Ross sat on the kitchen counter of the Byers household, trying to scrub the blood off of her hands. Richie was standing next to her, while Max, Mike, and Lucas sat at the table, with Dustin leaning against it. After the lab, they quickly went back to Will's house, where Hopper contacted authorities. Richie had pointed out that he was the authorities but had been ignored. Hopper was speaking with them at that very moment, clearly annoyed.

"I don't know how many people are left alive!" the police officer was saying in a hard tone. "I am the police! Chief Jim Hopper!"

Ross sighed, dropping her hands down into her lap. Richie glanced at her, before looking back forward and muttering," You look like shit."

"Thanks," Ross drawled. Steve came in from the other room and stood on her other side. She was still curious as to why he was with them, or even with the others in the first place. They'd already explained what had happened in the junkyard, but Dustin never got around to explaining how he'd gotten the senior's help in the first place.

"Yes," Hopper continued on the phone. "The number that I gave you, yes. 6767. I will be here." He hung up, and turned back to face them all.

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

"We'll see."

Ross continued to scrub at her hands. She had no doubt in her mind that they wouldn't believe them. It was crazy. Killer monsters who stormed a lab and ate everyone in it? Absolutely insane.

"We'll see?" Mike repeated. "We can't just sit here while those things are loose!"

"We stay here," Hopper said sternly. "And we wait for help." He turned and walked into the next room.

Ross slid off the counter top, wiping the rag across her lips once more and turning to Richie. "Is it gone?" she asked.

He looked her up and down before nodding. "Yeah. But what are you gonna do about that?" He pointed a finger at the bloody hospital gown.

Ross furrowed her eyebrows. "I don't know," she sighed. Mike stood up from the table, catching her attention. He walked to the pile of puzzles, before picking up the blue cube from the top.

Bob. He'd died for them. If it wasn't for him, they wouldn't have made it out of that building. Ross sighed deeply, clenching her fists.

"Did you know that Bob was the original founder of Hawkins AV?" Mike asked.

"Really?" Lucas asked. Mike turned, holding the cube with one hand, giving a small smile.

"He petitioned the school to start it and everything," Mike explained. "Then he had a fund-raiser for equipment." He walked back towards them.

"Mr. Clarke learned everything from him. Pretty awesome, right?"

"Yeah," Lucas and Dustin agreed. Mike set the cube down on the table.

"We can't let him die in vain," he told them. Ross nodded.

"We can't," she agreed.

"Well, what do you want to do, Mike?" Dustin asked loudly. "Alright, the Chief's right on this. We can't stop those demodogs on our own."

"Demodogs?" Max asked.

Dustin looked at her like it was obvious. "Demogorgon. Dogs. Demodogs. It's-it's like a compound." Ross rolled her eyes. "It's like a play on words-"

"Okay," Max said, stopping Dustin in his tracks. He faltered, looking back at the table top.

"I mean, when it was just Dart, maybe," he continued.

"But there's an army now," Lucas said.

"Who gives a shit," Richie said, stepping up next to the table. "Doesn't mean we can't try."

"It's suicide," Dustin argued.

"His army," Mike said. Ross raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?" Steve asked.

"His army," Mike repeated.

"Yeah, we got that part Nancy Drew," Richie said, waving him along. "Instead of repeating, mind explaining?"

"Maybe if we stop him," Mike went on, "we can stop his army, too."

"Take out the leader and the whole team crumbles," Ross said, understanding what Mike was on to. The Wheeler boy turned down the hall towards Will's room, and Ross and the others were quick to follow.

He snatched up Will's drawing of the shadow monster, and held it up for everyone to see.

"The shadow monster," Dustin noted.

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

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

"To the tunnels, to the monsters," Richie said.

"To the Upside Down, everything," Mike finished.

"Whoa, whoa," Steve said, holding up his hands. "Slow down, slow down."

"Okay, so, the shadow monster's inside everything," Mike said. "And if the vines feel something like pain-"

"-Will does, too," Ross said.

"And so does Dart," Lucas added.

"Yeah. It's like what Mr. Clarke taught us," Mike said. Ross furrowed her eyebrows.

"Shit, really?" She asked. He nodded. "I've gotta start paying attention in class."

"It's a hive mind," Richie said. Ross turned towards him, surprised. He never striked her as one to pay attention.

"Hive mind?" Steve questioned.

"A collective consciousness," Dustin said. "It's a super organism."

"And this is the thing that controls everything," Mike said, tapping the paper. "It's the brain."

"Like the Mind Flayer," Dustin said.

Lucas snapped his fingers, and pointed at Dustin.

"The what?" Max and Steve asked.

"What the fuck is a Mind Flayer?" Richie asked. Ross smirked.

"Get ready to be educated."

Dustin set the book on the table, and looked up.

"The Mind Flayer," he said.

"What the hell is that?" Hopper asked.

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

"Oh my god," Hopper said, rolling his eyes. "None of this is real. This is a kids' game."

"No," Dustin corrected. "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. Ross looked over to him, raising an eyebrow.

"Seriously?" Richie asked.

"Analogy? That's what you're worried about?" Dustin questioned.

"Whatever," Ross said, pointing to the book. "It's the best analogy for understanding whatever the hell this thing is."

"Okay," Nancy said, holding up her hands. "So this mind flamer thing-"

"Flayer," Dustin corrected. "Mind Flayer."

"Guys," Ross stressed, rolling her eyes. "Now is not the time for corrections."

Nancy sighed. "What does it want?"

Dustin paused. "To conquer us, basically. Ya know, it believes it's the master race."

"That's promising," Richie noted.

"Oh, like-like the Germans?" Steve said, pointing to the page.

Ross frowned, looking at Steve with confusion.

"Uh, the Nazis?" Dustin asked. Steve frowned, before nodding.

"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 explained.

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

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

"Okay," Nancy said, picking up the book," so if this thing is like a brain that's controlling everything, then if we kill it..."

"We kill everything it controls," Mike said.

"We win," Dustin said.

"Hopefully," Ross said.

"Theoretically," Lucas added.

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

"No," Dustin chuckled. "No, no fire-no fireballs. Uh, you summon an undead army, uh, because...because zombies, ya know, they don't have brains, and the mind flayer, it-it-it likes brains."

"Jesus christ," Richie groaned.

"It's just a game," Dustin said. "It's a game."

"What the hell are we doing here?" Hopper asked, throwing the book down on the table.

"I thought we were waiting for your military back up," Dustin challenged.

"We are!"

"Even if they come, how are they gonna stop this?" Mike asked. "You can't just shoot it with guns."

"I don't suppose they've got an army of zombies in their backyard," Ross said sarcastically.

"You don't know that!" Hopper said to Mike, ignoring Ross's comment. "We don't know anything!"

"We know it's already killed everybody in that lab," Mike said.

"We know the monsters are gonna molt again," Lucas said.

"Which mean we know that we won't just be dealing with Demodogs," Ross added. "We'll be fucking with demogorgons!"

"We know that it's only a matter of time before those tunnels reach this town," Dustin said.

"They're right."

Ross turned to see Joyce standing in the hall. She was still wearing the scrubs from the lab. "We have to kill it. I want to kill it."

"Me, too," Hopper said, approaching her. "Me, too, Joyce, okay? But how do we do that? We don't exactly know what we're dealing with here."

"No," Mike said. "But he does."

Ross looked over to Will, still sleeping on the couch.

"If anyone knows how to destroy this thing," Mike continued, walking into the living room. "It's Will."

"He's connected to it," Ross agreed, following him.

"He'll know it's weakness," Mike said.

"I thought we couldn't trust him anymore," Max said. "That he's a spy for the Mind Flayer now."

"Yeah," Mike said, "but he can't spy if he doesn't know where he is."

Ross looked to Mike. She could practically see the gears turning in his head. He had a plan.

.

They all quickly set to work. Hopper was to clear the shed, Nancy and Steve would start putting up tarps on the walls, Dustin and Lucas would scour the trash for spare paper or covers, Mike would look for ammonia, Max would disguise the chairs, Jonathan and Joyce would get wires to secure Will, all while and Richie and Ross were looking for all the duct tape and staples they could find.

They were in the living room digging through cupboards and drawers. All Ross had succeeded in finding were a few measly Scotch Tape dispensers. She was sorting through a junk drawer when Richie turned to her.

"Ross?"

"Hmm?" she hummed, not looking away from the drawer. She couldn't possible think of what he had to ask her about, even though there were a thousand things to ask about.

"What's the Upside Down like?"

Ross paused, thumbing the cap of the permanent marker in her hand.

"What's it like?"

"Yeah," he said. "Were you scared?"

Ross gave a dry laugh, slumping back to the floor, but continued to look through the drawer. "Yeah, I was scared," she said, nodding.

"What was it like?" he asked again. Ross glanced at him. He was sitting on the floor a few feet away, two rolls of duct tape in his hands, and staring at her. She looked away.

"It was cold," she said. "And dark. And there were these...vines everywhere. On the walls, and floors, and the ceiling. And it was really quiet, too."

"Did you see the thing? The demogorgon?"

Ross shook her head. She hadn't seen the demogorgon, but she had seen something else. That creature, or person, with blue eyes and a white face. "No, I didn't. I just wandered for hours, looking for someone else. Will, mainly."

She sighed, shrugging. She wouldn't tell him about the eyes. They had enough to worry about as it was, and Richie didn't need to be asking more questions.

"I got lost in the forest, and I almost saw the demogorgon," she said.

"And you found that hole and crawled out," Richie finished. When they told him everything that happened, Ross had explained how she'd left the Upside Down. She nodded.

"That's...crazy," he muttered. "You were in there for half a day?"

She nodded, looking up to meet his eyes. "Yeah. But Will was in there for a week."

After Richie and Ross gathered all the supplied they could find, they went out to the shed and distributed them to everyone. They all started taping and stapling tarps, paper, sheets, cardboard, and nearly just any type of cover they could find. They covered the ground, and the floor, and they put up two headlamps. Lucas plugged them in as Jonathan brought in Will and tied him to the chair. Ross sighed, rubbing her face as the others left the room. All that remained was Jonathan, Ross, Joyce, Mike, and Hopper.

"All right, you ready?" Hopper asked Joyce.

"Yeah," she breathed out shakily, nodding slightly. Ross handed Hopper the jug of ammonia, and he started to shake it, approaching Will. Ross crossed her arms, watching as he screwed off the cap, doused a cotton ball with it, and held it beneath Will's nose.

Will gasped, jerking awake with wide eyes. Ross furrowed her eyebrows, taking a step closer. His eyes were no longer their usual bluish green, they were a deep brown. Why had his eyes changed colors? Will glanced around, grunting as he pulled on his restraints.

"What?" he asked, turning to Hopper as he took a step forward. "What is this?"

No one said anything, and he jerked a bit more. "What-what is this? Why am I tied up?"

Ross rubbed her arm, trying to rid of the sudden goosebumps she'd gotten. She was still dressed in the blood stained hospital gown, with the shorts and tanktop underneath, and socks on her feet.

Joyce moved forward and kneeled in front of her son, grabbing his arms. "Will, we just wanna talk to you," she told him. "We're not gonna hurt you."

"Where am I?" he asked loudly, looking up from his mom. Hopper knelt beside him, grabbing the back of the chair. He held up a peice of paper Ross recognized to be Will's drawing of the shadow monster. He shook it lightly.

"You recognize this?" he shook it again. "Do you recognize this?"

Will shook his head.

"Hey," Joyce said softly. "We wanna help you. But to do that, we have to understand how to kill it."

"Why am I tied up?" Will shouted. Joyce flinched, and Ross grabbed Jonathan's arm.

"Why am I tied up?" Will shouted again, leaning forward into his mom's face. "Why am I tied up? Why am I tied up?""

"Hey," Hopper yelled, grabbing Will's shoulder and pushing him back.

"Why am I tied up?" Will continued, thrashing in his chair. "Why am I tied up?"

The lights began to flicker, and Ross tightened her grip, taking a step closer to the older boy.

"Let me go!" Will screamed. "Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!"

Ross winced, grabbing the side of her head as it began to hurt. There, she felt something wet in her ears.

Blood.

She let go of Jonathan and brought a hand to her nose, felt the crimson liquid and shook her head. Internally she willed it to stop, knowing it wouldn't work. Ross settled for wiping her nose and focusing on Will. They had bigger problems then nosebleeds.

She focused back on Will, who was still screaming, and she felt panic and fear rise in her chest. What if they couldn't help him? What if he never got better? Ross blinked away her tears, trying furiously to not think about anything that wasn't Will getting better. Because he would get better. He was one of Ross's best friends, and there was no way she would let him live the rest of his life like this.

"Let me go!" Will shouted, beginning to falter. "Let me go!" The lights stopped flickering, and Will slumped forward, breathing heavily. Ross took a deep breath, using her clean hand to wipe at her eyes.

Joyce got up from the ground and sat in the other chair. "Do you know what March 22nd is?"

Will only stared.

"It's your birthday," she continued. "You're birthday. When you turned eight, I gave you that huge box of crayons. Do you remember that?"

Ross sighed. She remembered Will's eighth birthday. It had been a few months after Ross's mom had left. Her dad had been spending all their money on alcohol, so she couldn't get Will a present. The boys had gotten him cool toys, and all she managed was a rock. It was smooth, and she'd found it in a stream near her house. She brought it home and carved Will's name into with a pocket knife she found lying around, and gave it to him. He told her he loved it, although she knew he was secretly disappointed. However he kept it, and probably still had it to this day.

"It was 120 colors," Joyce continued. "And all your friends, they got you Star Wars toys, but all you wanted to do was draw with all your new colors. And you drew this big spaceship, but it wasn't from a movie. It-it was your spaceship. A rainbow ship is what you called it. And you must have used every color in the box." Joyce told Will about how she took it to her work and hung it up, showing and telling everyone what Will had done. She said he was embarrased, but she was so proud.

Beside her, Jonathan let out a shaky breath. "Do you remember the day dad left?" Will turned to him, and Jonathan stepped forward, kneeling beside Joyce.

"We stayed up all night building Castle Byers, just the way you drew it. And it took so long because you were so bad at hammering. You missed the nail everytime. And then is started raining, but we stayed out there anyway. We were both sick for like a week after that. But we just had to finish it, didn't we?"

Ross sighed, glancing towards the ground.

And she saw it.

Will was tapping his fingers to one of the legs of his chair.

"We just had to," Jonathan finished.

"Do you remember the first day that we met?" Mike asked. Ross gave him a quick glance, but looked back to Will's hand. Had he been tapping the whole time?

"It was-It was the first day of Kindergarten. I knew nobody. I had no friends and I just felt so alone and so scared, but...I saw you on the swings and you were alone, too. You were just swinging by yourself. And I just walked up to you and...I asked.

"I asked if you wanted to be my friend. And you said yes. You said yes."

It was a rhythm. He was tapping a rhythm. Why?

"It was the best thing I've ever done."

Joyce leaned forward. "Will, baby...if you're in there, just please...please talk to us."

The tapping became more frantic.

"Please, honey, please, can you do that for me? Please. I love you so much."

Will let out a shaky breath. "Let me go."

Ross stepped forward and nudged Hopper, holding up a pale finger towards Will.

He was tapping Morse Code.

Disclaimer: I don't own the ideas, plot, or characters of IT or Stranger Things

Guest: Thanks for the review! I'm crazy glad to know that someone's interested in having a prequel. As for Ross and Richie, ship away! Happy to know your opinion on the story. I hope you enjoy the chapter!

A/N: This is one of my shorter chapters, I think. So, sorry about that. There's not much I have to say about this one. I've been super busy getting things ready for all the upcoming art shows i've got for school. Got 2nd place in photography at our last one, and 1st in the sidewalk chalk competion! (we killed it, lol). And, yay me, now I get to wake up at 5:30 to go to one that's 3 hours away. But yeah, so next week's chapter may be up late, bc we've got 2 shows that week. Anyway, sorry for an errors in spelling or grammar, and I really hope you like the chapter!

-blockthewriter