Heaven's on Fire - KISS

[playingtough]

WHO: Billy Hargrove and those that join him
WHERE: Mostly Temba's city-center area, maybe the Upside-Down
WHAT: Hey there's an event thingy
WHEN: During the event timeline
WARNINGS:STRANGER THINGS SPOILERS, profanity, event warnings, violence, panic/PTSD attacks, will update as they make themselves known




October 10th

Run To You - Bryan Adams

He’s in the civic center when the storm hits. Billy had seen it coming, but didn’t think anything of it. It’s a storm. It wouldn’t be anything to worry about. Earthquakes (well, volcanoes), those were something to worry about. Storms were not. So he had done his workout as usual as it hit and when he left…

…Well, Billy would wish later he hadn’t. Because upon leaving the civic center with the intention of hitting the diner and then heading home, he heard something. No, not something.

Someone.

He whirls around in place, his hair whipping about wildly as he struggles to see if it’s her. And Billy sees her in the distance. Tired muscles be damned, he breaks into a run, heading right towards the woman. She doesn’t seem to get closer no matter how far he runs.

“MOM!!” he all but screams out, determined to get to her, damn it. It’s hard to see with all of the lights out and the storm blocking out the sun. “Mom!” he shouts again. She disappears into the clouds, reappearing in different positions in the distance, never in the same spot. Billy looks confused, turning to try and track her.

What was going on?!

The ghost of his mother disappeared and he turned, looking for her. “I DONT’ UNDERSTAND!!” he yells, feeling the echo of those words from when he was at the Steelworks building.

October 11th - 12th


It’s The End of the World As We Know It - R.E.M.

It’s not the gate opening that starts it. It’s not the sight of the stupid looking bats or that weird flower dog.

It’s the gigantic thing that he knows from the mall. Seeing that mind flayer on the other side of the gate while trying to get from the cabin to the hotel to make sure there are others okay (hint: that didn’t happen). He freezes, the blood draining from his face to leave his skin white. Billy’s clammy and cold all in the span of a few seconds, but more importantly?

He’s terrified.

Billy knows that that monster can do. He’s felt it. It’s going to kill him when he’s sent home by the aliens here.

It’s here to kill him.

He ducks behind the fountain before darting to be against one of the side walls of the diner. Billy’s curling up, screaming and holding his head and looking like he’s agony. The guy is physically fine, but his mind is not. Guess seeing the very creature you helped create in your world while being possessed by the enemy would do that to you.

October 13th - End

If You Want Blood (You Got It) - AC/DC

No. He can’t be a pussy about this shit. It’ll kill him back home, but Billy has the tools to stop the beasts here. Gladio had found him in the chaos and dropped off an axe. Something about ‘use it if you need it, kid’ before running off to do more warrior things.

The axe had felt heavy in his lap from where he was sitting. But then Billy stood up, testing out it’s weight as he had been trained. It felt good. Felt right. He gave it a few swings before the confidence started growing in him. Billy could do this. He stopped the flayer’s tongue with his bare hands, didn’t he? He could stop the whole thing with his axe. He could stop any of them!

Heading out from where he had bunkered himself, Billy found one of those bat-things headed towards him. It took a few swings through the air (five, if you’re counting), to get it, but hitting it with the dull side knocked it down to the ground to slice through it with the blade.

“Take that you creepy fucker!” he shouted at it, giving it another smack. Black blood stained his boots and jeans as he hit something in it, before he moved on to the next one.

“COME GET SOME, FUCKERS!!” he shouted, wielding the weapon with far more confidence than he had when it had been dropped off.

Comments

[playingtough]

It sounds worth it when you're trying to make your son into a man and beatings just don't seem to work. So Neil had taken away the coastline, the long highways, the dazzling sunsets. Now it was just rats and fog and death. Always had been, the rats just went from being metaphorical to literal.

"My dad worked at a bank. Security guard. Met my stepmom there and after a year or two, we moved to Hawkins. I hate it. I miss the beaches and the open roads." He looks her over, keeping out his head and just... focusing on her. "You didn't get caught up in the mall stuff, right?"

[ephemerios]

“Honestly, I probably would feel the same way if I came from a place like California.” Not that she's ever been, but the images of it always seem really ... well, free, non suffocating. You know, everything that Hawkins isn't.

To the question about the mall, she shakes her head slightly. “Nope. Before I got here, it was just a fire and I saw no reason to not believe it; seems kinda stupid now. But even if I had been caught up in it, I wouldn't blame you for it.”

[playingtough]

"Not stupid. People are good at covering up what they don't want others to know." He swallows hard, but it's clear he's starting to relax. The episode of terror is starting to pass and talking is helping. God, it is helping.

Before I got here. "Wait, how long have you been here?"

[ephemerios]

“If I wrote half the book on hiding things from the world, I guess that makes you the author of the other half. And we're not even getting royalties, which is a complete rip off.” How dare, really.

“Not long, but I mean like, before here as in while I was still home and had the mentality of someone just from a small town with no super creepy problems, before the reality check that came with showing up here.”