Royal Pain || Stranger Things

thirty-five || charged batteries

"Where the hell did she go?"

Panicked eyes averted to Eleven, searching for some kind of answer to an impossible question.

"I don't..." Suspended on one leg with the help of Max and Mike, El shrugged profusely. "She's in the Upside Down."

"Why would she want that?" Will barked, running up to the spot Tatum had disappeared and looking for any hint of the gate. "She's the one who said if the gate opens, he only builds faster."

"She did say that it's the last thing the Mind Flayer would expect," Nancy offered hesitantly. "He's looking for us right now, so why would he think she'd risk it all?"

"Guys!" Steve, donning not only a battered face but his trusty bat broken out of the trunk of his abandoned car, busted through the outer door of the mall with Dustin at his side, the two bolting to the center.

Although Dustin was embraced lovingly by his friends and tried to rehash the madness of his time stuck in the Russian base, it was Steve who turned in an unsettled circle with the bat resting over his shoulder.

"Where's Tatum?" he asked, voice drawing the others into silence.

"She..." Nancy's eyes flickered to the spot she had been before she blinked out of the world. "She opened the gate."

"No..." Steve laughed, only for it to fall short. "No, no there's no way she would do that."

"For real," said Lucas. "She opened the gate, and then it ate her."

Max's brows furrowed. "What! It did not eat her! She ran inside!"

"Why the hell would she do that?" Steve stressed, hand raising to his forehead.

Static suddenly shuffled through the air, a blinding light causing the others to tear their eyes away from the source.

The rift opened just where it had closed, orange and red hues pooling out as the curdling shrieks of demo-dogs littered into reality.

And what came out of it was not only one figure, but two.

Steve yelped as a mouthed hand extended through the rift, reaching out for those who had escaped it. He raised his bat as the gate began to close, swinging down hard and connecting with the goo-like limb, severing it from the body and trapping the rest on the other side as the rift sealed.

Heartbeats ran high as the mall settled back into the silence, only fitted with the sound of heavy breathing and distant fireworks.

The bundled up pair on the ground, enveloped around each other and covered in the ectoplasm that came with entering the Upside Down, began to pull apart.

"Oh, my God," Steve whispered, stepping back as Tatum's face became clear.

Ever since learning of her existence, Steve knew how badly Tatum wanted to rescue her sister. To retrieve her from the hell she had been forced into by those that were supposed to raise her. Tate had stayed behind from going back to England just in case there was ever the chance she could bring her home.

And there Nina was, slowly rising from the ground and taking in her surroundings.

"Holy shit," Dustin laughed, mouth opening in a wide grin. "That's insane. She looks just like her."

Tatum pushed now-slicked hair out of her face, breathing heavily as she looked to the cluster of friends staring in awe. "Backup." She laughed out of not only exhaustion, but surprise, pulling in the smaller version of herself into a tight hug.