Fic: Badlands (4/8)
Fic: Badlands (4/8)
By: Pen37
Beta:
clarksmuse
Banner:
cheryljluv
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Smallville/Supernatural
Characters: Chloe, Sam, Dean, Bobby, Oliver Queen
Pairing: Chloe/Dean,
Disclaimer: Not Mine, Fun only.
Dust Jacket: http://i165.photobucket.com/albums/u51/pen37_album/badlands.jpg
Summary: The group heads to South Dakota to recover. But recovery isn't as relaxing as it should be with Evil Scientists, ghostly Native Americans, and Chloe and Dean fighting the whole way.
Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
This is part of the Special Projects series. The rest of the fics can be found here.
Written for the Crossovers100 challenge. Prompt #82 Cave. The table is here.
“I think I have something here,” Bobby glanced up from the newspaper he was reading.
Sam looked up. The three of them were gathered around his kitchen table. Folders, newspapers and both lap tops were set up in a kind of makeshift command center on the search for a hunt. Sam looked in trepidation at Dean, who had commandeered Chloe's computer.
Dean looked up at Bobby, and quirked an eyebrow in question.
“Looks like a couple of suspicious mutilations out in the black hills.”
“Cattle?” Dean's words were clipped.
“People,” Bobby said. “Campers, hikers. Hunters.”
“How?”
“That's what caught my attention,” He said. “I've got a friend at the state crime lab that sends the weird cases over to me. In this instance, the victims were hacked to death with a tomahawk.”
Dean nodded, a grim look of satisfaction was on his face that chilled Sam's blood. “Good.” He got up, and walked toward the bedroom. “Wake me when the research is done.”
Sam looked over at Bobby, and saw his concern written in the older hunter's face. “Maybe I should come along with you for this one.”
Sam looked down the hall, where he could just see Dean disappear into his room. He felt the urge to call Chloe, but his loyalty to Dean squelched it. “Maybe you should.”
***
Ollie was shaking his head as he carried a box over to Chloe's computer. “I would love to know how you manage to get Clark to drop everything and fly halfway around the world to play errand boy for you.”
Chloe shrugged. Her gaze remained firmly locked onto her computer screen. “I got him young and trained him right.”
Ollie snorted at that.
“You're just jealous because you don't have your very own trained alien.” Chloe turned from the computer, and opened the box. “You should be nicer to Clark and Lois. With the way they're going at it like bunnies, you could be running neck and neck with Bruce for Godfather.”
“So not a picture I wanted, sidekick.”
Chloe shrugged, and pulled an army issue Colt .45 from the box. She sighted down the barrel before securing it in a harness and strapping it on across her shoulders. Next she pulled a smaller derringer from the box, and strapped it just above her knee.
“I could have arranged any number of -- ”
“I like my own weapons, thank you,” Chloe cut him off with a dismissive wave as she tucked a knife into the top of her boot. “They're familiar.”
A second blade went into her belt at the small of her back. She stopped as she was securing a third one to the harness just behind her neck, and thought that maybe Dean was having more of an influence on her life than she originally suspected.
“Since when do you play with knives?”
“Never if I can help it.”
“What happened to that one gun you were so attached to?”
“Lost it in a lake during a shark attack.” She shrugged at his incredulous look. “It's kind of a long story.”
“I'm sorry.”
“I guess it doesn't pay to fall too in love with things.”
“Guess not,” he looked away. “So what have you got for me?”
She turned back to the computer, and pulled up a satellite photo of the Black Hills area. “I started with the thematic Mapper to pinpoint likely sites. The three most probable all center around old mining camps: areas where the hills are honeycombed with dry mines and old ghost towns.”
“Then I switched to the Thermal Infrared Multispectral Scanner, and I was able to eliminate all but one site. She stabbed at the screen with her forefinger. “This one shows recent activity. About two months ago, there was heavy machinery in there. Moving things, shifting dirt. I pulled up permits, and found them registered to the Lily 31 mining company. Lilly 31. Lilly. As in Lillian Luthor.”
“And 31 as in 33.1?”
“Or Level 3. It’s gone through several variations. Of course, we have to verify that this is the place, but . . .” Chloe shrugged.
“Good work, sidekick.” Oliver grinned.
She tilted her head modestly. “Find it was the easy part. It’s probably done up like area 51: With perimeter sensors, motion detectors. Cameras. Plus a ring of kryptonite, knowing Lex.”
“That’s never stopped us before,” He grinned at her. “Well, maybe Clark. But we have something that he doesn’t have.”
“What?” Chloe cocked an eyebrow at him.
“My brains.”
“God, we’re doomed!”
***
When Dean finally got up again, he looked a little bit better. He was still favoring his unstitched side, but Sam thought that the fact that he wasn’t holding it was a good thing.
“Talk to me, Sammy. What’d you find?”
“There's a local legend that fits the murders,” Sam said. “Locals say that in the 1830's a group of prospectors wandered into the hills looking for gold. The problem is that the Black hills is sacred to local tribes.”
“So?”
“So it would be like the time that Pastor Jim caught you teaching the choir boys how to play poker.”
“Oh,” Dean grimaced. “Heh. I think that's the only time I ever saw him mad. He was pretty hot at me for a while.”
“Yeah? Well so were the Kiowa Natives who found those miners. They hacked them up with tomahawks, and threw their bodies into a ravine.”
“Ouch,” Dean said. “And I thought that having to polish all the pews in the rectory was harsh.”
“It gets better,” Sam said. “Two of the miners survived. They tracked the natives back to their camp, and took revenge. They slaughtered the camp, and dropped the bodies down the same ravine. Legend says that their spirits haunt that area to this day.”
Dean raised an eyebrow. “So we're dealing with angry Native spirits? What do you suppose has them all stirred up?”
“Who knows? Development in the region? Maybe a hiker found some bones and took them as a souvenir?”
“Well, we're going to have to find the bones and find out.”
“Yeah, and it's not going to be an easy trip,” Sam looked pointedly at Dean's wounded side. “We have to get into that ravine.”
“I'm up for it,” Dean set his jaw in a determined line.
“Really?” Sam tilted his head.
“Oh jeez,” Dean rolled his eyes. “You're not going to make me hug, are you?
“Dean, is this about hunting, or about proving something to Chloe. . . Because she's not around to see you prove it.”
“Dude, enough.” Dean shook his head, turned and walked toward the door.
“Where are you going?”
“I have to put the Impala back together,” Dean said. “The sooner we can start this hunt, the better.”