09x22 - Heatseeker - Part Five: Out on the Street
Episode number: 09x22 of Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)
Title: Heatseeker
Subtitle: Out on the Street
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,155
Rating: R
Warnings: language, violence
"Can't you heal him?" Dean demanded from Cas.
"He's not injured, Dean! He's a dog!" Cas said defensively.
"No, he's a human and just looks like a dog!"
"I can't heal this. We need to find Tezcatlipoca and have him reverse it."
Dean paced the length of the alley, and Sam followed with his tail high in the air, wagging.
"Sammy, stop that. This is - weird enough."
Sam sat down and lowered his nose.
"You're making him sad," Cas scolded.
"How do we find this guy, Cas?"
"He'll be at the epicenter of activity."
"What're we waiting for?" Dean asked. "Let's go!"
Cas hesitated. He handed Dean the Colt salvaged from Sam's clothing, which failed to stay on him in his current golden retriever form.
"Dean, there's something that's bothering me - "
"You mean besides the fact that my brother is on all fours and has even more hair?"
"The pentagram," Cas said. "It's a symbol of protection."
"So what? You can protect something evil."
"I dislike tricksters, and Tezcatlipoca is worse for - "
"Then we kill him. Done and done. Do you know where he is?"
"Yes, he's near the post office. In a vacant apartment. His position is roughly the center of the pentagram."
"Let's go."
"Dean, I don't like this."
Sam barked.
"Sam agrees with me. Two against one. Let's go."
Tezcatlipoca had better things to do. Still, he made a bet and lost it. He might be many things, but he wasn't one to lapse on his debts. The archangel Gabriel's payment was a simple request anyway, hardly even worth sweeting over.
Then the Winchesters arrived... Those two reckless boys who tried to stop him back in Colorado. They certainly were fun, and they had a sidekick with them - an angel. Not as powerful as Gabriel, but an angel nonetheless. He certainly had a bone to pick with them. This was going to be fun.
The rustle of wings announced the arrival of said angel sidekick. The barking told him that his spell on the gangly brother had taken.
"Now, now," Tezcatlipoca said to his new guests. "You shouldn't be so rude."
"Fuck you!" Dean said aiming the Colt at the deity's head.
Click! It jammed.
"Your brother tried that on me last time," Tezcatlipoca said, "and if it could fire, it would kill me. Good thing it's having a hard time, huh?"
Dean cursed again. Tezcatlipoca snapped his fingers, and suddenly three large jaguars prowled the room, staring at Dean like he was the good cat food. Sam growled at the closest jaguar, staying close to his brother.
"Son of a bitch," he said.
"You know, you and your brother are getting lax," Tezcatlipoca said. "When was the last time either of you was even injured?"
"We get our asses handed to us all the time," Dean replied, realizing afterward that it wasn't a good way to frame it.
"You're both too busy enjoying domestic bliss to really invest yourselves in your jobs, otherwise you wouldn't have your heads so far up your asses."
"Right, we're just sitting on our hands while you turn people into stone or sic your jaguars on them," Dean countered.
"Did you know New York City, Manhattan specifically, has fault lines under it? You have any idea what an earthquake would do to this place?"
"So, what, you're preparing this place for an earthquake by killing innocent people? Turning them into dogs? I thought you were a trickster, not an idiot."
The air evaporated from his lungs, and it was only when he reached out for Castiel that he realized the angel was frozen in place, like a statue. Sam bounded to help his brother, but he, too, became frozen.
And Dean couldn't breathe.
"You know, a few months ago, you and your brother were highly interesting. All the crap that was bubbling to the surface, all the evil in the world, and you two. You were most interesting, Dean - it is Dean, isn't it? Accepting what you saw - "
"That was a trick!"
"No, it wasn't. And neither is this. You see, I just prevented the supernatural forces of this little war from sinking this city into the ocean."
He waved his hand and threw Dean into the far wall. Dean choked, but he was finally able to make his lungs work again.
"And you repay me by trying to kill me. You know, if you had done your job better, none of this would be happening."
"Screw you!" Dean said.
"You better listen to me, boy," Tezcatlipoca warned. "Normally I would pull the wool over your eyes and record everything for posterity. But right now your mess is putting me under duress."
"Sounds like you have it real rough," Dean said weakly.
"Damn right," he snapped back. "You know what happens when there's no more future to predict, Dean? Because I do. And it's not pretty."
"So what, you stop an earthquake? What's that gonna go - "
"You understand that seventy lives were exchanged for millions. I do hope you can do basic math."
"Fuck you!"
Tezcatlipoca lifted Dean from the ground, pinning him to the wall with one of his hands. Each finger was a sharp, blistering talon.
"You are little more than a child, yet the world was entrusted to your care. So I will give you some guidance on the matter, if for no reason than it will provide me some amusement. Lucifer and Therion are collecting weapons. There is one weapon you and yours have left out in the open for easy picking, and they're both desperate enough to try to take it. The boy is more dangerous than either of them. Don't be foolish and expect nothing to happen."
And with those ominous words, darkness overtook Dean. The last sound he heard was the growling roars of the jaguars.
Dean woke up with one hell of a headache.
"Cas? Sam?" he said, afraid of what he might find.
Sam was naked, except for his tie, and unconscious on the ground. Cas was still frozen.
The first thing he did was take Castiel's trench coat and cover Sam with it. That just seemed the right thing to do.
"Cas?" Dean said. "Please, Cas, tell me there's an unfreeze button or something - "
He studied the floor under the angel. There were no sigils or traps there, so he turned his chin up to inspect the ceiling. There were markings there, but - how would Tezcatlipoca know that Cas would teleport to that spot?
Dean wanted to kick himself. The bastard could predict the damn future, of course he knew. Damn it!
Dean heaved Castiel up off the floor and dragged him over to Sam. As soon as Dean let him go, the angel collapsed next to his brother, panting.
"That was deeply unpleasant."
"You okay?" Dean asked. He knelt down and placed his hand in the small of Cas's back.
"Yes," Cas said.
The angel reached out for Sam's - thankfully very human - hand and touched it. Sam's eyes opened.
"Why am I naked?" was all he asked.
"I'll explain later. We need to zap outa here, Cas, 'cuz I don't wanna be jaguar chow."
Sam hesitated, staring at his phone. He learned no life lessons from his brief time as a dog, but he remembered Dean's advice.
And Dean was right. Dodge was the one being poked and prodded by doctors. She was the one with her life on hold. The least Sam could do was make a little effort on his part, even if it did hurt his ego.
He dialed out.
"You've reached Dodge. Leave me a message."
It was immediate. Her phone must be off.
"Hey, Dodge. It's me, Sam. You didn't call - I thought maybe you needed a little space or something. But I - uh. I miss you. And I want to know how you're doing. So, please call me back. When you get the chance. Love you, bye."
He hung up and immediately realized he just said "I love you" to someone for the first time over the phone.
Sam was really losing his touch.
"You've both been very quiet," Castiel observed. "What's wrong?"
"That Tezcatlipoca ass hole said something to me," Dean said, sparing Sam.
"What?" Cas asked sympathetically.
"That we've gone soft," Dean replied.
"Right, sure," Sam snapped.
"He's right," Dean said.
Cas tilted his head in confusion. "You can't believe that."
"Can't I?" Dean asked. "Look at our recent score card, huh? Dodge was kidnapped by that creepy-crawly bitch Therion. There was a freaking witch massacre - or maybe a war - and not only did we not stop it, we don't know why the fuck any of it happened. Which is basically what happened with the weird zombie-ghosts mash up, and don't get me started on that Crocotta bitch we just let go - "
"Dean," Sam cut his brother off. "We can't win them all."
"This isn't about winning them all, Sammy. Our score card hasn't been this bad since the freaking apocalypse!" Dean commented. "And the worse thing is - half the time we don't even know what's going on!"
"So you believe him?" Castiel asked. "That he was casting a spell to save the city?"
"Wait, what?" Sam said.
Dean nodded. "Sorry, you were making a call," he said to his brother. "He told me he was working mojo to prevent supernatural forces from dropping Manhattan into the ocean with an earthquake."
Sam was pissed that his brother hadn't said this before, but something dawned on him. "That explains the first incident - people turning into stone - and the pentagram. The Fifth Sun, this world, is supposed to be destroyed by Earthquakes."
"So he turns people to stone instead?" Dean asked.
"The pentagram must've, I dunno, protected the fault line," Sam said.
"That does beg one more question," Cas cut in. "Why it is you are human again, Sam. All the others in the restaurant were turned into fish."
Sam turned his head, reminding Dean of the soulful expression he had as a dog. "You mean, I was the only dog?"
"That I saw," Cas said.
"That bastard!"
"Late to the game, Sam."
"No, I mean - " Sam huffed. "I was outside the restaurant when that spell took. I had to be. I mean, I was calling you to warn you nothing weird was going on where I was."
"You think he sniped you with an extra spell?" Dean asked. "Jackass."
They rode in silence for a few more minutes.
"He said something else," Dean began. "About a weapon. Something that we - us three - left out in the open."
"What weapon?" Castiel asked. "Dodge?"
"He said something about a boy. The boy is dangerous, or something. But Therion on Lucifer are getting desperate enough to make a play for this weapon anyway."
Nothing but the sound of breathing filled the car.
"Maybe he is right," Sam said. "We've spent so much time trying to hide Kevin, to hide Dodge, to keep Cas safe. And meanwhile people are building up armies. They've found a way to cloak themselves from us - and we've made it easy for them. We've been so conservative. We're not out looking for shit. We're waiting for things to happen then chasing after it."
"That's not entirely true," Cas pointed out. "You have been looking for cases."
"But cases of things were know of," Sam said. "We've gotten so focused on what we look for, we're missing - "
"The forest for the trees?" Dean suggested, quoting the evil bastard.
"No," Sam said. "I'm talking about the cases that aren't cases."
"You lost me," Dean replied.
"We rely on police, news, angel radio," Sam ticked off. "Dodge's FBI database. But these new forces? They're smarter than they've ever been. Smarter than they were under Azazel, under Crowley - "
Dean interrupted. "You think they're cleaning up their messes? Leaving no witnesses?"
"Maybe even targeting people who wouldn't be missed. Remember that weird cult case Garth caught like, last year?"
Dean thought hard about that. "Wait, the one with the Leviathans. They ate their followers - "
"Yes. All the news reports that covered the cult said it was a sequestered group. People went on the ranch and never came back. But that's not all that weird. Not our kinda weird anyway. The only reason that it caught our attention was that Garth was out there on vacation and saw something shape-shift."
"So, you're thinking that there are more, uh, shape-shifting phenomenon for us to find?" Cas said. "Metaphorically."
"Yeah," Sam said, "basically."
Dean got on board and said, "Okay, then, project one: figure out who this boy-weapon is and get his ass to safety."
Castiel spoke up, "I believe I already know who Tezcatlipoca was talking about. And I think we need to get to Nebraska, now."
"Nebraska? We left a weapon out in the open in Nebraska?"
"Jesse Turner," Castiel said. "The Cambion."
<<< Previous Part:
Part Four: No Life Preserver
Next Episode: >>>
09x23 Chase the Ace
Primary Post: 09x22 Heatseeker
Primary Post: Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)
Title: Heatseeker
Subtitle: Out on the Street
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,155
Rating: R
Warnings: language, violence
"Can't you heal him?" Dean demanded from Cas.
"He's not injured, Dean! He's a dog!" Cas said defensively.
"No, he's a human and just looks like a dog!"
"I can't heal this. We need to find Tezcatlipoca and have him reverse it."
Dean paced the length of the alley, and Sam followed with his tail high in the air, wagging.
"Sammy, stop that. This is - weird enough."
Sam sat down and lowered his nose.
"You're making him sad," Cas scolded.
"How do we find this guy, Cas?"
"He'll be at the epicenter of activity."
"What're we waiting for?" Dean asked. "Let's go!"
Cas hesitated. He handed Dean the Colt salvaged from Sam's clothing, which failed to stay on him in his current golden retriever form.
"Dean, there's something that's bothering me - "
"You mean besides the fact that my brother is on all fours and has even more hair?"
"The pentagram," Cas said. "It's a symbol of protection."
"So what? You can protect something evil."
"I dislike tricksters, and Tezcatlipoca is worse for - "
"Then we kill him. Done and done. Do you know where he is?"
"Yes, he's near the post office. In a vacant apartment. His position is roughly the center of the pentagram."
"Let's go."
"Dean, I don't like this."
Sam barked.
"Sam agrees with me. Two against one. Let's go."
Tezcatlipoca had better things to do. Still, he made a bet and lost it. He might be many things, but he wasn't one to lapse on his debts. The archangel Gabriel's payment was a simple request anyway, hardly even worth sweeting over.
Then the Winchesters arrived... Those two reckless boys who tried to stop him back in Colorado. They certainly were fun, and they had a sidekick with them - an angel. Not as powerful as Gabriel, but an angel nonetheless. He certainly had a bone to pick with them. This was going to be fun.
The rustle of wings announced the arrival of said angel sidekick. The barking told him that his spell on the gangly brother had taken.
"Now, now," Tezcatlipoca said to his new guests. "You shouldn't be so rude."
"Fuck you!" Dean said aiming the Colt at the deity's head.
Click! It jammed.
"Your brother tried that on me last time," Tezcatlipoca said, "and if it could fire, it would kill me. Good thing it's having a hard time, huh?"
Dean cursed again. Tezcatlipoca snapped his fingers, and suddenly three large jaguars prowled the room, staring at Dean like he was the good cat food. Sam growled at the closest jaguar, staying close to his brother.
"Son of a bitch," he said.
"You know, you and your brother are getting lax," Tezcatlipoca said. "When was the last time either of you was even injured?"
"We get our asses handed to us all the time," Dean replied, realizing afterward that it wasn't a good way to frame it.
"You're both too busy enjoying domestic bliss to really invest yourselves in your jobs, otherwise you wouldn't have your heads so far up your asses."
"Right, we're just sitting on our hands while you turn people into stone or sic your jaguars on them," Dean countered.
"Did you know New York City, Manhattan specifically, has fault lines under it? You have any idea what an earthquake would do to this place?"
"So, what, you're preparing this place for an earthquake by killing innocent people? Turning them into dogs? I thought you were a trickster, not an idiot."
The air evaporated from his lungs, and it was only when he reached out for Castiel that he realized the angel was frozen in place, like a statue. Sam bounded to help his brother, but he, too, became frozen.
And Dean couldn't breathe.
"You know, a few months ago, you and your brother were highly interesting. All the crap that was bubbling to the surface, all the evil in the world, and you two. You were most interesting, Dean - it is Dean, isn't it? Accepting what you saw - "
"That was a trick!"
"No, it wasn't. And neither is this. You see, I just prevented the supernatural forces of this little war from sinking this city into the ocean."
He waved his hand and threw Dean into the far wall. Dean choked, but he was finally able to make his lungs work again.
"And you repay me by trying to kill me. You know, if you had done your job better, none of this would be happening."
"Screw you!" Dean said.
"You better listen to me, boy," Tezcatlipoca warned. "Normally I would pull the wool over your eyes and record everything for posterity. But right now your mess is putting me under duress."
"Sounds like you have it real rough," Dean said weakly.
"Damn right," he snapped back. "You know what happens when there's no more future to predict, Dean? Because I do. And it's not pretty."
"So what, you stop an earthquake? What's that gonna go - "
"You understand that seventy lives were exchanged for millions. I do hope you can do basic math."
"Fuck you!"
Tezcatlipoca lifted Dean from the ground, pinning him to the wall with one of his hands. Each finger was a sharp, blistering talon.
"You are little more than a child, yet the world was entrusted to your care. So I will give you some guidance on the matter, if for no reason than it will provide me some amusement. Lucifer and Therion are collecting weapons. There is one weapon you and yours have left out in the open for easy picking, and they're both desperate enough to try to take it. The boy is more dangerous than either of them. Don't be foolish and expect nothing to happen."
And with those ominous words, darkness overtook Dean. The last sound he heard was the growling roars of the jaguars.
Dean woke up with one hell of a headache.
"Cas? Sam?" he said, afraid of what he might find.
Sam was naked, except for his tie, and unconscious on the ground. Cas was still frozen.
The first thing he did was take Castiel's trench coat and cover Sam with it. That just seemed the right thing to do.
"Cas?" Dean said. "Please, Cas, tell me there's an unfreeze button or something - "
He studied the floor under the angel. There were no sigils or traps there, so he turned his chin up to inspect the ceiling. There were markings there, but - how would Tezcatlipoca know that Cas would teleport to that spot?
Dean wanted to kick himself. The bastard could predict the damn future, of course he knew. Damn it!
Dean heaved Castiel up off the floor and dragged him over to Sam. As soon as Dean let him go, the angel collapsed next to his brother, panting.
"That was deeply unpleasant."
"You okay?" Dean asked. He knelt down and placed his hand in the small of Cas's back.
"Yes," Cas said.
The angel reached out for Sam's - thankfully very human - hand and touched it. Sam's eyes opened.
"Why am I naked?" was all he asked.
"I'll explain later. We need to zap outa here, Cas, 'cuz I don't wanna be jaguar chow."
Sam hesitated, staring at his phone. He learned no life lessons from his brief time as a dog, but he remembered Dean's advice.
And Dean was right. Dodge was the one being poked and prodded by doctors. She was the one with her life on hold. The least Sam could do was make a little effort on his part, even if it did hurt his ego.
He dialed out.
"You've reached Dodge. Leave me a message."
It was immediate. Her phone must be off.
"Hey, Dodge. It's me, Sam. You didn't call - I thought maybe you needed a little space or something. But I - uh. I miss you. And I want to know how you're doing. So, please call me back. When you get the chance. Love you, bye."
He hung up and immediately realized he just said "I love you" to someone for the first time over the phone.
Sam was really losing his touch.
"You've both been very quiet," Castiel observed. "What's wrong?"
"That Tezcatlipoca ass hole said something to me," Dean said, sparing Sam.
"What?" Cas asked sympathetically.
"That we've gone soft," Dean replied.
"Right, sure," Sam snapped.
"He's right," Dean said.
Cas tilted his head in confusion. "You can't believe that."
"Can't I?" Dean asked. "Look at our recent score card, huh? Dodge was kidnapped by that creepy-crawly bitch Therion. There was a freaking witch massacre - or maybe a war - and not only did we not stop it, we don't know why the fuck any of it happened. Which is basically what happened with the weird zombie-ghosts mash up, and don't get me started on that Crocotta bitch we just let go - "
"Dean," Sam cut his brother off. "We can't win them all."
"This isn't about winning them all, Sammy. Our score card hasn't been this bad since the freaking apocalypse!" Dean commented. "And the worse thing is - half the time we don't even know what's going on!"
"So you believe him?" Castiel asked. "That he was casting a spell to save the city?"
"Wait, what?" Sam said.
Dean nodded. "Sorry, you were making a call," he said to his brother. "He told me he was working mojo to prevent supernatural forces from dropping Manhattan into the ocean with an earthquake."
Sam was pissed that his brother hadn't said this before, but something dawned on him. "That explains the first incident - people turning into stone - and the pentagram. The Fifth Sun, this world, is supposed to be destroyed by Earthquakes."
"So he turns people to stone instead?" Dean asked.
"The pentagram must've, I dunno, protected the fault line," Sam said.
"That does beg one more question," Cas cut in. "Why it is you are human again, Sam. All the others in the restaurant were turned into fish."
Sam turned his head, reminding Dean of the soulful expression he had as a dog. "You mean, I was the only dog?"
"That I saw," Cas said.
"That bastard!"
"Late to the game, Sam."
"No, I mean - " Sam huffed. "I was outside the restaurant when that spell took. I had to be. I mean, I was calling you to warn you nothing weird was going on where I was."
"You think he sniped you with an extra spell?" Dean asked. "Jackass."
They rode in silence for a few more minutes.
"He said something else," Dean began. "About a weapon. Something that we - us three - left out in the open."
"What weapon?" Castiel asked. "Dodge?"
"He said something about a boy. The boy is dangerous, or something. But Therion on Lucifer are getting desperate enough to make a play for this weapon anyway."
Nothing but the sound of breathing filled the car.
"Maybe he is right," Sam said. "We've spent so much time trying to hide Kevin, to hide Dodge, to keep Cas safe. And meanwhile people are building up armies. They've found a way to cloak themselves from us - and we've made it easy for them. We've been so conservative. We're not out looking for shit. We're waiting for things to happen then chasing after it."
"That's not entirely true," Cas pointed out. "You have been looking for cases."
"But cases of things were know of," Sam said. "We've gotten so focused on what we look for, we're missing - "
"The forest for the trees?" Dean suggested, quoting the evil bastard.
"No," Sam said. "I'm talking about the cases that aren't cases."
"You lost me," Dean replied.
"We rely on police, news, angel radio," Sam ticked off. "Dodge's FBI database. But these new forces? They're smarter than they've ever been. Smarter than they were under Azazel, under Crowley - "
Dean interrupted. "You think they're cleaning up their messes? Leaving no witnesses?"
"Maybe even targeting people who wouldn't be missed. Remember that weird cult case Garth caught like, last year?"
Dean thought hard about that. "Wait, the one with the Leviathans. They ate their followers - "
"Yes. All the news reports that covered the cult said it was a sequestered group. People went on the ranch and never came back. But that's not all that weird. Not our kinda weird anyway. The only reason that it caught our attention was that Garth was out there on vacation and saw something shape-shift."
"So, you're thinking that there are more, uh, shape-shifting phenomenon for us to find?" Cas said. "Metaphorically."
"Yeah," Sam said, "basically."
Dean got on board and said, "Okay, then, project one: figure out who this boy-weapon is and get his ass to safety."
Castiel spoke up, "I believe I already know who Tezcatlipoca was talking about. And I think we need to get to Nebraska, now."
"Nebraska? We left a weapon out in the open in Nebraska?"
"Jesse Turner," Castiel said. "The Cambion."
<<< Previous Part:
Part Four: No Life Preserver
Next Episode: >>>
09x23 Chase the Ace
Primary Post: 09x22 Heatseeker
Primary Post: Season 9 Fan Fiction (S9FF)