Pieces on the Board
Outside of Resistance Headquarters
General William 'Stormy' Kennington surveyed the scene and grunted. His nickname was a bit of a misnomer, as he usually had an unreadable, stony, poker-faced like demeanor, despite the conditions that he usually found himself in command of.
He was meeting with his staff in a hastily constructed command tent, all generators and the smell of moldy canvas tents. In truth, he preferred this good 'old school' setting to the techno-nightmare NASA style command bunkers that modern warfare had turned into.
He turned listlessly back towards his assembled staff and grunted again. They looked uncomfortable. As they should be.
"When did this thing show up, exactly?" he asked in a low, rumbling, basso tone.
"Oh-three-hundred, General," came the brisk response from his executive clerk, Lieutenant Colonel Shaffer. He tapped a couple of times on his military issued I-Pad, turning it to show the General photos from the military surveillance satellites. "On the dot, it appears, Sir."
General Kennington nodded and took in a deep breath. "And the recon teams?"
Another staffer, a one-star General named Manston shook his head. "Unable to access, sir."
Kennington blinked. "Feel free to elaborate, if you please, General Manston."
Manston looked over to his left, where a Master Sergeant with a Black Beret stood at stiff 'Parade Rest', hands linked behind his back, back straight as a rod. The Master Sergeant nodded back to General Manston in acknowledgement.
"Sir!," he barked in a sharp military greeting, "On orders from General Shaffer, I sent in three Ranger recon teams, two mounted, one on foot. They reported that while they were able to gain access through the initial perimeter, after just a few feet in, all equipment ceased to function, and visibility went down to zero. They continued on mission, attempting to guess a forward direction, but they always seemed to do a one-eighty and exit at exactly the same point they attempted entry, sir!"
"Did you try drones after that?"
"Sir! Drones were also ineffective. The operators lost contact and control after breaching the perimeter. We were unable to recover any of that equipment, sir!"
Kennington rubbed his chin, turning back to the target. "I hate being blind..." he muttered.
He turned back to his staff. "Allright, hot and heavy, then. Maintain the perimeter, bring up the 120mm artillery..."
General Manston paled. "Sir...we haven't even established if there are civilians inside that..."
Kennington cut him off with a withering look. "Saturate the target with illumination rounds, Genral...everything that you can unload at it for a two-minute period." He nodded in satisfaction as he saw Manston relax. "Recon, send in bomb disposal robots, don't worry if they lose contact, just lock their gears to forward. Rangers?"
The Master Sergeant straightened up even further. "Sir!"
"Get as much heavy rope as you can find and attach it to those robots. Tie flags off on 'em every ten feet. Ranger teams will follow that rope in, clear?"
The Ranger smiled. "Sir, yes sir!"
Kennington nodded. "Men, get on it. We have a three hundred yard mass of God-knows-what sitting here on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and I want answers. Dismissed." He watched as his staff raced off, coordinating with their clerks to get his orders implemented.
He turned back slowly to the aforementioned 'target', a sense of apprehension settling in over his thoughts.
A swirling, almost solid mass of darkness covered a large section of the warehouse district. It had suddenly appeared shortly after the operation to fight back against those...things from the sea had finally been wrapped up. The mass had remained a constant size, and, thankfully, it hadn't appeared aggressive in any way, shape or form. It was simply...unnerving.
Especially if one listened to it. If you really concentrated, you could hear something like...whispers coming from within that swirling Void.
And it sounded like pure, unadulterated madness.
Crowley circled the block one more time in his Ferrari, frowning deeply at the military roadblocks and personnel carriers that blocked every road leading into L.A.'s warehouse district. He looked over at Rowena in the passenger's seat, who let out a huff and shrugged. He had gotten back from Hell with Rowena a few hours ago, and had seen the news reports about the black mass covering the Los Angeles Warehouse District, seemingly right over where Resistance Headquarters was.
Or had been.
"No way in...and still no word or sign from Castiel, Gabriel, or any of the Hunters..." he murmured.
"I'm sure they're stuck inside that barrier. They must be having as much trouble getting out as we are getting in," Rowena answered.
"And you're positive that there's no spell or trick that you might have forgotten that might get us past that?" Crowley griped.
She fixed him with a level stare. "It's like I said, son. No spells are working in the immediate area. Lest you forget what happened when you tried to teleport us in there."
Crowley shivered visibly. "Never remind me of that again."
Rowena smiled. "Just so we're clear that I'm not the only one not contributing here."
Crowley shot a hateful look at the Military Police Officer that waved his car off to a side street. He reluctantly turned off and headed back in the direction of the highway.
"Where to?" Rowena asked, making a careful, but seemingly also disinterested study of her fingernails.
"My office. Then on to the Winchesters. Maybe there's something in that Bunker of theirs that has some information on...whatever that black mass is."
"Why not just go straight there?"
"I will not be parking this vehicle anywhere near Kansas."
Rowena rolled her eyes. "You can be so petty sometimes, Fergus."
"Learned that particular trait from the best, now, didn't I?" he snapped back, gunning the engine. Rowena pursed her lips and gave him a disapproving look. Crowley smiled wickedly.
Gabriel stumbled again, and shuffled down the Venice Beach boardwalk, finally stopping and leaning hard against the low railing of an Italian restaurant. A few patrons gave him a dirty look, mistaking him for one of the legions of homeless on the strip, and then turned back to their meals, the hiccup in the pattern of their normal lives quickly forgotten.
"Yeah, go ahead, cut up those steaks," he sneered, breathless. "You're all on the damned Titanic, and don't even realize it..." At that, a few diners looked back up at him and shook their heads.
Gabriel turned away from the people eating, oblivious to their soon to be horrific fate, and noticed a couple of police moving down the boardwalk towards him, one of them tapping his partner on the shoulder and nodding in his direction.
Normally, this wouldn't have bothered him...a couple of weird looks from some people and some human cops...but Judah had taken all of his power away. Suddenly, he didn't feel all that eager to spend his last few hours of existence rotting in a holding cell.
He stood up away from the railing and turned quickly away, still looking over his shoulder at the police.
He ran right into what felt like a solid brick wall.
He looked up in confusion as two strong arms steadied him and turned him gently down the boardwalk, walking swiftly away.
"It's allright officers!" the man said, calling back over his shoulders. "He's my brother! Had a bit too much to drink! I'm bringing him right home!" They hustled faster down the street, turning a corner down an alley.
"Yeah, well, good...get him the hell out of here, then!" Gabriel heard one of the cops yell after them, Luckily, the police seemed to be happy enough to have Gabriel cleared out by somebody, anybody else actually, and not bothering the guests any further.
They stopped and Gabriel looked up at his rescuer in confusion.
"...You? Where the hell did you come from?"
Cain's blue eyes narrowed at Gabriel and he looked at him closer. "Gabriel...you're alive?" He seemed to consider something, then nodded to himself in confirmation. "Makes sense. What happened?"
"Long story. Dad grounded me, I guess," he answered flatly. "Oh, and He also opened up the Gate. We're all going to die."
Cain grimaced. "I already know about that."
Gabriel looked down pointedly at Cain's arm. "The Mark?"
Cain shook his head slowly and rolled back his sleeve. His arm was clear of any symbol.
"Gone. Like I said, I know what God did."
Gabriel sighed and chuckled lowly, a bit hysterically. "Yeah, well, thanks for keeping me out of jail, at least. Know any good bars around here that we can drown our sorrows before we're ripped into sub-atomic particles?"
Cain frowned. "I'm not sure that's what's going to happen."
Gabriel returned the frown, his forehead crinkling in confusion. "Um...what? What have we just been talking a bout...?"
Cain looked away. "I think it's something else. Those creatures that attacked...they were driven away...that shouldn't have been possible. And the fact that you were left alive. None of this fits what Armageddon should look like. There's something else at play here."
Gabriel waved a hand in the air. "Oh, just give ol' Judah some time, he'll figure out a way to make all your wishes come true, there, honcho."
Cain shook his head. "No. That's not it. He's up to something."
Gabriel shook his head, smiling bitterly and still obviously not believing him. "Yeah, well, as soon as you can figure out exactly what that is, do me a favor and share that with the rest of the class, oh wise guru."
Castiel squinted through the dark mist surrounding the warehouse and closed the door, going back inside.
He walked briskly down the hallway and to an office near the back of the complex, not bothering to knock before entering.
Aleister looked up from the floor where he was seated, legs crossed over each other, in the middle of a floating miasma of dark energy. Black smoke trailed lazily from his eyes.
"The army is here," Castiel reported, walking into the room and closing the door behind him.
Aleister smiled and shook his head. "A waste of effort."
Castiel frowned. "Those same human soldiers were able to defeat our invasion force. I would not discount them so completely if I were you."
"That invasion force was not fully manifested, as we have determined. I , however, am."
Castiel sighed and shook his head.
"If you say so."
"Castiel, it doesn't matter how many toys they throw at that barrier, they will never breach it. It is made up of pure chaos...any attempt to cross it requires a creature from the Void. And as far as I'm aware, none of those are currently in their employ."Aleister tilted his head. "Don't you trust me?"
Castiel turned away. "For as long as I've spent here among the humans, there's one thing that I've learned about them that I think you should keep in mind."
"Oh? And what's that?"
Castiel turned back to the Old One. The hate that was in the Angel's eyes, but was restrained from acting upon, glared furiously at Aleister. Aleister simply smiled back at him, waiting.
"There are some of them that you should never underestimate," Castiel answered warningly.
Sam sighed and turned down the speaker from the alarm. It was the fifteenth time it had gone off, sending waves of blaring sound echoing off of every wall of the Bunker...in the last hour.
"Geez man, I thought we set those things to mute or whatever," Dean complained, coming into the control room and rapping on the table, making the map of the world on it's surface jump. He eyed it and the several blinking red lights on it and shook his head. "S'giving me a damned headache."
"Yeah, well, this is what happens when the whole world is under assault from extra-dimensional monsters," Sam answered, exasperated.
"So...yeah, wonderful work from those Men of Letters, huh? World comes to an end, let's set off some skull-crushing alarms. That'll calm everything right down." Dean answered, sullen.
Sam nodded in agreement, looking back at the console, then frowning in confusion. "That one was a perimeter alarm, though."
Dean's head rocked back a little in surprise. "What...that mean they're right outside the Bunker? Should we grab some weapons?"
Sam shook his head. "No...I don't think so. It was there, but I checked all the cameras...it's clear."
"Check it again," came a woman's voice from the stairs to the entrance. In a blink, Sam reached into a drawer and pulled out a shotgun, spinning on the intruder. Dean ducked under the table and ripped a .45 free of a Velcro holster attached there, taking aim as well. He blinked, then slowly lowered the barrel.
"The hell...?"
"Hello boys, " said Crowley and Rowena simultaneously. Crowley winced, then shook his head. "My line, Mother...if you don't mind."
Rowena shrugged. "It sounds better when I say it." She looked at the Winchester brothers, then at the table and the dozen or so flashing lights.
"Tsk, tsk. It seems we have our work cut out for us, doesn't it? Where shall we start?"