wild one - steve harrington

child's play

As Mike stood up, breaking the stillness of the room, everyone turned to look at him, somewhat curious as to what he was thinking. Picking up a blue object, he snapped the silence in two. 'Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?' He asked, faintly.

'Really?' 

'He petitioned the school to start it and everything.' Mike continued, getting a tiny bit louder. 

Roxy leaned to her right over to Steve and quietly asked 'Who's Bob?' Steve responded with a shrug; he knew that if he told her, she'd forget in the following five seconds.

'...Then he had a fundraiser for equipment.' Mike said, in pride. 'Mr. Clark learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?' He finished, as he walked into the room. Roxy took note of everyone's sombre faces and decided to turn away, looking around the room and at the state of the house. 

'Yeah.' Dustin and Lucas said softly together.

'We can't let him die in vain.' Mike said with obvious determination. With her back turned to the kids, Roxy mouthed 'Oh, right.' in the realisation of who they were talking about.

'What do you want to do, Mike? The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on their own.' Dustin argued, Roxy wheeling around to watch.

'Demo-dogs?' Max asked with a fair amount of judgement. 

'Demogorgon... dogs. Demo-dogs.' Dustin explained, gesturing the joining of the two words. 'It's like a compound. Like a play on words-'

'Okay.' Max said as a harsh whisper.

'I mean, if it was just Dart, maybe...'

'But it's an army now.' Lucas said, and for the first time, Roxy was interested in listening to their conversation. She edged toward the table, the glint of psychopathic excitement in her eye that would scare anyone on her bad side. Knowing what they were up against, when Steve saw her eyes, he grew worried.

'Precisely.'

'His army.' Mike looked down at the table, some sort of reckoning dawning on him.

'What do you mean?' Steve said, turning to look at the table once more.

'His army! Maybe if we can stop him, we can stop his army too.' Mike explained frantically. He ran off to another room, causing the rest to follow him. In the next room, Mike lifted a piece of paper with a supernatural drawing on it, holding it for the group to see. 

'The shadow monster.'

'Cool name.' Roxy recognised.

'It got Will that day on the field.' Mike said. Roxy furrowed her eyebrows at these kids - they, somehow, knew a great deal about whatever in hell was going on around them. She slow-blinked at the fact that someone was proving to be better than her in a life or death situation. 'The doctor said it was like a virus. It infected him.' Mike continued.

'And, so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?' Max asked with understanding.

'To the tunnels, the monsters, the Upside Down, everything.'

'Woah. Slow down. Slow down.' Steve interjected, giving himself and Roxy a minute and another explanation of what's going on.

'Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything.' Mike started. 'And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will.'

'And so does Dart.' Lucas mentioned.

'Yeah. Like what Mr. Clark taught us. The Hive Mind.'

'Hive Mind?' Roxy and Steve asked synchronically, both confused.