Chapter Seven:
A Fucking Hive Mind
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"Unbelievable! We leave her with you for a day, a day, and she's.. she's.." Mike snapped, glaring at Steve as he paced back and forth in the living room. "Well look at her! She was bleeding everywhere! How did you let this happen? Why?"

Steve sighed, feeling guilt spread from his heart through out his body. He didn't mean for Ramona to get hurt, especially not as much as she did. As much as he swore up and down, left and right, that he almost hated the girl, she wasn't actually that bad.

"Little man, you need to chillax. I'm fine." Ramona groaned, rollling her eyes. "You're making me dizzy just by looking at you!"

Mike huffed, stopping in his place and glancing at Ramona. "Fine!"

"I don't know how many people are left alive!" Hopper snapped, "I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper!"

Ramona yawned, walking over and standing beside Steve. "You think they'll find us?"

Steve glanced down at her, "I-I don't know."

Ramona grunted, rubbing her eyes as she subconsciously pulled on the tied fabric around her arm. "I better not see another one of those.. estúpidas perras de culo.."

"We'll see?" Mike snapped, drawing Ramona's attention away from Steve, "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"

"We stay here, and we wait for help." Hopper said sternly. Mike scoffed, rolling his eyes and crossing his arms as he leaned back in the chair.

"Wait for help my ass." Ramona muttered, "I'm fucking hungry, I'm tired, and I'm probably jobless.."

Steve sighed, "Hey, I heard they're opening a mall up or something.. Sometime this summer, I think."

"Shit, that's cool." Ramona nodded, "Maybe you can finally get yourself a job, Harrington."

"Oh, whatever, García." Steve scoffed, crossing his arms and leaning against the corner of the counter, his eyes trained on her.

Ramona laughed, licking her teeth as she tapped her foot against the floor. "Still hungry as shit, though."

Steve nodded in agreement, "After all this is over we can get somethin' to eat."

"Oh, fuck yeah.." Ramona mumbled quietly, watching as Mike got up and picked a small blue box off of the stack of books in the living room. He looked down at it, a solemn expression crossing his face.

"Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike said slowly, running his thumb along the corners of the box. Ramona sighed sadly, pushing herself off of the sink.

"Really?" Lucas knitted his eyebrows together.

Mike nodded, "He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fund-raiser for the equipment.. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him."

"Mr. Clarke was my favorite teacher." Ramona said, stretching out her back.

"Pretty awesome, right?" Dustin and Lucas nodded in agreement as Mike placed the blue box in the center of the table. "We can't let him die in vain."

"Well, what don you wanna do, Mike?" Dustin snapped, "Alright, the Chiefs right on this.  We can't stop those demo-dogs on our own, I mean, look what they did to Ramona."

"Demo-dogs?" Max questioned, causing all eyes to turn to her.

"Demogorgan.. dogs." Dustin folded his hands together. "Demo-dogs.. It's like a.. compound.. It's like a play on words-"

"Okay, I get it." Max said, an exasperated look on her face.

"I mean, when it was just Dart, then maybe.."

"But there's an army now." Lucas leaned his head on his arm with a huff.

"Precisely."

"His army."

"Huh?" Ramona looked up from her shoes.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked, knitting his eyebrows together.

"His army!" Mike repeated, "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army, too!"

Mike left the room, returning moments later with a piece of paper with a drawing of the mind flayer on it. Max held it in her hands as the group surrounded her while Dustin explained his idea.

"The shadow monster." Dustin pointed out, a look of realization on his face.

"It got Will that day in the field. The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him." Mike explained.

"And so this virus, it's connecting him to the tunnels?" Max asked slowly, looking up from the paper.

"To the tunnels, the monsters, the upside down, to everything!" Mike's voice began to speed up.

"So we have to kill the virus, and Will will be.. okay again? And this'll all be over?" Ramona nodded, scratching her head as she took the paper from Max's hands to show it to Steve.

"Woah, woah.. Slow down. Slow down." Steve said, looking over Ramona's shoulder at the drawing.

"Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything, and if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will." Mike explained, his voice becoming frantic.

"And so does Dart!" Lucas finished.

"Yeah, like what Mr. Clarke taught us."

"A fucking Hive mind!" Ramona shook her head, "This is.. fucking cool. Sorry for my French."

"The hive mind!" Mike clapped his hands together, pointing at her.

"Hive mind?" Steve asked, confusion clear in his voice and on his face.

"Connected minds." Ramona said simply.

"Yeah, it's a collective consciousness." Dustin continued on. "It's a super-organism."

"And this is the thing that controls everything.. It's the brain." Mike explained.

"Like the mind flayer!" Dustin said slowly. Ramona nodded, remembering when she used to join Nancy and dress up for Mike's campaigns.

"What?"

"Dusty roads, educate Harrington, please." Ramona said, nodding to herself as she watched Dustin disappear before reappearing minuted later, a large book in his hands. He slammed the book on the table, flipping through the pages until he found what he wanted.

"The mind flayer." Dustin read from the book.

"What the hell is that?" Hopper asked, a hint of annoyance in his tone.

"It's a monster from an unknown dimension." Dustin explained, "It's so ancient that it doesn't even know its true home. Okay, it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using its highly developed psionic powers."

Hopper rolled his eyes, "None of this is real. This is a kids game."

"No, it's a manual.. And it's not for kids!" Dustin argued. "And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"

"Analogy." Lucas corrected.

"Not now." Ramona rolled her eyes, "Don't start with me, either of you."

"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin ignored her, "Fine! An analogy for understanding whatever the hell this is."

"Okay, so this.. mind flamer thing-" Nancy raised her hands as she looked down

"Flayer. Mind flayer."

"What does it want?"

"To conquer us, basically. It believes it's the master race."

"Like the Germans?" Steve asked, glancing over at Ramona, causing her to shoot him a look.

"Uh.. The Nazis?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah.. The Nazis.." Steve stammered out, causing Ramona to roll her eyes and mutter to herself in Spanish.

"Uh, If the Nazis were from another dimension, totally. Uh, it views other races, like us, as inferior to itself."

"It wants to spread, take over other dimensions." Mike continued, looking around the group.

"We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it!" Lucas shook his head quickly.

"That's great!" Steve said sarcastically, "Yeah, that's really great! Jesus!"

Ramona huffed, watching as Steve walked away.

"Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it-" Nancy started, reading over the book in her hands.

"We kill everything it controls." Mike confirmed.

"We win."

"Theoretically."

"Hopefully." Ramona pointed at each of them.

"Great, so how do you kill this thing? Shoot it with fireballs or something?" Hopper asked, taking the book from Nancy's hands.

Dustin scoffed, laughing sarcastically. "No, no, no. No fire- No fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because.. because zombies. You know, they don't have.. brains.."

"We're all gonna die." Ramona muttered, walking away from the table and towards Steve. "We're all gonna die!"

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

{ A/n: i am: sleepy af,,, also them >>> }

{ Translations: Stupid ass bitches }