but Ringo didn't fail to see how close Lucas and Max stayed together. They had both taken on the responsibility of cleaning broken glass. Ringo sat at the table, watching them with a smirk on her face. She could tell they liked each other, the way they naturally gravitated together. However she also knew of Dustin's feelings, and hoped he wasn't too attached to the redhead.

With her smirk remaining, her fingers lazily dragged through her blonde locks as she began to braid them, her mouth opening to lowly sing lyrics she felt pertained to the situation.

"Young looooove," she sang, low enough to appear casual but audible for them still to hear, "first looooove..."

The kids gave her a weird look, as she swayed to side to side with a knowing glint to her eye. Steve covered his hand over his mouth to muffle his laughs, shaking his head with ridiculousness at her lack of subtlety.

Mike was pacing the floor with a worried expression, the only one not to react to her sudden outburst of song. He was too enveloped in his own thoughts and concerns to pay them any attention. Ringo was concerned for him, feeling as if she had stepped into his sister's shoes with Nancy's absence. But she also knew her cousin well, and knew he needed to be left alone. Mike tended to snap at people when he was stressed.

"Mike, will you just stop already?" Lucas voiced, stopping from sweeping to voice what everyone was thinking.

"You weren't there, okay?" He whipped around, sounding as stressed as he looked. "That lab is swarming with hundreds of those dogs."

"Demodogs," Dustin reminded him, receiving a glare.

"Goddamn, kid," Ringo huffed, throwing her gaze towards the ceiling in an eye roll and shaking her hair out of the plaits. "You're like a broken record. Change the damn tune."

"The chief will take care of her!" Lucas reminded him, stopping Mike from snapping at Dustin.

"Like she needs protection," Max scoffed, obviously still bitter from their earlier altercation as she swept glass shards into a dustpan.

"Listen, dude," Steve began, stepping in to diffuse the situation and looking incredibly domestic with a towel in his hand. "If the coach calls a play in the game, bottom line is you execute it, alright?"

"Oh boy," Ringo muttered to herself, knowing full well football was the last analogy to use to get these kids to listen.

"First of all," Mike whipped around, "this isn't some stupid sports game. And second, we're not even in the game. We're on the bench."

Steve threw a glance over his shoulder at Ringo, eyes widened in mild surprise.

"Damn, is that where you get your attitude?" He commented, turning back to Mike and beginning to stammer as he came up with a response. "Right, so my point is..."

"Useless players get put on the bench?" Ringo finished for him.

"No!" He scoffed. "My point is... okay, we're put on the bench and there's nothing we can do."

"That's not entirely true," Dustin started, receiving a huff from every person present as he formulated another far-fetched thought. "These demodogs have a hive mind. When they ran away from the bus, they got called away."

"So if we get their attention, maybe we can draw them away from the lab," Max speculated.

"And clear a path to the gate," Mike continued after her, eyes fixed to the ground as the idea sunk in.

Steve's eyes widened and his mouth dropped, looking back at Ringo with an incredulous look but she simply avoided his gaze and scratched the back of her neck. The idea wasn't that left-field, if only they could find a way to drag their attention away that didn't involve becoming the object of their attention.

"Yeah!" Steve spluttered, smacking the tea towel against his leg as he brought his hands down. "And then we all die!"

"Well that's one point of view," Dustin shrugged.

"That's not a point of view man, that's a fact."

"I got it!" Mike exclaimed suddenly, darting off towards the hallway next to the kitchen and crouching down to point at one of the taped drawings. "This is where the Chief dug his hole, this is our way into the tunnel. So..."

He took off again, this time towards the living room where a mass of drawings seemed to cluster together at a meeting point.

"This is like a hub! Maybe if we can set this on fire-"

"Oh, yeah?" Steve called out sarcastically. "That's a no!"

Ringo tilted her head as followed from the entry point drawing towards the hub, mentally debating their chances of survival and trying to decipher the length of their travel. Admittedly, she felt just as useless as the other kids did, she wasn't meant to just stand on the sidelines.

"The mind flayer would call away his army and they'd all come to stop us," Dustin added, as if it was a normal thing.

"Wait, what?" Ringo reeled back. "We can't fight an army! All we have between us is a bat, an axe and several kids we temporarily fostered. And no offence, you're all dead weight!"

"Hey!" Steve called out to them, his voice falling on deaf ears.

"Then we circle back to the exit," Mike offered to the kids excitedly huddled together, raising Ringo's eyebrows in thought.

"Guys-"

"By the time they realise we're gone, El would be at the gate!"

"Hey! Hey! Hey!" Steve was shouting, clapping his hands frantically to get their attention. Ringo stayed pointedly silent, mulling over their plan and wondering if she should voice that it didn't sound like the worst.

Steve tossed his now infamous towel over his shoulder, placing his hands on his hips and giving each kid a pointed look.

"This is not happening," he demanded, raising an eyebrow and daring one of them to argue that fact.

"Why not?!" Dustin retorted, nose scrunched up with annoyance.

"Ringo, can you speak to these kids, please? They're not listening to me!"

On cue, all eyes turned to the blonde, who was leaning against the wall with a rather unphased expression. She awkwardly screwed up her face, hands clasped together and raising her shoulders up.

"I mean... the kids wanna go help their friend, Steve," she tried to reason, taking their side somewhat.

"You're no help!" He pointed at her frustratedly, before returning his glare to the pre-teens. "It's not happening! I promised to keep you shitheads safe, and that's exactly what I plan on doing. We're staying here - on the bench, and we're waiting for the starting team to do their job. Does everybody understand?"

"But Ringo said-" Lucas began, gesturing wildly at the blonde who tried to stay out of Steve's line of fire.

"If Ringo told you to jump off a bridge, would you do it?" He questioned, his tone still as high-strung.

"Fuck yeah," Dustin answered, grinning cheekily at her and forcing her to bite back a laugh.

"This isn't a stupid sports game, then!" Mike spat out stubbornly, prompting Steve to take his towel and shake it at the black haired boy.

"I said does everybody understand that? I need a yes."

They didn't answer, instead rolling their eyes and dispersing once more. Their lips whispered comments about their seemingly newfound adoptive mother, but Steve didn't care as long as they listened to him.

"Damn," Ringo murmured, sidling up against him and waggling her eyebrows suggestively. "I like it when you take control. Why don't you keep that dishcloth for later?"

"You're no help whatsoever," he continued, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. "It's like I have to do everything myself."

"Awe, I'm sorry," she jutted her lower lip out, wrapping her arms around him from the side and resting her chin on his shoulder. "You wanna go into the bathroom and make out?"

"No," he sighed, looking exhausted. "We're not going into the bathroom to make out, we have obligations."

Disrupting Ringo's advances was the shining of headlights through the window. Sharing a panicked gaze, the teenagers rushed forward towards the curtains, peeling them back and peering outside to see who had come to visit them.

"Fuck," Ringo and Steve muttered simultaneously at the sight of Jessica's car, the owner itself currently putting the car into park and exiting through the driver's door.

"You're gonna have to go out there," Steve told her, stepping back from the window. "She can't come in here, the place is a mess."

"What am I supposed to tell her?" Ringo answered, her voice high-pitched in panic.

"Tell her... we're having a party?"

"That we didn't invite her to? Gee, that'll go down well!"

"Make up something, I don't know!"

Grumbling, Ringo darted for the front door, stepping outside onto the porch before she could knock on the wood. Jessica gasped in surprise and stepped back as she suddenly appeared, eyes narrowing in confusion.

"Uh- hey?" She started awkwardly with a short laugh.

"Hey!" Ringo responded, too quickly and too loud. Everything about her screamed suspicious, and Jessica was far too intelligent to look past it.

"What's going on? I've been looking for you guys?" She told her, a sense of vulnerability in her voice that made Ringo's heart clench in guilt.

"It's uh... Dallas night. It's Jonathan and I's guilty pleasure," she threw in a giggle for good measure, "don't tell anyone."

"I thought Dallas was on Sunday?" Jessica raised her eyebrows disbelievingly.

"It's a repeat, we missed the last one."

"Oh," she opened her mouth in an o-shape, gaze trailing between Ringo and the broken window. "Is that why Steve and the kids are here too then?"

Ringo's brows furrowed, leaning forward to follow her gaze and frowning when she saw Steve and the kids were peering out the broken glass, entirely obvious. When they saw that she had caught them, they flew backward out of sight, only serving to make them look more suspicious.

"Really?" Jessica asked drily, shaking her head and turning to storm back to her car.

"No, Jessica wait!" Ringo called out, rushing to follow after her. But Jessica, given a head-start, climbed inside of her car and started up the engine. She peeled out of the driveway with a slight screeching noise, but Ringo was determined - and rushed to follow after the car.

Jessica swallowed back tears of anger, hating how she knew this was going to happen. Just like it always did. Her friends would grow tired of her personality, irritated with her presence and eventually just hang out without her altogether. She should have known better.

A knock at her window startled her, turning her head to see the blonde sprinting at the side of the car to stay up to speed as they reached the main road. Jessica frowned in disbelief, scoffing lowly and pointedly starting to rev her engine faster.

"I haven't run... this fast... since there was a rat in my trailer," Ringo shouted, voice muffled through the window. Her cheeks were flaming red already, a clear sign of her unfitness. When Jessica began to pick up speed, she fell considerably behind, having to stop altogether to catch her breath.

"Damnit!" Ringo cursed, leaning her hands against her knees and taking deep, shaky breaths. The light sound of brakes squealing sounded up ahead, prompting her to lift her head and sigh at relief at the sight of Jessica's car stopped fully.

Wasting no time before Jessica changed her mind, Ringo jogged towards it and grappled for the passenger side door, shuffling inside the car where she was met with a frosty reception.

"What do you want?" Jessica hissed, avoiding her eyes and keeping focused on the road ahead.

"I-I want... to... explain," Ringo said, still panting heavily and clutching her chest to calm her erratic breathing.

"There's nothing to explain," Jessica shrugged. "I don't care."

"Yes, you do! W-... we weren't hanging out without... you - oh my god, I think I'm having a heart attack," Ringo took a few more deep breaths, while Jessica simply rolled her eyes in annoyance, still hurt by the whole situation.

"We weren't hanging out without you," Ringo repeated when she could finally adjust her breaths. "Look, something's going on and I can't tell you what it is, but you just have to trust me when I say that if I could tell you, I would. You don't want to be involved with this."

"You expect me to believe that?" She finally looked at her, expression cold but her eyes clearly saddened. A car drove slowly past them, but Ringo didn't look, determined to keep her attention on her friend. Surely the car wasn't turning into the Byers, anyway.

"I know it's a big ask," Ringo conceded. "But I swear to you, there's some bad shit going on. It started last Halloween, it's the reason behind everything with Barb and with Will's disappearance... just trust me, please?"

"You can't involve me, but you'll involve a bunch of twelve year olds? Bullshit."

"They were already involved!" Ringo disputed, turning slightly desperate.

"If you didn't want to be my friend any more just say it, I'm not a little bitch. I can take it," Jessica turned back forward, her walls visibly building up and shutting her off from Ringo.

"If I didn't want to be your friend, would I seriously have ran the whole way down that driveway for your ass? I wouldn't run for my life," Ringo smiled softly, taking a sigh of relief when Jessica emitted a low snigger.

It was silent for a moment, but Jessica seemed to relax a little. The last thing Ringo wanted to do was lose her as a friend. Nancy and her may have been close through family, but Jessica was probably Ringo's first true friend, she made moving to Hawkins so much more bearable before she settled in.

"Look," Ringo began, casting a glance over her shoulder, "we're just babysitting the kids, right now. Do you wanna come up? I can't tell you much, but I can tell you all about Nancy and Jonathan. You're going to die."

"Nancy and Jonathan?" Jessica echoed with a gasp, lips stretching into a grin. "No way!"

With a grin, Jessica put her car into drive and turned the steering wheel fully around, intending to make a U-turn on the road and return to the Byers residence.

"Well I can't miss that story, can I?"

With the tension finally dissolved between them, the girls travelled back up to the house. But the addition of a new car in front of the house caught Ringo's attention.

"What the heck?" She whispered, mainly to herself. The closer they came, the more she recognised the vehicle and concluded it could only have been Billy Hargrove's.

"Is Billy here too?" Jessica questioned, full of suspicion.

"No, he isn't," Ringo responded, voice slightly stiff with concern as she noticed the front door was wide open. Before the car had even pulled to a stop, she opened the door and bolted out into the night air, a bad feeling enveloping her.

Once again, she was sprinting. But this time it was towards the house, the shouts from the kids meeting her ears only spurring her on to move faster.

The second she rounded the corner of the entrance, her eyes dropped to the horrifying sight of a bloodied Billy beating up an even bloodier Steve. Beating may have been a term too light for his actions, as he was positioned over the top of the other teenager, pummelling his face mercilessly with his fists.

The kids were yelling for him to stop, and looked close to tears. Their shouts became muffled to her ears, her heart hammering in her chest as Ringo knew she had to act fast. For all they knew, Billy might not have stopped.

She grappled for the lamp positioned on an end table, ripping the socket from the wall and all but dived forward as she swung the lamp with all her strength. It met against the side of Billy's head with a sickening thud, immediately knocking him out cold and swinging him limply in the direction he was hit.

Without taking a minute to analyse what she had done, Ringo dropped the now broken lamp at her feet and slid onto her knees next to Steve, sobs rising in her throat at his appearance.

Blood was trickling from his nostrils and his split lips, his face already starting to swell from the hits he took.

"Honey?" Ringo called out to him, cupping the sides of his head ever so gently as tears began to drip down her cheeks. "I'm home! Wake up!"

"Holy shit," Jessica's voice cut through the room as she entered, eyes darting back and forth between an unconscious Steve and Billy.

"Get some goddamn ice, please!" Ringo pleaded, biting her lower lip harshly. The boys and Jessica rushed to the kitchen to fetch some frozen food for Steve's face.

Max stayed behind, staring down at Billy's lifeless body with a cold expression.

"Is he... dead?" Ringo shakily asked, terrified that she may have hit him a smidgen too hard.

Max uncaringly lifted her foot and placed it on his stomach, rolling the teenager over onto his back. Immediately after doing so, he let out a groan of pain, his eyelids starting to flutter. Even though she hated him with every fibre in her being, she was thankful he was alive. A murder charge wasn't an achievement she'd have listed on a college resume.

Max swerved and roughly grabbed a needle that was laying next to the stereo, filled with a liquid meant to subdue Will. She uncapped it and dropped down, jamming it harshly into Billy's neck and then firing the empty syringe onto the ground. Immediately, he fell unconscious again.

"We don't need him waking up," Max explained to Ringo, who was watching her intently. With that dealt with, she ripped the frozen bags of peas and ice from the hands of the others that had fetched them for her, placing them carefully around his face. Truly, she didn't know what else to do. Ring an ambulance? Try to wake him up?

"I can get him out of here," Jessica offered nodding towards a broken Billy. "Drop him on his front lawn and let him think he was on a wild bender. I'll just need help getting him to the car."

"Thank you," Ringo sniffled, fixing the bags of peas so they didn't slip and fall down.

Now with the immediate threat over with, the trio of boys shared a look, their eyes switching between Ringo and each other.

With Steve and Billy relatively okay, maybe now they could focus on making sure Eleven was too.