PRETTY SICK!
— the plan ☆

"The mind flayer."

Dustin slammed a book down onto the kitchen table, the manual to solve all of their problems, and commenced the first official "party meeting" of the night. Any tense feelings from the screaming match between Steve and Gen—which he definitely won, but the way—were pushed down for the time being and replaced with a fire to kick some monster ass.

The mind flayer was a monster that used the bodies of other things and people to do its bidding—way worse than in Alien when the Xenomorph put eggs in the human's chest—it was the head guy, general of the army, the "big cheese" that led all of the Demodogs to battle and kept Will in his trance. Steve already got a run-down of it all. He feigned his complete attention by staring at Dustin's guide book, his brows furrowed deep in thought.

He didn't... he did care about saving the world and all, but he'd been riddled with an indescribable guilt the moment he laid his eyes on the pale green Ford Pinto when it pulled out of the lab's driveway. Angie's Pinto. Steve thought nothing of it, at first, everyone and their mother owned a goddamn Pinto—shit, Ms. Byers owned the exact same car. It wasn't until his eyes trailed up to the driver's face that a rush of ice-cold water flowed through his veins, he only saw the scene for a split second before the car passed him.

Raymond Murdoch, the town's resident idiot sat behind the wheel, his knuckles pale from his stressed grip on the rubber. He only recognized him by name because Nancy complained about a detective pestering her brother a few times, the same detective Steve saw hanging around Angie multiple times over the past few months.

It felt like a movie, when everything finally connected in his head and Steve just went, "Oh." to himself as the kids murmured about the mysterious car. He knew that the person slumped over in the passenger seat was the blonde who spent her formative high school years being his best friend, and—shit, from the looks of it, Angie didn't seem too good, or alert, or anything that suggested she wasn't dead next to that dumbass.

A question blared in Steve's head. He didn't know how she managed to get into the lab on such a bad day, no one did, not Hopper or Mike (he didn't bother asking Joyce. Rest in peace Bob.), not a soul, the only information he got was that she was attacked inside and barely made it out; without the help of Hopper and the axe that laid discarded by the front door, Angie would've been dead. Being honest, he had an idea of the series of events leading up to that moment, sort of, but he couldn't fathom how. How did she get trapped? How did she get hurt? There had to have been a way for Steve to prevent it, there had to be; but she was already hurt and bloodied, so instead of sitting on his ass like those government assholes, Steve would do his part and help.

His only wish for that night was that Angie lived to tell the tale. If the next time he saw her cheery face was laid in a casket, dulled with death, he would... Steve would... He didn't think about it too hard.

"What the hell is that?" replied Chief Hopper, a sour look pulled on his face. He had no time to listen to a fictional kid's game, and Steve, well, he vaguely understood the premise of what went on with the little Byers kid. It was something like The Exorcist, except it looked like it wouldn't be as simple of a solution as calling a priest.

"It's a monster from an unknown dimension." Dustin's dubious statements made it hard for anyone who didn't get the Dungeons and Dragons game to follow. It must have been an articulation problem, or a nerdy language barrier that made it impossible to understand. He didn't watch enough supernatural movies to get the full picture without pulling examples of the same thing from the real world. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly developed psionic powers."

Enslaving of other races. Noted.

Hopper rolled his eyes at Dustin, there was an edge in his voice when he groaned sternly, "Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids game."

"No, it's a manual. And it's not for kids," he snapped back, a tone that made Steve question if Dustin knew what the word "authority" was laced in his voice, because he hasn't seen an ounce of compliance since he met the boy.

"The only people who seem to know jack-shit about it are children," Gen piped up from where she leaned over the table, hands pressed against the surface in a wide stance and standing next to Nancy. "But," her eyes flitted over to Dustin for a split second, "He's right. When it... stole my power, I think it wanted to take me too, but I wasn't a good host."

"Exactly. Thank you," the younger teen exhaled, pointing his finger with enough accusation towards Hopper that it made Steve raise his brows. "So unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor—"

"Analogy," Lucas cut him off.

"Analogy," Dustin repeated, "That's what you're worried about? Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"Okay, so this Mind Flamer thing—" started Nancy, ready to get to the point.

"Flayer. Mind Flayer."

She sighed for a millisecond. "What does it want?" The woman continued with haste, and Steve tore his eyes away from her before he started to wallow about how he failed so hard in that relationship that Nancy ran off with Jonathan "The Stalker" Byers. That wasn't something he wanted to think about, period. Not then, not ever.

He needed to focus on the task at hand, no matter how badly his mind wanted to wander off towards his personal hang-ups.

"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race," Dustin explained in simple terms that a majority (if not all) could understand. So simple, in fact, it reminded Steve of why the Mind Flayer's prerogative seemed so similar to something he'd heard before during his history classes.

To make sure he had it correct, Steve questioned, "Like the—like the Germans."

"You mean Nazis?" Gen deadpanned, her upper lip curled skyward for his slip up. Well, they got the idea, didn't they? Volkova didn't need to be so judgemental.

He stammered for a moment and nodded, feeling heat crawl up his neck, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Nazis." At least he was trying to understand, unlike Hopper, who pressed his thumb and fingers over his eyes and rubbed his face.

"Uh..." Dustin trailed off, searching for the right words to reply to Steve. Everyone around the table looked a little bit disappointed in him. Steve should probably leave the planning to people who actually knew what they were talking about, he was more of the sexy, stoic leader rather than a "planner". "If the Nazis were from another dimension—totally. Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions."

Lucas piped up with a shocking revelation, "We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it."

Having enough with the potential death of everyone he's ever cared about, Steve felt a bit antsy, letting words slip past his lips, rapid-fire before he could filter them out. "That's great. That's great. That's really great, Jesus," he remarked, headed to the back of the kitchen to pace and hopefully clear his head.

"That's a bit dramatic, no?" Gen questioned, her face screwed up as if she bit into something rotten.

"I don't think it is," Nancy responded, her hair fluttering prettily as she took the book in her hand to get a closer look. "So, if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it..."

Mike finished, determination resonated in his eyes, "We kill everything it controls."

Dustin nodded. "We win."

"Theoretically," added Lucas, reasonably too. This all sounded just peachy in theory—but applied in real-life and not just a stupid board game? A totally different story. As much as he trusted these kids, Steve had real-life experience fighting this thing, or one of this thing's offspring, and he worried that they couldn't just blast it to death without repercussions.

Hopper had a few more questions, it seemed, when he trudged towards Nancy and plucked the book from her fingers. "How do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"

"No," Dustin chuckled, "No, no fire—no fireballs. You summon an undead army, uh, because... because zombies, you know, they don't have brains, and the Mind Flayer, it... it... it likes brains..." The more he found himself talking, the more the confidence in the room weaned. "It's just a game. It's a game."

"Zombies," repeated Gen, offering an unamused chortle. "I'm telling you guys now, the day people start coming back from the dead, is the day I'm giving up."

Volkova thought she was so funny, didn't she? Like she didn't almost kill everyone an hour ago. Sadly, not everyone had the same sentiment for jokes as she did, because Hopper tossed the book down and growled, "What the hell are we doing here?"

"I thought your military B.F.F.s were coming for a playdate with the Demogorgon puppies," the Russian girl remarked sarcastically, mischief glimmered in her brown eyes. This earned a nod of approval from a few others around the table, including a reluctant Steve, yet a sharp glare from the Chief. "Unless you think they aren't."

"They are!"

Mike scowled at Hopper. "Even if they come, how are they going to stop this? You can't just shoot this with guns."

"You don't know that!" Hopper hissed, unconvinced that the military couldn't save the day. Even if the Wheeler kid was a little shit, could the military stop this? Steve liked to think he trusted the people who ran the country as an act of patriotism, but his loyalty wavered with every inter-dimensional incident (a.k.a. their fault.). "We don't know anything!"

"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab!" He rolled his eyes, ignoring every social norm placed around respecting those above you. "Gen was right, we only have so long before one of us end up like Angie or Bob!"

The mention of Angie's name in that way made Steve flinch slightly and turn away from the table; nausea crept up his throat like an animal prepared to pounce up on him. He didn't know what happened to Mr. Newby, or Angie, but neither of them sounded to be in particularly good shape, seeing as Bob was dead, and there was a very likely chance that Angie might fall under the same fate he did. Steve would never forgive himself if she died, how he watched her fall down the slippery slope of obsession and did nothing to help her. He barely offered support up until a few days ago.

The raven haired girl across from him visibly tensed up and clenched her jaw.

"And we know the monsters are gonna molt again," Lucas piped up, helping get Mike's point across. Their determination felt almost... inspiring to Steve? He had to be the leader and protector (obviously, as the devilishly-handsome, heroic man archetype), but despite their friend's life being on the line, they didn't look like they were up in their own heads praying for a different outcome, they were putting it into action.

Dustin chimed, "And we know it's only a matter of time before those monsters reach this town."

"They're right," a voice croaked from the living room, thickened with the sadness of a woman that was on the verge of losing everything; her love, her son, her town, everything. Steve's jaw set at the sight of Ms. Byers. Joyce's eyes were ringed with red from sobbing uncontrollably after the sight of Bob's death, her head hung low, but she had a look on her face that told everyone she wanted to drive those creatures back to the hell they spawned from. Her words quivered with her lips as she stated, "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."

Chief Hopper walked towards her, his tone softened from how he spoke with the excitable children moments prior. "Me too. Me too, Joyce, okay?" he leveled with her, "But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

"No. But he does," Mike declared, shuffling towards Will's sleeping form, "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know its weakness."

How could they talk to him if he was a spy out to kill them all? This wasn't something Will could just back out of.

"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," floundered Max. "That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now." Steve didn't blame her for being hesitant, it looked like two out of the three kids were assholes to her and not up for playing nice, even in the face of imminent danger. Henderson was included after his little performance in the bus. But that was just what it was: a performance until he felt it. The sexual electricity he'd explained to him.

Mike took a step forward, his eyes narrowed in determination. "Yeah, but, he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."

𓆩♡𓆪

"Are we gonna talk about how you nearly ripped Dustin Henderson's head from his body?"

The shed that Gen and Hopper stood in had become barren, plain, wooden, and rid of all of the items and shelves, various tarps and trash bags littered around the interior of the small building. They concocted a "plan" to contact Will while he was still possessed by something called the Mind Flayer (Filleter? Flamer?): tie him up and question him for a response, pretty much, except they had to disguise the shed to not look like the shed, since the monster would be able to find out where they resided through Will's eyes. Was it inhumane? Absolutely. But they needed to do what they needed to do.

Unfortunately, Gen ended up paired with Hopper when it came to hanging duty, and he had a few too many questions for her to answer. Questions that she rightfully had zero energy to answer.

"No," she replied shortly, stapling a newspaper over the tiny window.

Hopper sighed—patience was a virtue, and yet the world tested him infinitely. "Where did you run off to?" he asked, "I called the Munson's, I called the Wheeler's, Byer's—"

"Are you seriously telling me off right now?" inquired Gen. She turned her head to look at him, eyes squinted in shame, a sardonic smile graced upon her lips. Shame directed at him or herself, she couldn't tell.

For a moment he wanted to agree, a testament to his pride, and a sword in the gut of her rebellion, but she looked just so... defeated. She felt defeated. The past few days were like weeks apart, and two strangers now stared back at each other: one exhausted with his own existence, and the other weighed down by unkept promises of the past. Hopper glanced away from her and exhaled deeply, muttering, "Just worried."

She shrugged in response. "It's a story for another day."

"That you'll conveniently forget, right?" he hummed, holding a tarp in place for Gen to staple to the wood. His nonchalant response helped ease the tension in the air.

"Eh, depends on how this night goes," the raven haired girl replied sarcastically, the right corner of her lip twitching upwards as she obliged his directions.

Hopper let out a noise of amusement with a breath from his nose. "Uh-huh, and you'll leave out any incriminating parts?"

"There's nothing to leave out if there is none. I never wanted to rip off Dustin's head," she joked, her mouth curled into a toothless grin. The man gave her a look like, "don't joke about lying to me", and Gen raised her hands in defense. "Hey, you almost did too. We're both in that head-ripping incrimination range."

"I'm the chief of police—I don't rip heads off, I shoot. With guns," guffawed Jim, rolling his eyes at the teenager beside him.

Gen clicked her tongue, a sarcastically disappointed noise came from the movement. "So you're telling me you wanted to shoot a child, Hopper? Shame on you."

Truthfully, Hopper didn't want anyone to hear the banter, sure, he liked it (Gen could tell), but he had to be the gruff, rough, and tough cop to the rest of the kids.

"You know what I meant," he scoffed.

"I know exactly what you meant," repeated the girl, Gen followed up with a cough that sounded eerily similar to "Child murderer." if you strained your ears a bit.

Pride flourished in the blues of Jim's eyes, for what? Gen had no idea because she'd just called him a child murderer not ten seconds prior. He crossed his arms over his chest and smirked, barely, as he hissed playfully, "Knock it off, kid. Aren't you supposed to be stapling?"

"I am," she replied, offended that he thought she'd slack off, pointing to each staple she made. "See?"

Hopper inspected the fine craftsmanship and tsked, the corner of his face scrunching up to a wink. "You missed a few spots," Jim corrected without having pointed out where her mistakes resided exactly. She had a sneaking (definite) suspicion that he'd lied.

Gen's neck craned to stare at him, her eyebrows raised in good-natured annoyance until he brought his hand up to ruffle her hair, chuckling at her sudden perturbed expression.

In her heart, she never found the spirit to shrug his hand off of her, or smack him until he backed off, because the affection was... acknowledged, with some reluctance. Maybe even appreciated once she caught a breather bygone everything with the Mind Flayer got settled—if it got settled at all. The fight was far from over, the ravenette sensed. They've only edged towards the climax. Time was ticking.

—————
AUTHOR'S NOTE
a little bit of steve's pov
sprinkled in for funsies

there's only four chapters
left of this act from here
and im SO excited to get
started on s3. i have a lot
in store *rubs my mitts
together*

dont forget to vote and
comment!! i love seeing it
(plus my birthday is on
tuesday, so)

PRETTY SICK
girlpools  /  2023