In Normal, Illinois, in the year 1958, a sharply dressed man woke his young son and bid him goodbye on his way to work, playing a music box to soothe the boy back to man travelled to a mysterious building bearing the same symbols as a pin on his tie, and greeted a beautiful woman named Josie. Men in robes called Josie away, but while the man waited, a number of screams draw his attention. He entered their chamber to find the men slain, Josie possessed by the demon "Abaddon," and the last living man begging him to hide a mysterious box bearing the same symbol. The man fled into one of the adjacent rooms, and began putting together a spell, diving through its portal before Abaddon caught him.
November 3, 2005
Palo Alto, CA
Usagi awoke in her hotel bed to find the angel staring at her.
Usagi pulled the covers over her short nightgown. "What are you doing here?!"
Usagi spoke in a whisper, fearful of waking her sisters. Kagome and Usagi were asleep in their beds. Sam was asleep in the adjoining hotel room and so was Dean.
He motioned for Usagi to come outside, which Usagi did. He stood extremely close to her. Usagi could smell whitecastle burgers and spring rain.
"Castiel," Usagi murmured softly. "Personal space. Step back please."
"This concerns you and your family," he said, stepping back, worry slipping into his tone. Usagi felt a bit jealous. "When I awakened your powers as a senshi, I awakened your sisters' as well. You are now vulnerable. It's time for you to awaken your senshi powers fully as sisters through the Dominus Trinus."
"Explain," Usagi put a hand on a hip.
He looked confused at her behavior. "The Shingetsu line of witches descends from Queen Serenity, Queen of the Moon and Heavens and what humans consider a witch, killed in the first Sailor Wars. As Serenity died she vowed that each generation of Halliwell witches would grow stronger, culminating in the arrival of five sisters. These sisters would be the most powerful good witches the world has ever known. They would destroy all kinds of evil and be known as The Sailor Senshi."
Usagi mulled it all over in her mind. We were the Sailor Senshi from Sam and Dean's Men of Letters stories?
Usagi coughed, feeling shy. "So I'll do this Dominus Trinus. Whatever you say Castiel. But just one thing…"
Usagi summoned her courage.
"What is it?" He seemed curious.
"I want to see you again…for a date."
xxx
Minako was home from college for a break. She and Usagi were now staying at their childhood home in Shingetsu Shrine in Lebanon trying to be normal. Usagi had had a strange dream about a man going through a portal last night.
After helping out on several hunts, Usagi had invited Sam, Minako's roommate and his brother Dean to come live at Halliwell Manor because we got along so well.
"Why are we coming home now?" Minako asked her, looking frustrated.
"Usagi explained," I responded stubbornly, fumbling through the boxes in the attic. "Before we go to Colorado, I wanted to come home. And I wanted a girls day."
"What exactly are you looking for?" Minako glared at her.
Usagi fumbled through the boxes in the living room. "This book."
Usagi went through a dusty old book called the Grimoire.
"Oh!" Minako shouted out loud. "That's a triquetra! I learned about it in Metaphysical Studies."
Usagi smiled a creepy smile and her voice was soft when Usagi spoke again. "I found it. It was mentioned in a letter Grams left us."
"Sis," Minako was concerned. "You're shaking. Are you ok?"
Minako sat the Grimoire on an odd pedestal like piece of furniture that somehow fit it perfectly. "The Grimoire. Neat. Wanna try a spell?"
"Y-Yes," Usagi responded simply as Usagi turned the page to the spell Usagi wanted. "Dominus Trinus."
"Let's read it together," Minako smiled at us.
We stared at the Grimoire, then put candles down and read the incantation in Latin.
"Audite verba maleficas
Arcana nocte absconditus.
Vetustissima dii allegatur,
Magnum opus magicas quaeritur.
Hac nocte in hanc horam
Antiqua munia invocabo.
Tres sorores suas, ut nos vestris: Afferte,
Facultas desit, nobis potestas. "
The room shook slightly and the lights flickered. We had taken a picture earlier of the two of us. The picture on the mantle changed…the sisters in the picture moved closer together.
"What the hell was that?" Minako demanded angrily.
"What do you mean?" Usagi said innocently, flipping through the now tame Grimoire.
"Look!" Minako pointed at the picture. "What did you do?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," Usagi answered lamely, reading about hunters.
xxx
The Winchester brothers were in the other room eating and drinking beer.
A man flew out of the closet, standing before Sam and Dean. "John…Where is John Winchester?"
"We…we don't know," stammered Sam, while Dean pointed a gun at the man.
"What are you doing with the Guardians then?" the man shouted. "Where are the others—"
Kagome, Minako and Usagi entered the room.
The door was flung open and Minako turned in shock and threw her hands out in surprise. Suddenly, as if the universe was finally listening, it stopped.
The man in the closet doorway was frozen. It was Henry Winchester.
"Why is he frozen?" Usagi yelled.
"You're alive!" Minako said. For a minute she had thought she was alone in a time freeze. Or whatever the hell this was.
"Lemme go!" Usagi squealed at her sister.
"What have you turned her into?" Minako said, concentrating on keeping her freeze up.
"I don't know," Usagi yelled. "I'm as shocked as you are."
The freeze dropped and Henry stared at the girls. "Surely you didn't freeze her on purpose did you, GuardianI?"
"It's you!" Usagi said. "Don't hurt him! He's your grandfather. Henry Winchester."
"John is her son," Henry said. "I belong to the Men of Letters. They were annihilated in her time by a demon, and I brought the Key to the Bunker here to the future, hoping to find family. But I was forced to leave her son behind with no explanation."
"That sounds familiar," Dean said resentfully. "We were raised as Men of Letters and Hunters. Our Dad knows all about the Men of Letters. But they died before he could become one."
"His problem now is probably why he couldn't return to dad," Sam said sadly. "Dad is missing."
Henry sat down with his grandsons and the witches and explained the ways of the Men of Letters when he was one of them, including information that the Bunker was theirs now that the others were gone.
Usagi was thinking about hunters and the Men of Letters. Usagi jumped suddenly.
—-
Dean and Sam Winchester were in the Manor, talking about the Key to the Bunker.
"Don't worry about it, I've got this handled," Dean said to Sam. "The Guardians will blame Dean and Sam for this, and we'll hand the key to the supernatural motherlode to the leaders of Hell."
"Don't be overconfident," Sam replied. "That's what gets us shifters killed."
Dean laughed and walked outside. SWAT teams had guns pointed at him.
"Come out with your hands up!" came the cry of a bullhorn.
"There's nothing stopping her now," Dean muttered, and ran into an alley and ripped off his skin.
xxx
Minako grabbed her. This was just like when we were small. Something like this happened then too, didn't it?
She couldn't help. Just like back then. She held her and looked like she wanted to scream.
They all felt stronger, more powerful, their power was raised and she felt like she was on fire. Their powers were stronger but they still couldn't use them.
"Dean is…" Usagi explained her vision to the group.
"It sounds like a shapeshifter," Dean said before Henry could speak. "Don't worry this should be simple."
They then discussed a plan to destroy the shifters. Unfortunately they didn't have supplies to destroy the shifters at the Shrine. So they all went to one of the Winchesters' storage spaces to get silver weapons.
xxx
Marshall and Fritz, two shapeshifters, easily got into the Manor. Marshall was disguised as Dean Winchester, and had been doing quite a lot of murdering lately in that body. Fritz was disguised as Sam, and forever on clean-up duty.
They wanted the Key to the Bunker. But how to get a magically protected item like that?
Fritz glared at Marshall. "How will we get this key from them?"
The two went to walk out of the attic, and were thrown against a wall. Marshall stood, shaking himself off. "Then we use the human they call 'Henry.'"
xxx
Usagi tried to explain to Dean that he was in danger, but Dean wasn't buying it. He did see the wanted posters and the fact that the cops for some reason thought he was responsible for three murders in the past week.
"It's just a shifter," he explained to her. "We'll gank the bastard and then dodge the cops till it all dies down."
"But we can't move away Dean," Usagi commented. "You'd have to leave us behind. This Manor is all that is left to her and I'm not going anywhere."
Dean sighed. "We'll find a way."
xxx
Marshall and Fritz grabbed Henry in his bedroom at the Shrine. A fight broke out. At first it seemed that the shifters had the upper hand, but then the Man of Letters broke free and fought them off.
Just as he was about to kill them, however, they got the jump on him and forced him down into a chair, tied him up and held a knife to his throat.
"Your life isn't the one in danger here," Marshall said. "If you don't take the Key back from the Winchesters and deliver it to us, we'll kill your grandsons. And then there's those witches. They've never faced true evil. They are still innocent. It would be easy for them to become like us if they were, say, tortured long enough."
Henry winced and sighed, quickly formulating a plan in his mind. "Sam likes her better. He'll bring it to her if I ask him."
xxx
Sam snuck away to see his grandfather. He had never known him and now he just had to spend some time with him.
Sam sat down across from Henry and the two talked about the memories they shared from when he was small. He even spoke about his father, John.
"So you would have raised us to be full Men of Letters?" Sam asked. "I cant believe we missed out."
"I would've raised John to be a Man of Letters," he replied. "And when you two came along, you would've inherited it."
Sam explained how they had become hunters and Men of Letters despite Henry's death.
"I'm sorry about what happened to your mother," Henry said."But you have to trust me. Your lives are in danger. You have to give me the Key to the Bunker."
Sam sighed. He knew this was too good to be true. "You just don't want us to be like you. I knew it."
He left angrily.
xxx
Usagi entered the Manor to find it on lockdown. Dean was mad at Sam for going off with Henry alone. But Sam and Henry were nowhere to be found.
"How could he do that, Minako?!" Dean demanded. "He can't be sure what that man wants!"
"That man is your grandfather, Dean," Minako retorted.
"He wants the Key to the Bunker," Usagi muttered. "Sam told her. That's where he is…he's moping, because Henry lied to us. He just wants the key, like those shapeshifters."
"How do we know when shapeshifters aren't in our house?" Kagome wondered. "They can be anyone, but they seem to like the Winchesters forms, maybe they've been watching us as the Winchesters!"
Henry was dragged in by Sam just then. "I found him trying to get into the Manor and steal the key."
"That's not Sam!" Minako held up her hands and plants grew from the earth and tied up the fake Sam.
We then turned and faced 'Sam.' 'Dean' came in through the front door. "You get it yet, Fritz? The entire SWAT team is on her tail; we gotta shif-"
Upon noticing that Fritz was tied up and he had been betrayed, Marshall turned angrily and stabbed Henry.
We quickly intoned the incantation:
"Si in circulo est domi
Salutis et descendit malum est errare.
Tolle de omnibus entibus moenium
Salva nos tres sorores, adhuc nostram invoca. "
We said the spell and the two shifters were blasted against the walls of the house, exploding into tiny bits of flesh and goo. The blast shattered the windows and the front door of the house.
Henry stared in shock at her, even as Minako tried vainly to heal him. He whispered to her. "You are the legendary senshi."
Her face reddened at the mention of her senshi power.
Dean and Sam knelt next to their grandfather. Sam tried to stop the bleeding. "We can get you back to your own time. Y-You can tell Dad—"
Castiel appeared then and healed Henry Winchester. Castiel entrusted the boys with the Key to the Bunker.
As they stood over the cemetery plot that was their grandfather from his later life, Dean was filled with sorrow over the fact that his dad missed so much. Dean hid his face.
Sam looked up with a tear-stained face. "We have to become Men of Letters and open the Bunker.
"We have to find the other senshi," Usagi said.
"It's the least we can do—we're legacies," Dean said.
xxx
A woman with blonde hair and brown eyes walked out of a New York subway into the rain. "It's raining in the darkness."
