SPN J2 BigBang 2015 - Dreameater (Destiel) 8/9
Dean
Regardless of his emotional state - and the fact it was the first time since the whole mess started that he was allowed out without a team of babysitters - Dean went out hunting by himself that night. It’s not like he had much of a choice, what with people dying out there and Cas still down for the count.
As a hunter, there were rules about the supernatural that most people didn’t get. Sure, when there are eight people with cameras in a haunted house, the ghosts are unlikely to come out and say hi. But, really, the things that went bump in the night, particularly Japanese things, preferred for there to be humans out and about to torment and eat.
Yōkai were different than western monsters. On the whole, they liked teasing people as they walked, terrifying them for the heck of it, although there were other yōkai that were just hungry and, occasionally, vengeful and didn’t care if their meal was saturated in fear. They just wanted meats.
Tonight’s prey had been reported by the Chinese while they were out looking for the new kijo. They had been hot on its trail and had had no time to deal with the annoyance of a brand-spanking new yōkai. They had spotted the yōkai when one of them had been chasing any stupid joggers that thought their health was more important than their lives.
So that was how Dean had found himself out hunting down what he was told was a wanyūdō: a flaming ox-cart wheel with an old monk’s head in the middle. This yōkai liked to take souls early and deliver them to Hell. Buddhist Hell, not Christian Hell, and when Cas had tried to explain it (something about sixteen layers, hot and cold, blah blah blah Hell), Dean had not really tried to retain it.
There was a Buddhist Hell. That’s all that mattered.
Regardless, going out with just Gabe and leaving Cas in his room it didn’t feel right, and his attention was pretty shot as a result. The street where he had found the first wanyūdō was near a set of apartment complexes. This wanyūdō had been picking off people as they walked to and from their cars. The police had (as usual) no idea, as the bodies just look like they had collapsed, not a wound on them.
Thus here he was - his mind on his injured tengu, all while some sort of weird geriatric-wheel dude was sucking the souls right out of folks. He had to hand it to the thing, though: the gross flaming head guy was fast, and, when he brushed by Dean, the wheel cut into his guarding forearm viciously, even from a distance of half a foot, and it burned. He hissed at the pain, and hoped Gabe’s weapon of choice tonight - what looked like a fancy sword on a stick - was going to work out okay.
Dean knew that weapons like these were used for cavalry battles, when infantry were on the ground and needed the extra reach to knock riders off their horses. He had doubted the sword-spear thing that Gabe had turned into, but, as the thing came at him again, he set the weighted butt of the stick hard into the ground, like he might have if he were trying to survive a horse charge. The wheel-dude nearly struck the upright weapon straight on, but it veered at the last moment, cackling at Dean’s misfortune.
Dean shifted his weight, and stuck the sword end between the spokes, and three of them sliced open before the creature realized it had been struck. It screamed an old man scream, like it had fallen and couldn’t get up, and liquid squirted from the broken spokes, soaking Dean from head to toe.
Dean howled in disgust because it was old man goo, but used his anger to pull the weapon up and towards himself, forcing the blade higher, and slicing through the old man’s head with a clean swipe, splitting it in two. The wheel’s momentum, however, kept it moving, and it crashed into some nearby trash cans, disappearing into a pile of ash. It all happened in a flash, and Dean stretched out his arms and let the goop to just drip off his clothes, curling his lip at how gross he felt. He suddenly empathized with Dr. Venkman when he got slimed. He smirked and said, “He slimed me.”
Gabe popped back into his usual human guise and eyed the drenched hunter. “You smell like old man jizz,” he joked with a grin, snapping a chocolate bar into existence.
“You’d know,” Dean snapped back, and, maliciously, flicked his goo-covered arm at Gabriel, striping him from head to hip with the clear liquid. Gabe looked appropriately horrified for once.
“You nasty, y’know that?” Gabe growled, swiping at his face with the edge of his purple ‘Hopeless Romantic Seeks Filthy Whore’ t-shirt. “Fuck,” he muttered after a moment, sniffing at the now-wet t-shirt. “Actually, Dean, this shit smells like gasoline.”
Dean, who’d been smirking at Gabe’s discomfort, reluctantly took a sniff. “Yeah. Smells like gas.”
He pulled off his army surplus jacket, which had taken the brunt, and used its clean sleeve to wipe off what he could off his face and neck. The goop had gotten on Dean’s flannel and t-shirt, and they were sticking uncomfortably to his chest and stomach. “Man, I don’t have a clean set in the car. Should we go after the second one, or drop by the house?”
Gabe shrugged. “Not up to me, chuckles.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay. There are two more of these mean little bastards out tonight. Let’s go get them and then I’ll soak in the bathtub later.”
But of course things were never as easy as he thought they’d be.
Dean was being optimistic and had forgotten about his bad luck, because there were five of the wheeled bastards. As a result, he’d almost been set on fire more than a few times, and he was absolutely filthy, just covered in old man-gas jizz, soot, and dirt from his several stop-drops-and-rolls. He now knew what a burnt-on-the-edges eggroll that had been dropped on the floor felt like, and it wasn’t all that great.
He had gotten home at 3am and realized that most of the hunters would have probably croaked on that one, and so he counted it a win, not seeing the speculative look that Akira gave him as he stomped upstairs to get clean.
Cas was downstairs with Sam, manning the phones for the other teams, and helping out with translations.
Someone, probably Akira, had bullied Cas into wearing a slightly oversized white t-shirt with tears in the back for his wings. The tears had been methodically safe-pinned together and the silver pins glinted occasionally. He was also wearing charcoal sweats, and his hair done in a disturbing man-bun. Dean tried not to roll his eyes and bet his money on it being Akira’s doing again, because her inner hipster was a douche and liked shit like that. Man-buns.
Cas’s feet were even encased in bright white tube socks with red stitching around the toes. He looked nearly human, except for the giant wings at his back, even with his wane color. Somehow his complexion reminded him of Bilbo Baggins’ description of feeling thin, like butter scraped over too much bread. He looked fragile, and Dean didn’t like that either. It was just gonna be one of those nights, he supposed.
He ignored his worries and just wandered over because Cas was beaming at him from across the room, the smile crinkling the corners of his eyes and making his nose look all scrunched. It was adorable, and he found himself grinning in return.
When Dean threw himself down next to him on the couch, however, the tengu hissed and grabbed Dean’s arm, eyeing the scorched cut and the new bruises. He cooed over Dean’s wounds sadly, and looking ready to try and heal them. Dean jerked his arm away, turning bright red in the process, and said, “You are not wasting your energy on these piddly cuts.”
Cas just blinked at him with those eyes and nodded, taking comfort in sitting as close to Dean as possible. Dean let him. Who was he to deny a dying man? Bird? Thing?
From Bobby’s desk, Sam said (in his girly-ass-let’s-talk-emotions voice), “If you two want to be alone, I can arrange that. I don’t want to get in the way of your canoodling.”
Cas tilted his head like he wasn’t sure what he meant, but his cheeks were slightly pinker than before. Dean flipped Sam the bird (HA HA HA! The bird!!), and, just to make him uncomfortable, stated, “I don’t need your permission, Samantha” and proceed to pull Cas in for a kiss, making sure his brother got an eyeful.
There was some artful, pretend gagging, and Dean one-finger saluted him again.
The unfortunate side-effect of this tactic, though, was that kissing Cas was a miracle and he still tasted like sweet, fresh cherries. Dean didn’t want to stop and, after a good five minutes of sucking face in front of witnesses, he heard his brother clear his throat and finally shout, “Seriously, Dean? C’mon!!”
He detached his lips only to find Cas had covered them with his wings, and he gently tugged one down to eye his brother.
Sam was looking traumatized. He hadn’t looked that traumatized since he had walked in on Dean standing in their motel kitchenette with a fistful of Crisco and a propped centerfold of Miss Busty Asian Beauty 1999.
Dean smirked. “Ah, don’t be such a big baby! You couldn’t even see anything!”
Sam stared at him with horrified hazel eyes and whispered forlornly, “The sounds. Dear god, the sounds.”
All was good.
Akira woke him up the next morning by violently pushing him out of bed. Dean landed on his chest with a hard thump. When he reared up from his nose being smashed against the wood floor, he knocked his head into the knobby bit of the desk chair that stuck out, and ended up curled in a piteous ball, swearing a blue-streak that may or may not have frightened all the birds out of the tree outside.
If he wasn’t sure Akira was capable and willing to kill him, he would have kicked her in the knee for being an asshole and standing there clapping and whistling in admiration of his swearing skills.
“Wow, I’m from New York, and that was impressive, man,” she said, still slow clapping.
Dean heaved out a breath and said, “Akira, whatever it is, it better be good.”
She stood there in her fancy black turtleneck, with her fancy crocheted huge sweater over it, her fancy black leggings tucked into her fancy black riding boots with the brown tops, her hand on her cocked hip, like Dean was wasting her time, and drinking from one of Bobby’s bigger mugs that said, “NOT INTERESTED” on it in big black letters.
He remembered that mug. Sam had given Bobby that mug.
Dean pushed himself up and muttered bitterly, “What’s this? Are you modeling for some douchebag hipster calendar, or what?”
Her brown eyes narrowed in on him, sharp and prickly, and he worked at not squirming under them.
Finally, she said, “Your precious tengu is already downstairs. Move your ass downstairs, or I will introduce my Ralph Laurens’ to it. Capisce?”
Blearily, he looked up at her from the floor, and, rubbing a hand over the new bump on his skull, he rasped, “Are you sure you’re Japanese? I thought they were supposed to be polite or something?”
“That’s the best you’ve got, Winchester?” She responded wryly, as she turned on her heel and walked out, the rest of her retort echoing down the hall, “I’m a New Yorker first, American second, and Japanese third. I will bitch you out, shoot you in the ass, and then thank you for the privilege. Now get out here!”
Dean sighed and hung his head, thumping it lightly against the wooden floor. “Jesus fucking Christ, don’t I know one nice female hunter?”
Without thinking on it too much, he marched downstairs as was demanded of him, yawning, stretching, and scratching his head. He had not even paused to change out of his pajamas, which were just soft flannel pants and an old t-shirt. He stopped short on the fourth step down when he realized there were like thirty people in the office and spilling out into the hall and kitchen.
He also realized there were some giggles and stares, and that he hadn’t noticed that, when he stretched, his t-shirt had risen, revealing his abs and hipbones. He blushed, but managed to smirk and a wink at them, internally groaning at the bright burst of feminine giggles it got him.
“She could have warned a guy,” he muttered as he turned around and waltzed back to his room, bitching under his breath the whole time about women not warning a guy about an audience, and how was he supposed to know that there were a bazillion people downstairs.
Changed, he came back out wearing a proper t-shirt with KISS on the front and a maroon flannel shirt over his worn jeans. He was in his socked feet, but he didn’t want to bother with boots, not when he didn’t know when Akira was just going to drop in.
Again, as he descended, he had an audience, and he recognized a few of the faces. He hadn’t had much to do with the larger teams, mostly because everyone was too spread out to hang out much. It wasn’t like there were that many people in Sioux Falls; it was more that there were just that many variations of yōkai running around causing trouble. Not all of them ate people; some were just annoying as hell and, to boot, multiplied like rabbits or hamsters.
As he stepped in, Akira caught sight of him and waved him towards the small island that was Bobby’s desk. The bead was nowhere in sight, although Cas was sitting on the couch, looking trapped, and Gabe was next to him, just looking belligerent, especially with a turquoise t-shirt that proclaimed, ‘I’d rather be snorting cocaine off a hooker’s ass,’ under a well-worn dark brown leather bomber jacket. He smiled at them, and Cas’s trapped expression eased a touch. Gabe popped a Chupa Chup into existence and aggressively sucked on it, his gaze sweeping over the assembled magicians and hunters vigilantly, just in case they decided to make a move against Cas.
Which was ridiculous, given the reverence they were receiving, and the number of hand claps and bows that were given in their direction. Still, they were in the middle of a mass of monster exterminators… and they weren’t actually human.
Akira pointed to the spot between Cas and Gabe, while his moose of a brother was helping hold up the whiteboard so everyone could see it. She made some noise to get everyone’s attention.
She slipped into her explanation. “One of our teams has finally caught onto the Baku’s den. She’s living on the top floor of the CenturyLink Tower, where the building’s eccentric owner kept his offices, but also lived there.”
She pointed to the whiteboard, indicating the center of the board where a sigil of some sort had been written. Dean only recognized the giant pentacle in the middle, the rest just looking like scribbles that spiraled around and away from the center. In the middle, there was a Chinese character “鵺” and a bunch more scribbles that he took as more writing. To him, it just looked like someone with a shaky hand tried to write something out.
There was a lot of murmuring, and she asked, “Does anyone else know what this means?”
A hand or two went up, and one of the older Shintoists said, “It’s a summons for a nue.”
Akira smugly smiled and nodded. “Exactly. That’s it. We have ourselves a harbinger of doom, folks.” She pointed over at the trio on the couch, and Dean stiffened at having the whole room look at him. “The Righteous Man who started it all must finish it. He has lost all his luck to the creature, and now is basically living off the kitsune’s good will.”
Gabe leaped up like he had won something, pumping his fists in the air, strutting in the two-foot strip of room they had for their feet, and bowing his head to everyone. “Yes, thank you! Thank you!”
Dean snagged the tail of his shirt and dragged him back down.
“Shut up,” he muttered, trying not to laugh. The various practitioners were giving Gabe incredulous looks. So much for the ‘honorable’ kitsune.
“Regardless,” Akira continued, ignoring Gabe, “Time is of the essence. She’s using that luck to force start the summoning. Because of that, I will need teams of two to go out and find the smaller sigils associated with this giant one.” She pointed to some of the slightly bigger squiggles on the sigil, most of them at the points of the pentacle. “If she calls it up, we’re in deep shit because I don’t know if Dean will survive to see Nurarihyon or the Night Parade to stop it.”
Dean ignored the queasy feeling those words gave him, and, when Cas took his hand, he was grateful, slotting those slim fingers against his and ignoring any looks it got them.
Akira continued, pointing to the areas on the sigil where lines touched. “Perhaps if we can weaken the spell by removing some of the smaller bits, we can help destabilize it.”
She pressed her lips together and shrugged. “Maybe just make it harder for the Baku, if nothing else.”
There was a general murmuring as the practitioners spoke amongst themselves, and a hand went up from an older man in his late thirties. “What is our timeline for this?”
Akira nodded. “Good question.” She folded her arms against her chest and said, “Two days, now, if my divination is right, and it is never wrong.”
One of the young men in the Shintoists stood up for a moment and said, “I agree. When I did a divination for events in the next few weeks, it said potential disaster in the next few days.”
“And, of course, there’s the lunar eclipse in two days,” remarked someone from the back.
The murmuring got louder, and Akira shushed them by just putting out her hands and making a settling motion with them. “Okay, alright. That means we basically have two days to at least weaken the spell, combat and hopefully defeat the Baku.” She turned to Dean, and suddenly every eye was on him.
“Do you think you can?” She asked him candidly.
Dean legitimately had no answer to that. He felt Cas wince and hadn’t realized he had tensed and squeezed his hand a bit too hard.
“I’m gonna do what I can,” he settled on finally. He didn’t know if he could, but he’d do his best or die trying. Hell, dying was on the menu if he didn’t try, so why not? Fake it til ya make it.
Akira narrowed her gaze at him, and he suddenly felt like she could read his mind. He narrowed his eyes right back at her and started to think of every sexual position he could imagine with Cas, and, as it turned out, it was quite a few. Her eyebrow twitched, but she didn’t appear shocked, so he presumed she was not actually reading his mind; she was just being an asshole.
“Fine,” she said finally, looking back out at the sea of faces. “Sam here has the list of pairs. About half of you will still be on yōkai extermination duty!” There were groans and complaints at that, and she shouted, “People dying out there folks! Keep it in mind!”
Someone grunted, “No one’s dying of Betobetosan exposure.”
Bobby broke in and said, “Yeah, but they multiply fast and they’re annoying as hell.”
There was more grumbling, mostly of agreement. Banishing the little bastards was time consuming, not hard, as it had to be directed AT them, which meant pinpointing their position, and the things were invisible.
Bobby yelled above the din of thirty people talking to each other and figuring out their assignments, “I know we had set up a perimeter last week to try and prevent yōkai from escaping the city, so we’re asking a few of you to get on it and check the barrier we set up.”
“Who do we talk to,” was shouted back, and Bobby pointed at Sam, who was chatting with some blushing woman as he wrote down her name and assignment.
Dean watched the crowd, hearing different languages being spoken, and laughter of some of them. They looked tired, and he didn’t blame them because night after night of ghostbusting was no fun. And it was night after night, as that bitch kept spawning hell creatures like she was suffering from beer shits.
He tried to ignore most of the stares in his direction, even as Gabe was deliberately ignoring the reverent clapping hands and bows in his direction, immersing himself in some tabloid with a headline that said, “Casa Erotica: The Real Story of Love and the Pizza Man” and chewing on a bit of red licorice.
Dean nudged him and asked to borrow it later, and Gabe gave him the bro-thumbs up.
Downtown Sioux Falls
Dean
That night, Gabe, Dean, Cas, and Sam were on baku watch. Using a telescope, they spied on her a bit, but the CenturyLink Tower was the tallest building in Sioux Falls (well, in South Dakota) and even camping out on the roof of a nearby building made it hard to see. But, really, all they saw her do all night was eat veggie pizza, pop open packages of Oreos and snack cakes to devour, and watch “Gilmore Girls,” while rubbing her belly. No sign of the big shot executive, so they figured he was dead.
“S-should we go in?” Sam asked after his turn at the telescope. He was looking vaguely uncomfortable as Gabe had decided to sit very close to him to keep warm, and was currently curling in next to him in his tiny form. It looked like his discomfort had more to do with worrying about squashing the fox than Gabe being affectionate. The flirting and all that was easy enough to ignore, since he knew Gabe wasn’t being serious.
At least, Dean hoped he wasn’t being serious.
Cas shook his head. He was bundled in a Ravenclaw muffler Sam had dredged up and covered in a beige trench coat that Bobby used to wear ages ago. It was just big enough to hide Cas’s wings and was warm to boot. Cas in a muffler covering the lower half of his face, with a reddened nose and cheeks, though, were doing weird things to Dean’s libido, even when he told it to calm the fuck down. When had he ever thought cold brightened eyes, and reddened cheeks and noses were attractive?
Cas tugged the muffler down, and said, “I think she only looks off guard. She’s on the 11th floor. We don’t know what’s on the other 11 floors.”
Sam nodded, his huge hand ducking down to pet Gabe, who curled into the caress with a tiny yip. “I know there’s an elevator that can take us to the top, but I think it requires an old fashioned key to get to the penthouse. It’s not one of those card accesses or we could get Ash to rig it for us.”
“Then how are we supposed to infiltrate?” Dean sat back and huffed petulantly. “We need suggestions on how to perpetrate this.”
Cas paused and looked at Dean. He slowly said, “She might be waiting for you tomorrow.” He stared at his hands. “She...might need you for the final part of the summons.”
At Dean and Sam’s disbelieving expressions, Cas held out his hands and stuttered out, “I am no expert at summoning nue!” He put his hands in his lap and stared at them more. “It… it’s more that I’m guessing that, if she needed Dean’s luck to summon it, maybe she needs the rest to complete it?”
The tiny fox yawned and stretched, shaking himself out. “She won’t,” Gabe said, sitting up and staring at them all. “She’ll need Dean’s life force to bring Nurarihyon and the Night Parade.”
Sam rubbed his face with his hands and blew out a frustrated sigh. “Okay, so what’s a New-rah-ree-hee-on thing? Explain it.”
Gabe cocked his head and said, “Hmm… Nurarihyon is said to be the leader of the Night Parade.” He quirked a smile and added, “By himself, he’s pretty harmless, just annoying as fuck since he sneaks into places humans live when they are out and uses all their things, drinks all their beverages, wears their clothes.”
He chuckled. “He’s a good fellow, when he’s not bringing about the Night Parade. But he’s really hard to pick out of a crowd since he looks human.”
“He looks like a little old man,” Cas clarified.
“And… that’s all he does?” Sam looked confused. “He sneaks into places and mooches?”
“Hey,” Dean muttered, “If I saw that my snacks had been eaten and my best booze gone, I’d pitch a fit!”
“You’d pitch a fit even if you’d have done it yourself while drunk,” Sam said dismissively, sending him a bitchface.
“You’d pitch a fit, bitch,” Dean groused, punching his brother lightly on the arm.
“Whatever, jerk,” Sam mumbled and turned to look through the telescope. He yelped and fell back, and Dean and the other two tensed in alarm. “Fuck! She knows we’re here!”
Dean said, “What?” He picked up the telescope and looked towards the penthouse, and, sure enough, that piggy bitch was standing in the window, just grinning at them, waving one hand. He saw her lips move, and she winked, walking away. He gritted his teeth and put down the telescope.
“Sonovabitch, I hate that thing,” he snarled, turning back to the others. “She just fucking waved at me and mouthed, ‘it’s too late’ before just turning away.”
“Well,” Sam muttered. “It can’t get much worse than that.”
When the troop of four returned to Bobby’s, it was to mild chaos.
A few of the pairs of hunters sent to find and possibly erase the grounding sigils were suddenly AWOL, and could not be hailed on their phones, nor did the GPS on them work.
The yōkai were suspiciously quiet, as if they were waiting for something, and the whole city seemed to be holding its breath.
Arguments had broken out about whether or not a full-scale assault should be immediately attempted, since it seemed things were too quiet, and seemed to be quickly coming to a head. Others vehemently insisted that locating the missing hunters was the most important thing, and fuck the frontal assault when their numbers had already been pared down by a quarter.
In the midst of it all, Akira was like a cork, bobbing between them, keeping her head up, mediating arguments, and coordinating efforts.
When she spotted them at the edge of the hall, she called out, “What did you bozos find out?”
Dean and Sam exchanged looks, and Sam said, “She made us. She didn’t do anything, but mock us that it was too late.”
Bobby looked up from where he was working with the map and pointing out where the last sigil-removing team had disappeared. “And you idjits let her scare you off?”
Dean and Sam both frowned. Sam started with, “It wasn’t like th-”
Dean shoved him back and got in front of him, “I made the decision to back down. We were made. She was deliberately doing nothing but snarfing Oreos and boxes of Little Debbies, while watching girly TV shows.”
From behind him, Sam grumbled about discretion being the better part of valor, and Gabe laughed at him.
Akira stopped moving for a moment and expectantly stared at them. “So, Dean, what’s the next move?”
Dean shrugged. There had been a brief discussion in the car about whether or not they needed to involve John, but Sam, like Bobby, was worried about John’s ‘kill first, ask later’ policy regarding the supernatural, and he had ended on, “I also don’t think he’d be too happy about you swapping spit with, y’know, it.”
Dean had punched him hard in the arm. “Don’t call him an ‘it.’ I’ll pound you.”
“Aw, look. True love rears its ugly head.” Gabe had snickered in the back seat, while Sam whined, “I didn’t mean it. It’s what Dad would say!”
Cas had been napping and Dean was glad he had missed it all.
Dean’s stomach had churned at what his Dad would say. “That’s why Bobby said not to tell him shit when this all started. His ‘stab first, ask later attitude’ was going to be a problem with the friendlies.”
But Sam had hesitantly said, “Dean… if… I mean, if we don’t break this spell…”
“We’ll break the spell,” Dean had said stubbornly. He blew out a breath. “We’ll break the spell, and he doesn’t have to know about all this.”
“He probably already does, y’know,” Sam had remarked, slouching in his seat.
“Well, he’s probably busy then. Why call him if we can handle it ourselves?”
Sam had given him a ‘who-the-hell-do-you-think-you’re-fooling’ look, and Dean had glared back, mentally begging him to just drop it.
Thankfully, Sammy had.
But now, confronted with a roomful of upset practitioners and hunters, all looking to him for leadership, he was feeling uncomfortable and missed the commanding presence of his father. John knew how to get things done. Dean mostly just played things by ear and hoped for the best.
He looked for his surrogate dad in the crowd and said, “Uh… Bobby, you wanna get in on this?”
Bobby looked at him with a scowl and shrugged. “It’s your ass on the line. It’s your show, son.”
Not at all helpful there, Bobby.
A hand snuck into his, and he looked over his shoulder to find Cas had wedged himself so he was standing next to Dean, his wings tucked in tight to his back. He gripped Cas’s hand and Cas smiled encouragingly. Coughing to release some his own tension, Dean said, “We have about five hours before dawn. How much time do we need to set up for an offensive?”
Akira’s mouth crooked into a small smile. “I imagine about twelve total, because I wanted to do a few spells and the others want to seek out the missing people.” She jerked her chin towards Bobby. “Bobby here can take care of organizing the missing people search.”
Bobby gave her a dirty look from under his shaggy brows. “Girl, you better not plan on leaving me out of this,” he growled.
“Wouldn’t dream of it, but you know Sioux Falls the best and have the most experience tracking down yōkai.”
“Bobby, please do that.” Dean jerked his thumb back towards Sam, Cas, and Gabe. “I have these guys with me, and whatever else Akira is cooking up.”
Green eyes assessed the onmyōji and he asked, “You are planning something, aren’t you?”
She grinned at him, looking disgustingly fresh in her off-the-shoulder deep red sweater and ripped skinny black jeans, despite being as sleep deprived as the rest of them. “Of course.”
Dean nodded. “Then it’s settled. Tomorrow evening early, before the lunar eclipse.”
He pointed at Bobby. “That gives us time to look for the missing people.” He pointed at Akira. “And gives you time to get whatever you’re planning to do done, right?”
She shrugged. “I’ll do that I’ve got to.”
Dean nodded again and made a swirly motion with his pointing finger towards the waiting practitioners. “Bobby, you got this, right? This… this is all you, right?”
Bobby made a shooing motion and bent back over to look over the map.
Dean sighed in relief and squeezed Cas’s hand gratefully. He looked at his small team and said, “C’mon, I need some info from you guys and see what we can do about tomorrow.”
Gabriel’s Grove
Akira
Akira hated wearing all the crap she was expected to wear as an onmyōji: the sashinuki were okay, because the wide-legged pants were pretty comfortable, but the joē, the ceremonial robe that went over it, make it a pain to move her arm and hands, and she ended up pushing them up her arms a lot while she prepared. Even with the strip of cloth she used to hold back her sleeves, they inevitably get in the way. She also hated the weird fin-like mesh hat called a tate-eboshi, but it was part of the outfit, so she bore with it.
She looked at the altar she had set up with permission from Gabriel in his small grove, making sure the boundaries were well delineated and double bound by the guardian ropes strewn with shide. The shide, pristine white paper folded into zig-zag strips, waved gently in the early morning air. The altar, made with some help from Bobby, was basically a small table with small offerings of salt, fresh fruit, a nice trout Gabe had fished out for her, and also several more shide. The shide were symbols for purity, and were important in guarding her from attacks.
She reasoned the time to be between the hour of the Ox and the Tiger, which meant she needed to hurry before the cock’s crowed dawn.
She knelt before the smaller table, where she had her paper works and ink, and, cupping her hands into the first mudra, she started to chant under her breath in Japanese. “With reverence and awe, I humbly request the assistance of my ancestors, as we guard this city from ruin and pray release the spirit of the Baku, Eve, from her pain.”
“I ask assistance for our relative, our ancestor’s kin, Akio, also known as Gabriel, who has made a contract with Dean Winchester to save this world from doom. I ask this in Abe no Seimei’s name, and pray that Seiryu on the East, Byakko of the West, Suzaku to the South, and Genbu on the North guard and reinforce the barriers built to hold in the damages that will be done today, in the name of humanity.”
She prayed this in a litany until she could feel the power building, reinforcing the containment spells, adding strength to her magic. By the time she felt it hit its peak, she was breathing hard and sweating profusely. She picked up her writing brush and, on the strips of prepared paper, she wrote her spells, one after another, until her powers were spent, and she could put down the brush.
Akira sat a moment, trying to pull herself together, since it had been a decade since she had last tried to channel so much power. But looking at the names on the paper strips, she wondered, not for the first time, what the gods had in store for Dean Winchester that they were coming to his aid so powerfully?
Dean
In the long-ass discussion with Cas, Gabe, and Sam, it came down to Cas wanting to get in on the action that he had no power to get in on; Gabe not really giving a shit one way or the other; and Sam getting all of them to see reason.
Getting into the penthouse was the first legitimate hurdle, of course. So, when asked point blank, Gabe finally admitted that he could jimmy open the elevator lock, but it was attached to electricity and that made it singularly uncomfortable to do so. Not impossible. Just… uncomfortable.
Dean nearly slapped him upside the head for that.
Further argument revolved around Sam’s wanting to be there, and Dean not wanting him there. It was dangerous. Sam had to go back to school. He didn’t have time for near-death fights.
“But Dean,” Sam gritted out, “It’s the end of the world if we don’t win. I don’t think Stanford’s going to matter if there’s no world.”
This is why his baby brother was going to end up a lawyer.
Cas broke the fight up and added his two cents.
“Dean, you will need back up. I’m pretty sure that Akira will be going with us, but even she’s going to need physical protection. The others… I suspect they will be trying to contain the damages.” He paused. “I… I really don’t think tomorrow will end very prettily.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Dean groused, running his hands through his hair. “Damn it.”
Gabe yawned and scratched his belly, saying through the mouthful of M&Ms he had been chewing on, “I think Akira’s got a plan. The woman’s a firecracker, that’s for sure.”
Dean rolled his eyes. “I just bet she does. Meanwhile, we’re left as baku bait and my dick’s left hanging in the wind.”
“It’s a nice dick, at least,” Cas offered quietly, obviously not quite understanding the twin looks of utter horror on Dean and Sam’s faces, or why Gabe was laughing so hard, he nearly choked on his candy.
Sighing heavily, Dean said, “Great. Thanks, Cas.” He refused to look at his traumatized brother or Gabe, who was howling with laughter and rolling on the floor. “Fuck it. We’ll do what Winchesters have always done: wing it.”
The day of the battle had dawned quietly enough. The yōkai had not made much of an appearance overnight, and that made everyone very nervous. The overall group had departed around 2am to their respective living spaces, to rest, eat, and prepare for the night. It was going to get ugly; they had not been able to erase even a single sigil piece.
The teams had approached the various sigil sites, only to either not find them, or to also disappear into the night.
With morale already low with the first group of missing people, and the group’s collective failure was crippling. It was an unforeseen blow to an already traumatic battle. They tried to rally, but it was difficult.
So, at 5pm, they again met at Bobby’s house for a finale battle meeting and, possibly, a final meal.
Everyone kicked in and there was everything from General Mao’s chicken (although they didn’t call it that) to onigiri, the seaweed wrapped rice balls being tucked away into pockets and bags for later snacking.
Amulets were passed out and a few more blessings given, especially to Dean and Sam, who were spearheading the attack on the office building. Half of the group, coordinated by Bobby, were going to maintain the barriers at the edges of the city, just in case Dean and Sam fail and the nue does show up. They needed to keep it in the city by any means possible and Bobby had spent several days doing research on the side with Akira, Sam, and Cas to figure out how to kill it.
Only, of course, if Dean and Sam failed.
Which they weren’t. Absolutely not.
The rest of the hunters were going patrolling, while Akira, Sam, Dean, and Gabe went to the CenturyLink Tower. Cas was told to stay at home, and not all the pouting and puppy-dog eyes were going to change Dean’s mind about it. The tengu looked even worse, like the weight of his flesh was barely there. His eyes had sunken into his face a bit, and lost most of their luster.
If Dean was dying tonight, he wasn’t going to do it while Cas watched.
As the group made their way to the Tower, the atmosphere in the car was tense. Sam was playing with the metal thing that Bobby had found for him, something called a Vajra. It was the size of a knife, but it was the shape of a tube and it had heft to it. Elaborate symbols decorated the sides of the gold tube, and each end had four prongs surrounding a short pointed piece of metal to, as Bobby had said, crush evil.
Sam, over the last few days, had also been given a crash course on Buddhism and Buddhist chants, so his mighty and gigantic skull was stuffed full of those things. He had also been given a short sword by Akira with a bright red tassel hanging off the pommel, and a pocketful of paper ofuda to help distract the yōkai. The ofuda paper spells were for containment, but mostly for low to medium level yōkai. Who knew what they were going to run into? Dean had noticed the bulge in Sam’s coat too, although he hadn’t mentioned it, but he could tell Sam was also carrying a sawed-off shotgun with rounds of rock salt. It was a good idea. It may not stop yōkai, but it bothered the hell out of them.
Akira had not said much, carrying her monstrous tote bag with ease. She was dressed in pure white this time, with no makeup, and her hair was pulled severely back. She looked ready for business, and her smiles, when she found Dean looking at her, were sharp. Dean was genuinely glad that she was on their side.
So it had been decided that Akira would be playing defense, Sam would flow with what needed to be done, and Dean and Gabe needed to focus on pure offense against the yōkai in the battle planning. Akira had been very straightforward, which Dean appreciated and hated because he didn’t want to do it.
“It may go against the grain” Akira had said, her caramel colored eyes intent, her polish-free fingernail poking Dean in the chest for emphasis, “But you must cut through her abdomen. That’s where the main summoning spell is. That’s where she’s carrying the nue.”
Dean really did not like that idea, but he had swallowed his unease and nodded.
Gabe didn’t care. That bitch had beaten the hell out of Cassie and even hurt him a bit in the last battle they’d had in the dream realm. She was just pure monster to him. Screw that nue.
They didn’t speak as they parked across the way, easily breaking into the building, which was ominously quiet. They crossed the lobby nervously, and piled into the elevator. Gabe futzed with the mechanical lock that allowed the elevator to enter the off-limits 11th floor, pulling back with a curse when it sparked and shocked him. Dean ignored Gabe’s resentful eyes, and focused on the battle to come.
He was so glad it was going to be over, one way or another.
When the elevator finally pinged and opened, the apartment was unoccupied, although it smelled horrendous and most of the lights were either flickering like a bad horror flick or just off, leaving heavy pockets of darkness.
To make things worse, there were a lot of things in the large penthouse. It was minimalist in furniture and in the open design, what with uncomfortable looking couches with short backs and a room floored with what Gabe called tatami mats. In locked glass cases, old Japanese swords, paintings, kimono, and just general cultural plunder were on display throughout the penthouse. A large, heavily embroidered red kimono took up most of one wall, the design looking like a bunch of flying storks and fluffy white clouds with gold linings.
But the Baku was not present and she had not set guards inside the rooms.
“Guess the party’s upstairs,” Dean muttered. Sam and Akira agreed, and they briefly split up to look for the way to the roof, Gabe nonchalantly following Dean.
Dean tried not to cringe when he found the bedroom and there was nothing but some hair and a giant blood spot in there. He worked around the foul, rust-colored stain, and looked around for the entrance to the roof. He found nothing so he backed out quickly, trying not to breathe in the stench of drying and fermenting blood.
Gabe had stayed away, complaining from where he was in the hallway about the stench. Dean ignored him, and poked around in the hall closet.
Sam finally gave a shout out when he located the entrance in the pantry. It was a closed panel at the top of a ladder and looked more like for emergency purposes than for really accessing the roof.
All of them stared at it, and Dean realized that he could hear chanting from the entry and feel a low-level buzz that was making the hair on his arms stand up.
They all looked to each other and nodded, and Dean climbed up the ladder to the rooftop first. He pushed the heavy metal panel up and cautiously looked out. The chanting was hella loud, now, and there was a definite buzzing like a million helium balloons had been charged with a million amps of static electricity.
He had just poked his head out, his arm holding the entrance up, when something snapped the panel completely open, while a huge hand reached in and grabbed his wrist. Dean had about five seconds to note a massive, red-hued, muscle-bound dude with insanely bright red hair and eyes looking at him, just dangling all six-foot plus and 200-lbs of him with one hand easily, before Dean was flicked away like a booger off a finger.
Indistinctly, he heard someone shout, “Oni!!”
But then he hit something with great force and clumsily slid down the invisible wall into a painfully moaning lump on the building’s roof. He groggily concluded it was a barrier, since he wasn’t plummeting to his death over the edge of the building.
From where he had landed, he heard Sam holler, “Dean!”
And then there was a grunt and thump as Sam landed in a crumpled heap next to him.
Dean sat up and rubbed his head, asking, “Sam! Are you okay?”
Sam groaned out a muted and mumbled, “Yes!”
They both staggered to their feet just as a similar-looking man to the red bastard walked up, this time with light blue skin, blue hair and ice blue eyes. They were both easily eight-feet tall, and just built like brick shithouses. Dean saw the guy’s foot pull back and braced himself for the kick by curling into a ball.
Meanwhile, the giant red man was apparently not prepared for a huge fox to come leaping out of the hole and biting his ruddy arm viciously. The red man howled, attempting to shake off the fox, but Gabe just bit down harder, making sure Akira got out of the hole in one piece.
When Akira get clear, Gabe released the oni’s arm and leaped towards Dean, knocking his shoulder into the blue oni’s back with all his strength and watching him stumble forward, only to trip over Dean and smack into the barrier face first.
Dean had grunted when the huge foot had caught on his shoulder, holding in his yelp of pain as he felt the bruise bloom under his skin right where his shoulder met his left arm. It was better, though, then getting the shit kicked out of him with a Caddy-sized foot.
Sam rushed over and helped him up, avoiding the blue guy as he also slowly stood up, and they all four backed up to the opposite edge of the rooftop as they figured out what was going on. The rooftop, now that he had time to look at it, was mostly flat with the air-conditioning units to one side. It seemed the owner had wanted to make sure there was a helicopter pad, which made most of the rooftop bare. On the western side, a completely naked Eve had set up the altar with a circle and glowing, white sigils painted into the black roof. On the altar was a dead woman, her body spread open like a dissected frog pinned to a board, with what looked like her heart, liver, and a bowl of blood offered up.
Before the altar stood the Baku, chanting loudly and rhythmically, while bright blue balls of light danced around her like butterflies. Every other beat of her chant, one of the balls of light was sucked into her abdomen, and it sent off a small shock wave that felt icky on Dean’s skin.
“Gabe,” he muttered, “What the fuck is she doing? It feels gross.”
Gabe, in his large fox form, had his ears back, his eyes were glowing yellow, and he had his lips pulled back in a disgusted grimace. “She’s feeding the spell souls,” he replied tightly. “That bitch is feed the nue the human souls that were caught for her. That’s why there’s that small electrical discharge.”
He turned those glowing eyes on Dean, and there was a predatory gleam, a purpose, there, for once. “Those souls cannot be redeemed, but… we need to stop her before she completes the spell and all the souls are consumed.”
Dean nodded, and reached, saying, “Ideyō!”
Gabe grinned at him and there was a pop as he transformed into a regular, old katana.
Dean gripped it, feeling Gabe’s moral indignation running through the blade.
Suddenly to his left, there was the retort of a shotgun as Sam pumped the blue big guy full of rock salt, which did little to slow him down, and shouting to his right, as Akira chanted something that put a stop the red guy’s momentum.
“FUCK!” He heard Akira shout. “This is not going to stop them very long!”
Sam had thrown the shotgun to the side and was trying to keep the blue guy busy with the sword Akira had given him. The sword was a few inches shorter than Dean’s katana, and Sam was able to use it more like a long knife. It didn’t damage the blue guy much, but it kept him at a distance, so there was that.
Dean stepped forward into Sam’s battle with the sword, glad Gabe was guiding him, because, although he was pretty good with a knife, he wasn’t sure what to do with a sword, other than poke someone with the pointy end.
He slid under the blue guy’s swing at him, and, as he stood, he realized that this wasn’t a guy who was cosplaying as a blueberry. He had horns. Tiny, black horns that stuck out from his scalp and were just visible through his bright, berry-blue hair.
Monster, then. He swung the sword as he stood up behind the guy, and it bit into his meats right above his waistline. The guy howled, obviously not expecting it to hurt, which made sense as the shotgun blast had done nothing but ruin his “Dallas Cowboys” jersey that said, “Aoi” on the back. Dean heard him roar again as Sam poked him from the opposite side.
He turned back and struck twice more, striking the blue guy (Aoi?) in the back of the knee and, even with Akira screaming a warning, he nearly got his head removed from his shoulders, when the big red dude came rushing at him with a giant spiked club from behind.
The blue guy had collapsed to one knee, but he looked like he was healing. Slowly, but healing.
Dean hollered, “SAM!!” before dodging the next blow from the spiked club aimed at his head.
The club stopped as the red guy (in a damned Red Wings hockey jersey) tried to bring it down, and Akira’s strained, “NOW, DEAN!” made it obvious this was his chance.
He stabbed through the creature’s middle, and something told him that it wasn’t enough. He dragged the sword out, ignoring the red oni’s grunts of pain and how, slowly, the club was starting to move. Dean stabbed the thing through the throat this time and sliced through, cutting away half of the monster’s neck and his arm when Dean pulled the sword down.
Dean was drenched in monster blood but he was happy with the results as the monster gurgled its rage.
Another howl, somewhere to his left, and Sam was reciting sutras as fast as he could. Dean ignored it, hearing Akira also desperately trying to keep the creature still and near losing, as the red oni had kept its grip on the club and it was definitely moving now.
Not for long.
The second cut slid effortlessly through the other half of its neck and arm, and Dean had to wonder if it was that Gabriel was just so holy that he cut through the monsters like a hot knife through room-temp butter, or that monsters were just more fragile than they thought.
The red oni’s head flew off its shoulders with a juicy bounce, its arm falling off to the side, while its bulky body fell in slo-mo to the ground.
He heard Sam scream, “Dean!”
He turned to look and the big blue guy came running towards Dean, his arms flailing. He stopped just short of engaging Dean when Sam threw the pronged thing that Bobby had given him through the blue oni’s back, and it slid through its chest like the monster was made of wet tissue paper.
The same creature the rock salt had barely touched, stared down at his midsection with surprise. The expression was still on his face when Dean cut off its head. There was another juicy bounce, and another anticlimactic thud as the body fell like its strings were cut.
Akira and Sam jogged closer to him, both of them breathing heavily and he turned Gabriel towards the Baku.
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Aoi: Means "blue" in Japanese. (Oni are often paired into Red and Blue.)
Oni, in Japanese, has a lot of meanings. In this case, it means "ogre."