ramblin_rosie | Extremely rough fic snippet for kalliel

From a fic idea that probably isn't going anywhere much, but I thought it might cheer you up anyway. ♥ Happy belated birthday.

Fandoms: SPN/Skin Horse

Premise: When Raphael tries to retrieve Virgil from French Mistake!verse and grabs the Winchesters by accident, something goes horribly wrong because in the multiverse next door, a malfunctioning quantum gateway is threatening to rip a hole in reality. Virgil remains trapped in FM!verse as in canon, but the Winchesters get thrown through the gateway into the Anasigma lab in Carbondale, PA, where overly inquisitive teen Jonah Yu and his not-yet-girlfriend Nera Vivaldi are living their own version of "Mystery Spot"....

"This has to be Gabriel's fault somehow," Sam wheezed, sitting down on the fireproof crate in which he'd finally trapped the last of the napalm-spewing envenomed axolotls that had been chewing on the wiring in Dr. Mendoza's lab.

"Gabriel's dead," Dean noted as he cautiously wrapped electrical tape around a splice.

"We've thought that before and been wrong. He's the one angel we know who could have survived Lucifer's attack."

Dr. Mendoza looked up at Sam and pushed his glasses up his nose. "Now, when you say angel...."

"Literal," the brothers chorused.

Dr. Mendoza sighed, shook his head, and went back to work. "I've seen enough through the Second Gate to know anything's possible, but I've never seen literal angels in our multiverse."

"You oughta meet Cas," said Dean, wrapping another splice. "He's the most literal of 'em all."

Sam snorted.

Dr. Mendoza zapped something with a soldering iron. "I just... I didn't think it was possible to survive travel through the gate even within one multiverse and even when the gate was functioning correctly. And now you show up, and it sounds like you're not from our multiverse at all!"

Dean shrugged. "What can I say, Doc? We're a special kind of weird."

"That's another reason I wonder about Gabriel," Sam added. "The spell that was supposed to take us home was being powered by an archangel's grace. Okay, so Raphael didn't know he was grabbing us, but still... it shouldn't have misfired this badly."

Dean acknowledged that with a shrug of his eyebrows.

"Either way," said Dr. Mendoza, closing up the panel he'd been repairing, "the question remains: how do we get you back to your own universe? Supposing your angel friend can't find you to retrieve you, how do we manage it ourselves?"

Sam and Dean shared a look of horrified realization.

"Bobby's gonna kill Balthazar," Sam whispered.

~*~
"YOU DID WHAT?!!" Bobby bellowed at the two angels sitting at his kitchen table with hangdog expressions.

"It was Balthazar's idea," Cas murmured, not looking up.

"Oi!" Balthazar objected. "You didn't have to agree, you know!"

"I didn't think--"

"Precisely," Bobby interrupted. "You didn't think, y'damn idjit."

Cas finally looked up at him. "Bobby, do you believe I would have used this plan if I'd known what would happen?! Sam was bad enough--" He stopped himself with a cringe.

Bobby's expression went from thunderous to tornadic even as his voice lowered. "Boy, are you tellin' me you're the one who left Sam's soul in the Cage?"

Cas took a sudden interest in a knot in the wooden tabletop and didn't answer.

Bobby slammed his hands down on the table, startling both angels. "You fix this. You bring my boys back. Or I'm gettin' the holy oil outta their car and findin' me a recipe for chicken-fried angel. Capisce?"

"Yes, sir," the angels replied, not doubting for a moment that he was serious.

~*~
"There," said Dr. Mendoza as Dean finally put down the electrical tape. "That's the last of the repairs. The gate's stabilized, at least for the moment."

Dean checked his watch. "Got another hour until the kids' friend gets here. Any chance you could...."

Dr. Mendoza shook his head. "No. Not tonight. I need tequila and sleep and then migas and coffee before I can even figure out what happened to Jonah, never mind calculating the telemetry and the energy required to send you guys back. And this place is far too dangerous for you to stay here that long."

Sam sighed. "I think we should stick with the kids, at least until Zerhakker shows up, whoever he is. I mean, Jonah's holding up pretty well so far, but if anything manages to blindside him again...."

Dean sighed in turn. "Yeah, you're right. Bad enough we haven't been able to stop his loops yet; we can't let him get killed again."

So decided, the brothers joined Jonah and Nera in Dr. Mendoza's office and answered as many of their excited questions as possible in the time before Jonah declared they needed to brave the exit route marked Eyeball Razor Chimps. Apparently he'd gone that route before, however, and the four of them managed to avoid all the fatal traps and more axolotls before arriving on the roof. Jonah even managed to distract and overpower the security guard who tried to apprehend them without any help from the Winchesters.

"Why the hell'd we come with 'em again?" Dean asked Sam.

"Only way out?" Sam suggested.

Dean grimaced but didn't argue. There wasn't really time to argue, anyway. The sun was beginning to peek above the skyline, and silhouetted against it was the unmistakable shape of a V22 Osprey headed straight for them.

Just our luck we have to fly to get out of here, Dean groaned inwardly as Nera and Sam waved to the chopper and Jonah cringed out of the range of its rotors. But it landed without incident, and Sam herded everyone else--including Dean--into the seemingly empty cabin.

As Dean stepped in, a diagonal flash of silver on the doorframe caught the corner of his eye, and he reached out to give it a respectful touch, only to have his brain catch up with his hand as he actually felt the thing.

This helicopter had a mezuzah?!

Sam shoved him all the way inside before he could do a proper double-take and climbed in after him, but at about that moment, the automated voice broke off its spiel and asked, "What're you smirking about?"

"Nera, Sam, Dean," Jonah said, "meet Nick Zerhakker."

"Oh, WIZARD!" Nera cried.

The disembodied voice dropped the automated vocoder. "Ant people, how'd you know?"

"Sam was a car once," Dean volunteered, sitting down in one of the back seats in hopes of holding off his nerves and nausea.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean."

"Were you really?!" Nera demanded.

"I got better."

"Bet you didn't have a spammed swear filter," Nick groused.

Sam coughed. "No, actually."

Dean barely managed to follow the conversation that ensued as Nick the Jewish cyborg helicopter lifted off and Nera convinced him to share something from some video game called Half-Life 2, although Sam stipulated that they needed to land while the kids got their restricted media fix. That was marginally better than being in the air for two hours, but it did require setting down and lifting off again, which was rough.

"Dude," Nick confided from the speaker closest to Dean's ear as they finally flew back toward the kids' car, which was still outside the Anasigma lab. "I've only crashed, like, once, and a) that was a zombie's fault and b) it was three years ago in the middle of an Alaska snowstorm on my first mission. The zombie's in Florida right now, and it ain't snowin' here. Besides, anything happens to us in the air, it's gonna hurt me a bank of a lot more than it'll hurt y'alls."

Dean frowned. "That swear filter must really mess with your head."

"You have no idea. And don't change the parsec subject."

Dean grumbled under his breath, but Sam elbowed him, apparently on principle. "Fine," Dean finally conceded. "I guess I'll have to trust you."

"Thanks for the puzzling vote of confidence," Nick grouched and turned off that speaker.

"He sounds an awful lot like you," Sam murmured.

"Shut up, Sam," Dean murmured back and tried to relax.

It was only a minute or so later that Nick landed outside the lab and bade farewell to the kids, although his vague attempt to warn Jonah against going back into the lab only succeeded in sending Jonah into a bout of hysterical laughter so crippling that Nera had to drag him to the car by main force. But the Winchesters didn't immediately follow.

"So what about y'alls?" Nick asked. "You goin' with them?"

Sam looked at Dean. Dean looked at Sam.

"We're... not from this universe," Sam admitted. "Dr. Mendoza didn't know how long it would take him to figure out how to send us back. In the meantime, we really don't have anywhere to go."

Nick sighed. "Look, I get it, but my bosses... they only deal in non-humans, vershtayst? I don't know if they'd be willin' to help you or--or hire you or anything."

"Sammy's got demon blood," Dean offered, "and I was a vampire for about two days back in October."

There was a pause, and then Nick closed his door. "Next stop, Florida."