Chapter Nine
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The Mind Flayer

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            Everyone met up at the Byers home. Hugs were shared between everyone, relieved to know everyone was safe, at least as safe as they could be at the moment. Olivia was informed by Hopper that Bob had sacrificed himself for them. She didn't know Bob too well, but he was so kind to her in the small time they knew each other. He didn't deserve to die. Joyce's happiness being taken away from that awful lab and those terrifying creatures fueled Olivia. In the mean time, Jonathan was comforting Will who was out cold on the couch, with Nancy putting a tender hand on his shoulder. Steve looked at them with a heartbroken expression.

            Olivia walked to over to him and patted him on the shoulder. She could relate to how he was feeling, it had shattered her heart to see Jonathan growing closer to Nancy. "I know how you're feeling." She confided in him. "You okay?" She asked softly.

            "I will be," Steve nodded and snuck both of his arms around her. He towered over the petite girl who was at least a good two heads shorter than him. "Guess we can call ourselves the heartbroken club," He joked, trying to lighten the mood (it didn't really work though). It made her kind of sad at how true it was. However, she supposed it was how her and Steve were able to bond and connect so quickly, through their shared heartbreak.

            "Hey, you need to rest," Steve told the girl gently.

            "I can't," Olivia shook her head and leaned in closer to him. "N-not with everything going on," Steve just held the girl tighter.

            Meanwhile, Hopper was exasperated as he tried to recruit more help on the phone with unfortunately no luck. He slammed the phone with frustration.

            "They didn't believe you, did they?" Dustin asked Hopper.

            "We'll see."

            "We'll see?" Mike huffed, who was sitting at the kitchen table impatiently. "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"

            "We stay here, and we wait for help," Hopper demanded and made his way over to Joyce's room.

            "Mike, Hopper's right," Olivia finally said. "I know it's hard to just sit here and do nothing. Believe me, I know. But this is the safest place to be right now."

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The party was sat around the kitchen table in sadness, taking a moment to remember Bob. Olivia leaned her head on Steve's shoulder as tears started streaming down her face. Steve gently held her close to him as if she were about to break.

            "Did you guys know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike acknowledged, breaking the silence. He was fiddling with Bob's blue rubik's cube as he spoke. Olivia smiled softly as Wheeler boy reminisced good things about Bob.

            Lucas widened his eyes. "Really?"

            Mike nodded with a small smile. "He petitioned the school to start it and everything. Then he had a fundraiser for equipment. Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"

            "Yeah," Dustin and Lucas chorused, finally seeming to be on the same page for the first time that night.

            Mike sighed and put the blue rubik's cube back on the table. "We can't let him die in vain."

            "Mike's right," Olivia spoke up and walked over to stand next to Mike. "He was a superhero. He risked his life to save all of us."

            "What do you want to do?" Dustin queried. "Alright, the Chief's right on this. We can't stop those Demo-dogs on our own."

            "Demo-dogs?" Max piped up.

            "Demogorgan. Dogs. Demo-dogs," Dustin gestured with his hands. "It's like a compound. It's like a play on words-" Olivia swat him on the shoulder softly, as a way to tell him to stop talking.

            Max's eyes grew big. "Okay."

            Dustin sighed and looked up at Mike. "I mean, when it was just Dart... maybe."

            "But there's an army now," Olivia concluded, starting to fiddle with the ends of her sleeves nervously.

            "Precisely," Dustin agreed.

            "His army," Mike sighed.

            Steve tilted his head, "What do you mean?"

            "His army!" Mike eyes lit up. "Maybe if we stop him, we can stop his army too."

            "I want to stop his army as much as you do, believe me. But how? I mean who knows how many Demo-dogs are out there?" Olivia queried.

            Mike rushed over to Will's room to grab his drawing of the shadow monster and handed it over to Olivia. A wave of realization came over him. "The shadow monster."

            "It got Will that day on the field," Olivia recounted.

            "Right," Mike nodded. "The doctor said it was like a virus, it infected him."

            "And so this virus," Max started to connect the dots. "It's connecting him to the tunnels?"

            "To the tunnels, to the monsters, the Upside Down, everything," Mike answered in a rush.

            "Woah, slow down, slow down," Steve cut in, overwhelmed by all of the new information.

            Mike patted Olivia on the shoulder. "You explain it to him Liv, he'll understand it better coming from you."

            Olivia felt her cheeks warm up and turned to face Steve who was already looking at her. "Okay so, the shadow monster's inside everything. And if the vines feel something like pain, then so does Will. And so does Dart." She tried to explain. She could relate to Steve very well at the moment, sometimes she didn't understand half the things Dustin said.

            "Yeah, it's like what Mr. Clarke taught us," Mike commented. "The hive mind."

            "Hive mind?" Steve stammered.

            "A collective consciousness. It's a super organism," Dustin simplified. Olivia patted his head and Dustin smiled at her. She wondered how he always seemed to know everything.

            Mike pointed to the shadow monster. "And this is the thing that controls everything. It's the brain." He added in.

            Olivia suddenly remembered something the kids had taught her about Dungeons and Dragons. "Like the mind flayer!" She chimed in. All the kids marveled at her, impressed and amazed at the smart analogy she had made.

            "The what?" Steve and Max exclaimed in unison, having been the only ones in the group who haven't played the game.

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            Once Dustin managed to find the Dungeons and Dragons manual, Olivia gathered everyone to the living room, including Hopper, Nancy, and Jonathan, to explain everything that they had figured out. The Henderson siblings teamed up to break down to the group what the mind flayer was, and Dustin slammed the book on the table for everyone to see.

            "The mind flayer," Dustin declared.

            "What the hell is that?" Hopper grunted.

            Olivia laughed, standing in the middle between Dustin and Steve. "It's a monster from another dimension." She answered. "It's so ancient that it doesn't know it's true home."

            "And it enslaves races of other dimensions by taking over their brains using their highly developed psionic powers." Dustin added in.

            "Oh my God, none of this is real, this is a kids' game," Hopper scoffed.

            Dustin looked at him in disbelief. "No, it's a manual, and it's not for kids. And unless you know something that we don't, this is the best metaphor-"

            "Analogy," Lucas corrected.

            "Analogy?" Dustin mocked. "That's what your worried about? Fine! An a apology for understanding whatever the hell this is." Olivia sighed and rubbed her temple, wondering how she was going to get through this with those two constantly bickering. Steve patted her on the back to comfort her.

            "Okay, so this mind flamer thing-" Nancy began to say, trying to process everything she just learned.

            "Flayer." Dustin corrected. "Mind flayer."

            Olivia shot him a glare. "Really Dusty? You literally just ranted to Lucas about correcting you about the analogy. Now your doing the same thing to Nance." The brunette scolded, swatting him lightly on the shoulder.

            "Um, ow?" Dustin whined, looking up at his sister. Olivia rolled her eyes. "And um sorry Nancy," He apologized, throwing his hands in the air.

            Nancy sighed at Dustin's antics. "What does it want?"

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

            "Oh like the... like the Germans." He chimed in to the discussion. He felt a little dumb that he knew nothing about Dungeons and Dragons, and he wanted to impress Olivia by saying something that he thought sounded smart.

            Dustin looked at him quizzically. "Uh, the Nazis?"

            Steve's face went beet red. "Yeah, yeah, yeah... the Nazis." He corrected himself quickly. Olivia thought it was quite cute how flustered he got. She patted him on the back and gave him a reassuring smile that made Steve's heart race.

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

            "It wants to spread, take over other dimensions," Olivia explained.

            "We are talking about the destruction of our world as we know it." Lucas declared.

            Steve stood up and put his hands on his head and walked over to the window. "That's great. That's great. That's really great."

            Nancy took a closer look at the manual. "Okay, so if this thing is like a brain that controls everything, then if we kill it..."

            "We kill everything it controls. We win," Olivia finished.

            "Theoretically," Lucas added in.

            "Alright, great. So how do you kill this thing? Shoot fireballs or something?" Hopper questioned.

            Dustin chuckles. "No, no no, no fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because..." He pauses for a moment when Hopper starts to scowl. "....because zombies you know, they don't have brains. And t-the mind flayer... i-it likes brains."

            Olivia walked over to him and nudged his shoulder. "Dustin, please stop talking." She told him politely. She looked up at hopper. "It's just a game."

            "Yeah..." Dustin gulped at Hopper's glare. "It's a game."

            Hopper slammed the book on the table. Everyone started to quarrel about how they should kill the demo dogs, while Hopper said again that they need to wait for his backup. Joyce then came out of her room which made everyone stop talking.

            "They're right," Her voice was small and broken. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."

            Hopper walked over to her. "Me too Joyce, me too. Okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

            "No," Mike chipped in. "But he does. If anyone knows how to destroy this thing, it's Will. He's connected to it. He'll know his weaknesses."

            "I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," Max reminded. "That he's a spy for the mind flayer now."

            "Yeah," Olivia breathed. "And is this even safe for him?"

            "You guys are right," Mike nodded. "But he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."