The security footage played out in front of them, showing Balthazar, Gabriel and Sam tumble onto the bridge, ready to make firm their escape. The ship took off as normal, Gabriel clung to Sam's neck and commanded that he leave the bridge to prepare himself for "I thought I'd never see you again" sex which, judging by the trepidation on Sam's robotic features, was slightly different to "thank god we're both still alive" sex. Balthazar let them leave. There was a moment's silence, before both Gabriel and Sam were marched back onto the bridge by a man dressed in billowing white robes, and aiming a gun at them (somewhat inexpertly, but a gun is a gun).

The man made some gestures, there was a conversation that the audio didn't pick up on, and then he sighed, before grabbing Balthazar by the arm and zapping the ground beneath them with the gun. They promptly disappeared, leaving Sam and Gabriel confused, interrupted and shocked.

The security footage cut out. Dean and Cas stared at each other.

They stared at Sam.

They had recognised the man in the white robes, even if Gabriel hadn't seen fit to tell them.

"How did Chuck get on the ship?"

(-*-)

On a small moon, in the middle of nowhere, Balthazar glared at his captor.

"You're that squirrely guy, aren't you? From Krippketha. Shurleyburlfast."

"You can call me Chuck, if it helps." Chuck flashed a nervous smile, before balancing his gun muzzle-down on the ground, pulling on a few levers and turning it into a makeshift chair. He perched on the stool, white robes billowing in the little wind they were getting.

"Where are we?"

"All will be revealed. Shortly."

"How shortly?"

"When your friends arrive with the Earth man."

"Why wait?" Balthazar snarled. Chuck just glanced up at him.

"All will be revealed." He picked a rock up from the ground, and skimmed it across the low-gravity surface of the moon. "Shortly."

Balthazar wanted to ask many questions. Like "What do you want with us", "how will the Impala know how to get here" and most pressingly, "how are we breathing", but he knew Chuck wouldn't answer them. So he sat on the ground and skimmed stones.

(-*-)

"I can't believe it!" Gabriel yelled, as Bobby took care of piloting the ship to the coordinates Chuck had set before he kidnapped Balthazar. "I leave you alone for five minutes…"

"Two years, Gabriel." Cas was in one of those rare positions where he could actually claim the moral high ground, and he was using it for all it was worth. "Two years on a prehistoric planet. Not just underdeveloped; pre-development! What else was I supposed to do?"

"Not hook up with the monkey man there, that's…"

"What? You've hooked up with humans! What was Sam before he got tin-plated, huh?"

"That's not the point…"

Dean had a feeling they had both forgotten he was there. Quietly, he backed out of the bridge and went to find some coffee. He did not want to be dragged into this particular argument, although he could still hear it halfway down the corridor.

"Look, the drugs and the drinking I could take, I thought they made you more fun, but you're still supposed to be the genius on this ship and I won't have you expending your energy…"

"You aren't my mother, Gabriel, you have no say in how I expend my energy…"

"I AM THE CAPTAIN, I AM IN CHARGE!"

Dean started walking faster, argued with the Nutri-matic for five minutes about what he meant by "coffee" and then sat in the medical bay until he couldn't hear shouting any more.

It was good to be back. Probably.

(-*-)

Meanwhile, hovering some five hundred feet above the shattered remains of the offices of the Bloody Invaluable Book, safely (or, dangerously, depending on your viewpoint) ensconced in the throne-like captain's chair of the Rhaptoor Task-Force ship, Prostetnic Daemon Crowley was not amused.

"So, let me make sure I'm hearing this right." He pinched the bridge of his nose with one thin, grey hand, closing his eyes. "We got paid… a sizeable fee… to take care of the planet Earth and all its little monkey inhabitants."

"Yes, sir." The low-ranking minion trembled. He had done nothing to deserve the inevitable punishment, save daring to speak to his boss.

"But unfortunately, one "Dean Winchester" somehow escapes his certain doom, invalidating our contract."

"Yes… sir…" Crowley was being very quiet, very controlled, and almost entirely emotionless. The minion was right to be utterly terrified.

"Then we receive another, even better paying contract from the mouse Lucifer, which states we need to kill Mr Winchester's travelling companions and keep him alive, so we can deliver him back to the mice."

"Ye…"

"And then, our initial contractors give us an even better offer to kill him. Which, I am assured, we did."

"Y…"

"But I am now told that, not only is Dean Winchester somehow miraculously alive, but so are his travelling buddies, two of which carry outstanding bounties on their heads, and one of which I was assured had been fed into the Deific Visuo-Generator."

The minion stared mutely up at the hulking form of his employer, now beginning to fume with rage.

"Speak!" He barked.

"Yes… sir…" the minion yelped.

"What do you have to say?"

The minion furrowed its brow, deep in thought, before being suddenly and swiftly killed with a blast from a DeathKnell .35 ray gun.

Crowley waited for the clean-up crew to sweep the body off to the incinerator tube, and then he shot them too.

Sighing, he reclined in his chair and pushed a few buttons on the control panel that sat in front of him. On the visi-screen, a man with a mullet and a mansion appeared in front of him.

"Yo, Crowley dude. What's up?"

"Doctor Bahdas. I hope I haven't called at a bad time?"

"Nah, I was just toking up. What's happening?"

"I've just shot half my crew, and I'm feeling a little stressed."

"Right… and…"

"And as my brain-care specialist, I would hope that you had something useful to say on the matter."

"Oh, yeah, right… ok… Close your eyes."

Crowley did as he was told, with an edge of reluctance.

"Now… chill out."

"That's it?"

Ash had already hung up.

Crowley scowled at the visi-screen. He would probably have to fire his brain-care specialist.

Preferably out of something like a cannon, and into something like a wall made of nuclear fusion.

He set target for the last known location of the Impala ship, and decided that he would torture people to find out where it had gone. Who said you couldn't enjoy your work?

(-*-)

Dean finally felt it safe to put his head around the door when silence fell, followed by the quick swoop of the automatic bridge doors. Gabriel stormed past him, shooting him only a quick glare as he continued to stomp off somewhere else. Dean, hoping that he wasn't about to witness a murder scene, edged quietly onto the bridge, where he found Castiel slumped moodily in one of the chairs. He looked up when Dean entered.

"Hey."

"Hey. So… that didn't go well."

"He's protective. He's always been protective. Which I find quite ironic given that he was the one who ran away from home aged ten and decreed he would only speak to us to ask for more money."

"Ok… your bizarre family history aside, where does that leave us?"

Cas looked at Dean for a moment, his lips pursed in thought. He stood, stretched, and brushed past Dean, pausing on his way back to the medical bay.

"That depends who you mean by 'us'. It leaves Gabriel pissed off that he can't control me, and probably being an insufferable dick to you for the duration of our time together. It leaves Sam stuck as Gabriel's stress toy, therefore even more moody and irrational than usual and probably being even more insufferable for the duration of our time together. It leaves you caught in the middle of an odd family dynamic, and it leaves me going to the medical bay to find something to get high on. It also leaves me wanting to have obnoxiously loud sex just to irritate my dear cousin even further, so feel free to join me in the medical bay at any time."

Dean thought about all this for a second, then realised exactly what had been offered and stumbled happily after Cas, realising that for the first time in two years he'd get to have sex on a bed that wasn't made out of sand or plant-life. Anything other than that was not important, he decided, as he waited just long enough for Cas to swallow his pills of choice before pouncing, pressing the smaller man up against the bed, pushing as much of himself into as much of Cas' space as possible. Their tongues raced over each other, hands rapidly fumbling to discard unnecessary clothing (it wasn't like they had much, thanks to their wonderfully primitive former lifestyles) before caressing and clinging to any stretches of exposed flesh they could find. True to his word, Cas was definitely more vocal than usual, which Dean was not going to object to.

"Good luck getting rid of his space-herpes!" Gabriel's voice floated in from the next room, before he promptly commanded that Sam do something to make him oblivious to the noises.

Bobby switched off his vocal recognition software and focused on flying the ship.

Damn horny organic idjits.