Back at the Byers house, the group sat, trying to gather themselves together and make a plan.
"They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asked after Hopper hung up the phone.
"We'll see," Hopper muttered, looking back at the group.
"'We'll see'?" Mike scoffed. "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"
"I hate to say it," Kim whispered to Steve. "But I kind of missed Mike's bitchy attitude."
"We stay here, and we wait for help," Hopper said through clenched teeth before walking out of the kitchen.
The two teens and four younger kids sat in silence for a while, Kim sitting on top of the counter and Steve leaning next to her. He wanted more than anything to wrap his arms around her or take her hand or kiss her, but didn't want to make her mad with Nancy being so close by.
"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike asked, walking over to the stack of puzzles and brain teasers Bob had brought by earlier.
Kim hadn't known Bob very well, but she had known that he was nice and that he made Joyce happy. In her book, that made him a pretty good guy. And after hearing about how he had died so that people she cared about could get out of the lab, made her feel that much worse that he was gone.
"Well, what do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin asked, her brothers outburst pulling Kim back into the conversation. "The Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own."
"Demo-dogs?" Max asked, raising her eyebrows.
Dustin looked at her with an exasperated expression. "Demogorgon. Dogs. Demo-dogs. It's like a compound. It's like a play on words-"
"Yeah, okay," Max interrupted, not used to him talking to her like that. "I get it."
Dustin sighed. "I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe-"
"But there's an army now," Mike nodded, knowing better than anyone else in the room just how many of those things there were. "His army."
"What do you mean?" Steve asked the young Wheeler boy.
"His army," Mike repeated, louder this time. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too."
"I'm sorry," Kim spoke up. "But who the hell are you talking about?"
Mike rushed away, coming back with the picture of the shadow monster than Will had drawn. "It got Will that day on the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."
"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked.
"To the tunnels, monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike nodded.
Kim and Steve exchanged a look, having no idea what the kids were talking about, but walked closer to the picture to try and understand. "Whoa, slow down," Steve told Mike.
"Okay so, the shadow monsters inside everything," Mike said, not realizing that Kim and Steve really had no idea who or what the shadow monster was. "And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will."
"And so does Dart," Lucas added.
Kim suddenly felt bad for beating the shit out of the baby demogorgons earlier, wondering how badly the cuts and stabs had hurt Will.
"Yeah, it's like what Mr. Clake taught us. The hive mind," Mike said.
"Hive mind?" Steve asked, having never paid attention during science class.
"A collective consciousness," Kim explained. "It's a super organism. And this," she pointed down at the shadow monster drawing, "must be the thing that controls everything. It's the brain."
Steve smirked at her. "When did you get all smart?"
"Would you two stop it before I throw up," Dustin cut in.
"Wait, I thought you and Nancy-?" Mike started to question Steve.
Dustin picked up the drawing and cut of the argument that was about to start. "It's like the Mind Flayer."
•••••
Once Dustin had Will's Dungeons and Dragons book out and everyone was packed into the small kitchen, Dustin started to explain what he was talking about. "The Mind Flayer."
"What the hell is that?" Hopper asked sceptically.
"It's a monster from an unknown dimension," Dustin started to explain. "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. It enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly-developed psionic powers."
Hopper rolled his eyes. "Oh, my God, none of this is real. This is a kids' game."
"No, it's a manual and it's not just for kids," Dustin defended.
"You got a better plan, Sock Hop?" Kim asked the chief.
Dustin was thankful that his sister was defending him as always. "Yeah, unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"
"Analogy," Lucas corrected.
Dustin glarred across the table at his friend. "Analogy? That's what you're worried about? Fine! An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."
"Okay, so the mind flamer thing," Nancy tried to say.
"Flayer. Mind Flayer," Dustin said, not bothering to hide his annoyance.
Nancy rolled her eyes, promising herself she was never having kids. "What does it want?"
"To conquer us basically," Dustin explained. "It believes it's the master race."
"Oh, like the Germans?" Steve asked, feeling like he could finally say something smart.
Dustin groaned. "Uh, the Nazis?"
Steve looked between Dustin and Kim, assuming that Nazis and Germans were the same thing. "Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Nazis."
"Uh, if the Nazis were from another dimension, totally," Dustin said. "Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."
"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions," Mike added.
"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it," Lucas said dramatically.
"That's great," Steve muttered, walking away from the table to try and calm down. "That's great. That's really great. Jesus!"
"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it?" Nancy questioned, trying to ignore a pacing Steve.
"We kill everything it controls," Mike answered his older sister.
"We win," Dustin nodded.
"Theoretically," Lucas reminded him.
"Great," Hopper said, taking the manual from Nancy. "So how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?"
Dustin laughed quietly at how little Hopper understood of the game. "No, no fire balls. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because zombies, you know, they don't have brains, and the mind flayer, i-it like brains. It's just a game. It's a game."
"Are you serious?" Kim mumbled, putting her head in her hands.
"What the hell are we doing here?" Hop snapped.
"I thought we were waiting for your military backup," Dustin fired back at him, having just as much attitude with the cop as his older sister would have.
"We are!" Hopper yelled.
"Even if they come, how are they gonna stop this?" Mike asked. "You can't just shoot this with guns."
"You don't know that!" Hopper yelled again, his nerves nearly at their breaking point. "We don't know anything!"
"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab," Mike reminded him, just slightly calmer than Hop.
"And we know the monsters are gonna molt again," Lucas said.
"And we know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin added.
"They're right," Joyce said, having just walked out of her bedroom. Her voice was hoarse from crying. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."
Hopper's eyes softened and Kim wondered, not for the first time, if Hop had a thing for Joyce. "Me too. Me too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."
"No, but he does," Mike said, his eyes on Will who was still knocked out on the couch. "If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know its weakness."
"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," Max said. "That he's a spy for the mind flayer now."
Mike sighed, his eyes still on his sleeping friend. "Yeah, but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."