Hawkins Curse || Steve Harrington x Reader ||

The Mind Flayer pt.2

"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" I heard Mike say as I  walked into the kitchen. "Really?" Lucas said. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything." Mike said holding a blue cube. "Then he had a fund-raiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?" "Yeah." Lucas and Dustin said.

"We can't let him die in vain." Mike said placing the toy on the table. "What do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin snapped. "The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own." Dustin added. "Demo-dogs?" Max asked. "Demogorgon dogs. Demo-dogs. It's like a compound." Dustin explained. "It's like a play on words..." Lucas said. "Okay." Max simply said.

"I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe...But there's an army now." I said. "Precisely." Dustin pointed a finger to me. "His army." Mikes eyes widened. "What do you mean?" Steve asked standing up straight. "His army. Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too." Mike explained before running into Will's room picking up a drawing of a spider-like thing. "The shadow monster." Dustin said. "It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him." Mike explained. "And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked. "To the tunnels, monsters, the
Upside Down, everything."  "Whoa. Slow down. Slow down." Steve said trying to catch up. "Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will." "And so does Dart." Lucas added. "Yeah. Like what Mr. Clarke taught us. The hive mind." Mike continued. "Hive mind?" I asked. 

"A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism." Dustin explained to me. "And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain." Mike went on. "Like the mind flayer." Dustin's eyes widened.  "The what?" Max asked tilting her head.

We went back into the kitchen where Hopper and everyone else except for Joyce was, Dustin grabbed a game manual and slammed it open on the table, "The mind flayer." Dustin said pointing to a picture of a character. "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 its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers." Dustin explained looking around the room. 

"Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids' game." Hopper sounded annoyed. "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." Dustin argued.  "Analogy." Lucas corrected. "Analogy? That's what you're worried about Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"Okay, so this mind flamer thing." Nancy leaned in. "Flayer. Mind flayer." Dustin corrected. Nancy let out a sigh, "What does it want?" She asked. "To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race." Dustin said.

"Like the Germans?" Steve asked. "Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin said with attitude. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis." Steve stuttered. "If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally. Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself." Dustin continued. "It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." "We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." The kids bounced of each other. "That's great. That's great. That's really great. Jesus!" Steve said running his hand through his hair.

"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it..." Nancy said picking up the book. "We kill everything it controls." Mike commented. "We win." Dustin said looking at me. "Theoretically." Lucas added.

"Great. So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with Fireballs or something?" Hopper asked grabbing the book from Nancy. "No. No, no Fire-
No Fireballs. Uh, 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- It's just a game. It's a game." Dustin said in defeat.  "What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper said throwing the book onto the table. "I thought we were waiting for your military backup." Dustin stated. "We are!" "How are they gonna stop this? You can't just shoot this with guns." Mike chimed in. "You don't know that! We don't know anything!" Hopper yelled. "We know it's already killed everybody in that lab." Mike stated. "We know the monsters are gonna molt again." Lucas added. "We know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town." Dustin finished. 

"They're right...We have to kill it. I want to kill it." Joyce entered the room. "Me, too.  Me, too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here." Hopper approached her.

"No. But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know its weakness." Mike explained walking towards the unconscious boy on the couch. "I thought we couldn't trust him anymore." I said. "That he's a spy for the mind flayer now." Max added. "Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is." Mikes eyes widened.

We all split up into groups, Steve went with Nancy, Lucas went with Dustin, Joyce and Jonathan went with Hopper and I went with Max and Mike. We sat in the kitchen making a chair cover.

"I get why El was your mage now." Max broke the silence. "What?" Mike looked at her "Lucas. He told me all about her." Max smiled. "Well, he shouldn't have." Snapped back making Max's smile fade. "And just because you know the truth, it doesn't mean you're in our party. You do know that, right?" Mike said. "Yeah, I know. I mean, why would you want a stupid
zoomer in your party anyway? I'm just saying, El? She sounds like she was really awesome."Max said trying to relieve the tension. "Yeah, she was. Until that thing took her. Just like it took Bob." Mike said getting up. "Hey. Just because you don't like someone doesn't mean you can act like a mouth breather." I said pulling him back. He scoffed and walked off.

~*~*~

Later after we had set up the shed, Lucas, Dustin, Max, Steve, Nancy and I were waiting in  the house. I sat in the kitchen tapping my foot causing my leg to bounce. I felt a hand rest on my leg, I looked up and met Steve's eyes. I smiled at him and he smiled back, we stared at each other before Hopper and everyone else came rushing in. 

Hopper slammed a Piece of paper on the table and began to write dots and dashes. "What happened?" Dustin asked curiously. "I think he's talking,
just not with words." "What is that?" Steve asked looking at the paper. "Morse code." I said. "H-E-R-E." Hopper spelt out. "Here." We all said in unison. "Will's still in there. He's talking to us." Hopper stated.

Hopper, Joyce, Mike and Jonathan went back to the shed but not before giving us a walkie talkie.

We all sat around the table, Dustin and I both had a piece of paper and a pen. "Dash, dot, dash, dot." Dustin mumbled. Lucas looked down a list  "Okay, got it." He said. "C." Max said ad I nodded writing it down.

L.
O.
S.
E.
G.
A.
T.
E.

I finished writing.  "Close gate." We all read. The phone suddenly started ringing. "Shit, Shit." Dustin said running over picking it up before slamming it down. It rang again, I ran over to it and tore it off the wall before chucking it to the ground. "Do you think he heard that?" Max asked. "It's just a phone. It could be anywhere. Right?" Dustin said.

We all froze as we heard growling, Dustin, Max, Lucas and Mike -who had just ran in- ran to the window. "Hey. Hey, get away from the windows!" Hopper yelled picking up a gun. "Do you know how to use this?" He turned to Jonathan.  "What?" Jonathan seemed panicked. "Can you use this?" Hopper raised his voice. "I can." Nancy stepped forward. (Ugh what a queen) 

"Where are they?" Max asked as we all stood in a line, looking at the window. We heard a loud thud coming from the kitchen, we all turned towards it. "What are they doing?" Nancy asked pointing the gun to the kitchen. We heard screeching coming from the front door so we all faced it standing out ground.

the screeching stopped suddenly before a Demo-dog came flying through the window. "AHH!" We all screamed. "Holy shit." Dustin let out a long sigh. "Is it dead?" I asked looking at the thing lying on the ground. 

We all froze as we heard the door creak open.