Author's Note: Today we have the author most likely botching car facts. I know many, many things. Most of it's useless, and very little of it is about cars. So please forgive my inaccuracies. Also, 494 gets a name. Sam's thoughts, not that he's having a lot of them right now, are much the same as Max's. It was sort of unavoidable given that I couldn't just change Alec's name. I'll get that map up soonish. I was a lazy bum and didn't get it scanned and uploaded in time. Enjoy!
Chapter 9
"The chart said he was precognitive with a side order of telekinesis," Alec said. "They were giving him sedatives to, you know, keep him from fighting too much and screaming them deaf. That's part of the standard cocktail. I'm gonna guess he didn't get much in the way of painkillers." He sighed. "Those cloud responses. Scientifically unsound."
"Let me repeat. What?"
"Did I stutter? I don't think I did, because while there are many things wrong with me, a speech impediment isn't one of them." 494 looked like he felt like he was surrounded by idiots.
"It was a 'Could you explain again without the crazy talk' what. Not an 'I didn't hear you or take in the actual words you were using' what." Dean was overjoyed to find that the Little Toaster was going to be just as touchy as Sammy. He had incredible luck with little brothers.
"I'm not crazy," 494 said. There was a remarkable amount of venom in the words.
Dean didn't have to be a Stanford Free Ride level genius to figure out that this was some sort of weird sore spot with the kid. A very large and tender sore spot from the feel of the tension that was suddenly surrounding them both. He was almost afraid that the kid would bolt on him. "Whoa, deep breaths, Little Toaster. I'm not saying you are. At least no more than the rest of us. And let's face it, Winchesters are a little off, but I wouldn't classify any of us as actually crazy. Except maybe Dad, but that's a whole different clip of ammo." He waited a moment for the kid to settle. It didn't take long. For some reason, he had a feeling that he was going to be spending a lot of time trying to settle this kid. He was clearly one tough bastard, but still, someone had stirred when they should have shaken. "All I meant is that Sammy isn't psychic."
"Yeah, he is." The kid held up the papers. "Why the hell do you think they wanted him?"
Dean was absurdly pleased that 494 used the word 'they' instead of 'we', but now wasn't the time for throwing parties. Sam was still unconscious with who knew what swimming through his bloodstream. "Dunno. But I practically raised the kid. I would have noticed."
"You're saying that psychics don't exist? After having tea and confession with Mia?" 494 gave him an exasperated look.
"You were watching that?" Dean held a hand up to stop the kid from opening his mouth. "Jesus, don't tell me. And don't talk to me about her either. I know psychics exist; I'm not an idiot. I'm just saying that I think I would have noticed if Sammy were one."
"Well, he is."
"You know what?" Dean asked. "Who cares. I just want to know what the hell they gave him so I know how to help him. He looks like shit whether he's the next Haley Joel or Joe Normal."
"Honestly, I don't know what half this shit is," 494 said. "I think it was tailor made. If you gave me some time I could most likely break it down and figure some of it out." He was carefully reading through the medication list again.
"Great. That doesn't help me now."
"Well, according to this, he spent most of his time completely out of it. Most of these drugs have some sort of psychoactive component. I'm seeing a lot of sedatives and short-acting stimulants."
"Sedatives make him nauseous," Dean said. Sam hated them. He usually chose to suffer rather than deal with the after effects of the medication.
"Yeah. He puked on someone."
"Nice."
"Poetic, really." Dean didn't like the expression on the kid's face as he read further. He made a mental note to read that file later. "Anyway, I don't see very much in the way of real sleep. No extended period of REM sleep or anything. They're all interrupted."
"So he's running on empty. No food, and no rest."
"And most likely a crippling headache."
"And anything we give him could react badly to whatever else he's already had." Dean felt tired. He sat down on the edge of the bed next to Sam and ran a hand through his baby brother's hair. "What a God damned cluster fuck this is."
"That does seem to sum it up."
"Looking this chemical soup up won't help, because there ain't shit we can do about it. Not with the supplies we have on hand."
"Basically, yeah. If you want my advice as both a Psy-Ops alumni and a field medic, we should just let him sleep. Keep him warm, and push whatever fluids we can to flush the chemicals out of his system."
"Little Toaster, the Field Medic. Every hunter should have one." Dean stood, grabbed the first aid kit, and set it on the floor at the foot of Sam's bed. Then he took the ice bucket and filled it with clean water. He pulled out one of the washcloths and started to clean up the cuts on Sam's bare feet from their escape.
"What's with the Toaster thing? What's wrong with you?"
"You don't have a name, so for now you're stuck with Little Toaster." Dean felt that this was pretty damned self-explanatory.
"My designation is X5-494."
"Yeah, whatever. You're 'Little Toaster' until Sam calls you something different. I suck at naming things."
"I can tell. I like Sam better than you. He wasn't as mouthy."
"Are you sure we're talking about the same Sam?" Dean was carefully swabbing dirt out of particularly nasty-looking cut, and then dabbed it with the same anti-bacterial cream he had used on 494. He would have to buy more soon. "Because if so, you must have been drugging him." He wrapped Sam's feet and then turned and fished through Sam's bag, looking for a pair of socks. He paused as his hand brushed against the familiar feel of leather and paper, and he pulled out his father's journal.
He just stared at it hard for a couple of moments, and 494 had to wonder what was going through his mind, because he was clearly reading more into this than just finding his father's journal. After a moment, he watched Dean gently tug on the corner of the photo tucked under the front flap, much like Sam had. In hindsight, he figured that was when Sam had really caught him. 494 had never bothered to examine it, or anything about the journal, really. The photo was small, wallet-sized, and showed a laughing woman in a sundress with long blonde hair. "Ah, Christ, he's not missing," Dean breathed out. "He left. He actually left." 494 watched as Dean's jaw tightened and clenched, and then he gently replaced the photo and put the journal into his own bag with carefully controlled movements.
494 wisely kept his mouth shut as he watched Dean paw through Sam's bag and pull out a military issue .45 similar in make to his own, even if this one did look much more plain. He then loaded it and put it under Sam's pillow, then moved on to finding the socks. Once that was done, he pulled up the half of the hideous bedspread Sam wasn't laying on and tucked it up around Sam. Then he quickly snatched up a box of rock salt and drew lines across the door and windows. He tossed the box back into the supply bag with more force than necessary and snatched up one of the room keys. "I'll be back. If Sammy wakes . . . I'll be back." And then he was out of the room.
494 was left sitting there wondering what in the hell he had missed and hoping that Dean made it back before Sam woke up. After a few minutes, he stood, tucked the Glock into the waist of his pants at the small of his back, a habit of Dean's that he was apparently going to be keeping. He rooted through Dean's clothes until he found a clean T-shirt and carefully pulled it on. He tried to tell himself that he wasn't slightly disappointed that it was looser on him than it would have been on Dean. It really didn't matter if Dean had more muscle mass; he didn't have catlike reflexes.
In the hour and half that Dean was gone, Sam made several disturbed and upset noises in his sleep, but didn't actually seem to be waking, so 494 let him be. He also learned to despise daytime television and like Stephen King.
XXXXX
Renfro and Lydecker tolerated each other's company with what could be referred to as cold courtesy. That was if one was feeling generous. Lydecker hardly ever felt generous towards her.
They were in the same room to discuss 494's escape with the Winchesters. At least that was the official line. Honestly, it felt more like trying to get their stories straight before being called on the carpet by the Committee and then possibly facing death by firing squad. It was also an act of self-defense. Renfro would crucify him if she got the chance.
"You know, Deck, this might not have happened if you hadn't given Bravo Unit so much freedom."
"This has nothing to – "
"Or if you had allowed 494 to have a longer round of reindoctrination."
"Woman, if you interrupt me again, we will have a large problem," Deck stated. "And don't try to blame this on me. I had the situation handled before you forced the issue by sending 494 to terminate Dean Winchester. He wouldn't have turned on us or realigned his loyalties otherwise."
"All I did was expose a weakness that was already present."
Deck could have sworn she was laughing at him. "It was a weakness I had managed. One I had accounted for. Against the odds, I had turned 494 into an excellent soldier. His strengths far outweighed any weakness. That is, until you undermined all my work. They are not machines. They are weapons, but they are not machines. Their flaws can't be repaired. They have to be managed. Your actions have lost us one of the best X5s we have. Tell the Committee whatever you want. Record shows it was you who screwed up, not me." He stood and left.
The reality of the situation was that it didn't matter who had botched this. He was the one that had to clean it up. He was the one that had trained 494, and he was the only one that the X5 would answer to. If he wanted 494 back, he was going to have to do it himself. And he was going to have to do it soon, or 494's devotion to the Winchesters would completely override his loyalty to Manticore. He was ruled by emotion more than any other X5, and he had clearly already formed a connection to them.
The simplest solution was that they would take him to hospital or clinic when his seizures started. He hadn't taken his medication with him. The Colonel knew that already. The bottle had been found in 494's cell, and all doses were accounted for.
XXXXX
Dean walked quickly with no real destination in mind at first. Just to be away from what his father had done and away from his own thoughts. After about twenty minutes, he had walked himself into the industrial section of downtown wherever-he-was. The adrenaline rush that had come with his slight panic over his father's quick departure wore away, just leaving him on high alert. That was okay; high alert certainly was useful right now with a government goon squad on his tail.
He stood and looked around as he made a mental list of things that needed to be taken care of and taken care of now. They needed food, because they were all running on nothing, or worse yet, medication. He needed to replenish the first aid kit. He needed to figure out where they were now, so he could figure out where they should go. He needed to figure out how to get there, because he was betting that whatever mojo and/or protections he and Sam had put on the car were not up to snuff anymore after being handled and pawed at by those Manticore fuckers.
And it didn't look like Sammy would be tying his own shoes – correction, Dean's shoes because Sam's were gone – for a few days, yet let alone using his special Sammy magic to hide the Impala. He supposed he shouldn't have been surprised that his brother was psychic. If he really thought about it, he was pretty sure that his father had known since Sam was old enough to start reading and trying to apply it, which was pretty damned young. They all knew protection spells and luck charms and little bits of magic you couldn't help but pick up as a hunter, but it always worked better for Sam, lasted a little longer, or did the trick when you really needed it. Got the car past that one cop waiting to nab them on the way out of town.
Hell, sometimes Sam would just make shit up as he went along. If Dean had tried, their asses would have been grass years ago. The signs had all been there, starting with their mom being murdered by the Demon right over baby Sammy's bed like some sort of evil sacrificial rite.
Dean sighed. None of that was going to help them now. That psychic gift of Sam's had bitten them all in the ass, and now Dean had to pull their fat out of the fire the old-fashioned mundane way. And now it wasn't just Sam and Dean. He had 494 to deal with, to protect, now. He may have been a genetically engineered super-soldier, but somehow Dean was pretty sure that if he just sent the kid out into the world, he would end up in real trouble, real quick. Or maybe Dean was just trying to justify wanting to keep the kid with him, because hell, they had the same parents. This kid was a Winchester and they took care of their own.
Dean looked around himself one more time to get his bearings and saw the answers to most of his troubles. His pleased and slightly sly smirk slid across his face as he crossed the road with his normal confident swagger. First stop was to rent the U-Haul with a nice shiny new credit card. Next stop was the Pep Boys, conveniently only half a block away, where he used the same credit card to buy the gear he would need to put the Impala up on blocks, and asked to be directed to the nearest Wal-Mart. He heaved his current purchases into the U-haul and then drove to the Wal-Mart and took great pleasure in taking up eight parking spaces at the back of the lot. Forty minutes later he was on his way back to the motel with a plan, food, ice packs for Sam, a sweatshirt for 494 plus the essentials like toothbrush and socks and what he needed to restock the first aid kit.
The credit card was snapped in half, part of it left in a Wal-Mart trash can and part of it thrown out the window and hopefully down a drain. A change of plates that night and they would be home free.
He breezed back into the motel room in a pretty good mood, all things considered. Somehow it only improved when he saw 494 had the Glock drawn and pointed even if tucking it under a pillow was not the best way to conceal it in the world. He put his hands out to his side and nudged the door closed with his foot. "Just me." He put his hands down when he heard the safety click back into place on the gun.
He tossed one of the bags onto the bed beside 494. "That's stuff for you. I'll be back in a minute." With that, he set the other bags down, snatched up the ice bucket, and left the room. Never once did his feet even come close to disturbing the salt lines.
He came back in with the ice bucket actually full of ice. He took a pint of ice cream out of one of the bags and crammed it into the bucket. Then he looked over at 494, who had dumped the bag's contents onto the bed. "We can wear the same shirts and jeans, but I ain't sharing socks and boxers with you, kid. I figure the hoodie will cover up that tattoo you got going on. Maybe we can get it lasered off."
"No," 494 said, as his hand came up to cover it.
"Dude, it's damned conspicuous, designation number or not. You don't need a damned nametag tattooed to you."
"No, I mean, it can't be lasered off. Or it can be, but it comes back in about a week. It's not a tattoo. It's part of my genetic code."
"That sucks hard." And was sort of sick. It made Dean think of branded cattle.
"It's never been a problem until now. I used to have a jacket the covered it pretty well, but . . ."
"Yeah, well, we'll get you some clothes when we get to Bobby's. Bag on the table has sandwich stuff in it." He was going to suggest the that kid help himself, but he already was. Hell, he was already chewing. "Just leave some for me, okay, kid?"
"Sure."
Dean shook his head and sat on the edge of Sam's bed. He peeled the blanket back a bit. "Come on, Sunshine, up and at'em." He shook Sam's shoulder a little, trying to rouse him. What he got was a small distressed noise. He tapped Sam's cheek a little. "I'll let you go back to sleep soon. Come on, little brother, wakey wakey." When Sam did nothing, Dean shook him harder, a bit worried. Sam was never a deep sleeper. Then suddenly Sam bolted upright with a gasp, eyes wide, unseeing.
"Sam?" Dean had Sam by the shoulders, holding him steady. "Come on, Sam, back to the real world." He gave Sam another little shake and this time Sam's eyes latched onto his brother.
"Dean." He sounded almost panicked. 494 found it interesting that even half-crazed, Sam instantly knew who Dean was, and he was sure that Sam would never confuse the two of them again.
"Right here, Sammy. You're safe now." Sam sagged forward and rested his forehead against Dean's shoulder, hands fisting in Dean's shirt. One of Dean's hand moved slowly over Sam's hair. They would both deny that this exchange had ever taken place.
"God, my head hurts. Everything hurts. But mostly my head." Sam didn't move back from his brother because he honestly wasn't sure he had he energy, but his hands did loosen and let go of Dean's shirt.
"Yeah, they messed you up pretty badly. I don't want to give you anything yet, because I don't know what they were giving you. I think what you need is something in your stomach, some ice on your bruises, and then some more sleep."
Sam was still resting his head against Dean's shoulder, most likely not even aware that the X5 was in the room, halfway through his second sandwich. "You make me eat and I'll puke, man."
"Got you covered." Sam was always nauseous after being given sedatives. It never failed. The only things he could keep down were apple juice and plain ice cream. Dean produced the second from the ice bucket. He put the pint in Sam's hand and then reached around him to arrange the pillows so he could lean against the headboard, then pushed Sam back into them slowly.
Sam just sat there for a few moments and then took the spoon Dean handed him. "Promise not to mock me about this tomorrow."
"Sam . . ."
"Promise or I won't eat."
"You are such a little bitch." Sam just smiled until Dean finally sighed. "Fine, I won't mock your girlish tendencies tomorrow. Eat your damned ice cream."
"Jerk." But Sam did as he was told.
494 watched them, wondering what the hell the subtext of that conversation had been, because there sure had been a lot of it. He also wondered if this was how normal people acted. Somehow he didn't think so. He carefully made more noise than necessary while making his third sandwich, just so they didn't forget he was there.
Sam's head whipped around to face him, and he then closed his eyes for a moment as the motion obviously made him dizzy. After a moment, his eyes opened and he ate another bite of ice cream, watching him.
"What? I know I'm good looking, but you see this face every day on him," 494 said, gesturing at Dean.
"I'm just wondering why you came with us."
"I'm wondering how many damned sandwiches you can eat?" Dean chimed in, but he snuck a look at Sam, almost afraid of what he would see. Dean had taken the Little Toaster under his wing, so to speak, without talking to Sam about it. He didn't know what he would do if Sam was pissed, and Sam had a right to be. Dean had just been taken prisoner, but Sammy had been drugged and tortured.
Sam watched Dean, then 494, for a long moment. He was suddenly reminded vividly of the husky puppy he and Dean had had when he had been seven. The poor thing had been tied out in the sun and clearly abused, and Dean had unchained it. The little guy had bitten Dean for his trouble, but they'd just carried it home to their motel room anyway. John had let them keep it in a moment of insanity, and it had only taken a couple of days for it to be part of the family.
But it had all come apart when the legal owner had seen them playing with it behind the motel and threatened to bring the law down on them. The Winchesters simply couldn't afford that, and the puppy had gone back to its first owners.
That was 494. They'd gotten past the biting stage, and Sam just hoped they could hide before the original owners showed. He gave Dean a little nod to let his big brother know that they could keep the new brother. Dean was right. He was already family.
"I can eat at least three," 494 stated with a grin and then bit into the sandwich he was holding. "And I came along because I couldn't bear to leave the car."
"You say that like you're ever going to be able to drive her again, Little Toaster," Dean replied and walked over to the table to make his own sandwich before there wasn't any food left.
"You know, Colonel Lydecker was going to let me keep it after you died." 494 said with a one-shouldered shrug. Sam noticed he was heavily favoring his left shoulder and arm. He decided to ask Dean about it later, when it didn't feel like his head was going to fall off. He did notice that 494 was now wearing one of Dean's T-shirts, which meant that there had been blood and that Dean had already patched him up.
"Too bad for you. What was prize number two?" Dean took a huge bite of his sandwich. The lunchmeat was cheap-ass processed crap and the white bread less than the finest, but at least it wasn't prison food.
"A pony."
Sam nearly snorted his ice cream. "Great, just what I needed. Another smart aleck. Did you just call him Little Toaster?" He set his ice cream down on his knee and pressed his bruised wrists to it. "So what's the plan?"
"Sure did. And we'll head to Bobby's." Dean set his food down and picked up the box of zip-lock sandwich bags he had bought. He started filling four of them with ice from the bucket. Sam put the partially empty pint on the nightstand and took two of the ice packs from Dean, settling them on his wrists while Dean put the other two on his ankles. "I rented a full-sized U-Haul. I'm going to put the Impala up on blocks inside, that way no one can find us until we get her sorted out. The credit card is already gone. We change plates tonight and we should be home free."
"Who's Bobby?" 494 asked. "And Lydecker will just keep looking for the car, you know."
"Bobby's a friend. Another hunter. He'll let us lay low there for a while. Recuperate. Fix the Impala."
"We should get rid of it." 494 cringed just thinking about it.
"She's not going anywhere, Little Toaster. She'll be safe by the time we're done with her."
494 made a face. "Stop calling me that!"
"No can do."
"Alec," Sam stated.
"Uh?" was Dean's intelligent response. 494 just blinked at him.
Sam ignored Dean and focused on Dean's two-years-too-young twin. "Alec. We should call you Alec. You know, like smart aleck. It suits you."
494 gave him a long look and then smiled. It was less lopsided than Dean's, and younger somehow. Sam noticed that everything about him was younger than Dean. It wasn't about the two year age gap or even that 494 hadn't seen as much hardship, because somehow Sam was pretty sure than he had had more than his fair share by miles. It was just that a lot of things were probably still new for him. Like a name. "Yeah, Alec. I like that."
Now Dean gave that slightly lopsided grin of his. "I told you Sam would come up with something good for you."
XXXXX
Meg felt it the moment he stepped across the threshold to the dingy warehouse that her particular conclave of Familiars had taken up residence in this month. She turned to look at the doorway he was going to be striding through any second. She saw a couple of the actual psychics, as pathetic as they were, shift nervously. One of them had the common sense to send up a warning that something was coming.
Several people formed up protective ranks in front of the priestess as sharp footsteps approached. Meg felt a smirk slide across her borrowed face. It amused the hell out of her that they were waiting to fight off what they had spent their entire lives worshipping. And oh, the tingly power all that adoration gave was such a warm and fuzzy thing.
Only an idiot wouldn't have been afraid of the figure that appeared in the doorway. He was a black, back-lit silhouette that seemed to fill up more than physical space. His yellow eyes stood out against the dark. Meg was only now learning to use the power that she had inherited from him that allowed him to bend the darkness around him.
She sighed and rolled her eyes into the next state as two of the priestess' guards failed to comprehend who was in front of them and threw themselves to their deaths. Yellow eyes narrowed in irritation and his two attackers, who clearly had more balls than brains, skidded back away from him in opposite directions. Their heels drug across the cement floor and their heads made a hard cracking noise as they eventually slammed into the walls. Their ascent to the ceiling was quick and brutal and her father did nothing to contain the mess as his power sliced through them. Meg laughed at the dumbfounded expression everyone wore.
"I am not in the mood." His voice was a promise of death for the next person that crossed him, or possibly for the next person who drew his attention to them. He advanced from the doorway and his faithful followers fell away.
Meg made her way towards her father and then fell into step with him as he made his way to the priestess. She would give the priestess credit for brains. The woman was still holding the conclave's pet snake and she looked from its gold eyes to the matching eyes of the being before her, and fell to her knees. "Master," was the only word she said as her forehead touched the floor.
XXXXX
The silence was really starting to get to Dean, or at least the lack of conversation was. He was keeping the music low out of sympathy for Sam. He had been slipping in and out of sleep for the last few hours, and when he was awake, he stated that his head hurt in such a way that would have made a migraine feel like a shoulder massage. They had settled him in the passenger seat by the door so he could lean into the corner and sleep. Also, this way if Sam lost his lunch, Dean was safe. Alec was the one stuck in the middle.
"So." Dean began looking over at Alec for a second. He was still looking pale and hurt, but not too bad, considering. "Care to finally explain to me why you have my face?"
"I was born with it. Isn't that how most people get their faces?" Alec quipped. He could have just answered Dean, but he had to know just how far he could push, and exactly how he fit in with these two. At the moment, he wasn't sure he did at all. There didn't seem to be room for anyone else between them, but he didn't want to think about that. If he thought about it, then he had to acknowledge that he wanted to stay with them and that he wasn't ready to be out here alone.
"Ha very ha. What I want to know is why you were born with my face. Am I going to have to word everything this carefully, like I'm in one of Sammy's law classes?"
"It'd be hilarious to watch you try."
"Listen, Little Toaster, I'm pretty sure I could find a bathtub to dump you in if you keep giving me trouble."
Alec sighed. They were back to that Toaster thing. He would have complained, but he thought that it might mean that Dean liked him. He leaned his head back and tried to ease the pressure on his wounded shoulder. "All of the X5s were built from a pre-existing template. You're mine."
"Huh." Dean pondered this. "You want to try that again in a way that makes sense?"
"Why don't you ask the impossible?"
Sam made a small snorting noise, clearly a commentary on their conversation. They both looked over at him, Alec longer than Dean, who turned his eyes back to the road. Sam's eyes were clear for the moment, and he quirked a smile at them to show that he was paying attention.
Alec turned back to look out the windshield. "The X5s were the first real successes. This is mostly because we could pass for human. According to the Colonel, we look human, Ordinary, because we're all based on a naturally occurring genetic code. We're products of heavy tinkering instead of being built from scratch like the 'Nomolies and the earlier series. They, for the most part, don't look human. Some of them aren't too bright, either."
Dean took a hand off the wheel and ran it over his face. "Okay. Shit. This is a lot to take in, and no offense to your story-telling abilities, but you're leaving me with a lot of questions."
"You answer my questions about the scary shit you deal with, and I'll answer yours about the scary shit I deal with."
"Sounds fair. First, how am I template for you?"
"How old were you when your dad retired from service?"
"Pretty young. One or two."
"Manticore, that's home by the way, ran a front for a while as a fertility clinic for the Armed Forces. Free of charge, of course. I guess your parents had trouble in one way or another. It was a pretty easy way to get good material. They just cloned the embryo of the parents they thought were valuable enough. They looked for things like exceptional service records, intelligence, adaptability, attractiveness. Your number came up and here I am. I guess your parents had some good shit."
"So you're a clone of me. Then why do you say you only look human?"
"I was a clone of you," Alec corrected. "Once upon a test tube. But we've all been tinkered with, spliced, shaken, and stirred. You were born; I'm a science experiment."
"So what makes you so different?"
"You fought with a couple of X5s. Pound for pound, we're stronger. We're faster. We're all part cat of some variety or another, which means we're stronger, faster – I mean way faster – have better reflexes, and are more flexible." He grinned. "I learned to walk tightropes when I was six and can make ten foot vertical leaps look easy. We have a better sense of spatial relations than most people, and we can see in the dark, at least as well as a cat. That's one of the ways Sam caught me. I forgot that you would have needed a flashlight."
Dean was quiet for a long moment, trying to take all of this in. "Sammy always did notice the details." There was another pause. "Seriously, you're part cat."
"Yeah."
There was a long pause from Dean. "What kind? Angora? Persian, American Short Hair?"
"Give him some credit." Sam's response was sleepy, but mercifully not disoriented.
"Abyssinian or Devon Rex. Maybe Siamese. He's loud enough."
"You Winchesters are asses, you know that?" Alec wrinkled his nose when Dean laughed.
"And think, you haven't met Dad yet." Sam was still amused.
"Leopard to answer your question. Specifically, Panthera Pardus Saxicolor, commonly known as the Persian Leopard. At least that's what I have. They tried to match things to what they thought our adult body type would be, to make sure our mostly human bodies would be able to put up with the strain. They stayed away from things that hunted specifically as packs, like lions, because they didn't want any of that mentality to carry over."
"Species personality traits carry over?" Sam asked quietly from his corner.
"Yeah, sometimes. It depends on how much you got. Some of us have more carry over than others. We've speculated amongst ourselves as to why. Maybe we actually have more feline DNA than others. Maybe it's the human personality meshing really well with the feline instinct, who knows."
"So what carries over?"
"Sociability. Preferences in hunting methods. Dominance issues. Some of the baser instincts."
"Baser, huh?" Dean seemed amused.
"Yeah." Alec said. It was hard to take things to seriously around Dean. "Three or four times a year they have to frickin' separate some of us. It's real fun. Males on the east side of the base, females on the west. Hell, they had to redo meal and class schedules as we got older."
"But male cats don't have breeding cycles," was Sam's confused comment.
"No, but some of us can smell theirs, and that's enough to make us climb the walls and kill."
Dean grinned. "These girls sound like fun."
"No. You wouldn't perform up to standard or have enough endurance and she'd break you in half and move on to the next guy."
"Hey!"
Sam was apparently well enough to laugh at his brother.
Alec laughed too. "Seriously, for three days straight? You'd get a break when she felt like having a nap."
"I could last that long if the girl was hot enough."
"Dean, that's anatomically impossible," Sam said with a little snort.
"Maybe, but what a way to go. Genetically engineered catgirls."
"Ugh," was all Alec was capable of saying. "Seriously, it's a pretty unpleasant way to spend three or four days."
"You could just jerk off." Apparently Sam was capable of being uncouth.
Dean snorted. "No, they can't. 'It's a sign of mental weakness and lack of self control.' No wonder everyone there was so tense."
XXXXX
To say that Bobby was annoyed when he heard the rumble of a truck pulling into his yard would be an understatement. Then again, if you asked a lot of people, Bobby Singer's primary mode of existence was annoyance. He looked across his kitchen table once, the near end covered in books of an occult nature and the far end covered in small car parts. He rose with a sigh and went out to stand on his porch to head off whoever the hell was interrupting him on a Sunday. He wondered why his damned fool dog wasn't barking his damned fool head off.
Then he saw the reason walking toward him. Dean Winchester. The mutt had always liked the boy. "Dean." He stepped off the porch and gave the boy's shoulder a quick pat. He looked tired. Wrung dry. "Where the hell is the Impala. What's wrong?"
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