▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

❛ sᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴡɪᴄᴋᴇᴅ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐒𝐈𝐗 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ sᴜᴘᴇʀ ᴛʀᴏᴜᴘᴇʀ ꒱


❝ THERE ARE MOMENTS WHEN
I THINK I'M GOING CRAZY ❞

▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

As the two groups converged together for the first time that week, Jessie lingered towards the back as hugs were exchanged. Their voices rose to a cacophony of noise as they shared their adventures with each other. The brunette's eyes unfocused as she zoned out but she startled slightly when she suddenly saw red.

Max stood in front of her awkwardly. "Um, hi."

She blinked several times to see if the Russians had somehow drugged her, too, but the redhead remained in her sight. "Uh. . . hi?"

"I'm, um, glad you're okay," she began and it looked like she wanted to say something else but was cut off by Eleven collapsing on the floor.

Everyone rushed over to see what was wrong. Mike gathered her in his arms as she groaned in pain. "My leg! My leg!"

Johnathan and Nancy immediately set to work unwrapping her bandages that looked like they'd seen better days. The last one was pulled away to reveal a horrible, disgusting wound that caused everyone to gag at the sight of it. It was even worse when whatever was inside of her started to move, making her yelp in pain again.

Mike looked down at her frantically. "El! El, are you okay?"

Jessie gave him an unimpressed look. "Does it look like she's okay to you, genius?"

He shot her a positively murderous glare in response but after having dealt with deadly Russians, she wasn't the least bit affected by it. The dark-haired boy didn't deign her a reply in favor of addressing the problem at hand. "There's something in there!"

"Keep her talking," Johnathan instructed him as he stood. "Keep her awake, okay?"

He raced towards the food court as Robin tried to distract her: "it's uh. . . you know, it's not actually that bad. There was a. . . the goalie on my soccer team, Beth Wildfire, this other girl slid into her leg and the whole bone came out of her knee— six inches or something. It was insane."

"Robin," Steve interrupted her. "You're not helping."

"Right. Sorry."

Thankfully, Johnathan reappeared with a knife in his hand, cutting off any other disturbing stories. "Alright, El? This is gonna hurt like hell, okay?"

"Okay," she acknowledged quietly.

"I need you to stay still," he told her as he put on a pair of gloves. He then handed her a wooden spoon. "Here. You might wanna bite down on this, okay?"

"Jesus Christ," Dustin breathed.

Mike grabbed the spoon and gave it to the short-haired girl. She put it in her mouth without complaining as Johnathan readied the knife. He tried to ignore Dustin's panicking as Mike lost his patience. "Do it!"

The older boy began to insert the blade into her skin, causing her to scream through the spoon. Her face turned red as his fingers slid under her wound to try and find the thing that was hiding in it.

"Johnathan!" Nancy cried out warningly.

"Stop talking!" he retorted as he continued to search for the moving thing. When he couldn't find it, he cursed. "Goddamn it."

El spat out the spoon. "No! Stop it!" Nancy pushed the boy away from the teen. "I-I can do it. I can do it."

She inhaled sharply before she raised her hand towards the wound. Screaming loudly, she used her powers as the creature began writhe in pain under her skin. Glass exploded all around them as she tried to take the thing out. She successfully tossed it on the ground away from her where it landed with a wet thwap! It skittered across the floor before it got squished by a large, black boot. 

.・。.・゜✫・.・✫・゜・。.

They gathered around the fountain to listen as Mike described their newest threat. "The Mind Flayer built this monster in Hawkins to stop El, to kill her and pave the way to our world."

"And it almost did," Nancy continued. "That was just one tiny piece of it."

"How big is this thing?" Hopper asked. He was holding El in his lap as he pressed a bundle of ice to her head.

"It's big," Johnathan said. "Thirty feet, at least."

"Yeah, and ah. . . it sort of destroyed your cabin," Lucas added. "Sorry."

"Okay," Steve began. "So just to be clear, this-this big fleshy spider thing that hurt El, it's some kind of gigantic. . . weapon?"

"Yes."

"But instead of, like, screws and metal, the Mind Flayer made its weapon with melted people."

"Yes! Exactly."

"Yeah, okay. I'm just. . . making sure."

"Are we sure this thing is still alive?" Joyce asked.

"El beat the shit out of it," Max replied, "but yeah, it's still alive."

"If we close the gate again. . ."

"We could cut the brain from the body!"

"And kill it!" Lucas finished. "Theoretically."

"YOO-HOO!" a bearded man yelled. He ran towards them as he waved papers in the air. "Yoo-hoo!" He slapped them down on the table to reveal a map of the Russian base. "This is what Alexi called 'the hub.'" He traced a path along the lines. "The hub takes us to the vault room."

"Okay," Hopper said. "Where's the gate?"

"Here," Murry replied as he pointed to one corner of the paper. "I don't know the scale on this but I think it's fairly close to the vault room. Maybe fifty feet or so."

Erica rolled her eyes. "More like five hundred! What, you're just going to waltz in there like it's Commie Disneyland or something?"

The man stared at her blankly. "I'm sorry, who are you?"

"Erica Sinclair. Who are you?"

"Murray. . . Bauman."

"Listen Mr. Bunman. I'm not trying to tell you how to do things but I've been down in that shithole for twenty-four hours and with all due respect, you do what this man tells you, you're all gonna die," the girl told him bluntly as she held up her palm in a talk-to-the-hand sort of way.

"I'm sorry," he said through clenched teeth. "Why is this four-year-old speaking to me?"

"I'm ten, you bald bastard!"

"Erica!" Lucas scolded her.

"Just the facts!"

"She's right," Dustin spoke up. "You're all gonna die but you don't have to." He gestured to the papers. "Excuse me. May I?"

"Please!" Murray snapped.

The curly-haired boy took a seat at the table and Jessie came to stand behind him. He circled one of the squares on the map. "Okay. You see this room here? This is a storage facility. There's a hatch in here that feeds into their underground ventilation system. That will lead you to the base of the weapon. Now, it's a bit of a maze down there but between me, Jessie and Erica, we can show you the way."

"You can show us the way?" Hopper repeated incredulously.

"We can," Jessie agreed. "The vents are how we escaped interrogation."

Max's eyes widened as she echoed, "interrogation?"

"You can do all the fighting and dangerous hero shit," Dustin continued. "We'll be your navigators."

The police officer stared at them for a moment before he nodded like he was going to agree. His words contradicted the gesture as he answered firmly, "no. Nope."

"But—"

"No buts, Salvador! I don't care if you've got screws loose in your brain. You're still a kid and I'll be damned if I let you die!"

.・。.・゜✫・.・✫・゜・。.

Jessie was quite tired of people telling her what she could and could not do. Jessie, keep running! No Jessie, don't use a grenade! Jessie, blend! No Jessie, don't come with us into a Commie base that you just escaped from!

Well, she was done and she refused to listen to Steve's pleading that she stay with Dustin and Erica. Instead, she hopped in the back as Robin took the front. They raced down the hill in the Todfather, a car that Hopper had commandeered from a random civilian. The wind brushed past her as they hurtled towards Starcourt and she felt her adrenaline begin to rise again at the thought of facing the monster.

The engine revved as Steve pulled into the parking lot nearly fifteen minutes later. The mall had clearly been put through hell, which only became clearer as they got closer. Jessie eyed the damage as they neared. "I guess the Mind Flayer's not a big fan of Black Friday and corporate America, huh?"

"It's not," Robin agreed as she leaned forward, "but it looks like Hargrove's a little too excited."

"Oh, shit!" Steve exclaimed as they watched another car speed towards their friends.

The older boy floored it and they raced after Possessed-Billy. Jessie let out a whoop! of excitement as they slammed into the Camaro and sent the other car spiraling away. The two teens in front were jolted badly while the brunette— who had chosen to sit in the middle— only rocked with the crash.

"You guys okay?" Steve asked.

"Ask me tomorrow?" Robin replied shakily. A snarl made them turn away from the flung vehicle and towards the mall. "Oh, shit."

The three teens stood up in the Todfather to get a better view of the mall's roof. The Mind Flayer had used its now-physical body to climb on the roof and it roared loudly as if it were proclaiming itself ruler of fifty-percent-off sales. The station wagon screeched to a stop next to them and Nancy rolled her window down. "Get in!" 

They leapt into motion and squeezed into the back. Nancy wasted no time in peeling out of the parking lot and away from the monster.

.・。.・゜✫・.・✫・゜・。.

Unfortunately, the Mind Flayer liked to play chase just about as much as Jessie did. That was to say, not at all.

All too soon, it turned around and began to head back to Starcourt, prompting them to do a the fastest three-point-turn in history. Johnathan then raced them back to where they'd began and stopped in the parking lot. He climbed out of the car. "Let's go! Get the fireworks!"

The older teens grabbed the ammunition from the roof of the car and divided it up among the group. Nancy looked around at them. "We need to be careful. The Mind Flayer might know we're here."

The seven of them crept through the mall as they made their way to the upper level. While it wasn't hard to spot the Mind Flayer, the best attacking vantage point was above it. It was currently facing the Gap with particular interest in a girl with a black-and-yellow shirt.

"Fan out!" Lucas said. "It's go time!"

Jessie shot him an irritated look but complied. They divided into four groups: Nancy and Johnathan. Steve and Robin. Will and Lucas. The brunette preferred working on her own anyway so she wasn't too upset at being the odd one out.

Just as the Mind Flayer reached El, Lucas tossed a lit firecracker at it, causing the monster to wail. "Flay this, you ugly piece of shit!" The creature stumbled into a pillar right underneath where Johnathan and Nancy were waiting. It was greeted by more explosives.

"Hey, asshole! Over here!" Steve shouted and he threw his own firecracker.

"Get back to the hell you came from, you shit-faced motherfucking bitch!" Jessie addressed the monster with all the words people had hurled at her in the past as she flung her ammo towards it. She was filled with smug satisfaction as she cursed out the interdimensional beast.

Sparks soared throughout the room which confused the creature and made it lose its focus on El. Billy still stood near her but he was groaning and retching on the ground. Their distraction seemed to be working, though, as the girl scrambled out of the way. . . but not fast enough.

As the only solo team member, Jessie made a beeline for her. . . friend (because El was one of the few people who fell in that category.) Running had always been her Achilles' heel, though, and she tired quickly. Cursing under her breath, she stumbled to a stop and shoved her hands into random pockets of her coat.

Locating her skates, she jumped around stupidly as she tied them to her shoes. After securing the buckles, she used the solid floor of the mall to her advantage and pushed off towards the super-powered teen. The brunette dropped to her knees several feet away from the short-haired girl. Jessie put her hand on her friend's back to help support her and began to speak in a soothing tone, the same one she used with her father when he had nightmares. "Hey, it's okay. You're gonna be okay—"

In response to her calming words, El only seemed to become more frantic as her eyes widened. She lifted a hand and pointed past Jessie's shoulders as a loud scream emitted from her. Before Jessie could turn to see what the matter was, she was hefted several feet into the air by one of the Mind Flayer's tendrils. If she had been normal, she wouldn't have been able to scream as her breath was stolen from. Even now, though, fear remained the one emotion that escaped her.

Anger? It was there. Arrogance? She wasn't so arrogant as to say she wasn't feeling it then. Excited? Surprisingly, yes. (It was always a good thing to have being nearly killed by an interdimensional monster on your bucket list.)

She could feel the blood rush to her face as she swung in the beasts' grasp. Her twin braids fell on either side of her face and felt her ankle throb as the creature held on to it too tightly. Distantly, she heard shouting from the older teens but remained unperturbed.

Almost as if she could sense it, Jessie watched as the monster seemed to curl into itself slightly. Her hand slowly slid into her pocket and wrapped around a cylindrical object. She waited patiently as the creature took a deep breath before its mouth opened to reveal rows and rows of sharp, pointy teeth as it let out a furious roar.

In the same moment, Jessie pulled the grenade from her pocket and unlatched the pin with her teeth. Without hesitating a second longer, she tossed the explosive directly into the monster's open mouth. "Happy Independence Day, bastard!"

The detonation rocked the creature to its core and it stumbled backward as it tasted soot for the first time. Unfortunately, her timing wasn't great and the Mind Flayer flung her in response to the blast. She felt herself sail through the air and mentally prepared herself for the oncoming impact.

Jessie knew she blacked out the moment her eyes opened again.

Everything was blurry and there was a ringing in her ears that hadn't been there before. Something warm and wet trickled down her face and she wondered briefly if she was crying. That would be a first. Fuzzily, she reached up to touch it and her fingers came away red. "Huh."

[edited jul. 2022]