AN: From the suffering author and the cast at The Adventures of Goldie Locks, Merry Christmas, or whatever else your form of greeting is this holiday. Have a good one.

"Where's the real Dean Winchester?"

They threw him into a deep, dark pit, hog-tied like a Sunday roast. His face splashed into a puddle that he could only hope was water and large rodents scuttled across the floor past him. It was clearly an inescapable prison.

But no one really seemed to comprehend the walking natural disaster that was Dean Winchester. He was good with inescapable.

In a matter of minutes he was out of the handcuffs, twisting himself into roughly the same shape as a pretzel. Dean hadn't been born double-jointed, but since he had that accident when he was thirteen he was perfectly able to pop his right shoulder out of its socket whenever he felt the urge. Needless to say, he'd probably need to cash in on some forged medical insurance for a chiropractor later on.

Soon Dean was sitting on the floor rubbing his wrists and ankles to get the circulation flowing again. The only reason he hadn't tried to get out when they brought him in here was that someone had driven a big long needle filled with green gunk into his arm and had dropped him stone cold for at least a couple of days. He hoped it was only a couple of days.

He stared up at the circle of light far above him. One could almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain as he pondered his next move.

"Oh, very clever."

Someone had thrown him down a plothole.

Dean stood, and paced around in a circle for a moment, muttering to himself. Then his eyes lit up as an idea hit him like a smack across the head.

"Get out of it!"

There was a neon pink exclamation point flashing above his head. Dean swatted it away irritably. The damn cliché beetles got into everything. Lately the swarms had risen to plague-like levels. The Winchesters had been wondering whether the situation had supernatural connections.

It did. Sort of. But instead of a vampire or werewolf or the walking dead, they got some evil bitch trying to take over the world. Again. Still. Ultimate power. Death and destruction for all. Whatever. It was actually a bit ho-hum, been-there-done-that. Damn, were there no original ideas anymore? Come on, already!

Dean placed his hands against the wall and squinted up at the circle of light. He knew a little bit of the machinations of plot holes. He'd heard about their unpredictability, and how they were rips in the otherwise smooth fabric of Fiction. Dean had feigned sleep when his brother had been lecturing on about them, but he still had listened to every word.

They said logic didn't exist in a plothole. He didn't know who they were, but maybe they were right.

Maybe his crazy plan was crazy enough to actually work.

Squeezing his eyes shut, he began to hum a few bars of a Led Zeppelin song.

"…and she's buying a stairway to heaven." The off-key chorus came to a close and Dean crossed all his fingers. Slowly, like a phoenix rising from the ashes, the ground began to quake and then smoothly parted to reveal a shiny white marble step. Dean's arms dropped to his sides and he stared at it as the staircase began to unfold, moving upwards at increasing speeds.

It worked.

He jumped on the steps as they burst out of the plothole and continued climbing. Dean crashed onto the floor and rolled along the hallway as the steps drilled a hole through the next storey floor and kept going.

"Man." He stood and dusted off his knees. "If we could bottle a plothole, we'd make a fortune off the stuff."

"I know what you're saying."

A voice from behind. Dean tensed himself up to either fight or flee, before peering up over his shoulder.

Three mismatched beings where gathered about the coffee machine about three feet behind him. All of them were armed with bright blue weapons that resembled sharpened sporks, and were dressed in cracked armour reinforced with cardboard and masking tape. Clearly these guys weren't the font line crack troops.

All three of the monsters themselves looked like they appeared to be held together with staples and prayer. It was like God just got bored on the seventh day and put all the leftover bits in a giant blender to see what he could come up with.

"It was like I was just saying to Hector over here." The first monster said. "If we could distil the unstable atmosphere of a plothole we'd be rolling in it."

"And how exactly were you planning to do that, Gerald?"

"Elementary, my dear Edmund. Merely snap freeze a portion of the air inside the hole before doing some controlled experiments to discover the exact temperature that reduces the gas to a liquid. I think I'll call it A Whiff of Improbability."

"Look me up when you get started." Dean said. "Um, not that I'm objecting or anything, but shouldn't you guys be up and charging after me screaming something about how you'll suck out my insides with a straw when you catch me?"

"Dude, like, can you not read the sign or something?" Hector asked with a roll of his bulbous eyes.

Dean looked up.

By mandated court order, all employees are lawfully entitled to take their lunch break between 1.30pm and 2.00pm. However all staff are expected to return to their posts by exactly 2.00pm or risk untold circumstances.

This vaguely threatening memo is brought to you by the management of Plot Points, Inc.

"We're legally allowed to take this time off without interference from the management." Gerald said.

"Or we go to the Union." Edmund added. Dean winced. The Worker's Union just hadn't been the same since committee members were awarded the right to bear WMDs, or Weapons of Mass Dictation.

"Well, good for you. Standing up for worker's rights everywhere and all that junk. Fight the good fight, kicking ass and taking names." Dean began to walk backwards down the hall. "In fact, why don't you take a stand right now? Give yourselves another thirty minutes? Go the whole hour? Power to the people!" After thrusting his fist into the air, he turned around and hightailed it, before lunch was over.

Gerald turned to Hector and Edmund. "The short human has a point. What do you think about revolting?"

"Gerald, you are revolting."

The building was like a maze. Dean crept up stairs and crawled through ducts until the walls and floor changed from drab, I-didn't-have-enough-paint-left-to-do-a-whole-room-so-I-just-mixed-the-leftovers-all-together grey, to shockingly bright and scarily cheerful, like the place was either a very frightening funhouse or and insane asylum filled with interior decorators. He looked at the emblem on the wall.

Plot Points, Inc. Your friendly plot points warehouse.

"Figures. We needed a central plot point right about now." Dean snuck forward, reaching out to a door marked Top Secret, Don't Tell Anybody, and was about to slink through it when the door was flung open from the other side and he was almost trampled.

"Hey!" He shouted. "Watch where you're going!"

"Hey, you noob, how about you pay more attention instead of sneaking around where you're not-" The blonde woman stopped speaking, and her eyes widened. "Ack!" She said. "Wrong way, wrong way!" She shouted back to someone behind her. As she was about to disappear back the way she had come, Dean grasped wildly at the sleeve of her shirt.

Cloth ripped.

The girl stood there, unbelieving. "You bastard! That was Stella McCartney! I thought even a terminator would recognise prize couture when he saw it."

Dean's eyebrows rose. "I'm not a terminator, lady." He said.

"That's exactly what a terminator would say!"

He stopped to ponder that one for a minute. "I suppose so." He confessed. "There's not much point giving people time to react."

"So you admit it!"

"What? No! Jeez, woman, you off your meds?" He demanded. "I'm not a friggin' terminator! For one thing, I have a much cooler jacket. And way bigger biceps."

She looked him up and down, from damp, smelly flannel shirt to suspiciously stained jeans. Finally she must have concluded that there was no real threat in him, and called back to the person in the next room. "False alarm. I've found the good one."

A moment later, and a dark-haired man stuck his head around the door. "Hallo." He said, sounding decidedly English. Dean's eyes narrowed. Maybe it was just his particular experiences, but he really didn't like English people. "What's going on? He's the right one, then?"

The tone the other man used annoyed Dean just a bit. "Just a little bit of a bother. Nothin' t' worry about, Guv'nor."

"Boys." The woman said warily. "I'm Goldie Locks."

"Goldilocks?"

"Goldie Locks." She repeated, emphasising that in fact the 'locks' was her last name. "This is Teddy Lupin." And before Dean could so much as swear, the guy Teddy stared at him a moment before shimmering right into another shape, a kid with blue hair and sharp eyes. "Pleased to meet you." The kid said, offering his hand. Judging by the look on his face, it was merely a formality and he really had no desire to meet Dean at all.

Dean managed not to wince as he shook Lupin's hand. The skin didn't feel rubbery like a Shapeshifter's, but you could never be too careful these days.

"I'm-"

"Dean Winchester. We know." The English guy said, his flat voice telling Dean that he had been thoroughly briefed on the Winchesters. And he did not approve. That ticked Dean off mightily.

"Oh, you poor thing. It must have been hard for you, in those middle-upper-class suburbs for the underprivileged such as yourself. Kid, you don't know anything about me."

The two males stared at each other across the room. Goldie stepped between them, after verifying that neither of them were about to do anything stupid. Stupider. "We can have pistols at ten paces later." She said. Her tone brokered no room for refusal. "Right now we need to get down to that weapon and destroy it, while similarly avoiding being terminated by the Dean-bot."

"Dean-bot?" Dean glanced at Goldie in surprise. She grinned back wryly.

"A terminator with your face has been sent to kill us." She said.

Dean rocked back. "Why is everyone always stealing my face?" He demanded of the walls. "I like my face! I'm very attached to my face! That's just not fair."

"We'll worry about this later." Goldie was swiftly assuming her dominance over the two men. Dean guessed that inside she was much different than the creampuff on the outside. "We've got the weapon to destroy or the whole of Fiction goes ker-splat."

"What?"

"The True Sue is going to destroy all of Make-Believe Land with something called a Cannon Converter. It will tear the Multiverse apart." The Englishman said.

"You've got to help us." Goldie said.

Dean rubbed at his eyes. "Oh God." He muttered.

"I've got to save the world with Malibu Barbie and Glinda the Good Witch."