because he would have to be fully aware when they needed him.

"Ready," he said after taking a good few minutes for his awareness to sink into Will's physical being.

It felt the same when Will slipped into the Void, but the sensation lancing up Steve's spine was very different as he focused on Will's power. The feeling brought with it a sense of fire rather than the lightning like reflection he had felt with El. It whispered of power, carefully controlled, but it was a little bit wilder with untapped potential. What was the same, however, was the pressure that came with it and the damage it could do.

Steve did exactly as he had with El, using his own energy to push Will's natural healing into overdrive, smoothing over any damage before it was little more than an idea. It was easy, like he had been born to do it.

He was pretty sure it would be harder when El or Will exerted themselves, but he knew he could be ready for it. When he opened his eyes again, Will was already smiling at him.

"I think that's definitely proof of concept," Robin concluded.

"But can you heal both of them at the same time?" Joyce asked the next sensible question.

"And how long can you keep it up for?" Hopper added.

"I think so, and as long as I have to," Steve replied, because he refused to be beaten by any part of this.

He was still holding Will's hand, so he held out his other one to El once more. All he could do was try.