"Jude, you okay?" Mike knocked on the bathroom door, hearing heavy sniffles from the other side. "Come on, let me in."
"I'm fine." Jude called back, hoping Mike would just leave him alone. He found the dirty mirror infront of him, whipping his eyes as they appeared more blue then usually. He tried to pull himself together, Bobs death playing on repeated in his head. Jude hit his head, to try and rid the thought.
He began to think about how if he hadn't nominated Hopper, Bob wouldn't have jumped in with the idea, and they could have found a new way to get out. A way that didn't cause Bob to die right infront of him.
Jude pulled the cabinet open, placing his hand on the inside as he grabbed the door. With an inhale, he went to slam it before a knock came again, a soft voice ringing. "Open the door up, Lady Killer."
"I just wanna be alone." Jude said from the other side, talking to Dustin now.
"We know." it was Lucas this time. "But, we don't want to leave you alone."
"Jude, we need to be together." Mike spoke up, leaning on the door. "Just, talk to me."
Jude shut the cabinet after moving his hand, twisting the knob as he stared at the trio of boys. His eyes all puffy, pale skin now a red color, sadness across his shiny eyes. "I just don't want to do this."
"We know." Dustin frowned as Mike hugged him tightly, his arms tightening around his shoulders as Jude's head pressed into Mikes neck. He didn't want to cry, his masculinity already fragile enough today, even though that was never a big problem for him. But, now, for some reason, it just had been.
"Come on." Lucas rubbed his back. "I made you a sandwich."
The four walked back to the kitchen, where Max was. She turned to Jude, and he reddened in the face at a girl seeing him sad. He avoided her eye, taking a seat at the table infront of the sandwich Lucas made. Mike kept a hand on his shoulder the whole time, holding it in place as he started to look through the things Bob had brought for Will. "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?"
"Really?" Dustin spoke up in questioning.
Mike sat down next to Jude. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fund-raiser for equipment. Mr.Clarke learned everything from him."
Jude gave a tiny smile, whipping the mustard on his face. "I wish Mr.Clarke was here."
"Me too." Dustin had to agree.
"We can't let him die in vain." Mike brought the conversation back to Bob, looking around the table.
"What do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin spoke in annoyance. "The Chiefs right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own."
"Demo-Dogs?" Max looked over in disbelief.
"Demogorgon dogs." Dustin nodded.
"Kinda a mouthful." Jude admitted.
"Exactly." Dustin agreed, waving his hand. "Demo-Dog. It's like a compound. It's like a play on words-"
"Okay." Max cut him off quickly with a blink.
"I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe." Dustin admitted.
"But there's an army now." Lucas nodded his head.
"His army." Mike confirmed.
Jude looked up. "What?"
"His army." Mike repeated himself. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too."
Mike grabbed one of Wills drawings, showing it to them. Dustin nodded. "The shadow monster."
"It got Will that day on the field." Mike looked over at them, Jude slowly started to understand what he was saying. "The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."
"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max looked over in questioning.
"To everything, all of it." Jude agreed with Mike, thinking back to all the doctors had said.
"Whoa. Slow down. Slow down." Steve stopped them all with a raise of his hands.
"No, you keep up." Jude jabbed a finger his way.
"So, this shadow monsters inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will." Mike explained further to Steve as the Harrington teen listened intensely.
"And so does Dart." Lucas confirmed.
"Yeah. Like what Mr.Clarke taught us." Mike agreed with him. "The hive mind."
"Hive mind?" Steve looked in confusion.
"A collective consciousness. It's a super-organism." Dustin explained as he looked back at him.
"And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain." Mike spoke quickly, pointing at Wills drawing.
"Like the mind flayer." Dustin confirmed in shock.
Jude winced. "Are you freakin joking with my head?"
Lucas and Mike looked in just as panicked.
"The what?" Steve and Max asked on sync.
"The mind flayer." Dustin pulled one of Wills D&D books out to explain.
"What the hell is that?" Chief Hopper asked once he joined them, Nancy and Jonathan doing the same.
"My biggest nightmare." Jude admitted.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension. It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home." Dustin looked his way to explain it in the easiest way he could. "It enslaved races by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers."
"Oh, my god, none of this is real. This is a kids game." Hopper spoke in annoyance.
"Aye." Jude stabbed him with his index finger. "Do you need me to remind you what took Will the first time around? Doesn't seem like a kids game to be, man."
"It's a manual . It's not for kids." Dustin agreed with Jude.
"And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-" the curly haired boy began again.
"Analogy." Lucas corrected him.
"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin looked in disbelief. "Fine. An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."
"Okay, so this mind flamer thing-" Nancy began.
"Flayer. Mind Flayer." Dustin corrected him, Jude hit him in the arm.
"What does it want?" Nancy went on, looking his way.
"To conquer us, basically." Dustin agreed with a nod of his head. "It believes it's the master race."
"Like every other middle aged dad in this town." Jude mumbled under his breath with an eye roll.
"Like the Germans?" Steve asked, getting odd looks from around the table.
"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin blinked in his direction.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis." Steve agreed.
"Are you a Nazi, Steve?" Jude gapped at him.
"What?" the Harrington boy looked in offense his way.
"If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally." Dustin spoke in disbelief Steve's way. "Uh, it views otter races, like us, as inferior to itself."
"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." Mike helped him explain.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas agreed. Jude made a bomb noise, throwing his hands up in the air and twinkling his fingers back down.
"That's great. That's great. Thats really great. Jesus!" Steve paced around.
"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it-" Nancy read from the book.
"We kill everything it controls." Mike confirmed.
"Which we can't do." Jude pointed out.
"Why? We win." Nancy looked his way.
"Theoretically." Lucas sighed.
"Great. So how do we kill this thing? Shoot it with Fireballs or something?" Hopper yanked the book from Nancy's hands as he looked at the pages.
"No. No. No fireballs." Dustin chuckled in the slightest. "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 just a game."
"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper asked in disbelief, throwing the book back on the table.
"I thought we were waiting for your military backup." Dustin shot back his way.
"I see no military in sight." Jude spun in a circle. "Hello? Mr.Military? Are you here to save us while Hopper mocks any other logical plan?"
"How are they gonna stop this?" Mike asked the Chief in disbelief. "You can't just shook this with guns."
"You don't know that! We don't know anything!" Hopper yelled back at him.
"Don't yell at him for trying to think of a way to actually get all of us out alive." Jude defended Mike to Hopper. "We've already lost Bob."
"We know the monsters are gonna molt again." Lucas nodded his head.
"We know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town." Dustin agreed.
"They're right." a new voice rung, emerging from the hallway. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
Hopper walked her way. "Me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
"No." Mike spoke up knowingly, staring at a sleeping Will. "But, he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know it's weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore?" Max asked.
"We can't. But there might be another way." Jude looked in the redheads direction.
"Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is." Mike confirmed Jude's previous statements.
•
kylie speaks
i have this weird feeling
that jude is definitely in
slythrin for some reason.