↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ ↠ Heading North
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇʏ sᴇᴀʀᴄʜ ғᴏʀ ᴀ ᴘᴏʀᴛᴀʟ

El and Vee cuddled together on Mike's couch, their energy slowly returning to them. Vee held El in her arms as she stroked her hair, trying to get some sleep.

"What was Will saying? Like home... like home... but dark?" the boys racked their minds, trying to figure out where Will was currently located.

"And empty" Lucas added. Mike stood up and started to walk around the basement like it would help with the thinking, Dustin sighed.

"Empty and cold. Wait, did he say cold?" Dustin asked, looking towards Lucas.

"I don't know, the stupid radio kept going in and out," Lucas complained and whined.

"It's like riddles in the dark," Dustin muttered. Tee sat on the couch, El's and Vee's legs sat on top of his lap as he stared at the boys.

"Like home, like his house?" Mike stopped to turn to the other boys and wondered.

"or maybe like Hawkins" Lucas suggested as his eyes went wide.

"Upside down" El whispered, everyone furrowed their eyebrows in confusion.

"what'd she say" Lucas questioned confusedly as he stared at her.

"Upside down" Mike whispered in realization.

"What"

"Upside down!" Mike ran to his flipped DnD board and sat down, flipping the board over to its right side.

"When El showed us where Will was she flipped the board over, remember?" Mike flipped the board to its dark side again while Lucas and Dustin sat beside him at the table.

"Upside down, dark, empty." Mike vaguely explained, leaving the two other boys to stare at him in complete confusion.

"Do you understand what he's talking about?" Lucas asked Dustin who was across the table from him.

"No" he simply answered.

"Guys, Come on just think about it. When El and Vee took us to find Will, they took us to his house, right?" Mike started his explanation while looking at Lucas.

"Yeah and he wasn't there." Lucas said annoyed

"But what if he was there. What if we just couldn't see him. What if he was on the other side." Mike theorized. He flipped the board right side up. "What if... this is Hawkins and..." he flipped the board again.

"... this is where Will is. The Upside Down." Mike explained.

"Like the Vale of Shadows." Dustin realized as his eyes went wide.

Dustin slammed Mike's DnD guidebook onto the table. He flipped through the pages until he reached the desired section of pages.

"The Vale of Shadows is a dimension that is a dark reflection or echo of our world." Dustin read while looking up at the others. "It's is a place of decay and death. A plane out of phase. A place of monsters. It is right next to and you don't even see it." Fear wasn't evident in all of the boys eyes.

"An alternate dimension." Mike muttered.

"But... how... how do we get there?" Lucas stammered.

"You cast Shadow Walk" Lucas rolled his eyes. "In real life dummy"

"We can't shadow walk. But... maybe they can" Dustin nodded towards the three who were situated on the couch.

"Do you know how we get there? To the Upside Down?" Mike asked. All three of them tiredly shook their heads.

"Oh my god" Lucas sighed annoyed.

One of them is lying

The pencil ripped through the thin sheet of paper as the subjects eyes went wide. The boys had just gotten back from Will's funeral and were now demonstrating what their teacher had told them a few hours prior.

"It would take a lot of energy to build a gate like this. But that's got to be what happened. Otherwise, how'd Will get there, right?" Mike said.

"Right" they chorused.

"What we want to know is, do you any of you know where the gate is?" Lucas asked the three. The twins looked at each other before looking back at the dark skinned boy. They both shook their heads in unison, El skaking her head a few seconds after them. "Then how do you know about the Upside Down?" Lucas asked frustrated. El put her head down while the twins just shrugged their shoulders. Vee knew the Upside Down existed by she had know clue how to get there until Mike had told them. She didn't even know where the said 'portal' was.

They all turned towards Dustin who was pacing back and forth with a compass his hand.

"Dustin what are you doing?" Mike asked, slightly annoyed but the didn't answer back. "Dustin?" He continued to spin in a circle like a crazy man.

"Dustin! Dustin!" Mike and Lucas called and he finally turned to them. He quickly turned to them, eyes wide. "I- I need to see your compasses." He stuttered, asking for the devices.

"What?"

"Your compasses. All of your compassses, right now!" He yelled, Mike and Lucas looked at each other before looking at him in confusion. Lucas and Mike searched for all of the compasses in the basement and emptied them on the table.

"What's exciting about this!" Mike asked annoyed.

"Well, they're all facing North, right?" Dustin weakly explained but the others still weren't catching on.

"Yeah, so?" Lucas shrugged.

"Well that's not true north." Dustin continuously explained like it was obvious. "What do you mean?" Dustin could tell that Mike and Lucas hadn't seen payed close attention to Mr. Clarke's explanation of the Upside Down.

"I mean exactly what I just said. That's not true North." Dustin repeated, seeing the confused faces on the two boys. "Are you both seriously this dense? The sun rises in the east and it sets in the west, right?" Dustin said his sentence like he was teaching a bunch of 1st graders. The twins both looked at each other and looked back at the boys with identical facial expressions: completely weirded out.

"Which means that's true North" Dustin pointed behind Mike, the complete opposite way of what the compasses were telling them. "So what you're saying is that the compasses are broken." Dustin sighed in annoyance.

"Do you even understand how a compass works? Do you see a battery on this?"

"No"

"No, no you don't, because it doesn't need one. The needle's naturally drawn to the earth's magnetic North Pole." Dustin informed.

"So what's wrong with them?" Lucas asked. "Well that's what I couldn't figure out, but then I remembered. You can change the direction of a compass with a magnet. If there's the presence of a more powerful magnetic field, the needle deflects to that power. And then I remembered what Mr. Clarke said, the gate would have so much power-"

"-It would disrupt the electromagnetic field." Mike said in realization, finally understanding what the curly headed boy was talking about.

"Exactly"

"Meaning if we follow the compass' north..." Lucas trailed off while looking at Dustin.

"They should lead us to the gate." El stared in fear as the Maximoffs had their famous nonchalant faces and stared boredly.

Mike and Pietro stood in front of the group once again, this time they walked across the old abandoned Hawkins train tracks. Dustin and Lucas walked in the middle with the two lovebirds: Vee and El walked behind them.

Every couple of minutes, El would wipe her nose for whatever reason, Vee thought she was just sick and would check up on her later. Lucas would look back at them cautiously, catching Vee's eye and turning around again, looking back at the compass in his hands.

"How much further?" Lucas asked, shooting the words towards the boy beside him. "I don't know, these only tell direction, not distance. You really need to learn more about compasses." Dustin said.

"I'm just saying. How do we know when we get to the gate?" Lucas asked again. "Uh, I think a portal to another dimension is gonna be pretty obvious." Dustin slightly shouted annoyed. Lucas sighed before turning back to the two subjects behind them to see El wiping her nose again.

"Do you think she's acting weird?" Dustin gestured towards the fake blonde. "You're asking if the weirdo is acting weird?" Dustin shot a questioning brow at him.

"I mean weirder than normal?" He sighed.

"I don't know who cares."

Eleven breathed hard as memories of the lab swarmed in, pulling her out of the real world.

"Vee" El grabbed the red head by her lanky arm that was covered by a thick forest green coat. The girl hummed boredly and looked at the petite girl beside her.

"Turn back" she simply said.

"What, why?" She turned towards El, surprised.

"I'm tired" she lied straight to her face, El felt bad, it made her sick to her stomach.

"It's ok, we are almost at... destination." Vee reassured. She was also happy that she managed to use such a big word. El look back in fear but continued to walk beside Vee.

As the kids continued to walk, they had landed in a junk yard. Pieces of scrap, metal and cars were scattered around. Hell even a full bus was there.

"Oh no" Dustin said worryingly, stopping to take in his surroundings.

" 'oh no' what's 'oh no'?" Lucas asked, already angry. "We're headed back home" Dustin informed. "What?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm sure. Setting sun, right there. We looped right back around." Dustin pointed behind them. The twins stood there confused but Eleven knew that they were starting to realize.

"And you're just realizing now?" Lucas said annoyed. "Why is this all on me?"

"Because you're the compass genius!" Lucas yelled. "What do yours say?" The two looked at their devices at the same time. "North" they both chorused.

"Makes no damn sense" they all sighed in defeat.

"Maybe the gate moved" Mike suggested. "No, I don't think it's the gate. I think it's something else screwing with the compasses." Dustin said. Lucas slowly turned around in pure anger.

"Maybe it's something here" Mike gestured to the junkyard. "No it has to be like a super magnet."

"It's not a magnet. She's been acting weirder than normal. If she can slam doors with her mind she can definitely, she can definitely screw up a compass." Lucas pointed towards El. On instinct, the twins stood in front of El, silently defending her.

"Heck, I bet even the twins are helping her in on this." Vee didn't know what the hell Lucas was talking about, mostly cause he was yelling in a foreign language and the lab couldn't give a shit about her education or if she should be able to understand English, but she didn't understand why El wouldn't want them to go to the portal.

"Why would they do that?" Mike defended them. "Because they're trying to sabotage our mission, because they're traitors!" Lucas shouted. He had noticed the genuinely confused faces on the Maximoff twins so he singled El out, she was acting the most suspicious out all three of them.

He walked towards her in silence, anger written all over his face. El stared in horror as tears threatened to spill out of her eyes.

"Lucas what're you doing?"

"You did it, didn't you? You don't want us to reach the gate. You don't want us to find Will."

"Lucas come on, seriously. Just leave her alone." Mike tried to stop Lucas but the dark skinned boy ignored him. "Admit it."

"No" El whispered.

"Admit it!" He shouted, El visibly flinching. Vee quickly stepped up and slightly pushed Lucas back, glaring at him.

"I saw her wiping her nose on the tracks! She was using her powers" Lucas stared right at Vee, very much noticing the obvious facial expression change. "See, even the Russian Wonder Twins didn't know what she was doing" Lucas snarled.

Her eyebrows furrowed and she turned back to the girl she loved. "Is it true?" she asked. Eleven just whimpered and looked away.

Using her powers, Vee brought El closer to her and grabbed her right arm flipping it over revealing fresh shiny blood on the blue jacket.

"Fresh blood, I knew it." Lucas yelled. El didn't focus on him and neither did Vee. It felt like the whole world went silent as she stared at the girl she trusted, atleast who she thought she trusted. Now it was just her and Pietro again.

"Зачем?" El didn't need to know Russian to know what Vee was saying. (Why?)

"Зачем?!" Vee yelled again, harshly letting go of El's arm, her flinching in the process. "Ванда..." Tee said warily, but he was just ignored. (Wanda...)

"Почему ты лежишь? Я доверял тебе, МЫ доверяли тебе." Vee didn't care if she sounded dramatic, she didn't care what people think, I mean only 1/6 of them actually understood her. (Why did you lie? I trusted you, WE trusted you.)

Indentical tears streamed down the two lovers face. Vee's eyes flickered back and forth, she stared at El, trying to find something in her eyes or face that told her that Vee meant something to her, that she was at least her friend.

But El's face was unreadable, she couldn't even see with all of the fat tears covering her eyes. So she left. She just turned around and left. She left the boys and just walked away, quiet sobs left her mouth as she walked towards the forest in defeat.

Tee looked between El and his sister before he shook his head at El. He zoomed towards his sister, leaving El to wonder where she went wrong.

Ummm I think that was a LITTLE dramatic for that scene but idgaf.

Wanda when she found out that El had messed with the compasses.
(Iykyk)

Anyways

DID YALL PEEP THE NEW ST TEASER

(2285 words)