Note from the writer: Some dates were changed for the purposes of the story (since this is an alternate universe after all). I just wanted to let everyone know about that, just in case someone wonders why the date for the meteor shower is wrong.

THEN

October 7, 1987 – Iowa

Daniel Elkins leveled his shotgun at the angry spirit of a large man in a leather jacket, who was advancing towards them with an angry scowl on his face while John Winchester frantically poured salt into his grave. He blasted the big guy with rock salt and sent him packing long enough for John to pour in the gas.

Not long after, the ghost reappeared to Daniel's right and then he turned to take another shot. "He's coming back, John!"

The big man charged towards John while he flicked his lighter. "Come on, come on!"

Another muzzle flash from Daniel's gun lit up the dark cemetery, once again sending the ghost away with an angry yell, just as John managed to get a light.

"About damn time!" John tossed his lighter onto the skeleton beneath his feet and the ghost appeared one last time before bursting into flames and vanishing into the night.

A sigh of relief came out of Daniel's mouth and he lowered his gun. "Nice one! I thought we were in trouble for a minute there!"

John flashed him a grin as he watched the fire burn in the hole. "I thought so too. Damn lighter didn't want to work!"

Daniel went around to the other side of the grave site and slapped him on the back. "Just make sure you bring a full lighter next time."

The two of them watched the fire burn for a little while longer before putting the loose dirt back into the hole and covering it up. Since their hunt was over, they took their stuff back to the Impala, put it in the trunk, and got in the car. John started it up and Daniel smiled when he heard the roar of the engine.

"I never get tired of hearing that," Daniel said to him. "I used to have a nice set of wheels like this, until I wrecked it hunting Luther. The vamp still owes me for that one…"

John smiled as he reached for the radio. "He'll get what's coming to him one of these days. How about some tunes?"

He turned on the radio and Guns N' Roses immediately blasted out of the speakers. He backed up the car and the two of them took off down the road while they enjoyed the music. As soon as they rolled into town near the motel where Sam and Dean were sleeping, the radio hosts started talking about a meteor shower.

Daniel furrowed his brow and reached for the volume control knob to turn it up. "What's this?"

The concern was quite audible in the host's voice as he broke the news to his listeners. "Earlier today, something crazy happened in Kansas! There's this town that most of us have never heard of, called Smallville, and they got slammed by a meteor shower! So far, we only know of two people that've been killed, but six were reported missing."

The female co-host also made a comment about it. "It's awful what happened there. A couple kids were in the field where the first one hit, weren't they?"

John pulled into a parking space in front of the motel and exchanged a glance with Daniel. The host then replied, "Yeah! According to officials, Lionel Luthor's son was out there, along with some kid named Jeremy Creek. The Luthor boy seems to be doing okay, but the other kid's in a coma. The docs aren't sure if he'll ever wake up again."

The hunters continued to listen until the two hosts moved on to another topic and then John switched off the radio. "Should we check it out?"

Daniel shook his head as he thought about it. "I don't know. I've never heard of a meteor shower causing that much devastation. It could be an omen, but this is new territory for me."

John was taken aback by his mentor's reply. "You've been hunting for nearly three decades and this is new territory for you? If something evil is behind this, then it's gotta be one bad son of a bitch. It can't hurt to look."

Daniel glanced at John and smiled briefly, but then his expression turned serious again. "That's exactly what my old hunting partner said about Lawrence… I made a mistake not looking into it back then, so I'd hate for us to do the same thing now. I'm going to head over there tonight. Find a motel room for the boys and meet me there tomorrow."

Then Daniel got out of the Impala and went to his rental just a few parking spaces down. John watched him get in and drive away before going in to see his boys.

Early Afternoon, October 8, 1987 – Smallville, Kansas

When John finally arrived in the area, he could hardly believe his eyes. The smoke was still rising above the town when he pulled up to the blockade where a meteor had taken a horizontal path across the street and passed through some fields, tearing up the pavement and ripping soil out of the ground to a depth of about five feet along the way. He spotted his mentor chatting with local police up ahead by the roadblock as he parked the Impala behind a deputy's car and got out.

Daniel turned his head when he saw his partner and introduced him to an officer with dark hair and a thick mustache. "Deputy Miller, this is my partner, Agent McGillicutty."

John showed the deputy his badge and shook his hand. "Deputy."

"Thank you for coming," the deputy said. "Since you're both here, I'll bring you up to speed. So far, we've discovered four more bodies since yesterday. We have people coming in from Granville to help with search and rescue, as well as putting out the secondary fires that have flared up since the meteors came down. It's absolute chaos around here."

Daniel put his hands in the pockets of his suit trousers as he gave his young partner more details. "The deputy also told me the first meteor came down in Riley Field. That's where the Luthor boy and the teenager were found."

Deputy Miller clenched his jaw and looked back and forth between them before speaking again. "I don't know what you two expect to find out there. My people have looked around the area and all we found was a crop circle."

Daniel gave the deputy a friendly smile. "We like to be thorough. You never know what you might miss out there."

The deputy nodded and then went around the road barrier to speak with one of the nearby search and rescue crews. When he was far enough out of earshot, Daniel handed John a thick, folded up piece of paper. "This is a map of the town. I marked all of the closed roads and detours so we can find our way around."

John opened the map and took a good look at it. "Did you even sleep this morning, Dan?"

His mentor chuckled and smiled. "No. Did you?"

John looked back at him but didn't answer. "Let's check out that field."

Smallville Medical Center

The two hunters parked their vehicles in the parking lot outside, before getting out and adjusting their ties. As they made their way through the front entrance, they quietly spoke to each other about the lack of clues in the field.

"Hopefully the Luthor boy is still here," Daniel said when the doors at the main entrance slid open. "We might be able to ask him or his father about the things they saw out there."

John nodded as they headed towards the front desk, but said nothing. When the receptionist saw them, she looked up at them and asked, "Are you looking for someone?"

They showed her their FBI badges as Daniel answered her question. "Yes. We came to ask Lionel Luthor some questions about his son. Is he still here?"

The receptionist nodded. "I believe he is. He's about to be transferred to Metropolis General, but I'll double check."

Daniel thanked her as she picked up her phone and pushed a button to call the nurses' station near Lex's room. She explained the situation and quickly hung up after receiving a response.

"He's still here, but you should hurry." The receptionist handed Daniel a card with Lex's room number on it and pointed down a nearby hallway. "Room one seventeen is down that hall."

Daniel took the card and thanked her. "I appreciate your help. I imagine it's been an exhausting day."

The receptionist sighed loudly. "It definitely has been. Have a nice day."

Daniel and John quickly headed down the hallway towards Room 117 where they found Lionel Luthor outside of his son's hospital room speaking with one of the nurses.

When he noticed the two men heading in his direction, Lionel thanked the nurse and turned towards them. "Can I help you?"

They showed him their badges before Daniel answered him. "We came to ask you some questions about the incident."

Lionel inhaled sharply. "I don't know what more I can tell you, other than a meteor nearly killed my son. What happened was… a natural disaster."

Realizing that they might have offended him, John immediately apologized. "I'm very sorry about what happened to your son out there. We don't mean any disrespect, but we need to be thorough. Did you see anything unusual in that field, besides the falling meteor?"

Lionel paused for a moment, as he appeared to make an attempt at remembering something important. "I didn't notice anything else at the time, but I do know that there was another young man in that field."

"You mean Jeremy Creek, right?" Daniel asked.

Lionel nodded and pointed a bit further down the hall. "I believe I saw his mother in the intensive care unit. It's down that way to the left."

Daniel exchanged a glance with John and said, "I'll head down there and see if I can find her."

John watched his partner head down the hallway and then looked back at Lionel, who put his hand on the door frame as he observed his sleeping son. "Do you have children, Agent McGillicutty?"

John nodded. "I have two boys."

Lionel turned towards him and folded his arms across the front of his business jacket. "How old are they?"

John smiled as he thought about his sons. "My youngest, Sammy, is four and Dean is eight." But then he looked in at Lex and his smile faded. "I don't know what I would do if anything happened to them."

"Is their mother still in their lives?" Lionel asked.

Upon hearing that question, John froze for a second as the memories of the day he found Mary stuck to the ceiling in the nursery came flooding back to him. "No, she… She passed away. There was an accident and… There was a fire."

Lionel looked back into Lex's hospital room again and shared some details about his own wife. "Lillian has been sick for a while. It's going to be difficult for Lex when he loses his mother, but I will teach him to be strong. I'm certain that you will have to do the same with your own sons."

John nodded in agreement. "You're right. Our world's a very dark place. Sometimes I wish we could protect them from it forever."

Their conversation was suddenly interrupted by the paramedics that came to take Lex to the medical chopper out back. Lionel stepped aside, giving them some space, and then he looked at John one more time. "We can only hold their hand for so long before they must learn to stand on their own. If we coddle them, they'll end up like the other young man that was in that field."

"What do you know about the other boy?" John asked.

Lionel smiled at John as the paramedics wheeled Lex's bed out of the hospital room. "Apparently, he was hung from a stake in a field, which I've heard is what passes for entertainment around here. At least the Romans saved it for special occasions, unlike the small-town hicks that live in Smallville. Anyway..."

He extended his hand towards John. "They're taking Lex to Metropolis, and I have someone coming to take me back to the mansion. It was nice to meet you, Agent McGillicutty."

John took his hand and shook it. "Thank you for your time, Mister Luthor."

Lionel turned away and followed the paramedics down the hall so he could see his son off before heading home. Daniel returned shortly thereafter, to tell John what he learned. "It turns out Jeremy was strung up like a scarecrow by some school bullies. Those punks deserve a good beating, but I don't think their intent was to offer him as a sacrifice."

John nodded but said nothing. The expression on his face indicated that something he and Lionel talked about upset him, causing Daniel to be concerned. "Are you okay, John?"

"I will be," John replied. "After I find the thing that killed Mary. Anyway, I'm not so sure that anything supernatural is going on around here after all. I should probably head back to Granville to pick up the boys."

Daniel motioned for John to follow him as he headed back towards the front lobby. "You might be right, but before we get out of here, there are two more people we need to see."

John gave him a confused look. "Who?"

"Martha and Jonathon Kent," Daniel replied. "A nurse informed me that they brought Lionel and his son here yesterday. Neither of them were treated for serious injuries, so I assume they left after dropping them off."

"Do you think they might know something?" John asked.

Daniel shrugged. "It's worth looking into. If they were anywhere near the first strike, then it's possible."

"After we're done there, I could use a drink," John said.

Daniel agreed. "The nurse also said there's a bar outside of town. She said the owner's handing out free food and non-alcoholic drinks to first responders, but we can still go in for a real drink if we want to."

A faint smile appeared on John's face as the two of them started making their way towards the front lobby. "I'm glad the place is still open for business then."

Kent Farm

Jonathan Kent looked down at the small spacecraft that lay on the floor of the storm cellar. In his hands, he held the rectangular disk-like object that had fallen out of the vessel before it closed itself back up.

"Where did you come from, kid?" he asked with a sigh.

He quickly wrapped the object back up in its shop rag and set it next to some canning jars on a nearby shelf. Then he went over to the ship so he could inspect the hull a little more closely and it didn't take long for him to find the octagonal hole where a small piece appeared to be missing.

"Huh, what happened here?" Jonathan felt the edge of it with his fingers.

The hole wasn't very deep and its edges were far too smooth for it to be the result of damage during the crash (indicating that it had been cut into it beforehand) but why it was there, he could only guess. While he was still looking it over, Martha came down into the cellar and he turned away from his project when he heard the sound of her footsteps.

"He's asleep upstairs," Martha said with a smile.

Jonathan smiled and wrapped his arms around her. "I imagine he's tired after being up all night. Sometimes I wish I had his energy."

Keeping one arm around her, he led her over to the ship so she could get a closer look. "I've been trying to see if I can open it back up again, but I don't know what to do with it."

"For now, we should just keep it hidden until we figure out what the symbols on that device mean," Martha suggested. "It might give us some clues about where he's from."

Jonathan sighed. "I just hope no one else saw that… Ship coming down. If anyone found out about it, I don't know what we'd do."

Martha put her head against Jonathon's shoulder and nodded. "I think we should call Lionel and see if he can help us adopt Clark."

Jonathan let go of his wife and threw a tarp over the ship with a chuckle. "I still can't believe how fast you came up with a name for him last night."

Martha gave a slight shrug. "I'm just glad that Ethan believed my story. We can't keep him hidden forever."

"I'll call Lionel when I get back up to the house," Jonathan said. "Then we can get everything taken care of."

Once the ship was safely covered up, they went up the stairs and Jonathon shut and locked the door to the cellar. Hand in hand, the couple walked past the barn towards the house. Before they got to the picket fence that went around their home, they heard the sound of tires crunching over gravel.

"Who is that?" Martha asked, when she noticed a black 67 Chevy Impala creeping up their driveway.

"I have no idea," Jonathan replied. "I'll be in, in a minute. I want to see what these people want."

Martha went inside, leaving her husband alone in front of the barn. When the car came to a stop, two men wearing suits and ties got out and went up to him.

"What can I do for you gentlemen?" Jonathan asked.

They showed him their FBI badges, suddenly making him nervous. As they put them away, the older man answered, "We heard that you brought Lionel Luthor and his son to the hospital and we want to ask you some questions."

Jonathan gave them a suspicious look as he confirmed that they were correct. "That's right, I did."

"Could you please tell us what happened when you found the Luthors?" the younger agent asked.

Still suspicious, he shifted his gaze back and forth between the two men while giving a summary of everything that happened. "To get into town, we borrowed a friend's truck and then I brought Lionel and his son to the hospital."

Then the older agent asked a question of his own. "When you found Mister Luthor, did you go out into the field with him?"

Jonathon nodded. "He led me to the place where he found his son. Lionel was in shock, so I picked the boy up and carried him to the truck."

The younger agent then asked him another question. "Did you see anything else in that field?"

Jonathan shook his head and clenched his jaw before answering. "No, I didn't. If you're asking about that other poor kid, then I wish I had. He was much closer to the blast area, so I'm amazed he survived at all."

"I know what you mean," the older agent said. "It'll be a miracle if he wakes up from his coma."

Realizing that they weren't asking about the ship, Jonathan began to relax a little and asked, "Is there anything else you need to know?"

The two agents glanced at each other briefly, before the older of the two gave him a friendly grin. "No, I think that should do it, Mister Kent. I'm just glad that you and your wife are alright."

Feeling a little more at ease, Jonathan chuckled and extended his hand towards them. "Thank you for coming, I'm glad I could help."

The two agents each shook his hand and then they returned to their vehicle, giving Jonathan a chance to take a better look at the car. Why the bureau would allow them to drive a car that fancy, he could only guess, but he felt satisfied knowing that they weren't after the ship in the cellar. Despite this, he still watched them suspiciously as they left his property before going into the house to find Martha.

Granville, Kansas

Sometime the next morning, John Winchester returned to the motel in Granville where Sam and Dean were staying and Daniel Elkins pulled up beside him in his rental. Now wearing street clothes, rather than their suits and ties, they got out of their vehicles and took a moment to discuss their next move.

"So, where are you headed next?" John asked.

"I'm probably going to look for a lead on Luther."

John smiled and even chuckled a bit, surprising his partner. "Are you going to get back at him for wrecking your hot rod?"

Daniel laughed when he heard that question. "His entire family will pay for it. Once I finish 'em off, vampires will be damn near extinct. When their kind's gone, we'll all have one less kind of monster to deal with."

John's smile faded as he was once again reminded of his own quest for vengeance. "Now I just need to figure out what kind of monster killed Mary…"

"I'm fairly certain it was a demon," Daniel said. "There were demonic omens nearby just before it happened. Bad storms, dead crops, they were all over the state."

John looked down at the ground and kicked a small pebble across the pavement. "I hope you're right, Dan." Then he looked back up at the other hunter and an angry snarl came over his face. "Whatever it is, I've got to find it. When I do, I'm gonna make the thing suffer before I kill it."

Daniel put a hand on his shoulder and tried to reassure him. "After I take out the vamps, I'm going to help you find this thing. It won't be easy, but I think we can kill it."

"The Colt?" John asked. "Do you think it'll work?"

"I don't know yet," Daniel replied. "I haven't been able to track it down. I know that one of my ancestors somehow got his hands on it back in the day, but what happened to it after that, I'm not sure."

John glanced over at the door to the motel room where his sons were and then looked back at Daniel again. "When you find it, give the first bullet to Luther."

"Hopefully I find Luther first, so we can save that first bullet for your monster," Daniel said with a smile. "I'll see you around, John."

While the older hunter was getting into his rental, John went over and said, "I'm going to keep an eye on Smallville for a few more days. I have a bad feeling about that town, but I still don't know what we're up against."

Daniel got into the driver's seat and reached for the door, but he glanced up at John before pulling it shut. "That's probably a good idea. Even if demons aren't involved there, it can't hurt to stick around in case something else happens. Just lay low for a bit and I'll let you know if I get a lead on the Colt."

After Daniel left, John went over to the motel room and opened the door. The boys were watching some cartoons on the TV when he entered and Sam ran towards him excitedly and put his arms around him. Dean, on the other hand, only gave a faint smile, but despite his attempt to hide how he felt it was still obvious how much stress he was under by trying to keep his little brother safe, when he was still just a kid himself. John wished he didn't have to keep leaving his sons behind like this, but since he had become a hunter, this was the kind of life they were forced to live.