ᖇᗴᗩᒪ (𝗦𝘁𝗲𝘃𝗲 𝗛𝗮𝗿𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗼𝗻 𝘅 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿)

𝐶𝐻𝐴𝑃𝑇𝐸𝑅 𝑉𝐼𝐼𝐼 {𝙼𝚒𝚗𝚍 𝙵𝚕𝚊𝚢𝚎𝚛}

We arrive at a house I've never seen before, I think it's Jonathan's house. Steve helps me out of the very crammed car.
"Wait wait, who are you?" A stressed looking small woman asks, I think she's Jonathan's mum.
"I'm Y/n, His friend." I point to Steve. I moved here a few days ago, I'm from Australia."
"Aust-Australia? Um okay. I'm Joyce, nice to meet you."
"Nice to meet you too."
"I'm hopper."
"Y/n."
"I'm mike."
"Right."
"And that's Will." Mike says pointing to the boy Jonathan is carrying. "He's Jonathan's brother."
"Right okay." It was confusing meeting everyone at once.
"Don't worry, I hardly know any of them too well."Steve whispers to me.
"Okay good." I laugh and he smiles at me. I still had his sunglasses on, even though it was night.

Hopper was on the phone to somewhere, telling them about the lab.
"I don't know how many people are there. I don't know how many people are left alive." There's a pause when the person on the other end says something. "I am the police, chief Jim Hopper!"
I walk away following Steve to wherever he's going. We stand looking out the window.
"You right?" He's asks me.
"Yeah yeah I'm fine. Ar-are you?"
"Yeah but uh listen Y/n I know how scary this shit can be the first time you deal with it." He says putting his arm around me once again.
"Thanks Harrington." I say resting my head on his chest. He rubs my shoulder comfortingly.
"Oh my god Stevie I love you so muchhhhhh!" Lucas says behind us.
"I just can't live without you." Mike adds.
"Okay shut it you little brats." I say not looking back at them.

We all sit or stand around waiting for something to happen. Mike starts talking about some guy called Bob, who I think died.
"Who are they talking about?" I whisper to Steve.
"No idea."
"Well what do you want us to do on this Mike?" Dustin says. "The chiefs right on this. We can't fight those demo-dogs on our own."
"Demo-dogs?" Max asks.
"Demogorgan, dog." Dustin does a conjoining motion with his hands. "It's like a compound word, you know where-
"Okay." Max says sick of the explanation.
"I mean when it was just dart maybe." Dustin says gong back to what he was talking about before.
"But there's an army now." Lucas says.
"Precisely."
"His army." Mike says.
"What do you mean?" Steve asks.
"His army!" Mike repeats. "Maybe if we can stop him we can stop his army too." The kids run off following Mike, we follow them. Mike picks up a drawing.
"The shadow monster."
"It got will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him." Mike was talking so fast it was hard to keep up.
"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asks
"To the tunnels, to the monsters, to everything!"
"Woah, slow down. Slow down." Steve says
"Okay so the shadow monsters inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."
"And so does dart."
"Yeah. Like what Mr Clarke taught us. The hive mind."
"Hive mind?" Me and Steve question at the same time.
"A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism." Dustin explains but it doesn't exactly help.
"And this is the thing that controls everything." Mike continues. "It's the brain."
"Like the mind flayer."
Lucas clicks his fingers.
"What?" Steve, Max and I say at the same time.

We walk out into the kitchen, Dustin slams a master book he got from Wills room on the table. Everyone else is now around it with us.
"The mind flayer."
"What the hell is that?" Hopper asks.
"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 it's highly-developed psionic powers." Dustin explains only some of it getting through to my small mind.
"Oh my god none of this is real. This is a kids game!" Hopper yells sick of the stupidness in the house.
"N-no, it's a manual. And it's not for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-
"Analogy." Lucas corrects him.
"Analogy? That's what your worried about? Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."
"Okay so this mind flamer thing-
"Flayer. Mind flayer." Dustin corrects Nancy.
"What does it want?"
"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race."
"Like the the uh-
"The Germans!" I say understanding what Steve was tryna say.
"Yeah! The Germans! Thank you Y/n." Everyone looks at us like we're idiots.
"Uh. The Nazis?" Dustin asks.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Nazis." Steve and I stumble trying to hide our embarrassment for being so stupid.
"Uh. If the Nazis were from another dimension, then yeah totally." Dustin says trying to mane us look less stupid. "Uh it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."
"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions."
"We're talking about the destruction of our wired as we know it." Lucas says.
"That's great, that's great. That's really great. Jesus!" Steve says walking off
"Very comforting isn't it?" I laugh.
"Okay so if this thing is like a brain that controlling everything, then we if we kill it-
"We kill everything it controls." I can still hear Steve murmuring quietly about how crazy this is.
"We win."
"Theoretically."
"Great. So how do we kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"
"No no. No, fireballs." Dustin laughs. "Uh you summon an undead army uh, because uh zombies you know they don't have brains, it the the mind flayer it...it it likes brains. It's just a game, it's a game."
"What the hell are we doing here?"
"I thought we were waiting fir your military backup?"
"We are!"
"Even if they come how are they gonna stop this? You can't just shoot it with guns!"
"You don't know that! You don't know anything!"
"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab."
"And we know the monsters are gonna malt again."
"And we know it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town."
"They're right." Joyce says quietly, walking over to us. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
"Me too. Me too Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
"No. But he does." Mike says walking over to the unconscious Will who lay on the couch. "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know it's weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore. That he's a spy for the mind flayer now."
"Yeah but. He can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."

Literally most boring chapter to exist. I had to rewatch the whole scene.
Pls vote :)
-Soph