A/N: And once again, sorry for the short chapter, but I am spending a lot of time at the hospital and I doubt it will change anytime soon. Reviews are love, and to be honest, this week I could use it. Thanks for reading.

As Always,

Ever Reader

Disclaimer: Not my sandbox, I know better than to use the evil magic-luck coin of doom.

Prisoner of War – Chapter Twenty

"Wishes Gone Wild"

"The hell you say?" Bobby's incredulous voice came over the phone so loudly Dean had to pull it away for a moment.

"Uh, yeah. Teddy Bears? BIG ones?" He repeated, glancing over at Sam, who just shrugged again.

"Well, Dean, I'll admit, it's been a while since I've gone up against a rogue childrens toy. Have you tried calling the experts at F.A.O. Schwartz?" Bobby replied sarcastically.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Bobby, I'm serious, here. Giant, walking, talking Teddy Bear, drunk on Natural Light. Do we shoot it? Exorcise It? Bury it in a super-sized toy box? I'm at a loss here Bobby."

"Then we're in the same boat, Dean, cause I've been lost since the conversation started. You say it's drinking light beer?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah, but I already through some salt on it. Not a demon." Dean answered.

"What the hell kind of self respecting monster drinks light beer..." Dean could hear Bobby muttering over the phone.

"Bobby!" Dean said loudly, trying to get the older hunter to refocus.

"Well, Dean, I don't know what to tell you. Plenty of things could animate a toy, but you're talking like it's really alive, with a personality and such. That's just not as common." Bobby answered, floundering.

"Don't forget the eight foot high part." Dean added.

"Oh, trust me. It's blazoned across my mind, ya idjit. Look, I'm gonna have to hit the books and call you back. Start questioning witnesses, call me back with what you find, so I can start narrowing down the search" Bobby ordered. "Where's John, anyway?"

"Not here." Dean answered quickly, and Bobby was silent for a moment.

"I see." Bobby answered finally.

"What do we do about it in the meantime?" Sam asked into the phone from where he was standing next to Dean.

"Shut the door." Bobby suggested, hanging up on Dean.

The boys at each other in consternation.

"So...is the Teddy Bear a witness?" Sam asked.

Dean shook his head decisively. "Nah, he's...drunk."

Sam nodded slowly. "Right. Drunk Teddy, not a credible witness. That just leaves the little girl."

Dean grimaced. "Awesome."

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Sam knelt before the little girl. She was wearing mismatched clothes, her hair was in a snaggle, and she had a smudge of dirt under one eye.

"What's your name?" He asked gently.

She looked at him wryly.

"Annabelle. What's yours?"

Sam smiled a little. "I'm Sam. Can you tell me about Teddy?"

She climbed onto the dinner table, sitting down cross-legged right in the middle, and Sam realized with amusement she was trying to make up for the height disparity between them.

"He's supposed to be fun." She complained. "He's supposed to pick flowers with me, and come to my tea parties, and watch Disney movies with me. But instead all he does is drink that natural stuff, look at the magazines my daddy hid under the sink, and cry while he watches the news. And he smells bad."

"Huh. Hey, uh, Annabelle, where are your parents, anyway?" Sam asked, glancing up at Dean.

"Fiji, I think." She replied with a shrug.

"I beg your pardon?" Sam replied in surprise. "They went to Fiji and left you with...Teddy?"

"I don't think they meant to. They wished to go to Fiji, wherever that was, and then they were just gone." She answered.

"What do you mean, they wished?" Dean interjected.

She looked over at the older brother. "Just like I wished for my Teddy to be real, and he was. Mom laughed and said she wished they were on a beach in Fiji and POOF" She made big exclamation marks with her hands. "They were gone."

"Wishes? What do you mean, they made a wish? Just, standing in the kitchen talking or were they somewhere special? What exactly did they do?" Dean asked.

Annabelle looked at him like he was a moron. "How do you make wishes? You throw a coin in the lucky fountain."

"Oh, crap." Sam muttered, thinking back to the strange noises he had heard back at the Chinese restaurant, and the strange, nagging headache that had grown in strength the longer they had lingered here.

"Sam?" Dean asked expectantly.

Sam looked over. "Wong Foo's 'lucky fountain'. The guy even said all the lotto winners were customers."

"Damn." Dean said, shaking his head. "I should have made a wish. Pamela Anderson and a can of whipped cream."

"Probably better you didn't" Sam murmured, standing up.

"I have a feeling, if Teddy's any example, that the wishes go bad. Annabelle's parent couldn't have intentionally wished to disappear and leave her alone. They're probably stranded right now in a foreign country without passports and money with no way to get back to their kid."

"Great. Who knows how many wishes have been made." Dean muttered.

"Or why the cheesy fountain is even working in the first place." Sam added.

Looking back over at Annabelle, he said "Annabelle, Teddy is sick, and it's gonna be a few days before he's better. In the meantime, is there somewhere you can go and stay until your parents are back?"

"Mrs. James down the street watches me sometimes." She offered.

"Good." Dean said. "Can you pack an overnight bag and go there for a few nights, just until Teddy is better?"

She shrugged. "Sure. We were out of Lucky Charms anyway."

They boys climbed back into the Impala, and looked at each other helplessly for a moment.

"Well..." Dean started, "I guess we need to go back and try the fountain, make sure that really is the source of the wishes."

"Yeah." Sam said musingly, thinking about his discomfort at the restaurant. Had he been picking up on some kind a magical interference and not even realized it?

Was his freaky psychic thing...growing?

Dean started the Impala, as Sam continued to think about the fountain.

What could make wishes start coming true? The fountain had only recently become lucky, or the Winchesters would have been here much sooner.

Were the wishes really a bad thing? Certainly they could be a dangerous thing, but had someone done this to cause trouble, or simply not realized how far south this could go? And how had they triggered it in the first place?

Sam glanced up just as Dean navigated a tight corner, and a strange, shifting shimmer in the road caught his eye.

Suddenly, his stomach dropped as a surge of forewarning flooded his system.

"Dean, BRAKE!" He yelled, as he felt something warm run down his chin.

Dean slammed on the brakes, the Impala sliding to a stop only a few inches from the shifting shape that Sam had somehow seen without actually seeing.

Suddenly, in the middle on the road, a puddle appeared, growing larger as the brothers watched.

Dean's eyes bugged out as his quick mind put together his earlier investigation at the health club with the evidence currently in front of him.

"Best wish ever." He muttered, leaning back in surprise as a naked boy, approximately fourteen or so, suddenly appeared, standing wide eyed in front of the grill of the car.

"Sam, you-hey, man, your nose is bleeding!"

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Dean looked at Sam in concern, trying to understand why Sam's nose was suddenly bleeding. Sam was wiping at his chin ineffectually, and Dean fished a bandana out of his pocket without thinking.

"Here." He said, guiding Sam's hand to his nose with the bandana. "Lean forward, not back." He instructed automatically.

"I know." Sam said in a muffled voice.

"Did you hit your face?" Dean asked in confusion, trying to see what Sam could have hit his nose on.

Had Sam flown into the dash when Dean braked?

"Something like that." Sam mumbled.

"Damn, I need to replace the seat belt then." Dean said, leaning forward and down to check out the rest of Sam's face. "I guess we have been brake-checking an awful lot lately." He said thoughtfully.

"Dean." Sam said, nodding at the naked teen who had started edging to the side of the road, eyes still the size of saucers.

Dean opened the door, standing up at yelling at the boy. "Hey, Wong Foo's, right?" He hollered.

The kid nodded mutely.

"Awesome idea on paper, less awesome on the road. Stay away from the womens locker room, or next time I won't stop." Dean lectured, before climbing back in to check on Sam again.

Sam had gotten the bleeding under control, though now he was trying to clean up Dean's jacket.

"Sorry." He said sheepishly.

"Not the first time, kiddo." Dean murmured as he gave an experimental yank on the shoulder belt.

"Damn, you have the worst luck, Sam. It's working fine now. Maybe you should make a wish. How'd you even see him, anyway?"

"I saw...his shadow." Sam lied quickly.

Dean gave him a measuring look. "Huh. Lucky for the kid, then. Let's get over to the restaurant."

He started the car again and within a few moments, they'd once again reached downtown Berryville.

They stood in the restaurant's foyer, looking down at the least lucky-looking fountain they had ever seen.

Dean had flashed a health inspector badge at the indignant waiter, and now a closed sign hung on the restaurant's door.

"Sure don't look lucky." Dean said, reaching in his pocket for a quarter. "Well, let's give her a shot."

He flipped the quarter up into the air, the coin somersaulting over and over like a pinwheel as it began it's descent.

Suddenly Sam's fist shot out, grabbing the coin out of mid-air.

"Sam?" Dean asked questioningly.

"It's not the fountain." Sam said, eyes narrowed as he knelt down beside it. "It's in the fountain."

"You mean, one of those coins?" Dean asked, catching his drift.

"Yeah...I think...look at this one. It's not American." Sam reached into the water, reaching for the slightly misshapen piece of Bronze colored metal. "It looks old."

As Sam's fingers brushed he coin, however, his body jolted like he'd been shocked.

He pitched forward and would have tumbled head first into the water if Dean hadn't caught him and yanked him back.

His eyes fluttered closed and he jerked in Dean's arms for a few seconds before going still.

"SAM?" Dean yelled, but Sam didn't respond.

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That the vision itself happened didn't particularly surprise Sam at this point, though this one was supercharged, and it hurt.

Pictures flashed across his mind, far to fast for him to even begin to understand most of them. The coin was definitely old, though, that he gathered.

The pictures were a time line, of sorts.

He caught glimpses of some men dressed in what appeared to be a tribal fashion, in a stone temple.

Then came the wars, battle after battle. This coin had a bloody history, Sam now knew the wishes definitely went bad.

Finally, the flashes started slowing, the very last one just a split second view of a man wearing glasses, and he was familiar, where had he seen him before-

"SAM!" His eyes flew open as Dean literally shouted his name in his ear.

"Ow." He mumbled as Dean helped him up. He flexed his fingers without thinking, they tingled, like he'd been shocked or burned.

"What the hell was that?" Dean said frantically.

"Evil wish coin?" Sam offered, rubbing his pounding head.

"Ow." He repeated for good measure.

"But what happened?" Dean asked insistently.

Sam frowned. "That thing's locked and loaded. Seriously, armed and dangerous." He wasn't sure if Dean would see what he had, but since his head now felt like a herd of elephants was stampeding through it, it was better not to chance it.

"Okay. No touching evil magic coin. Did you...what..have a vision?" Dean asked haltingly.

"Maybe?" Sam admitted. "It was like it showed me it's whole life story, all at once. It was mostly a blur." He was careful to word it like it was the coin that caused the vision, and not something about Sam himself.

"Shit. How to get it out?" Dean asked musingly.

"Drain the pool." Sam suggested, and in the back ground the waiter wailed about lost income and the dinner rush.

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"And it shocked the hell out of your brother, and then it gave him a vision?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah, looked like the kid was being freaking electrocuted or something, Bobby. I'm about sick of this sick. How do I pull the plug on this thing?" Dean asked in an aggrieved voice.

"I'm on it." Bobby said, hanging up.

Sam had already started draining the pool, and as the water level dropped, the image on the coin became clearer.

"Incan?" Dean guessed.

"I think it's Mayan. Dean, this thing has started wars. Right now it's all vacations and Teddy Bears, but soon people are going to be wishes for their lovers to leave their spouses, for raises that should have gone to co-workers. How long until people start using this thing to off their enemies?" Sam said concernedly.

"Hey, man. We'll stop it. It's what we do, right?" Dean said reassuringly.

Sam looked over at him. "You do know, one day we won't be able to stop something in time, right? No one gets lucky forever."

Dean frowned. "The question is, who got lucky first."

"Huh?" Sam asked as he rubbed his temple.

"Who got lucky first? Who started this mess?" Dean asked.

Sam's eyes widened in understanding.

"The two." He exclaimed

"Huh?" This time it was Dean's turn to be confused.

"The ten and the two." Sam repeated. "They were having lunch here, remember? They announced their engagement just a few weeks back."

"Oh wow, that is seriously sick." Dean said, making a disgusted face. "I freaking hate love spells."

"Where's that paper?" Sam asked, and Dean handed it to him.

"Emmett Kowiski and Hope Danvers announce their engagement." Sam read aloud, showing Dean the picture.

The couple were photographed sitting on a couch in what appeared to be a living room.

On the back wall, in several large frames, was what appeared to be a coin collection.

"Awesome." Dean said.