AN: This is a Dark Angel crossover story, but I couldn't stop with just my usual Supernatural cross. I had to go and include almost everything Jensen Ackles has been in. Yeah. This rocketed into my brain after reading the most recent update of Daxius X's hilarious "Super Angel." Enjoy!

Sacrifice

The Blue Lady worked in mysterious ways, Ben found.

He'd walked into a church in a small town in Indiana one night to see his Lady. Constantly on alert, as a good soldier should be, he'd noticed the man crouching by the small basin of water always found at the entrances of the churches where the Blue Lady resided. The man was watching him as he went by, but that was no uncommon occurrence.

Ben knew that he had been made to be the best of the best, and his creators certainly hadn't skimped on his looks. It was all part of his DNA code, nothing more. Ben gave no thought to his appearance, but in his experience, ever since he'd reached puberty he was sure to attract more than one lustful eye (of both sexes) wherever he went. It didn't bother him—he was strong enough to ward off unwanted attention should it foolishly approach.

The cursory glance Ben sent the other man's way told him that he was of a similar build to him, perhaps a little bulkier, but nothing he wouldn't be able to handle if need be. He continued his purposeful stride towards his Lady without giving the man another thought. Let him look if he wanted to.

He stood before Her, eyes raised in fervent awe of Her beauty. He prayed for Her protection, and asked Her what he should do to make Her heart stronger.

It was then that he noticed the other man was no longer by the fountain, and was slowly and quietly creeping towards him. He stilled all his muscles and tensed, ready to crouch, ready to attack. He whirled.

Ben's eyes widened in shock for a millisecond as he took in the visage of the man in front of him. Those were his features twisted in disgust and hatred on the other man's face. His mouth drawn back in a snarl, his arm swinging out to splash…water in Ben's face.

Ben blinked the harmless liquid out of his eyes and recovered in time to block the knife descending towards his chest. The metal glinted silver in the candlelight. The other man grunted and the knife-wielding arm lowered in Ben's strong grip, shaking from the effort of trying to keep it up and pointed towards Ben.

Ben cocked his head to the side. Not a Transgenic then. Not like him.

This momentary lapse in Ben's concentration was enough for the other man to mash his fist into Ben's face. Startled, he let go of the man's other arm, and his attacker was free again.

"I know I'm awfully handsome, but do you freaks have to keep stealin' my face? It's annoying," the man whined through a smirk (an odd combination, but it worked). Ben found this reaction strange. The man didn't seem unnerved to see somebody with the same face as himself; on the contrary, he seemed to have come across this phenomenon before. And he was angry.

Ben dodged the fist again, and blurred behind the man. A hard knock to the head brought the human down on his knees. Another blow and he was down for the count.

Now that his opponent was unconscious, Ben had the opportunity to examine his captive more closely. A bit of scruff, scars, and different clothes, but every other phenotypic characteristic was identical to his.

Ben raised his eyes up from his twin sprawled on the carpet before the altar to smile at the Lady. He knew what to do now. He understood why this man had been sent to him.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He trussed up the man tightly and took him to the empty warehouse where he was currently staying. Then he left to gather the supplies he'd need to fulfill his mission to strengthen the Lady.

The man started to awaken less than an hour after Ben returned. The muffled, but pained groans the man emitted made Ben a little guilty, but he was mostly excited at his plans for the man.

With his enhanced sight, Ben could see bleary eyes focusing on him, squinting to pierce through the dark.

"Do you believe in the Lady?" he asked his prisoner. He really did want to know. Did this man who looked so much like him share more than that with him?

Angry green eyes looked up at him from the bruised face. "What lady, you crazy, face-stealin' sonofabitch?"

Ben ignored the insult and leaned forward into the man's personal space. "The Blue Lady. Do you believe in her?"

"The blue lady? Are we talking X-Men or Avatar? Mystique's hotter, but I woulda banged Sigourney in Aliens."

Ben knew a joke when he heard it, even when he didn't understand the full meaning behind it. Joking about his Lady was unforgivable in his eyes. "The Lady," he said, through gritted teeth. "The Blue Lady in the church. You saw her."

The man's brow wrinkled. Then he snorted. "The Virgin Mary? Uh yeah, sure. I know a guy, who knows a guy, who's met her. Yeah, she's real all right."

"Good," Ben said calmly. "Then you're worthy."

The man's eyebrows skyrocketed up. Green eyes blinked slowly. "Okay, I fold." He shrugged as much as his bound hands would allow him. "Worthy for what?"

"For Her," Ben replied. He turned aside and picked up the gun from the table where it lay. "Here, take this." He threw it to the man, who caught it without a fumble despite the rope around his wrists. Surprise shone cautiously out of the still distrustful face. "You know how to use it," Ben stated. He knew for sure that this man knew his way around weapons from the way he'd moved during their brief tussle.

"Yeah," the man said slowly. "I also know it's not loaded. Why're you giving me this? What are you doing?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously.

"I'll give you the bullets later. I'm giving you to the Lady. But I need to do something first."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The man, whose name Ben soon discovered was Dean, endured the ordeal without screaming, but Ben was made quite aware of what he thought of this whole situation from the steady stream of obscenities that flowed from the lips so similar to his.

"What the hell are you tattooing on me, you bastard?!" Dean growled, struggling.

"Stay still," Ben muttered, the tip of his tongue sticking out from between his front teeth in concentration. It was hard enough trying to keep his hand steady when he was already excited from nervous anticipation of what came next in his plans, but the squirming underneath him wasn't helping matters any.

This first attempt was a little shaky and crooked, but to the non-Transgenic eye, it looked passable. The black barcode gleamed freshly on the back of Dean's neck. The inflamed flesh around it oozed droplets of red blood.

Dean breathed out another expletive. Sweat beaded his brow. His body slipped forward limply against the chair back.

Ben would give him a few hours to recover, then set him loose.

Once Dean was let out, the real thrill would begin.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ben would never forget the exhilaration of that first hunt outside of Manticore. It seemed to him that all his other hunts paled in comparison.

Dean fought brilliantly, planned and plotted like a master statistician, and almost got the best of Ben a couple of times. But in the end, Transgenic skill and superior genes prevailed, and by midday, a broken and bloody corpse lay at Ben's feet.

Ben took a moment to catch his breath and knelt down beside his kill. His eyes slid from the battered brown boots slowly up to the still face, peaceful in death. Death had always fascinated Ben. He wondered what if felt like to die. Was it as peaceful as it looked, or were appearances deceptive?

He shook these thoughts out of his head and set to work. The steel tools shone brightly in the sun. Soon, a small pile of bloody ivory pieces nestled in the cloth Ben had laid out for the very purpose of housing them.

Satisfied with his work, Ben arranged the body the way he remembered that first kill back at Manticore had lain, and left the scene. Dean's teeth burned a hole in his pocket.

Back at the church, he stood proudly before his Lady and placed his offering on her altar. He smiled as the sun suddenly broke through the clouds and filtered down on him, colored red and gold from the stained-glass window. He basked in Her approval.

With this done, Ben thought that he had completed the task his Lady had sent to him to do, but he soon discovered he was wrong.

While wandering about the east coast, Ben came upon Tom. Tom was quiet, not a rough, obscene man like Dean had been. Not to say that Tom didn't have a few choice words to say when Ben attacked him (because he did), but overall, he struck Ben as the shy, reserved type. Harry, on the other hand, was vicious. Harry was Tom's other personality.

Yes, Tom-Harry was a little bit unbalanced, but Ben decided to carry on with his plan anyway, although Harry's threats of shoving a pickaxe up his second hole perturbed him slightly, while reminding him at the same time of Dean. He felt a small twinge of regret in his chest, but quickly suppressed it. The Lady wanted him to do it, so it had to be the right thing to do. Any guilty feeling was wrong.

Anyway, Harry (for Tom had receded back into the dark recesses of his mind as soon as he saw the weapons) gave Ben a solid fight, though not as long or as engaging as Dean's clever tactics had been. Blunt force seemed to be his style. Too bad Ben was stronger than him. He killed him like a sack of meat.

The second little cloth rattled and clacked when Ben set it down on the Lady's altar. He felt the sense of joyful peace wash over him again. He didn't know it then, but he still wasn't done. He still had work to do.

He hitchhiked through Kansas and found Jason. Jason, well, Jason was a disappointment after Dean and Harry. Not to say he didn't fight back, because he did, and quite stubbornly too, but no, it was the things he'd said that took Ben aback.

"I have friends in high places, and they will find you. Let me go," and "My family has a lot of money. My mother will pay whatever you ask." As if threats and bribes could move Ben from his purpose.

He said something else, too, that bothered Ben. Jason had a complex about aliens. At first, he even thought Ben was one of them. Absurd.

After Jason, Ben started thinking that perhaps the Blue Lady wanted him to find more of the ones who looked like him and give them to her. So he traveled about the country and searched for them.

Jake, the next sacrifice, was an interesting case. When asked if he believed, he answered in the affirmative. "Well, sort of. But I don't think she's going to help me. I'm the son of the Devil, after all," he said, and gave a harsh, bitter laugh.

Jake didn't fight back too hard, and when his teeth disappeared from Ben's pocket before he could offer them to the Lady, he figured that it was a sign that She considered Jake an unworthy sacrifice. He discovered later that Jakes body was never found and out of curiosity, went back to see if it was still where he'd left it. It wasn't.

Ben didn't bother worrying about it. The Blue Lady worked in mysterious ways.

Everything went downhill from there. The first one he found in California, Priestly (a strange name that fitted an appearance so strange that Ben almost missed the resemblance), was, put simply, a wimp.

"W-what do you think you're gonna do with th-that?" he stuttered. "T-tattoo? Already got n-nine. D-don't need another one. Yowch! You don't know how to use that thing, do you? Ow-wow!"

He didn't know how to fight either, and went down much too easily for Ben's hunting needs to be satisfied at all. The man had stumbled, for crying out loud.

The next one liked to talk to himself. "Maybe I'm a triplet instead of a twin. Or maybe he and Sami were switched at birth. That would explain why I look like him," he mused in a dreamy voice. Then he went on to ramble on about the evil Stefano and his dastardly designs to ruin happiness for everyone in Salem.

Ben sighed. That's what he got for searching in a place that had the same name as a town famous for witch-hunts (which was actually a silly practice, since witches aren't real).

Malcolm was an idiot. Ben hoped that none of his DNA came from Malcolm. He'd be mortified if he ever found out that he shared even 0.0001 percent of his genetic makeup with him.

"Whoa," the imbecile said, "I got kidnapped by a guy who looks like me, and he's going to kill me. My friends will never believe this when I tell them." All this with a giddy and empty grin on his face.

Ben almost got to another one who looked like him, but a small white terrier with brown markings dressed in little dog clothes kept barking and yipping and nipping at his ankles, and all the ruckus stopped him from getting too close. His cat DNA rebelled. Ben didn't like dogs.

He picked up another look-alike out in California again. "I'm an actor," this one said. "You can't do this. Although you are very good-looking, if I may say so myself."

Needless to say, Eddie G. went very quickly. He was too preoccupied with flattening his hair, which had become slightly disheveled from his brief run, using the reflective surface of the lake as a mirror.

Finally, he stopped hunting down men with faces just like him, men who could have been his DNA template for all he knew. They were just so…annoying. Dealing with them made him irritable, and many of them didn't even seem worthy of Her.

So he moved on to any young male who appeared pious enough to satiate his Lady. Of course, he continued carving his own barcode into his offerings so that the Lady would know that they were from him. These new sacrifices didn't put up as much of a fuss as their predecessors. It irked Ben a little that he seemed to come from such annoying stock.

Then one day, he found himself in Seattle. He hadn't known that Max was also there, but he sensed her, and was elated to finally meet one of his siblings again. He longed to tell her what he'd accomplished, but she beat him to it, and attacked him with such horror that he rethought his decision to include her in his plans.

Max didn't believe anymore, and she even had the gall to tell Ben that the Lady wasn't real. If she wasn't real, then how come Ben was still alive? He hadn't bothered covering up his tracks at all. If she wasn't real, then Ben should have been taken back to Manticore ages ago.

But she caught him, tied him up. "Don't you understand?" she said, brown eyes pleading with him to believe what wasn't true. "You're killing yourself over and over again."

He knew that all too well. That was what he'd set out to do, after all. He was just warming up for the ultimate sacrifice he could offer the Lady. Himself. It was a shame he had to ask Maxie to do it, though. She didn't believe. But it was for the Lady's heart, to keep her strong.

He was ready now.

Crack.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - -

AN: Okay, time for the "Name the Jensen Ackles Movie/Show" game. Can you do it?