I do not own Stranger Things or any of the characters.
Mutation
Thirteen narrowed his eyes as he watched the ceiling. Only Nancy and Jonathan had been allowed up, due to a two-visitor rule. However, he had a bad feeling that they'd need more help. Finally, he stood, walking away from the others, out of sight of the registration desk, and shifted everyone else's perception to him being an orderly, except Max, who walked over to him.
"What's the plan?" Max asked.
"I'm making myself look like an orderly," Thirteen said. "I'll meet you guys outside with Nancy and Jonathan."
Max nodded and gave him a quick kiss before returning to the others. Thirteen waited for a moment before walking past the registration desk, the woman seated at it staring at him for a minute before shaking her head and saying nothing. Thirteen raised a hand for a moment, tracking Nancy, then took the stairs up to the correct floor. However, as he arrived, he could already tell something was wrong. The entire floor was deserted, he could see a call light above a patient's door flashing, and he could sense something dangerous. Just then, Nancy and Jonathan rounded a corner a little ahead of him, terrified, and skidded to a stop.
"Run," Thirteen growled, having neglected to change his voice.
Confusion filled their faces instantly, neither having ever seen him change his appearance, let alone to a an adult black man in an orderly uniform.
"RUN! ! !" thirteen ordered, just as two men, both with black veins spiderwebbing across their skin, rounded the corner behind Nancy and Jonathan.
Thirteen swiped an arm, sending both men exploding into the wall and Jonathan and Nancy fled past him. One of the two was an older man with relatively short grey hair, who Thirteen recognized as Tom from pictures in his house. The other man was younger, blond, and had a slightly more casual outfit on than Tom did, though Tom's bloodstained shirt ruined the aesthetic of his white button-up shirt and tie.
"You're that boy," the blond said as both stood, Thirteen backing away slowly. "They called you Thirteen. You shouldn't have interfered."
Thirteen hurled both again, but this time, they slammed into the wall and dropped back onto their feet before sprinting at him. He turned and fled, hurling random objects back at them blindly. A chair missed, a desk took Tom to the ground, the blond caught a fire extinguisher, and then a second chair struck the fire extinguisher and caused it to explode, filling the hallway with a thick white powder and allowing Thirteen to escape. He pounded down a stairwell after Nancy and Jonathan, then turned in the hallway just as they both ducked into an area under construction. That was perfect. He could use the tools and metal rods there to fight. As he was halfway there, the door to the stairwell exploded off of its hinges, Tom and the blond stepping out in time to see him disappear inside. However, it wasn't new construction. They were replastering the walls. That meant there was nothing exceptionally useful to use.
He skidded to a stop in a small room where Nancy was trying to call the front desk on a red emergency phone, but apparently the front desk wasn't answering. Thirteen turned as he sensed Tom and the other man approaching, the light above them flickering. "I'm going to have to kill them both."
"What!?" Jonathan gasped. "You can't!"
"If I don't, we die!" Thirteen snapped. "And there's nothing here that can get hot enough to force the Mind Flayer out!"
"Wait, you might not have to!" Nancy said. "When Jonathan hit Tom with a vase, the same spot on Bruce turned black and he said, 'owie' like he felt it."
"So, they share pain," Thirteen said. "Good. Then I can use that."
Just then, Bruce, the blond, punched through the window in the door. "Hi there." He unlocked the door and opened it, grinning. "I'm here for you, Nancy Drew."
"I'll try and make an opening for you two," Thirteen muttered as Tom stepped into view behind Bruce. "You both need to run."
Both nodded, and when Bruce leapt forward, Thirteen swiped a hand, launching him across the room into the wall. Tom charged instantly, just as Bruce began to stand, and Thirteen swiped a hand. A set of scissors from a table off to the side flashed across the room into Tom's knee cap, and he screamed in pain, collapsing, Bruce also screaming and falling to the ground. However, Tom ripped the scissors back out and stood, Bruce regaining his feet faster. When they did, however, Thirteen swiped a hand, hurling Bruce into Tom, then swiped his hand backward, sending both streaking into the room as the three of them fled. Before they could get far, Bruce tackled Thirteen to the ground.
"Now I've got you!" Bruce grinned, closing his hands around Thirteen's throat as Tom passed, heading for Nancy and Jonathan with his scissors.
"Thirteen!" Nancy shouted fearfully.
Thirteen tried to breath but couldn't. Bruce grinned, squeezing harder. Finally, Thirteen focused and slammed his palm into Bruce's chest, over his heart. The barrier extended from his palm in a spike pierced Bruce's body with no resistance, protruding from his back. Bruce's eyes went wide as the barrier detached from Thirteen's hand, his grip going slack. Thirteen hurled him off with telekinesis before letting the barrier spike shatter into oblivion, then scrambled to his feet and into the hallway, seeing Tom clutch at his chest, dropping the scissors, just in time for Jonathan to grab them and drive them into his throat. After a moment of choking, Tom collapsed. Except, the lights were still flickering, and then went out altogether. They came back on, still flickering, as both bodies began to convulse, their shirts quickly being stained from the inside by blood. Jonathan and Nancy ran over to Thirteen, roughly halfway between the pair of convulsing corpses, and they all stared at one of the two in silent confusion. After a moment, both bodies had dissolved into a sort of liquid flesh, a sludge halfway between blood and meat. Then, the two puddles began to move, sliding across the ground with a series of wet, sucking, squelches, moving toward them, or toward each other. They backed down the hallway, away from the two puddles, but the puddles turned toward each other, rather than chasing them. When they met, they merged, rising and taking shape quickly as Thirteen's mind all but shrieked of danger, his eyes going wide. Images of the Mind Flayer flashed through his head as he subconsciously sensed this grotesque thing's mind. It was a body, a physical manifestation, of the Mind Flayer. Or, at least, a tiny fragment of it. As the thing began to near the completion of its shape, the lights went out again. An exit sign on one end of the hallway flickered three times, each accompanied by an audible click. Then, a couple seconds later, the lights came back on, flickering rapidly, and the thing, now complete, let out a high, vibrating roar. It had a muscular right arm, or maybe foreleg, three insectoid legs on its left side, an insectoid right rear leg, and several small, partially-formed insectoid legs from its back and right side. Its mouth was massive and filled with several rows of jagged, pointed teeth, its entire, fleshy body was coated in some kind of thick mucus, and its head was round and seemed to lack any eyes Thirteen could distinguish.
"Shit!" Nancy breathed.
"RUN! ! !" Thirteen shouted, arms snapping up as a pair of barrier spears formed and fired, impaling the thing in its bloated body as it charged, the thing roaring again.
Nancy and Jonathan both turned, sprinting to a stairwell and shouldering into it, only to only get the door open a few inches. Thirteen fired another barrier spear as he whipped his arm toward the door. There was a sound like an explosion as dozens of bags of rock salt all but exploded, scattering into the stairwell, and Jonathan and Nancy fled. Thirteen fired several more barrier spears before diving into a room just ahead of the thing's jaws. It exploded through the door after him, but he swung his arms toward it, a blast of telekinesis sending it exploding back out of the room and through the next wall. Thirteen turned, blasting through the other wall of the room into a hallway, then into the room opposite it, fleeing into the main hallway again and running away from the thing, which charged after him. He turned, forming and firing a pair of spears again. One caught the thing in the head, the other stakes its large right foreleg to the ground. The thing roared in pain, but remained stubbornly alive. However, when its right foreleg failed to move forward, it did crash to the ground, the bottom part of its leg tearing free and remaining around the spear. As Thirteen watched, the section of leg that had torn free fell into liquid, then turned brown, seeming to wither, or rot, instantly. The Mind Flayer fragment roared in rage, a clawed hand forming at the end of its now considerably shortened leg before it charged again. He shouted in effort, blasting it backward down the hallway with his telekinesis. He could do this. Sections cut off of the main body died. He could shave it down to nothing. He focused, forming a pair of disk barriers, and as the thing charged, he launched them. The thing roared as its insectoid legs were amputated, all of them rotting instantly, but it kept its main arm, and its legs regrew, though its overall mass shrunk a small amount in doing so.
It reached him and slashed with its claws, but he jumped, hurling himself over and past it with his telekinesis, then landed in a somersault, spinning and sending another barrier disk at it, shaving nearly a third of its body off its left side. It shrieked in pain, the huge section he'd cut off rotting instantly, but he'd hit a brick wall. His head was spinning and pounding like a sledgehammer inside his skull, blood was dripping quickly from his nose. He was out of power. If he tried to use more than one more barrier, he'd pass out on the spot. The thing clearly knew that, because it took its time turning to him, growling lowly as it stalked forward. Then, just as it shrieked and leapt toward him, Eleven stepped up beside him, shrieking and shoving her arms forward, sending it exploding backward along the hallway. It landed on its back, but instead of rolling over like a normal creature, it instead returned to its liquid form, then reformed on its feet. Except, as it did, Thirteen noticed something beside it. An oxygen tank. He reached out, focusing. He'd learned a lot by watching Jaws with Bob Newby. An oxygen tank wouldn't actually explode if shot by a gun. But if ripped open inside of a monster's body, the released energy would be the equivalent of an explosion.
He swiped his hand toward the still-reforming monster, burying the oxygen tank inside of it, forcing it to include it as it reformed. Then, just as it finished solidifying and roared, Thirteen clenched his hand into a fist, crushing the oxygen tank inside of the monster. The effect was immediate and dramatic. The pressure was suddenly dramatically increased by him crushing the tank while the tank itself was weakened. Which meant that as soon as his telekinetic hold had vanished, the pressure exploded outward, reducing the Mind Flayer's new body to paste and bits of meat, also blasting the walls, floor, and ceiling around the creature apart like any explosion would. As soon as the blast had ended, Thirteen collapsed, Eleven catching him as the others reached the floor, running over.
"Jesus!" Mike gaped. "What'd you do?"
"I turned an oxygen tank...into a bomb," Thirteen panted. "Max and Eleven, help me walk. Everyone else, see if you can quickly find any oxygen tanks. Full ones."
"Why?" Mike asked.
"Because I know what the Mind Flayer's up to," Thirteen said. "He's making himself a body. A physical one."
"Great," Lucas said. "Alright, let's go!"
The others who weren't helping him walk quickly scattered into the floor, most following Nancy, who said she'd seen some earlier. As they did, Eleven and Max quickly helped Thirteen into a stairwell, heading for the emergency exit, Thirteen shifting others' perception back to his usual appearance on the way.
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