The Presentation [The Upside Down Pack series]

One-Shot

Hawkins was not the best place in the world. In fact it was one of the worst.

The world was a place full of stereotypes and roles that people were supposed to follow: Alphas were supposed to be strong and dominant, Betas were hard-working and calm, and Omegas were simply baby-making machines with no feelings or intelligence.

And that was true all over the world, but, at least in the cities, people didn't mind so much if someone stepped out of their established role. Yes, you might get the usual insults behind your back and hateful looks as you walked down the street, but in Hawkins? It was hell. Whoever stepped out of their place was openly hated, insulted, beaten up... Basically, it made your life miserable.

Fortunately our protagonists had found a pack that didn't care about any of that bullshit. They had found a family in the others who finally supported their decisions without looking at their race.

The way they had found each other was more than strange, fighting monsters from another dimension and dealing with the trauma of it all. But, although everything they had been through had left them with many scars, physical and mental, they were grateful that at least some good had come out of it.

And now with the Upside Down and Vecna defeated for good, after Max successfully distracted him and Nancy, Steve and Robin killed him, the 6 Party members had to face their new challenge: The dreaded Presentation, in which they'll finally discover what their secondary gender is.

Through their personalities people could usually guess how they will present, but there were exceptions, more than what it seemed. In The Party for example, everyone knew almost for sure that Mike and Max would be Alfas, Lucas, El and Dustin would be categorized as Betas and Will an omega.

People were probably the freest from secondary gender expectations when they were pups and they hadn't gone through Presentation yet. Of course, pups were told all about the roles they were supposed to follow and how they were supposed to behave, but, without any secondary gender they were not trapped in the role they would be assigned. And now that our protagonists were in the year they turned sixteen, they would all present and have to accept whatever it was that society told them they had to be.

They had entered the seventh month of their year of Presentation and still none of the members of the Party had been through it. In fact, they were happy about it, none of them wanted to be forced to participate in the bullshit that people believed and as long as they didn't present then they didn't have to.

The closer it got to the end of the year, the more nervous our protagonists became: They were afraid of their future and what might happen because of their secondary genders. Most of the people in their class had already presented, causing the whole functioning of the class to change dramatically. The Alphas were the only ones who were treated with respect by the teachers, the Betas and Omegas always being treated as if they were stupid or as if they were inferior to the Alphas. Some people had left the class, all omegas who had been forced to stop studying as, according to their parents or guardians, they would not need to in order to be good spouses. Even if they continued with their studies they thought the omegas were too dumb to understand any of the subjects and therefore it was not worth wasting the time of the teachers and the other students. Cases of omegas being raped in the streets and even inside the school went up and up, beating the previous year by 20%.

Knowing all this, The Party stayed together 24/7, swearing to each other that all the nonsense in society would never divide them or change their dynamic, also promising to protect each other from all those horrible dangers.

And now, as usual, the six pups were in the Wheeler's basement, talking about various things and playing board games. Mike's parents and Holly had gone to Karen's sister's house for a few days, but, as Nancy and the boy had insisted on staying, they now had the house all to themselves.