CINEMA ( steve harrington! )

019

cinema——
under the weather

019

The Byers house was flooded with kids as everyone paced around frantically trying to understand everyone's individual parts of the story. Kenra, Steve and the kids obviously had their encounter with the demo-dogs, which is what Dustin was now calling the baby demogorgons. Nancy and Jonathan had been on a two days adventure in search for answers about the tragedies that had happened last year, something that Kenra could see may have actually been a bit more of a lovers escapade.

And lastly, Will, Mike and Joyce had been trapped in the house for two days because some creature from the Upside Down had been habituating Will's mind for the last ten months. Then they ended up saving Hopper from the Upside Down and that's how they got trapped in Hawkins Lab and almost eaten alive by monsters. They'd definitely had the most eventful three days.

Kenra was sitting on the floor in the kitchen while all the kids sat at the table. Hopper was on the phone and Kenra glanced up at Steve when she saw him walk over to her. From her spot on the floor she could see Nancy rubbing Jonathan's back to comfort him and she figured Steve was upset by it.

Hopper slammed the phone back down onto the wall and turned around. "They didn't believe you did they." Dustin asked. "We'll see." Hopper said simply.

"'We'll see'? We can't just sit here while those things are loose!" Mike raised his voice at the Chief of Police.

"We stay here and we wait for help." Hopper spoke sternly, clearly fed up with the Wheeler boy's attitude. The kitchen fell into silence when the man walked away. No one had anything to say and everyone was tired or stressed or just scared.

Kenra let her head fall against Steve's leg, letting her eyes fall shut briefly. Steve looked down at her. "Tired?" He pushed her hair away from her face so he could see her. She hummed, "I don't feel good."

Steve looked at her face, the dark light casting a shadow across it. "You don't look too good." He said. Kenra picked her head up and glared at him. "No, seriously, you're really pale, Kenra." Her skin looked void of all previous color and when Steve pressed the back of his hand against her cheeks and forehead, her skin was clammy.

"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike said to the group, distracting the two teenagers from Kenra's under the weather look. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fundraiser for equipment." His voice had some joy in it as he talked. "Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right."

"Yeah." Dustin and Lucas both said. "We can't let him die in vain." Mike said.

"Well what do you want to do, Mike? The chief's right on this. We can't stop these Demo-dogs on our own." Dustin spoke up. "I mean when it was just Dart, maybe."

"But there's an army now." Lucas added.

"His army." Mike had a moment of realization. "What do you mean?" Steve asked. "His army." Mike said with more confidence this time. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too." Mike ran over to find the picture Will had drawn a few days ago.

Kenra pushed herself off the ground and everyone crowded around the table. "The shadow monster." Dustin said as he looked at the stranger figure on the paper. "It got Will that day on the field." Mike said. "The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked, confused."

"The tunnels, the monsters, the Upside Down, everything. It..it's like he's possessed." Kenra's voice was shaking.

"Exactly." Mike nodded. "The shadow monsters inside everything, and if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."

"And so does Dart." Lucas said.

"Yeah. Like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind." Mike explained. "Hive mind?" Steve asked.

"A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism." Dustin told him.

Mike pointed down at the drawing. "And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain."

"Like the mind flayer." Dustin said. Lucas snapped his fingers and pointed at him in agreement. Dustin's words caused a bunch of confused 'what's' to float around the group. He ran into Will's room in search of a book and he got Hopper and Joyce out of the room.

Dustin flipped through the book until he found the page he was looking for. "The mind flayer."

"What the hell is that?" Hopper asked. "It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers." Everyone seems either extremely confused or aggravated by Dustin's words. Kenra was so used to her brother talking about random theories that every word of his was somehow making perfect sense to her.

"Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids' game." Hopper rolled his eyes.

"No, it's a manual. And it's not for kids. And unless you know something we don't, this is the best metaphor—" Dustin raised his voice at the man. "Analogy." Lucas corrected him. Dustin gave him a look. "Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" He yelled at his friend. "Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"D, just," Kenra shook her head. "What does it want?" She looked at her brother.

"To conquer us, basically." Dustin's voice had calmed back down. "It believes it's the master race."

"Ah, like the Germans?" Steve spoke up but Kenra could tell he immediately regretted it based on all the looks he got. "Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin corrected. "Uh, yeah, yeah, the Nazis."

"If the Nazis we're from another dimension, totally." Dustin said. "Um, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." Mike added in. "We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas said.

"That's great. That's really great." Steve shook his head.

Nancy looked down at the book on the table. "Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it... we kill everything it controls."

"We kill everything it controls." Mike said. "We win." Dustin said. "Theoretically." Lucas added.

"Uh, guys." Kenra spoke up. "Guys!" She said as loud as she could despite the aching in her chest, trying to get everyone's attention as they'd clearly missed one of the biggest problems with this whole idea. Everyone turned to look at her finally. "Massive problem with this whole thing. Will's controlled by this thing. So we have to find a way to kill it without killing Will too."

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sorry i kinda went mia for a while there, i'm hoping now that i'll be able to start posting once a week again like i had planned in the beginning :)

thank you, <3