𝐖𝐎𝐑𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐍𝐓 : 3.5k

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

𝐇𝐎𝐏𝐏𝐄𝐑, 𝐉𝐎𝐘𝐂𝐄, 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐑𝐀𝐘 𝐂𝐀𝐌𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐈𝐑 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐉𝐔𝐒𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄.

Well, kind of.

"Hey, heads up!" Owen watched from across the food court as Hopper tossed a walkie into Dustin's hands. "You can navigate, just from somewhere safe." However, the chief was too distracted with tuning into a specific station to notice Dustin staring down at the radio perplexedly.

"It's not that simple," the younger boy informed him.

"The signal won't reach," Erica confirmed.

"Not with this, anyway. You need something with a high enough frequency band to relay with the Russians' radio tower," Dustin continued, rattling off these details at a speed that was almost hard to understand. "But for that to work, you need someone who has both seen their comms room and has access to a superpowered, handcrafted radio tower, one preferably already situated at the highest point in Hawkins."

Hopper delivered a slow blink, unsure why Dustin was telling him this pertinent, plan-altering information now — especially when the little smirk on his face told a whole different story.

"Oh, wait. That's me," Dustin announced with ample amounts of sarcasm. But it soon melted away, revealing something more... genuine beneath his cocky exterior. "If you want us to navigate, you got us. But we need a head start... and a car."

With an overly dramatic sigh and a stern, very fatherly speech about being careful, Hopper handed off a set of jangly keys to Steve. Once he spotted the Cadillac key on the ring, Owen could practically feel Steve buzzing beside her as their little group — the Scoops Troop, as Dustin had deemed them — made their way to the nearest exit. Steve burst through the double doors first, coming face-to-face with the admittedly impressive, pale yellow convertible that Hopper had loaned them.

"Oh, man! Now this... This is what I'm talkin' about!" Steve gushed.

And while Owen did want to feel excited, she couldn't help but notice that this wasn't Hopper's usual ride. She glanced sideways at Robin, uncertainty written on her bloodied features. "Guess Hopper retired the ol' Blazer?"

Robin's eyes zeroed in on the vanity plate. "And started going by... The Toddfather?"

"Oh, screw Todd! Steve's her daddy now!" Steve exclaimed, joyfully.

Owen hadn't seen him this happy in days and honestly, it was pretty infectious. She couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out of her as he launched himself up and into the driver's seat with a toothy grin on his face. Owen took the more sensible route and tugged the passenger door open, allowing Robin, Erica, and Dustin to pile into the cramped back seat.

"Did he just talk about himself in the third person?" Robin murmured, scooching past.

Owen repressed a smile and nodded. "And called himself daddy," she confirmed, sliding in the passenger seat once everyone was in. She cast a look over the fancy leather seats, feigning a look of terror. "Are we sure that serum wore off? I mean, should he be operating heavy machinery right now?"

Steve breezed a hand through the air, visibly brushing off her comments. "Alright, where are we going?" he asked, making the conscious decision to ignore her teasing.

"Weathertop," Dustin replied.

"Weather-what?" Steve spun around to look at him.

Dustin's eyes rolled — now a natural instinct in response to Steve's cluelessness. "Just drive!"

"Okay. Jesus!" But Steve's exasperated tone was drowned out by the satisfying thrum of the car starting up. He cast a quick, invigorated look over at Owen in the passenger seat before he threw the car into reverse. They shot backwards only a couple feet, only to be sent soaring forward through the parking lot of Starcourt Mall mere seconds later, headed straight for the highest point in Hawkins.

☆゜·。。·゜゜·。。·゜★

Every pair of eyes was on the road ahead, looking for the entrance to Dustin's beloved Weathertop. The air was humid, but cool, as it whirred past the convertible, jostling everyone's hair and making their skin feel all sticky. It had apparently rained at some point, making all of the roads reflect the silvery moonlight. But even with the condensation accumulating on her skin, Owen knew that anything felt better than the stale, stagnant air of the Russian base they had been trapped in not too long ago. Owen was pretty sure that if she survived this, she would never complain about anything ever again.

"Jesus, how far is this thing, man?" Steve griped, shouting over the wind.

Dustin's lips dipped into a frown. "Relax, okay? We're almost there."

"Suzie must be pretty special, huh?" Robin mused. "I mean, if you built this thing and lugged it all the way to the middle of nowhere just to talk to her?"

A soft smile pulled at the edges of Owen's lips. "It is pretty romantic, Dustin," she agreed. Her head lolled across the headrest and Owen swore she could almost make out the rosy flush that flooded his cheeks if it weren't for the darkness that blanketed all of them.

"I mean, nobody's scientifically perfect, but Suzie's about as close to being perfect as any human could possibly be," he shrugged.

"She sounds made-up to me," Erica chimed in before nudging Steve. "She sound made-up to you?"

Steve's silence was deafening.

"Why are you hesitating, Steve?" Dustin snapped, immediately feeling defensive.

"I'm– I'm not! I'm not. I think she sounds... real. Y'know... Totally, absolutely real."

"Left! Turn left!"

Dustin's sudden instruction caused Steve's eyes to wildly dart around the surrounding area, seeing only dark trees and overgrown grass. "There's no road here!"

And although this seemed accurate from Owen's perspective in the passenger seat, Dustin wasn't letting up. "Turn left now!" he insisted.

Steve blindly trusted the only navigator they had and yanked the steering wheel sideways. The car nearly went up on two wheels as it went veering off of the road, careening straight through a tired, old fence. The entire group screamed and shouted in unison as wooden planks went flying past their heads. And then, they were headed up a hill, rumbling over the grassy knoll with no visible road ahead.

"Henderson! Where are we going?" Steve hollered.

His only response?

"Up!"

They only made it part of the way there before the engine started groaning beneath the hood of the car. Steve was fighting the steering wheel, doing his best to force it to stay straight. Meanwhile, Robin and the kids were just trying to remain in their seats as the uneven terrain attempted to launch them out of the vehicle.

"We're not gonna make it!" Robin cried out, holding Dustin and Erica down by the shoulders.

"Yes, we are!" Steve said with that persevering spirit of his. He smacked the dash a couple of times for good measure, like that would get any more power out of their struggling engine. "Come on, baby! Come on!"

This treatment seemed to have upset the fancy Cadillac, as it only took a split second for it to finally sputter out only halfway up the hill. Despite Steve's heavy foot on the gas, the wheels just spun rapidly, slinging mud across the pale yellow paint job instead of actually going anywhere.

"Looks like the Toddfather has its limitations," Robin muttered.

With a defeated sigh, Steve pulled the keys from the ignition and the group began to climb out. The tall grass was crushed beneath the soles of their shoes as they ascended Weathertop, illuminated only by the car's golden headlights and the moon overhead. Although the hill didn't look very steep, nearly all of them were out of breath by the time they reached the peak. The night air chilled the beads of sweat on Owen's brow as Dustin got busy setting up his nifty radio tower. Naturally, once it was all ready, he had the honors of making the very first call.

"Bald Eagle, do you copy? Bald Eagle, I repeat, this is Scoops Troop, do you copy?"

A moment of silence, followed by Murray's sarcastic voice. "Yes, I copy."

Excitement rippled through the group once they realized that their plan was actually working.

"Call sign?" Dustin asked, just wanting to double-check.

Owen could hear the annoyance in Murray's tone when he replied, "Bald Eagle."

"Please repeat."

"Bald Eagle! This is Bald Eagle!"

"Copy that. Good to hear your voice, Bald Eagle. What's your 20?"

Owen's hand flew up to cover her mouth, afraid that a giggle may escape while she loomed over Dustin's shoulder. But she couldn't help it! It was just too cool! Like, it really seemed as if Dustin had been preparing for this moment his whole life.

"We reached the vent. I'll contact you when I need you. Until then, silence."

"Roger that, Bald Eagle. This is Scoops Troop going radio silent. 10-10, over."

With a chipper beep, their radio was officially offline for the time being. Now, all they had to do was wait for Murray to call in with a question. This had to have been the easiest thing they had done all day — by far.

For a while after that, they would get communications from Murray every couple of minutes. Dustin, Robin, and Erica relayed directions through the vent network — a system that Owen and Steve had never even seen. Steve took this as a chance to rest. He had plopped down in the grass beside Robin, his knees drawn up so that he could rest his arms atop them. He looked simply serene, left with a rare moment of no responsibilities.

But Owen was far too anxious to do anything but pace. She needed to keep her mind busy, fully aware that if she gave it even a second of reprieve, it would turn on her and start working through every pessimistic possibility it could come up with. So, she settled on detailing each of her surroundings: The full moon framed by an array of fluffy clouds that only allowed the twinkling stars to peek out when the cool breeze jostled them just right. The dewy grass that was so tall, Owen could feel it brush against her fingertips from time to time, the tickle of it making her palm twitch. A symphony of frogs and crickets as the background music to the evening, sitting just beyond the firefly-speckled trees.

Owen noticed Steve staring at her by accident — right when she thought that she noticed everything. But she was still caught off-guard every single time she found him already fixated on her. Her eyes had scanned over him in a daze, completely unaware that he had been admiring her the entire time. Although, when he was caught, he didn't avert his eyes like most people would. No, his hazel eyes remained transfixed, full of unabashed infatuation. The weight of his gaze pinned her in place, miraculously halting her fretful pacing. All she could do was mirror him, her brows knitting together desperately, hoping that he could feel how adored he was. She needed to tell him, to utter it aloud, but this was not the time — even if the words were threatening to bubble out of her chest.

Of course, their period of relaxation was short-lived. A familiar sensation of dread sunk into the pit of Owen's stomach, drowning the butterflies that had taken flight there. Her palms grew clammy and her hands instinctively balled into tight fists. But something about this sensation was... different. It felt oddly distant, like her sixth sense was being muffled somehow. Although, the sheer horror that had infiltrated her mind was just as intense as one would expect.

"Guys?" There was a quaver in her voice when she spoke. Even with this abnormality in her detection abilities, Owen still turned in every direction, searching for some kind of incoming danger or lurking evil, but she struggled to see anything beyond the shadowy treeline. It wasn't until a cluster of flashing lights in the distance caught her eye that she realized why this specific sense was so subdued.

The danger was elsewhere — more specifically, at the mall with its noticeably broken glass ceiling.

"Guys, something's wrong!"

The group was at her side in an instant, easily spotting the core of her concern by following her stare. However, it didn't take long for Dustin to dash back to his radio. The others crowded around him, their wide eyes observing him as he switched stations. His voice trembled as he shouted into the microphone, hoping to get in touch with the rest of their party. "Griswold Family, Babbage's Bunch, this is Scoops Troop! Do you copy? Over!" When no one answered, he repeated himself, even more desperately than before, only to be interrupted by a resounding thud and an otherworldly screech.

That was definitely not a good sign.

But Owen wasn't going to wait around and foolishly hope that she was just misinterpreting that signal. Clearly, the others had been intercepted in some way and were in need of assistance. So, she pushed to her feet and stared down at Steve with an outstretched hand and a determined look in her eye. "Steve, give me the keys."

His big, hazel eyes blinked up at her. "What? Why?"

"Something is wrong! They wouldn't just ignore us if they weren't in danger. Someone needs to go help them."

"Owen, you can't just–"

"I swear to god, Steve! Just give me the damn keys!" She impatiently shoved her waiting palm even closer to his face. If he didn't hand them over to her, she would sprint all the way back to the mall if she had to. Hell, she was even considering all the ways in which she could fight them out of his grasp if he refused.

Instead, he stood to his full height and pulled in a deep breath. "Then I'm coming with you."

Owen normally would have fought him on this, wanting nothing more than to keep him as far from the danger as possible, but if this was the only way she could make it back to the mall in time, then she really needed to pick her battles. She blew a harsh breath through her nose and gave a curt nod. "Fine. Let's go," she gritted.

The two of them bounded back down the hill, but before they were gone for good, Dustin had enough of a mind to toss his extra walkie talkie into Steve's hands. "Stay in touch!" he instructed. Then, with a final thumbs up, Owen and Steve were out of sight, disappearing beneath the curve of the hill.

The ride back to the mall was tense, silent aside from the whoosh of wind past Owen and Steve's ears. She held the walkie talkie in her sweaty palms, one of her knees bouncing with each passing moment of radio silence from the Griswold Family and her brothers. All she could think about was all of the catastrophic possibilities, each of them involving her dearest friends and family. It was all so nightmarish, minus the ability to actually wake up.

When Steve whipped into the parking lot, all Owen could see at first was Nancy's station wagon parked several paces in front of a busted-up blue Camaro. Upon further inspection, this was a car that Owen was intimately familiar with, much to her dismay. Through the cracked window, Owen thought she could make out the wiry strands of Billy Hargrove's blond mullet, all matted with blood and sweat. But as she and Steve got closer, the rev of his car's engine became much more important than his disheveled appearance — especially since Nancy was standing right in between his headlights.

Owen watched in horror as Billy's car suddenly raced forth, speeding right towards Nancy. Gunshots rang out through the parking lot as Nancy fired bullets through Billy's windshield, shattering the glass and denting the hood, but doing little to slow him down. "Faster, Steve!" Owen demanded, her eyebrows pinched together as she watched the scene unfold before them. Following her orders, Steve slammed his foot against the gas pedal and sent them surging forward. But when the increase in speed was only slight, Owen knew that they weren't going to be able to make it in time.

So, she trusted her gut.

The walkie talkie clattered to the floorboard as she reached a hand out, feeling the energy instantly shoot outwards from her palm and into the ground below Billy's car. A burst of soil and concrete erupted just in time to send the Camaro hurtling away from Nancy. Time seemed to slow as they all watched Billy's car flip backwards through the air and land on its roof with an ear-ringing crash. Glass scattered across the pavement and smoke began to pour from beneath the hood. Right in front of the crash, a sizable chunk of the parking lot was now missing, holed out by the power of Owen's terrified mind.

The tires of the Cadillac screeched as they pulled to a stop between Nancy and the newly formed crater. Steve was slack-jawed when he turned to check on Owen, a comforting hand gripping her shoulder. "Holy shit, Owen... Are you okay?"

A thick ring of blood tinted her nostril when she faced him, stark against her pallid complexion. If he didn't know any better, he would've thought she had seen a ghost. And with the way Billy had been acting, maybe she had in a way. A shaky breath escaped her lips, but she was interrupted by a gruesome chittering overhead before she could answer. Such a sound was so specific, so eerily familiar, that it was reminiscent of their antics in late 1983.

Both she and Steve's eyes tilted upwards just in time to see the gigantic, fleshy monster everyone had been talking about breach the edge of the building. And somehow, it was so much worse than she had imagined. The Mind Flayer's clawed feet wrapped firmly around the roof of the mall, burrowing into the drywall and glaring down at them from over the flickering neon sign. The roar that it let out caused the ground to shake and goosebumps to erupt along Owen's arms. As it growled viciously, she couldn't stop staring at the endless rows of bared teeth, lining every corner of its mouth, all the way back into the innermost depths of its throat. Its skin — if you could even call it that — rippled and moved on its own accord, like each inch of flesh had a mind of its own.

And maybe it did.

Owen had no way of knowing if all of those absorbed Hawkins residents were still cognizant, if they were aware of what was going on, if they were trying to fight back. She hoped that her mind was just being cruel and fabricating this horrific possibility, because the idea that Diana was in there, potentially being forced to commit all of these atrocities against children, no less... It was against everything she ever stood for. Just thinking about it made Owen's stomach turn.

"H-Holy shit..." she breathed, still unable to tear her eyes away.

It took honking the horn of Nancy's car for Owen to finally snap out of her daze. "Get in!" Nancy shouted from the passenger seat. The monster lurched forward, causing the building to crumble slightly. That was all they needed to see in order to be convinced of Nancy's course of action.

Owen snagged the radio from the floorboard before they clumsily scrambled into the trunk of Nancy's station wagon, slamming the door behind them right as Jonathan sped away. Through the back window, Owen watched the monster crawl off of the mall and into the parking lot. One of its enormous feet crushed the Cadillac like it was made of paper as it made an effort to catch up with them.

The mall drifted into the distance, growing smaller by the second. It didn't take long for Owen to realize how cramped the trunk was, forcing her gangly limbs into a tangle with Steve's. Her eyes met his in the dark, uncertainty written all over his freckled features. "Uh, here. I can..." He tried to readjust, to give her more space, but when she mirrored his actions, they just ended up with their knees and shoulders pressed tightly against one another's, anyway.

Steve winced, awkwardly glancing sideways at her. "Or maybe I can just–" He tried to make another move, but Owen's hand on his thigh stopped him in his tracks. "It's fine, Steve. I'm fine," she assured him, gently. She felt him relax against her, sinking into the soft material that lined Nancy's trunk.

Tense silence filled the car despite its copious amount of passengers. Owen surprisingly longed for the whoosh of wind past her ears that the convertible had given her. Growing up with Law had made her especially sensitive to any prolonged period of quiet, 'cause if he was keeping quiet, then something was seriously wrong.

Owen's eyebrows twitched downward. With what little mobility she had, she turned to examine the back of everyone's head in the car. The Byers' matching bowl cuts, Nancy's perm, Lucas's bandana. But her brothers' identical mops of curls? Nowhere to be found. The realization had her heart thundering in her chest, her breaths suddenly coming out all stuttery. Even though she was terrified of the answer, the question still left her lips.

"Where are my brothers?"