Dean, Bobby, Jody, Frank, and Castiel sat around the kitchen table, a gloomy atmosphere pervading. They'd been up for hours, pouring over Frank's maps for Heathcliff Studios and the surrounding neighborhood. They needed to make some kind of plan they could agree on, but they all had their own idea about how it should all play out. And how they'd get in wasn't as big of a worry as how they'd get out.

Exhausted, Castiel took a crack at it, "Alright. If we... if everyone leaves for St. Louis in their own car... We'll have groups of one - two at most. When we get near the studio, we split up and make this perimeter-."

"What do we need a perimeter for?" Jody asked. "I thought we were sneaking in?"

"I'm not finished. Once we hit this line, we all park and wait. All but one. That one that takes the van, with attention to any passes or uniforms, and picks up all the others. Remember where you parked. We drop Sam and Dean off to join the audience and then the rest of us go in through the service gate."

"That don't explain a perimeter," Bobby said. "If we all park here," he gestured to an old church parking lot, "we can take the van together."

"I'm thinking ahead," Castiel said. "Best case scenario, we kill Crowley and Balthazar, and then as many as we can on the way out. But even without Legion, they have more soldiers. The odds we'll get swarmed are high."

"And a perimiter does what, then?" Jody asked.

Castiel looked up for a moment, then back down at the map. Almost guilty. But he went on, "We fight our way through the weakest exit together. Then... scatter in every direction. We get to our cars and don't look back until we're home."

Frank chuckled to himself. He knew what Castiel was driving at.

"What if one of us gets caught?" Jody asked, not liking this idea at all. "We wouldn't know till we got back."

"Do I gotta be the a-hole who says it?" Frank asked, in a tone that said he couldn't wait to be the a-hole. Nobody else seemed to get it and they gave him a 'what gives' look. "Fine: that's a feature, not a bug. They can't catch all of us."

"Oh, screw you, Frank!" Dean shouted. There was similar descent around the table.

"Hey, it's not my exit strategy," Frank said, still tickled. "But it's a good one, especially considering there's a chance we won't need one. You're welcome to come up with something better. Just remember that not all of us can come back from the dead."

"Yeah, okay, fine," Dean snapped. Not really up to the task, but whatever. Anything was better than the Scooby gang, 'let's split up,' plan. He took a deep breath, staring at the map. "Is there anywhere we can bottleneck 'em?"

"It's a film studio," Frank said. "Hanger doors everywhere."

"Smoke 'em out?"

"Anything that doesn't kill the audience won't faze demons," Bobby said. "And they got a couple hundred built-in hostages. Anything we do could trigger a shutdown."

"Yeah, I know, I know. So... Maybe you guys draw 'em out? You go in the back way, plant the Colt for us outside the hangar, then start a thing, tease their goons out of the studio."

Bobby asked, not argumentatively, "What happens if they just shut it all down with you boys inside? We need a way to get those people out. This whole thing... it's like a door in a cat's mouth. And they can shut it whenever they want."

Dean closed his eyes. "This would be so much easier if we had the stuff to make Demon Bombs. Just a generic, Walmart version would be nice."

"Demon bombs?" Castiel asked.

"This thing we figured out," Dean said, not wanting to get into it, "lotsa hard-to-get ingredients. Could really use a celestial eBay. And pretty much all the airborne angeles are buffalo wild wings now."

Castiel drew a breath but cast a look around the table. Did he dare? "What if... Meg could help us with that?" he asked.

But the minute he mentioned it, Bobby shot back, "Not happening."

"I mean, yeah," Dean said, but in a conceding tone, "let's not give Xenia Onatopp the nuclear codes, but... maybe she's got something that would give us an edge?"

"You get her involved," Bobby said, trying not to raise his voice, "and we might as well kill all those schmucks ourselves. Maybe she wants Crowley dead, but the rest of us are just as moist and delicious. Not to mention the power vacuum-."

"Okay, then. What are we gonna do?"

"If I remember right," Bobby said, "Crowley loves a good horse trade. What if we offer the Colt, get him to let the humans go."

"That's a great plan," Frank said. "Go in with the Colt and then tell them we got it. And in a few hours, when they're done laughing, they'll take it off our corpses."

"So maybe we don't all go in with the Colt," Dean said. "Maybe one of you guys hides out with it, we offer the trade, and the rest of us try to take Crowley the old-fashioned way."

"He'd never go for that!" Frank snapped.

"Then why don't you think of something!"

"Okay," Frank said quietly, "how about we say, 'screw the audience'?"

Protests erupted, but weak ones. Everyone wanted to save the hostages, but deep down - some deeper than others - they were all thinking this whole mission would be a lot easier if they didn't have to worry about casualties.

"Fine," Frank said, "but if Crowley wins, we're all flame-broiled anyway."