A bright turquoise door swung open to reveal a tall woman with a mass of natural red curls nestled around broad shoulders. She was a heavy lady, curved along every part of her body. Her plump face held a smattering of orange freckles, and sadness in her light, honey brown eyes gave lie to the warm smile she offered upon confirming her identification. "Yes, I'm Theresa Bevins."

"Good afternoon," Sam began. He introduced himself and Dean with their aliases, Kantner and Balin, and glanced at Dean as they both tucked away their FBI badges. He wanted to gauge Dean's reaction without staring. This girl looked nothing like her namesake, a woman Dean knew very intimately. Dean's face had gone poker-still, and Sam knew he was hiding disappointment. The real Carmelita was a knockout blonde with a slender body built for showing off, which she surely did in her handful of movies. Teresa, on the other hand, though she had a pretty face, was wide and full and did not fall into Dean's regular tastes.

"Oh, I suppose you're here to talk about what happened Saturday. Come in, come in." Teresa lead them into her dining room, red curls bouncing with each step. She motioned to a white painted, square top dining table and took her own seat where a glass of iced coffee -complete with coffee ice cubes and a straw- sat sweating on a cork coaster next to an open Sudoku book on a lace-trimmed powder blue placemat with a pencil laying in the spine. As Sam settled himself into the chair across from her, he noted the word "Expert" printed in small letters at the bottom of the page and that more than half of the puzzle had already been solved.

"So what can you tell us about that night?" Dean jumped right into the questioning, pulling Sam's attention away from the little book.

"Really, I don't know what more I could tell you that I didn't already tell the local police," Teresa replied, fiddling the pencil between her fingers.

"Why don't you start with what you told them and see if anything else comes to you," Sam suggested. Teresa nodded and put her eyes on the pencil she was holding instead of either brother.

"The after party was only just starting to get jumped up. We were all partying, you know? Singing, dancing, drinking, just having a good time. Next thing I knew..."

"Oh shit! Polly!"

"...Polly PicassHoe had the mic. We were singing together. And she just... died." Teresa looked up from the pencil and fixed her brown eyes on Dean. "Nothing else really happened. One moment, she was upright, singing; the next, she was falling. I tried to catch her. At first, I thought that maybe she had passed out from drinking too much. But then, well, all the other skaters were falling too, so..." She trailed off and looked down at her pencil again.

"Did you happen to see any black smoke anywhere?" Dean asked.

"Black smoke?" Teresa repeated, bringing up her gaze again. "Like from a fire? No."

"Bad smells?" Dean tried. "Like sulfur or rotten eggs?"

Teresa barked a laugh, "You've never been around derby girls after a bout, have you?" Her eyes flicked from Dean to Sam and back again. When they didn't answer, she filled them in. "Damn right it smelled bad. Though the running joke is we smell like soggy Frito pie, not sulfur."

"Forgive me for saying, Teresa," Sam put in, trying hard to smother his expression of disgust at her words. "But you don't seem as broken up about this as other skaters we've talked to." That brought her gaze back to Sam.

"No, I would assume not." Her amused smile turned into the sad one she was wearing when they arrived, and as she spoke more, it faded completely. "Truth be told, I didn't know Polly very well, or any of the others who died. See, I just passed my assessment to be a rostered skater not too long ago; this was only my second bout. I've been training with them, sure, but all six of them were so head and shoulders above where I am, skills-wise. Without a doubt, they were the best skaters on our team. I guess it was intimidating to talk to them. I'm... kinda shy, actually."

"Shy?" Dean asked. "Your skater name is based on porn star, and you're shy?"

Teresa stared at her pencil again and blushed so deeply, her orange freckles almost looked brown. Sam cleared his throat, gave Dean a meaningful glare, and slid his chair back as he stood. Dean took his hint and lifted to his feet as well. "Thank you for your time, Teresa," Sam said. "We'll see ourselves out."

"It's different on the track," Teresa murmured as they turned to leave. They stopped and looked back as she mumbled at the twirling pencil. "When I have skates on, when I'm out there, I feel so... strong, empowered... sexy. And I can't think of anyone sexier than Carmelita."

Dean grinned, "Si."

"You could see for yourself, you know," Teresa kept her eyes fixed on the pencil fiddling between her fingers.

"What do you mean?" asked Sam.

"Tip Top Texas Rollers are hosting a black and white scrimmage tomorrow." She looked up again, avoiding Dean's eyes and staring hard at Sam. "You could go. Though I'm not sure how many people will actually show; it was pretty hastily thrown together as a fund raiser. All the skater and spectator fees, plus whatever donations people want to chip in, it's all going to the families of the skaters who passed on Saturday."

Dean's voice matched the surprise on his face. "Really."

"Well sure," Teresa answered Dean but still wouldn't look at him, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on the taller brother. Sam supposed her embarrassment lingered. "Derby has a really tight-knit community. Even if we don't know each other personally, we all take care of one another. We're like a world-wide family."

Sam looked over and caught Dean's eye. He wondered if his brother was also remembering Bobby's comment those many years ago: "Family don't end with blood."

Once the turquoise door was closed behind them, and they were walking along a flower-lined walkway back to the car, Sam spoke up, "So I guess we're going out to watch some roller derby tomorrow."

Dean opened his arms and shoulders in a shrug. He glanced up and down the road before crossing, but the quiet neighborhood street was empty of moving traffic. "Maybe we'll get something useful out of someone there. It's not like we got anything good out of any of these girls."

"We got more out of her than the first two," Sam replied.

Dean paused with his hand gripping the handle of the car door. "We did?"

"Yeah, we did." Sam walked around to the other side of the car. "Teresa said the six Amarillo skaters who died were the best on the team. I bet the six on the Plainview team were their best too." They both climbed into the Impala, closing the squeaky doors with a twin of slams to hide away Dean's next statement.

"So we have a monster that not only kills roller derby skaters, but it makes sure to target only the best on a team?" His brow furrowed. "Yeah, we're going to the scrimmage tomorrow."

"And in the meantime?" Sam inquired. "What do you want to do?"

"Same thing you do every night, Pinky." Dean grinned over at Sam as he turned the key in the ignition and the car's engine roared to life. "Research."

.oOo.

Author's Note: This scene kinda wrote itself out as a montage while I was driving, and it played as a scene on the screen rather than in story form. Enjoy!

Musical Montage – Stroke 9 "Kick Some Ass"

Inside a small hotel room, Sam sits at a small, wooden table, shoved against a window right next to the door. Blue-on-blue drapes hang at the window next to his shoulder as he types at his laptop. On the other side of the screen sits empty food wrappings: a plastic container still coated with remnants of salad dressing and bits of shredded carrots with a plastic fork in the bottom and wadded wrappers from cheeseburgers next to an empty french fry box. Dean is sitting at the foot of the bed closest to Sam, a beer in his hand. He says something to Sam. Sam leans back in his chair and points at the screen with the lip of his beer as he answers. Dean joins him at the table and props his left hand on the back of the chair as he leans down to look at the screen.

Closeup of the laptop: Tip Top Texas Rollers official page. There is a picture of a roller skater wearing a white jersey with blue and red details. She is crouched low, one leg stretched out as though she is in the middle of a stride. A white cover with a blue-trimmed star that looks like the flag of Texas is on her helmet. The cursor on the screen skims to "Upcoming Events" and clicks. The page refreshes to show "Support Amarillo and Plainview with Triple-T R" at the top of the page.

The brothers look at each other and back down at the screen with interest. Sam speaks. Dean answers.

Dean is pacing the only empty floor space available in the small room, across dark grey carpeting from the foot of one bed to the other, flipping an empty beer bottle -bottom over neck- in his right hand. Sam is still at the little table with his laptop. A few empty beer bottles have joined the food wrappers. The brothers are talking to each other. Sam references his screen as he answers Dean's comments.

Dean is laying perpendicular across the center of a blue-on-beige bedspread, his legs bent, feet on the floor. His hands are folded across his stomach, and he's staring at the ceiling as Sam talks. He lifts his head to look at his brother. Sam points to the side of his head as he's talking, drawing a star shape, and then at his forehead and draws an invisible line across the top of his head, from his forehead to the back of his head.

Dean is standing behind Sam again, both of them staring with amazement at the screen.

On the screen is bout footage. A skater in pink slams hard into a skater in purple, knocking her well out of the boundary the track.

The brothers both flinch back a little, their mouths falling open in what would be loud "Oh!" with Dean's fist coming up to his grinning mouth and Sam's hand pointing at the screen. He says something. Dean moves his hand from his smile to reply.

Both brothers are on their feet, side by side, both of them crouched with their legs almost touching each other. Sam is pointing at the sliver of space between them, his face intent as he is talking. Without warning, Dean dips lower, swings his hips at Sam, and slams into his thigh, staggering Sam into the open space between the beds. Dean laughs, but it is cut short as Sam regains his balance and returns the favor, knocking Dean sideways.

Music fades with next scene...

Sam and Dean sat on their respective beds, facing each other. Dean was closer to the head of his bed, Sam was closer to the foot of his, keeping their knees from bumping. "Well, we still have no idea what kind of monster we're dealing with," Dean said. Sam nodded silently. "But at least we won't be asking dumbass questions tomorrow."

"Right," agreed Sam. "So we'll be able to focus on the job."

.oOo.

Wednesday

A whoosh of cool air swirled around Dean as he opened the glass door to Round the World, the local skating rink, and stepped inside, holding the door just long enough for Sam to take it and hold it open for himself. Behind them, the sun was beginning to set. In the brightly lit foyer of the building, a very attractive young woman wearing a revealing white tank with bold, red letters reading TTTR across her ample breasts sat at a table with papers across it. The right side of her head was buzzed short and dyed in leopard spots; the rest of her hair was a brilliant red, combed and styled to cup the left side of her face, the ends gracing her chin. Dean gave her an apprasing look as he stepped forward with a swagger. She looked up at him with grey-ish green eyes enhanced with brown and gold eyeshadow and brown mascara. A pair of silver hoops adorned either side of her bottom lip, and her red lipsticked smile took in both brothers.

"Welcome! Ya'll NSOin'?"

Dean stopped short and shared a confused glance with Sam before looking back down at the seated woman. "Uh... No, I don't... um.. I don't think we are En Ess... Owing?"

"Oh, I'm sorry." Her eyes flicked down to their empty hands and back up to their faces. "I saw ya'll weren't carryin' skate bags, so I thought you'd be officials. Ya'll here to watch, then?"

"Uh, yeah. Yeah, we're here to watch." Dean was still appreciating the view before him.

"Five each, please." She penned two tally marks on the paper in front of her, under a column labeled "Spectators" and used the pen in her hand to tap on a large coffee can painted with the Texas flag. "We're also requestin' any extra donations you'd be willin' to give. All the proceeds and donations tonight are goin' to the families of the skaters who passed away on Saturday."

Dean dug a ten dollar bill out of his wallet as she was talking and handed it to her. As she accepted it, he noticed a chunky blue cast encasing her left wrist.

"Man, derby's a rough sport, ain't it?"

She waved the cast in front of herself with a small laugh, "You mean this?" She tucked the bill neatly into the cash box at her elbow. "This happened at work. Honestly, I'd rather have a cool derby story to explain it. Still. It has me off skates 'til it comes off and I can put a wrist guard on again. Only a couple more weeks."

Sam, meanwhile, also flipped his own wallet open and stuffed a few bills into the coffee can. Dean didn't see how much, and he doubted the cutie on the other side of the table saw either. Even so, she favored Sam with an even bigger grin and an enthusiastic, "Thanks!" She then ripped two neon orange wrist bands free from a sheet of them and proffered one to Sam first. "These'll get you in and out of the buildin' for the rest of the evenin', plus it'll show anyone inside that you've paid."

"Thank you," Sam waited until Dean's wrist band was in place as well then started for the next set of doors that lead into the building. Dean lingered.

"What was your name again?"

"I didn't tell you my name," she replied with a sly smile.

"I'd like it very much if you did." He favored her with his own smile that usually started with a phone number and ended with a lot more.

"Death Leppard." Dean stared at the lip rings lustily as the name left her mouth. The moment she spoke, Dean was pulled sideways by Sam yanking on his sleeve.

"Dean. We're here for a reason."

"Alright, alright." Dean shook Sam's hand off of his arm and followed his little brother the few steps to the inner doors. He chanced a glance back at Death Leppard and got a nice boost of ego when he saw her looking at his butt. She let her eyes trail up his body to his face, making no attempt to hide what she had been doing. They smiled at each other again, and Dean sauntered through the doorway, making a mental note to get her number before they left.

Through the doorway, the main room of the skating rink was filled with people, the majority of whom were women, Dean noticed to his delight. Most of them were wearing either a black or white top, whether a t-shirt, tank top, or team jersey. There was also a sprinkling of referrees in black and white stripes inside and around the track. A bout was already in progress, skaters in white battling against skaters in black. People -on skates and off- were lined up along the barrier between the track and general walking area to watch and cheer. More were clustered in the snack bar. Even more were in a seating area of folding metal chairs set up on the rink floor, at the end of the track. Yellow and black striped tape sectioned off the area, and pieces of paper with bold "SUICIDE SEATING – 18 AND OVER" lettering were taped to every few chairs in the front row. Just about everyone was in some various state of gear; very few were spectators like themselves.

A barage of whistling filled the room. Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet! It started with one person's whistle but was echoed by several more. The jam was over. Skaters left the track and skated to their respective benches, replaced by nine more. One blocker in black was sitting in the penalty box with two people in pink sitting in chairs behind her. Dean was beginning to feel thankful of Sam's insitence on a crash course in roller derby the night before, but he was certain they had missed something.

"Five seconds!" Another pink person had a hand in the air, a stopwatch in his other hand, and a whistle in his mouth. Tweet! His hand flew down at the sound of the whistle. As the jam started, Dean tapped the arm of the nearest woman who, according to the back of her black jersey, was named J.R.R. Tokin'.

The green helmet adorned with stickers reading '420' across it tilted up. "The folks in the pink shirts," he said when she fixed dark brown, almost black, eyes on him. "Who are they?"

"The NSO's," she answered. "Non-skating officials. They do stuff like jam timing," she pointed to the one who had just blown his whistle and was now doing nothing other than staring at his stop watch. "Penalty box timing," she pointed to the penalty box. "Score keeping," her hand dropped to her side. "Well, it's just scrimmages, so we're not keeping official score tonight. This your first time?"

"Live, yes," Sam answered from the other side of Dean. "We've seen videos, though, and wanted to come check it out for ourselves."

Tokin' grinned, her tilted eyes glittering above a wide, slightly flattened nose, "Then what you really need to do is hit up a real bout. Most of us don't scrim as hard as we bout."

"I hear some teams party hard after the bout," Dean answered. "A little too hard, maybe."

"Yeah, I hear the same." Her round, tan face took on a sad expression. "I guess that's really why we're all here tonight, huh?"

"Do you know what happened?" Sam leaned his forearms down onto the barrier so he could better see around Dean. It made him have to look up at Tokin'. Her wrist guards clicked as she set her hands on the barrier to lean a little forward also. Dean eased back so he could observe them as they talked.

"Not really, no." Her black ponytail slithered on her shoulder as she shook her head. "I'm from Colorado. We've bouted against Amarillo a few times, so I wanted to come tonight. Word is, they took a hard hit. Their Captain was one of the ones who died. Same with PRD. And with so many of their star skaters gone, it's going to take a while for both teams to build back up." She looked back out at the track as the action brought the skaters around to the straightaway closest to them. Dean and Sam turned to look too.

A trio of white blockers were very successfully holding back a black jammer as a black blocker tried to disrupt them but was being thwarted by a fourth white blocker. Two more black blockers were in the front of everything, but they didn't seem to be doing much more than waiting for the white jammer to come back around. The white blocker guided the lone black blocker to the outside line and knocked her out of bounds. She immediately popped up onto her toe stops and ran in the opposite direction of the rest of the skaters. The black blocker skated on the outside of the track, following the white blocker, and re-entered the track behind her.

Tweet! "Black four-zero-four! Cutting!" The referee who made the call, Skuld, according to her striped jersey, crossed her arms out in front of herself in a big X then pointed her finger with a broad gesture of her arm. The black blocker threw her head back in frustration and left the track, booking it to the penalty box as quickly as she could. The white blocker high-fived one of her team mates who had also run back; a white blocker the black blocker hadn't noticed and re-entered in front of. The two of them hastened to rejoin the action in the pack as it rounded the next turn and away from them. Skuld, the ref, stayed with the pack, helmet swiveling, the wings painted on the sides catching reflections of the lights, as she intently eyed the skaters in the pack to call more penalties.

"I couldn't imagine if the same happened to my team," Tokin' murmured.

Sam looked confused, "You mean that?" He pointed to the track.

"No. What? Forcing a track cut? That shit happens all the time. I mean losing all of our best skaters," she eyed Sam. "You don't stay focused very well, do you?"

Sam's mouth tightened into his typical fake smile when he is insulted, and he straightened to his full height. Dean smirked. Tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet! Tweeeeee-ooooooo-eeeeep! Those watching the scrimmage let out a cheer, and the skaters on the track started hugging and high-fiving.

"Next one is in ten minutes," Tokin' said to Sam. "I'm up. You two sticking around?"

"You bet," Dean answered.