PRETTY SICK!
— all my problems are based around the past ☆

"Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, so let me get this straight. You think this thing took your..." Steve waved his fingers by his temple and made synth noise, "powers. Your — your brain powers?" he asked for the millionth time. Gen sipped the water bottle Lucas gave to her slowly and stared at him, her patience pulled thin as it could stretch, given the circumstances.

If she had the energy, she might have popped his head like a berry. "Yes, Steve. for the hundredth time, yes," the girl languished, "Either something is really wrong with Will, or it used him as bait to lure me in and eat my power or something."

Gen glanced at Max, who seemed just as antsy as Dustin, who paced around the bus while Lucas opted to keep watch above for the "Demodogs.".

"Are you sure you aren't just... drained, or something? You nearly killed all of us," retorted Max.

Her voice got caught in her throat for a moment as she frowned and looked at her hands, then clenched and unclenched them a few times. "I'm sure — I'm sorry... about... that," Gen apologized uncomfortably to Max and Dustin, the words felt foreign on her tongue. "I didn't... err, I didn't mean to scare you, or anything."

"That would've been totally badass if it wasn't aimed at us," Dustin informed her with a grin, and Max nodded in hesitant agreement, though she looked more worried than anything.

Gen gave them an awkward glance of acknowledgement and chugged her water, the action seemed sudden enough that Steve turned to look at her with one of his weird conflicted expressions that she could never read. It wasn't like she'd get the chance to get into his head and read it, ever, though. Her ability was gone.

There wasn't much rhyme or reason as to how she really knew, but Gen just... felt it. She felt the missing puzzle piece inside of her and she shoved the feeling down as quickly as it arose — people like Gen didn't get upset. It'd been hardwired into her at birth, vulnerability was a weakness, and she'd rather shoot herself in the head than get vulnerable in front of Steve Harrington and his gaggle of stupid children. So she stayed quiet, stretching and clenching her hands repeatedly while she listened to the sounds of crickets and Steve's lighter flick open and closed repeatedly.

Her skin crawled as she tried to ignore it.

"So, you really fought one of these things before?" Max asked timidly, worried if it was a touchy subject or not. Steve glanced at her and nodded, while Gen made a so-so hand. "And you're like, totally 100% sure it wasn't a bear?"

Dustin scowled and stopped his senseless pacing. "Shit, don't be an idiot. Okay? It wasn't a bear," he snapped in response for them, and Gen blinked in surprise, alongside Max who looked equally confused. "Why are you even here if you don't believe us? Gen has been to the Upside Down, you saw her earlier. Just go home."

Max brushed him off coolly, Gen couldn't find it in herself to blame her. "Yeesh, someone's cranky. Past your bedtime?" she asked and climbed up the ladder onto the roof of the bus.

"That's good, just show her you don't care," Steve complimented, and Gen elbowed him with a glare, "What?"

"Notice how she literally ran away from him, you're scaring them, Dustin. The women. Act like you care a little," sighed Gen.

"I don't," he replied, and Steve winked "sneakily" at him when he thought that Gen wasn't looking. Even if she didn't notice (which she did), Dustin deadpanned at him. "Why are you winking, Steve? Stop."

The man looked away like he hadn't done anything and continued to flick his lighter, to which Gen ended up placing her hand over it and held it shut, "Harrington, I swear to God."

Her other hand brought her fingers up to massage her temple, which still throbbed rhythmically with her heartbeat.

Steve rolled his eyes and shrugged her off, "Got it. Did you... uh, see Ange at all?" he asked, his eyes widened slightly with worry, and Dustin stopped his pacing to raise a brow at them. "I just have a bad feeling... about everything."

Her lips pursed into a deep frown and she shook her head, regretting not checking on her firsthand rather than after Will. Gen wished she could have seen what had Steve so shaken up over her, she didn't really understand what he meant by "not all there.", but he knew Angelica better than she did, for once she trusted his word. Though, she couldn't help but fear the worst — if somehow she got swept into everything.

They didn't have time for that, though, because a distinctive shriek made Gen bolt up from her seated position and peer through a crack in the metal barricade towards the foggy landscape. She squinted and searched for the Demogorgon; or rather, a smaller dog-like version of it instead as Dustin described earlier. Steve, also perturbed, shot up rigidly and stared through the crack.

He seemed more bothered by it than he let on. His eyes blown open, pupils pinpointed.

"You see him?" Dustin asked, his face in between Gen and Steve's.

Gen shifted away from him haphazardly.

Darkness. Unclear darkness took over the junkyard as nightfall came over them, fog billowed through the trashed cars and rolled atop the grassy hill from which they entered the area from. If Gen stood a few feet away from the bus, the people stuck inside would have seen nothing but a silhouette — nevermind catching a glimpse of a person, let alone a creature that crept close to the ground and underneath the dense fog.

Steve breathed shakily for a moment and shook his head, just barely, as he scanned the surroundings. "No."

"Lucas, what's going on?" Dustin called up through the hole in the roof.

"Hold on!"

Gen furrowed her brows and pointed into the distance towards a figure that crept closer towards the scrapyard — a Demodog, they called it. It growled lowly as it looked to be hesitating. "I've got eyes! Ten o'clock – ten o – ten o'clock!"

"What's it doing?" Dustin hissed. And she began to worry that their plan failed and they'd rather eat human meat, unless that was their plan all along.

"He's not taking the bait. Why is he not taking the bait?" whispered Steve, or rather commentated to himself as he watched extremely carefully.

"Maybe he's not hungry?"

"Maybe because you poured gasoline all over the meat," Gen deadpanned, her brows rising in feigned inspection. Steve gave her a once-over for being snide in such a dire situation. In all honesty, the thing never scared her, persay — the dog was no full grown Demogorgon. Though, it wasn't like she wanted to potentially become the entrée of its meat feast.

He shook his head and paused before he stood up straight and grabbed his bat from next to him, twirling it in his hand, "Maybe he's sick of cow."

"What the hell are you doing, Steven?" she snapped, standing up straight as well. So quickly, in fact, she nearly sent Dustin to the floor. "Now isn't the time to get ballsy."

"Just get ready," Steve replied and tossed the lighter at her.

Yeah, of course he felt like playing hero when that was the exact opposite of what the plan had been, Gen wished he had less gall and more brains, especially with the kids around.

He crept out of the bus, the door squealed unpleasantly from being pushed open and closed, and both Gen and Dustin cringed at the noise. She peered through the grated fence, her eyes straining to see through the thick layer of fog that covered the first few feet from the ground; Gen could hear him whistle and taunt the creature, but the smothering atmosphere wasn't very forgiving in the sight department. Her face scrunched up as she focused solely on the noises, but Max came rushing down from the roof of the bus, jabbering questions about Steve, and disguising anything they would have been able to hear from the outside.

Gen opened her eyes and tried her hardest not to glare at her, but it didn't matter, anyways. Max and Dustin's sights were trained on Steve's figure outside, crouched to stare through the gaps in the metal. "He's crazy," she muttered, mouth slightly agape.

"Insanely stupid, too," quipped Gen, tossing the lighter at Dustin, who didn't notice it until it smacked him on the side of the head.

"Son of a— He's awesome," he replied, flinching from the contact. Dustin's widened eyes flitted to the shiny silver device, then back up to Gen, who wrenched a loose rod from a seat of the bus. "What are you doing?"

She took a deep breath and tugged on it again, grunts and curses escaped her lips until she pulled it free from the rusty confines of the other pieces it'd been welded to. She wiped a thin layer of sweat from her brow and nudged the door open, muttering, "I don't think Dart is the only one."

"Wha—"

"Steve, watch out!" Lucas cried from the roof, and that gave Gen the confidence to sneak out of the bus, spinning around so she could cover Steve's blindspots.

Maybe she wasn't a fan of Steve 'The Hair' Harrington, but something possessed her to protect him — a sick sense of deja vu, probably.

No, now was the worst time for those kinds of thoughts.

She wanted some sense of self-fulfillment, that's it, even if it meant saving the skin of an obnoxious idiot. Plus... getting a couple of cool points with the kids sounded like a decent deal.

Her back hit Steve's, and Gen fought the fight or flight that tried to take over her senses. He barely jolted, catching his ragged breaths once he realized it was her and not a surprise attack from the Demodogs. "What're you doing out here?" Steve mumbled, voice raspy, only half focused on Gen.

"What? You expected me to let you play the hero all by yourself?" she replied, grinning through her own heavy breathing. Her calloused fingers wrapped tightly around the rusty rod, pointed end directed at the sky. Her deep brown eyes locked on the creature that crept through the darkness; Gen snapped her head to the right when two more Demodogs lurked out of the fog.

Fuck Dart, she thought to herself. She stuck her hand out towards them, rod still in the grip of her left, fingers rigid and tense as she focused. The familiar burning static feeling resonated in the base of her neck and traveled to the ends of her limbs. Pressure built, and her hand clenched into a fist suddenly with a grunt; ripples formed under the creature's skin, for a moment, until they erupted into a fountain of Demo-guts. Gen grimaced at the sight.

"Steve, Gen! Abort! Abort!"

They weren't out of the woods yet, though, as four more appeared and two from Steve's end lunged at them.

Gen hit the deck, letting the Demodog leap over her and tumble clumsily to the ground a few feet away. She ignored the pain in her chest and torso from throwing herself onto the ground and scrambled up to where Steve had rolled over the hood of the car, bat in hand. Her skin burned when she forced her arms out in front of her, hands struggling to form a fist to blow up two of the creatures behind the man, but she kicked her ass into gear once Steve hit a homerun at her (the ball being a baby Demogorgon.).

Her eyes widened in surprise, and Gen swiftly moved one of her arms to face the flying monster, fists closing abruptly as the monster expanded like a balloon mid-squeeze. A spray of what Gen thought was blood and some kind of bodily-matter coated the front of both her and Steve, which made her stop in her tracks and freeze in her position: arms outstretched and feet at a shoulder-length position.

"О, ебаный Христос!" (Oh, fucking Christ!)

"Seriously?!" Steve shouted, bewildered and equally as frozen and messy as Gen.

"Run! Steve! Gen! Come on!" Dustin screamed out from the bus, the doors wide open with the kids surrounding the entrance. All of them were yelling, pressuring the older teens to hurry the fuck up and avoid becoming a Demodog's chew toy.

Gen's chest ached, and she felt cracks of power over-exertion in her skin along her knuckles and between her fingers, but once she wiped the gore from her eyes with her sleeves, she took off after Steve towards the doors. Both of them threw themselves into the bus, grabbing the nearest things they could to barricade the door.

"Shit!" Dustin exclaimed when Gen bumped into him, and definitely smeared Demo-guts along his side.

"Are they rabid or something?" Max squacked, smartly avoiding the doors and windows of the bus. Gen pushed all of the kids along a wall, against the back of the driver's seat as Steve held the barricade against the front door with his feet.

Lucas shrieked, "They can't get in! They can't get in!" The bus shook and rattled dangerously, and the Demodogs struggled to break through all of the protection they surrounded the vehicle with. Gen pissed them off, royally. The creatures croaked and roared in frustration, the sound of metal sheets being hit reverberated around them and disoriented everyone inside.

With a roar, a Demodog got its arm into the bus, and Gen pushed the kids towards the middle. Blowing another one up could do more harm to her than the creatures themselves, especially when they were in numbers, so she gripped the rod in both of her hands and stabbed the monster as many times as she could.

A loud clang sounded from the ceiling as the bus' shaking started to slow to a stop, then another, and another. Her eyes watched it get closer to the open emergency exit on the ceiling, and Gen's gaze lowered. Gen and Max locked eyes for a moment, then the redhead's shot upwards as she screamed shrilly at the Demodog staring straight at her.

"Back up! Get away from the ladder!" she shouted, her fists flung wildly to grasp whatever clothing and limbs of the children she could and pulled them behind her. Steve stood in front of all of them, his bat ready to swing at anything that got in their way — his selflessness was shocking, but Gen couldn't tell if it was the fear kind of shocked, or the surprised kind of shocked.

She hid her shaking hands by gripping onto the rod tighter.

"You want some?" Steve cried out, swaying his weapon, "Come get this!" His taunts seemed to egg it on for a moment, it entertained it, but several distant cries from other Demodogs made it roar into the air and jump off of the vehicle.

Everyone stayed silent, the only noises that broke through the dead air were their heaving breaths — or Gen's heaving breaths that smothered the other noises until they were completely overcome by her own thoughts. She swallowed thickly and shut her eyes, the sounds of the children's screams echoed through her mind, a fresh memory that started to garble with her past ones.

It was done, so why were they still screaming? Why was he still screaming?

Pete's wails plagued her brain, stuck in her eardrums despite having been heard so long ago.

She ignored the white noise that played in the back of her head and followed behind Steve, in front of the kids and slightly dazed. Gen's eyes were glossed over, and everyone's voices sounded so far away, like they faded into the distance, like she shoved her head under water.

Mental waterboarding.

She stared blankly at something, maybe Steve's lips as he pointed directions to the group. Her brain refused to register anything until she felt the overwhelming urge to vomit, which she did once the coast was clear and she could get out of everyone's eyeline behind the bus. They couldn't see her like that.

Gen protected the kids. She did her job. All of them were unharmed.

So why was there a sinking feeling in her stomach? And not just normal dread. The kind that made her teeth chatter and hands tremor beyond being able to hide it, her hands couldn't grip onto her knees or the side of the bus as she emptied out the contents of her stomach and then some. Seeing, smelling, or hearing someone vomit made her need to vomit too, so when it was herself, that amplified times ten million. People found it funny when she would have to run to the bathroom when they would gag or talk about anything that had to do with throwing up in front of her, she wished it was a weakness she just ignored, like most of her other ones.

Will called it her kryptonite. Her own worst enemy was herself and people were starting to notice.

Gen shouldn't have let Steve risk his life like that, she should have, she was the more capable one anyway. Who cares if she got a little hurt during it? She wasn't weak, she bounced back — always. Gen always bounced back from whatever whiny, baby bullshit she moaned about in her head, whether that was vomit, or being sent to another dimension, or a girl not liking her back. That's just how it was.

So, she needed to bounce back again. Straighten herself up, put on her big-boy shoes and protect those damn kids from being put on the chopping block.

——— AUTHOR's NOTE
—— i feel like this chapter is bad but whatever honestly lawl... im REALLY trying to get back on schedule but im so so so bad at following them, i'll try to do better from now on. im just hesitant to release the prewritten chapters (like this one) bc i think they're not that great, howver... i will just suck it up i guess

—— honest to god i feel like NO ONE is ready for the next chapter... take that as you want 😊

PRETTY SICK!
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