Miss Perfect | Nancy Wheeler

Gate

"We need to come up with a plan to kill these Demodogs" Dustin says.

Mike repeats the phrase "Demodogs?"

"Demogorgon - dogs, Demodogs" Dustin makes lazy hand gestures.

You think back to what you saw at the lab. Dozens of them rearing against the exit, some still crouching over the corpse of Bob. "There's a whole army it's impossible" Eleven had died trying to take out one.

"His army!" Mike lights up as everyone looks at him expectantly. "Maybe if we stop him we can stop his army too" he explains how Will feels anything the growth from the upsidedown feels, how he's being controlled by a hive mind.

"Hive mind?" Steve asks joining the table.

Mike ignores him and grabs up a drawing Will had made of a giant dark mass "this is the thing that controls everything, its the brain"

Dustin nods "like the mind flayer" he grabs a DnD handbook and everyone including Hopper gathers around him.

"The mind flayer, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using highly developed-"

"Oh my god none of this stuff is real" Hopper grunts. "This is a kids game"

"No its a manual. And its not for children" Dustin corrects him. "This is the best metaphor-"

Lucas stops him "analogy" I've had missed these boys.

"Analogy that's what you're worried about? Fine" Dustin scoffs as if he wasn't enforcing people to use his new species names just minutes ago.

Nancy leans forward "okay so this mind flamer thing"

"Flayer" Dustin says. See.

"What does it want?" She rolls her eyes.

"To conquer us basically, it believes its the master race"

"Like uh the Germans?" Steve tries and fails to say something intellectual.

"The Nazis?" You gawp at his primate like knowledge.

"Yeah. Yeah the Nazis"

You hear Hopper mumbling under his breath. You were on his side with this one, a manual wasn't saving anyone.

"So how do we kill it, shoot it with fireballs ot something?" Hopper grabs up the book.

"No uh no fireballs" Dustin tuts. "You summon an undead army because you know they don't have brains and uh- it's just a game" he admits realising how it sounded "its just a game"

"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper grunts.

"I thought we we're supposed to be waiting for your military backup" Dustin snorts.

"We are!"

"Even if they come how are they going to stop this? You can't just shoot it with guns!" Mike yells.

Joyce stumbles up "you're tight, we have to kill it"

Hopper turns to her "but how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here"

Mike steps forth with an idea "if anyone knows how to destroy this thing it's Will"

Max sounds lost "but you said we can't trust him now, hes being used as a spy"

"He can't spy if he doesn't know where he is"

///

Nancy offers to help Steve set up the shed while you go lock yourself in the bathroom. You feel a full blown panic attack coming on. You couldn't stop blaming yourself for leaving Dustin. But how could you have known what was happening?