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THEY WERE BACK to walking the railroad tracks, except this time instead of three, there were five making the trek

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THEY WERE BACK to walking the railroad tracks, except this time instead of three, there were five making the trek. The shuffling of feet was the only sound to be heard for a long time. Everyone was tired, everyone was on edge, but no one was getting a respite that evening.

Lucas eventually broke the weary silence, questioning, "you're positive that was Dart?" The flicker of their flashlights provided brief moments of illumination to their dark surroundings.

Dustin huffed out a response, "yes. He had the same exact yellow pattern on his butt."

"He was tiny two days ago." Oh, Max. She still wasn't entirely aboard the crazy train yet, but the rest of the group, Steve, Dustin, Lucas, and Ana, had long since secured their one-way tickets.

"Well, he's molted three times already," Dustin stated as though it were obvious.

"Malted?" Well, Steve Harrington's vocabulary was definitely lacking.

"Molted. Shed his skin to make room for growth like hornworms," Dustin delivered the seemingly necessary lexicon lesson.

This, while probably helpful to some of the party, worked to spurn Max's interrogation onwards. "When's he gonna molt again?"

"It's gotta be soon. When he does, he'll be fully grown, or close to it. And so will his friends." Dustin's answer didn't inspire a lot of confidence. The group had barely been able to destroy one full-grown Demogorgon a year ago, and, actually, Eleven had been the one to defeat it finally. This time around, they had no Eleven, just a baseball bat with nails, a single gun, and a whole lot of attitude.

"Yeah, and he's gonna eat a lot more than just cats." Steve meant it as an offhand comment, but the older boy didn't know the altercation his insensitive joke would produce.

Lucas stepped around his friend and stopped him walking with a firm hand on the shoulder. The entire company halted as well to witness the squabble brewing between the party's Bard and Ranger. "Wait, a cat? Dart ate a cat?"

Dustin tried to lie his way out of it, but, as Ana had proclaimed to him what felt like eons ago, he was a dreadful liar. "No, what? No," he denied, fumbling over his words spectacularly.

Maybe all that luscious hair stopped air from getting into Steve's brain because any reasonable person would have known that his next comment was the opposite of helpful. "What are you talking about? He ate Mews."

Could someone's eyes get stuck in the back of their head from rolling them too far? Ana was about to find out. She knew exactly where this mess of a conversation was headed. Max, apparently, did not because she asked, "Mews? Who's Mews?"

"We really don't have time for this, y' all," Ana tried to intercede, but the train had already left the station. She shouldn't have even wasted the breath on her ignored statement.

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