Sam: Tell us how to repel Denizens!
Dean: Or we will make you wear this Justin Bieber shirt! *waggles shirt threateningly*
Lampito: No! No! Anything but that!
Sam: Well?
Lampito: You need whipped cream.
Dean: ? ? ?
Lampito: It's pure calories, containing 100% saturated guilt, unhealthy body image and self-loathing. It works on Denizens the way salt works on ghosts.
Sam (squirting a ring of whipped cream onto the floor): Quick, Dean, over here!
*They squirt whipped cream on each other*
Dean: Now we'll be safe!
*The Denizens spot them. They aren't*
Bobby: You have a mean streak a mile wide, madam.
Lampito: Chicks before dicks, dude.
Chapter 9
When Bobby was a kid, one of the cats that hung around the barns to keep the mice and rats down had a litter of kittens. One of them, a little ginger tom, found its way into the kitchen, and went after the jug of milk that Ma had left on the sideboard to settle.
When she came back in and saw the little creature whiskers deep in the cream rising to the top, she had let out an angry roar, and made a grab for it. The little tom kitten shot straight up the kitchen shelves without seeming to touch any of them, and clung on, wide eyes blinking at the angry biped below.
Right now, thought Bobby, Crowley reminded him of that kitten.
"Bobbeeeeeee!" he shrieked, squashing himself impossibly even further onto the top of the shelves, sending a number of books tumbling, "Bobbeeeee! Call them off!"
Bobby looked at the angry, snarling Winchesters. One was brandishing a demon-killing knife, one was looking around for anything that could be wielded by heavily bandaged hands, and the third was slavering and showing a mouthful of decidedly pointy hellteeth.
"If I were you," he said thoughtfully, "I would try to land closest to the dog. He'll kill you quickest, and, given his breeding, he might even drag you all the way back home. He's also least likely to piss on your cooling carcass."
"You asked!" yelped Crowley, eyeing the angry trio below, "You asked! I didn't want to say, but you asked! He accused me of filibustering!" he pointed sullenly at Sam. "And farnarkling!"
"You were," replied Sam, giving up on the search for a weapon and going to get a chair to stand on instead.
"OF COURSE I was!" wailed Crowley, "Because I knew you'd try to kill me!"
"Do, or do not, there is no try," intoned Dean in his best Yoda voice.
"Do not! Let's go with do not!" Crowley yipped.
Bobby sighed. He really wouldn't mind seeing Crowley torn limb from limb by bared teeth – and that was just what Sam might do, never mind the dog – but that wasn't going to help solve the Hellhound problem. If the King of Hell had access to information that could help, it would be easier to get that info if his head was still more or less attached to the rest of him.
"It was a possible history, boys," he reminded them, "It was an alternative reality. It might have happened, but it didn't."
"That's right!" Crowley nodded vigorously. "That ol' Free Will thing. You made different choices, so it never actually happened. It could've, but it didn't. Because you could've, but you didn't! Evil is thwarted, Good triumphs, Winchesters 1, Apocalypse 0!" He smiled desperately.
The Winchesters subsided somewhat.
"Can I stab him?" asked Dean. "Just a bit?"
"Not with that, son," Bobby told him, a bit regretfully. "Not yet, anyway."
"Maybe just slap him around a bit?" Dean pleaded.
"We need to pick his brains, Dean," Bobby said, "That will be easier if they're still on the inside of his skull."
Sam's puppy-dog expression of utter disappointment would've move a lesser man to tears.
"So, why don't you come on down, Crowley," coaxed Bobby, pouring another drink, getting a sudden memory of how he'd coaxed the ginger kitten down an hour later when Ma was gone by waving a saucer of cream. "Then you can tell us about this alternative, also-ran history that never happened." He waggled the glass enticingly.
Crowley eventually descended from the shelves with an awkward thump, and gratefully took the proffered glass. "Oh, Bobby, chum," he sighed, "What would I do without you, you marvellous individual?"
"Rampage unchecked across this plane and others, no doubt," was the gruff reply. "Now, we need as much information as you can give us about this might-have-been solution. What's a Dominicana?"
"The feminine form of the pseudo-Latin title 'Dominican', I think," Crowley told them. "A sort of infernally appointed Hellhound guardian."
"So, why don't you find one?" Sam asked. "How do you appoint this guardian? What exactly does the job involve?"
"Look, it's... complicated," Crowley repeated. "Maybe I could show you what I saw, then you'll know just as much as me, for yourselves."
Dean blinked. "You... you went and looked at an alternative history?" he asked incredulously.
"Oh, yes," Crowley replied airily, "It's not that difficult if you know how to look. Mostly, nobody's interested in what might have been. It takes a lot of juice, of course, but I'm King of Hell, and abuse of my executive power is practically a job requirement."
"So, how do we do this? Look at an alternative history?" asked Bobby.
Crowley pulled out his phone. "Well," he began, dialling, "If you're agreeable, I can call the IT Help Desk and ask them to patch it through to your TV."
"Hell has an IT Help Desk?" marvelled Sam.
"It was one of the first things I had to set up," Crowley told them, "Ah, hello? It's Crowley here. Who's this? Steve? Steve! Just the man. I need you to talk me through an AV set-up. Mm-hmm. Job number? No, I don't have a bloody job number! I'm the King of Hell, you pillock! Screw your job number! Yeah? Well, prioritise this! Or I'll have that new pancreas back, thank you very much... yes, yes, I'll drop by and initial the job log. Wonderful. What? Port number? No, no, I'm Topside, mate. Yes. Topside. Hang on, I'll look." The demon peered in behind Bobby's television. "Oh, bugger, there's more holes in the back of this thing than you'd find in a whorehouse... a USB? What's a USB? How do I tell if it's male or female? Are you telling me these things breed? I don't know. He wants to know if we have a browser we can route this through," he turned to the humans, "Do we have a browser?"
"Yep," replied Sam, waking up the laptop, "Right here."
"Okay, yeah, Steve, we got a browser," Crowley was back on the phone. "What? It's Sam. No, really, he appears to be browsing as we speak... Oh." He turned back to the Hunters. "He wants to know what operating system you're running, and what browser you're using."
"Windows XP and Explorer," Sam told him.
"Right. Steve? He says Windows XP and Explorer. Steve? Steve?" Crowley looked at his phone in confusion. "Steve, are you all right, mate?"
"Is there a problem?" asked Dean.
"All I can hear is sobbing," shrugged Crowley, "Steve, are you there? This is important! Pull yourself together, man! Right. What? WHAT? That's a very personal question, and I feel compelled to remind you that it's the sort of thing that can see you sent back to Equity and Diversity training, and I warn you, they do group hugs... no, you pervert, I will not tell you what my dongle looks like!"
"Oh, for fuck's sake," muttered Sam, snatching the phone awkwardly and sandwiching it between shoulder and ear. "Steve? Hi, it's Sam. Yeah, tell me about it. I feel your pain, man. My brother's even worse. Now, give me an address, and tell me what cables we'll need for this..."
Fifteen minutes later, Sam was just as frustrated as Crowley had been.
"Yes, I know!" he huffed in frustration into Crowley's phone, "And it is! Yes! But we're not getting anything! I'm telling you, we got green lights across the board, but there's no signal! No, I am not working for Crowley!"
Crowley took his phone back.
"Look, I think we've got the set-up right at this end, mate, we can probably take it from here," he said. "Thanks for your help. No, really. You've been very helpful. Yes, I'll do the User Satisfaction Survey as soon as I get back. I promise. I will. I'm the King of Hell, would I tell you fibs? All right. Bye."
"So, now what?" asked Dean, as Crowley started dialling again, "We don't have the damned thing connected, and we don't know how to work Hell's electronics!"
"So I'm calling someone who does," Crowley assured him, tapping away at his phone. "You might want to stand back a bit, he's quite big. Oh, and that expression on his face will mean that he's actually smiling."
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
When the fiend appeared in Bobby's living room, Dean's first impulse was to shoot it until there were no more bullets available in the entire world, but it gave them an incongruously shy little wave.
"Orgle, mate, that was quick," smiled Crowley, as the giant fiend carefully handed over a suit bag.
"Promptness is important," the fiend Orgle rumbled, "It shows respect and diligence. Verael is very keen on promptness. And neatness. And pushing chairs back in quietly."
"Wonderful, wonderful," Crowley enthused. "Gentlemen, this is Orgle, an up and coming... individual in Hell. Orgle, these are the Winchesters, Sam and Dean, and this is Bobby Singer."
"Hello," the fiend pulled the terrifying expression that meant 'smile' again, and carefully extended the massive taloned paw of one the arms on his right side to shake hands with painstaking care. "It is a pleasure to meet you." He turned anxiously to Crowley. "Did I do that right?" he asked. "I don't come Topside very often," he admitted to the humans.
"Yes, you did very well, mate," Crowley assured him, "Now, I have a little job for you, Orgle. We're going to watch a bit of alternative history here, and we just need a bit of help with setting up the AV bits and pieces..."
Orgle peered at Sam's laptop, at the TV, and smiled.
"Oh, yes," he said happily, "I can set this up. This needs to go in here..."
With surprising delicacy, Orgle had the laptop and TV connected and the picture in wide screen format in a couple of minutes.
"That's amazing," breathed Sam.
"Oh, you know what it's like," sighed Crowley, "All this technology, but if you want to get it to work, you have to have somebody under 300 years old to program it for you."
"Was there anything else, Mr Crowley?" asked Orgle.
"Maybe you could fetch some popcorn, while I get changed," Crowley told him, shrugging out of his ruined jacket. "Oh, and a couple of bottles from my office suite. You know the stuff I want."
Orgle disappeared, then reappeared a minute later with two bottles of Crowley's single malt, and bowls piled with steaming buttered popcorn.
"Ha! Forget it, mister!' snarled Sam. "If you think we're going to eat anything that comes from the Pit..."
"Oooooorm, thish ish sho goooood," Dean hummed happily, cramming another handful into his mouth. "Try id, Shammy, id's really good! And it'sh corn, sho your giant vegedarian ash can ead id! Thish ish wondervul, Orgle!" The fiend beamed. "All I need now iz zome beer."
"So, how do we work this?" asked Bobby with a roll of his eyes.
"Just use the remote," instructed Orgle, before disappearing and reappearing with a six pack. "I'm sorry about the beer," he told Dean regretfully, "I'll remember next time. Popcorn, and beer."
"Orgle, dude, you rock," Dean opened a beer, took another handful of popcorn, and sat back. "So, if we're gonna do this, let's do it."
Bobby hit 'play'...
The good thing about the new Lord of Hell – apart from the fact that he imposed order, efficient function, and the sort of stability that let the Hierarchy get on with their endless plotting and scheming and machinations against each other – was that he was a lot less volatile than Lucifer had been. Why, when Archduke Belaal had ranted angrily about how he was not going to defer to some child who'd gotten ideas above his station, he'd listened politely and attentively for fully five minutes before he'd smilingly gestured and the angry old demon had exploded. In fairness, he hardly ever burned out anyone, unless they'd really really REALLY annoyed him. The point was, he did it POLITELY, and good manners carried a lot of weight with the Hierarchy...
...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo... ...oooooOOOOOooooo...
The Winchesters and Bobby sat watching with a combination of reluctance, trepidation, horror, and a teensy bit of fascination. After all, who wouldn't be curious as to how it would've turned out if you'd ended up ruling the world? Or the underworld, at least...
" 'The Unattractive Office', Sam?" scoffed Dean. "You named the nerve centre of your diabolical realm 'The Unattractive Office'?"
"Well, it is!" Sam commented. "Look at it! Reds and blacks, it's like a '70s bad acid trip! What's that? Is that... a bouncy castle?"
"Hey, don't diss bouncy castles!" demanded Dean. "You can have fun on a bouncy castle! Once, I was a fair with this girl, in Iowa, I think it was, and..."
"Hmmmm, Carmen Miranda you aint, boy," observed Bobby, as demonic!Dean played out The Maraca Incident in wide screen format, and Crowley winced and gulped his drink.
"Has anyone ever told you that you're cute when you're angry?" Dean grinned at his brother, as the Boy King vetoed hair metal in The Unattractive Office.
"Your manners certainly aren't that different," Sam sniped. "Oh, dude, did you just own up to propositioning the Senior Satanic Librarian? You have no shame!"
"Some things never change, then," nodded Bobby.
"And... a zombie demon army?" Sam sounded disbelieving. "You wanted to create a zombie demon army?"
"Shut up, Tweedledum and Tweedledumber," hissed Crowley, "We're getting to the important part!" Dean threw a handful of popcorn at him.
They listened carefully to Dame Ghazoria's explanation of the Dominican's title, then watched as the new incumbent – the Dominicana – was presented to the Hierarchy.
"She is kinda hot in black," admitted Dean. Sam shushed at him.
All three humans shivered when she loosed her wings, and howled with joy to call her Pack.
They watched as the Hellhounds of the Pit assembled, circling, watching, uncertain as to what was happening. The largest, an enormous monster, offered a savage and snarling reaction to her assertion of dominance.
...The new Hellhound wrangler, the Dominicana, called out and faced down the largest and most savage of them, the Alpha male, leader in the absence of other guidance. She stared him down, spoke to him in a language he understood, until he submitted, sitting down with his ears drooping, and tentatively offered a paw the size of a truck's hubcap.
The Dominicana reached up, put her arms around his stinking neck, and hugged him.
"Good boy," she crooned. The Hellhound's tail began to wag. "This is Belisarius," she told the Lord of Hell, "And he will be Second of my pack."
"So, there you have it," said Crowley, hitting 'pause' as the assembled Hierarchy smiled at the tableau before them, "She won over the biggest, ugliest and nastiest of them all, and from there, brought them into line."
"Does that mean, we have to arrange something similar?" wondered Sam. "Is the pack's dominant Hound a factor here?"
"And if so, how do we find, and call, Belisarius?" added Bobby. He caught sight of Dean, who was staring at the screen, not in horror, but with a gentle smile on his face. "Dean?" he asked carefully, "Are you all right, son?"
Dean turned that smile on the other watchers. "I don't know how to call him," he said, looking back at the paused picture, "But I do know that in this reality, he won't answer. Because in our history, his name wasn't Belisarius. It was Jimi. Jimi senior."
Reviews are the Awesome Doggy Cuddles on the Sofa Of Life! Or, if you prefer, the Quaking Winchesters in the Circle Of Whipped Cream Of Life. Take your pick.