Lucas dramatically announced, sending the rest of the room that wasn't already aware of what a mind flayer was, into hysterics.

Nancy let out a sigh and shook her head, while Steve started anxiously scraping his hands through his hair and backing away from the table.

"That's great!" He remarked sarcastically, his head nodding frantically as it usually did when he became stressed, "that's great! That's really great!"

"Of course," Ringo rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest with annoyance. "Finally meet a guy, and now the world's gonna end."

"Okay," Nancy shook her head, trying to refocus on the situation at hand and keep rational. Jonathan had just reentered the room, eyebrows furrowed with confusion at the book laid out on the table and the apparent meeting being held. "So if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it...?"

"We kill everything it controls," Mike answered for her, looking a little more positive than he had in days.

"We win," Dustin confirmed.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Ringo interrupted, eyes glancing between the kids for an explanation. "If we kill the brain thing, and that will kill everything it controls, won't that kill Will?"

"Not unless it's a parasite," Steve voiced from a few feet away, starting to recover from his minor breakdown. "Because then... we would just be killing the parasite and not the host, right?"

Without missing a beat, every head in the room turned to look at Steve with mild confusion, staring blankly at him in wonder of how he would come up with that conclusion.

"What?" He rolled his eyes, rejoining them by Ringo's side. "None of you are in Biology with me... it gets boring, I actually have to listen to the class."

"Great," Hopper stepped forward, all but pushing them aside to get a closer look at the Holy Grail of a book they recited from. "How do we kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"

"N-no, no fireballs," Dustin nervously chuckled, knowing the real answer was something much more weird and would stop anyone over the age of thirteen listening. "Uh, you summon an undead army... because you know... zombies don't have brains, and the mind flayer it likes brains..."

With those words, all eager expressions in the room dropped. Whatever idea Dustin had been dangling in front of them had turned out to be nothing more than a fantasy.

"It's just a game," he shrugged, immediately receiving an eye roll and the smacking sound of the book slamming down from Hopper.

"What the hell are we doing here?" He grumbled.

"I thought we were waiting for your military backup," Dustin retorted with a sarcastic quirk of his brows.

"We are!"

"Look," Ringo stood up straight, her eyes boring into the Chief's in the hopes of getting him to listen. "This may have been some science fiction game-"

"RPG," Dustin corrected.

"Oh my god, shut up," she looked at him incredulously before turning back to Hopper. "But they may have been onto something. They're obviously all connected, but Will isn't one of those things. He's got one of those things inside him. Kill the host and hope that it kills the rest of them off."

When she finished, the entire room gave her a look similar to the one they gave Steve - full of disbelief and mild shock.

"Woah," Nancy whispered from beside her, sounding vaguely impressed.

"Hey, Daphne can be smart too," she bantered in return, confidently flicking her blonde hair over her shoulder.

"If that's the case, how would we even kill it? You can't just shoot it with guns," Mike argued, directing his frustration towards Hopper instead of his cousin.

"First of all, we don't know anything," he pointed at Ringo before turning his attention to Mike, "and second of all, you don't know that!"

"We know it's already killed everyone in that lab!"

"And we know the monsters are going to molt again!" Lucas added.

"And we know it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin voiced, all heads faced towards Hopper, searching for guidance in their time of darkness. Jonathan didn't speak once, something Nancy and Ringo didn't fail to notice. He wasn't the type of person to speak out often when in a crowd anyway, but this wasn't the same. He looked like he was about to completely give up.

"They're right," a new voice cut through the room, hoarse with stress and previously shed tears. Joyce Byers appeared in the doorframe, looking worse for wear than her eldest son. A pang of sympathy shot through Ringo - not only had she just lost the man she loved, for all she knew - she was about to lose a son too.

"We have to kill it," she agreed, fists clenched by her sides. "I want to kill it."

"Me too, me too, okay Joyce?" Hopper approached her, voice audibly softer when speaking with her. If the circumstances were different, Steve and Ringo would have commented on a potential budding relationship. "But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

"No," Mike interrupted, slowly stepping toward the bedroom where he knew Will was laying, "but he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He connected to it, he'll know its weakness."

"I thought we couldn't trust him? That he's a spy for the mind flayer?" Max reminded him.

"Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."

"How are you going to do that?" Steve questioned, confusedly looking at the younger boy. "Fill him with alcohol?"

Joyce and Hopper seemed to have a realisation of sorts, looking to each other with determination.

"The garden shed," she offered, the chief of police immediately nodding with agreement and rushing off towards the back door.

"You'd have been able to help with the alcohol thing," Steve teased into Ringo's ear, quietly - so no one else would hear. He didn't want to make light of the situation, but he also knew Ringo was panicking, and wanted to keep her from getting too wound up. "Because you never know where you are when you're drunk."

"Be that as it may," she whispered in return, following after everyone who approached the windows to look out, "I actually drink just to be able to put up with kissing you."

"Out of nervousness?" He smirked slyly.

"Out of disgust," she returned his grin, lightly smacking his cheek in playfulness.

✵

Hopper's idea had led them to the garden shed, where everyone was tasked with covering up every distinguishable feature inside it. If it had been any other circumstance, everyone under the age of eighteen would complain about the workload. But Will's life was at stake, which was enough to cause everyone to take the job seriously.

Nancy tacked plastic bags onto the wall, Steve was using tape to cover larger areas with sheets and Ringo was wrapping the support beam with wrapping paper leftover from last Christmas. While they did so, the kids scoured the house for anything else that could be used.

"So," Ringo sighed, breaking the silence as she wound the roll of paper around the beam, almost dizzying herself as she walked around the pole, "anyone else mentally freaking out?"

"Oh my god, yes," Nancy exhaled loudly, entire posture relaxing at the confirmation she wasn't the only one.

"Holy shit balls, I mean-" Steve's eyes widened, shaking his head lightly, "this is insane. This is insane. I feel like I'm in a horror movie."

"Well I'd hope not, pretty jocks tend to die first," Ringo grinned sarcastically, unrolling the cardboard sheet once it unveiled after she ran out of wrapping paper. She figured it could be spread out and tacked somewhere else.

"Aw," he waved his hand, pretending to be bashful, "you think I'm pretty?"

"You two are ridiculous," Nancy chuckled under her breath, their dynamic still something completely foreign to her.

"That ceiling is gonna need to be covered too," Ringo commented, her head tilting back as her gaze trailed over it. The roof was a dead giveaway - all Will would have to do was look up and know immediately where he was.

Rubbing the back of her forehead with her hand, she grabbed the ladder from next to Steve and settled it in the corner, ready to get to work on hiding the ceiling.

"So Nancy," Ringo began curiously, grabbing a spare staple gun and a mini-tarp as she ascended the ladder, "what happened with the... thing?"

"Thing?" Steve echoed, turning around with narrowed eyes. "What thing?"

"Nothing!" Nancy replied, her voice too high to believable.

"Something!" Ringo encouraged, knowing Steve wouldn't be put out by her decision to seek justice for Barb.

"I really don't think I should tell-" Nancy's eyes were desperately wide at Ringo, shaking her head quickly and making a cutting motion at her neck as a signal.

"Steve's not going to be mad, Nancy!" Ringo disputed. "I'll tell him if you want, it's no big deal!"

"Um... okay?" Nancy's expression screwed up awkwardly, taking a deep breath before continuing, "Jonathan and I had se-"

"Oh my god, no!" Ringo called out to interrupt her, holding back a bark of laughter. "Not that! The Barb thing!"

"Oh!" Nancy gasped, her free hand clapping over her mouth. Steve looked back and forth between both cousins, baffled by their interactions. He took a minute to think, the eventual look of realisation on his face was absolutely priceless.

Steve whipped around with an amused grin, pointing his finger accusingly at Nancy.

"You and Jonathan fucked!" He shouted, a little too loud, albeit. Immediately, Ringo and Nancy winced at his volume, hoping nobody inside heard.

"What?" A voice at the door cut through the small shed, the trio whipping around to see Jonathan standing with a dumbfounded expression.

"Oh, Jonathan!" Nancy gasped, her face flushing scarlet. Ringo and Steve made immediate eye contact, their postures stiffening at the sudden awkwardness.

"C-Can we just focus on saving Will, please?" He stammered, almost as red as Nancy was. If it hadn't been for the events of the day, he'd have been even more embarrassed than her. But he didn't have time to dwell, disappearing again after dropping a bundle of tinfoil onto the ground.

Nancy looked as if she had swallowed a bug, turning back to complete the wall in total silence. Steve, feeling guilt over exposing their gossiping, placed a comforting, but awkward, hand on her shoulder.

"Um... don't worry about it... champ?" He grimaced at his words, deciding it was probably the wrong thing to say.

"'Champ', Steve?" Ringo repeated, a dry tone in her voice. "Really?"

"Well, what else can you say to your ex-girlfriend who reveals she's banging your friend?" He lifted his grip off to hold his hands up in defence, shuffling forward to lift a roll of tinfoil.

Ringo smiled slightly to herself at his use of the word 'friend'. Steve would never admit it, nor would Jonathan, but they weren't as distant from each other as they thought.

✵

Waiting inside the house was more stressful than one would imagine, and thus, the occupants were forced to distract themselves. Mike, Joyce, Jonathan and Hopper had dragged Will to the shed for his interrogation. Dustin nervously paced past Ringo for the seventh time, who was currently shuffling through the cupboards for snacks. She ate when she was nervous.

"So Nancy, I didn't know you and Jonathan were a thing," Lucas called out with a smirk from his position on the ground, the girl in question's mouth falling open in shock.

"Hah!" Steve laughed, dropping his bat down to rest against the wall and leaning on the doorframe. "Classic."

"W-what?" Nancy sputtered, her eyes wide. "How do you know?"

"Everyone knows," Dustin rolled his eyes, leaning against the wall next to the window and keeping an eye out for movement. "We all heard Steve shouting."

"Thanks again, Ringo," Nancy smiled tightly.

"I did nothing," the blonde shrugged, breaking open a banana and dipping it into a jar of Nutella she found.

"God, how can you eat?" Max shook her head in disbelief, watching with narrowed eyes as the older girl took a bite of the banana.

"Easily?" Ringo answered, mimicking her facial expression.

Their chatter was disrupted by Hopper barging through the back door, practically diving for the bookcase and frantically flipping through each book until he found the one he was looking for.

"It's dotted decimal," he said with a rushed voice, as he scanned down the page, barely sparing Ringo a glance before calling to her in a shout. "Get pen and paper!"

"Ah! Okay!" Ringo shouted back, panicked by his tone. Quickly, she ripped open the drawer and whipped out a notepad and pen, tossing it towards the table for him to use. He began to sketch out a short series of dots and lines, before aligning it with the corresponding symbol in the book to get a letter.

"H-E-R-E," he read out, looking up for a moment before darting back towards the shed.

"What just happened?" Steve asked aloud, when all was silent for a minute. They all jumped when the next to burst inside was Jonathan, making a direct beeline for his bedroom. He pointedly didn't make eye contact with any of them; not even Nancy, who looked visibly wounded by that fact.

"He's just worried about Will, it's not personal," Ringo whispered to her, sidling up beside her and hooking their elbows together.

"I know, I know," Nancy waved off, but her expression was still tight nonetheless.

He barely looked at anyone when he returned either, his tape deck in hand and a determined expression on his face. Before reaching the handle of the back entrance, Jonathan whipped around and finally laid eyes on Nancy, his lips quirking up ever so slightly.

"Hopper is going to use the radio to relay dashes and dots that we get from Will, we need you guys to translate them into words. Okay?" He didn't wait for a response, all heads nodding in acceptance anyway and rushing to crowd around the table.

Lucas dived for the radio, which was already in the correct frequency, and ensured it was fully turned up. Ringo fetched another sheet of paper, handing it to Nancy to write with. Dustin and Max readied themselves with the book, prepared to translate at any minute. Steve looked like a fish out of water, unsure of how he could help but willing to offer his assistance nonetheless.

It was a couple of minutes before the first letter came through, which Dustin shouted across the table - a 'C'. Steve came around the table to stand next to Ringo, naturally gravitating towards her. She looked up upon sensing the presence beside her, a small smile rising on her lips before she returned her attention to Nancy's handwriting.

It took a while, but eventually a series of letters were wrote that could be made into two separate words.

"Clo Segate?" Steve read aloud, his eyebrows furrowed, "is that a name?"

"No, you dumb bitch, it says 'Close Gate'," Ringo screwed up her expression, biting back a laugh at his face of realisation. Nancy simply rolled her eyes, a sense of hope dawning on her. She didn't know what it meant, but it was possible Hopper and Joyce did.

Steve gestured for the walkie-talkie, ready to relay their findings to Hopper, but the shrill ring of the telephone cutting across the room froze the entire group mid-action.

Ringo was the first to respond, being the closest, all but leaping for the phone and lifting it off the hook.

"Not a good time!" She managed to make out, before slamming it down with a resounding click. It only took a second or two for the phone to ring once more, spurring a desperate response from Nancy as she ripped it off the wall and flung it across the ground.

The three teenagers met eyes, equal looks of horror and dread filled in each.

"Do you think he heard that?" Max asked, voicing everyone's thoughts.

"It's just a phone," Steve tried to play it down, "it could be anywhere, right?" Just on cue, a chorus of howls roared in the distance, dragging everyone's feet towards the nearest window to look out at the dark night.

"That's not good..." Dustin commented. His remark broke Steve and Ringo's temporary shock, forcing them to re-locate their weapons in the living room and start mentally preparing for what was sure to be a bloodbath.

Jonathan and Joyce smacked the door open, causing everyone to jump before they revealed themselves, carrying Will in their arms. Mike followed afterward, much to Nancy and Ringo's relief. Hopper's entrance was delayed for a few seconds, but when he appeared, he was carting two guns in tow - an assault rifle and a hunting rifle.

"Get away from the windows!" He barked at Max, Lucas and Dustin, prompting them to scamper away like scared mice. He reared around on a shaken Jonathan, who was growing paler by the second. "Do you know how to use this?"

"W-what?" Jonathan stammered with a gulp. The chief sighed and asked the next teenager close to him, which happened to be Steve.

"Can you use this?!"

"I'm- um- only at the fair!" He blurted, his nervousness increasing tenfold at Hopper's panicked tone. If the Chief of Police was scared, what chance did an assortment of kids and teenagers have?

"I can use it!" Nancy pushed through, catching the gun expertly after Hopper tossed it through the air. If they weren't about to look death in the eye, Ringo would have made a comment about girl power. But that was for another time.

The screeching in the distance closed in as they formed a defensive barrier by the window, all those armed standing in front of the vulnerable kids behind them. Ringo's thumb rubbed over the engraving of her name she had carved the day before, as she poised her axe over her shoulder and mentally prepared for the worst.

The monsters were surely in the front garden now, if not seconds away from breaking in. A loud thudding noise sounded out, seemingly carrying the creature's howl around to the East side of the house.

"What are they doing?" Nancy panted, nearly out of breath from the anxious tightening in her chest. All occupants in the house were feeling the tension rise.

A snarling that caused Joyce to cry out reached the front window, causing them to whip back around to face the front again.

The animals groaned, almost as if they were in some sort of pain. Of course, they didn't shut down the possibility it was some sort of trap.

Without any preceding sign, one of the creatures suddenly exploded through the window, eliciting a scream from all those inside. It hurtled through the air straight for Ringo, who's reflexes caused her to swing out and slice her axe into the neck of the thing, dropping it to the ground. With one eye on the now open window, the group watched tentatively as Ringo placed her Converse-covered shoe against the carcass and whipped her axe out of its neck.