The Impossible Hunter

Chapter Seventeen

All four on the edge of the ravine whipped around to find the source of the voice.

Peeping out from behind the tree were the two girls from the diner. Hannah, the one who gave them away, had both hands over her mouth, her eyes wide with fear.

"You guys are still following us?" Oswin hissed at them.

"Why the fuck are there two of you?" Nicole asked, her eyes bigger than the moon.

Oswin turned to Sam and Dean, "They shifters?" She whispered, nodding at the blue box.

"Most likely," Sam nodded.

"Anyone bring their silver?" Oswin asked.

"I got the angel blade," Dean said, "It'll kill anything." Cas glared at him. Dean didn't notice.

"My throwing stars are laced with silver. I only brought one though," Oswin said.

"What the fuck is happening?" Hannah squeaked.

"I think they're gonna off the duplicate!" Nicole whispered in fear.

Dean rolled his eyes, "Alright. You two. Turn around back the way you came, get in your car, and drive until there's no more road. Go home, stop following us, and never come back here. Pretend you saw nothing, and you might live to see Christmas. Understand?"

"I always knew I had the kind of personality that would get me death threats," Nicole whispered, "Now it's happening and I forgot my pocket knife."

"What? I'm not threatening you! Why do you think-?" Dean looked down at the blade in his hand that he was subconsciously waving at them. Slowly, he slipped it back into his belt, "I'm not threatening you. Those people down there, though? That duplicate? They're dangerous. So go home, hide under your covers, and pray you don't wake up to find someone else with your face murdering your family in the morning."

"Fuck, that's creepy," Hannah breathed.

"Yeah, and it's not a joke," Sam said, "Go home."

The two girls backed away slowly before turning around and jogging down the trail, back to their car.

"Right," Dean turned back to the group, "Cas, you have your angel blade?"

"I have my new one since you still have possession of the one I had since creation," Castiel glared at him.

"Great," Dean didn't bother to care, "Sam, will the demon knife work on shifters?"

"Only one way to find out," he shrugged.

"Perfect. You guys go in the direction they left and split up," Dean ordered, "You find 'em, you get someone else before you take 'em on. Except Cas. You're invincible. Use that. I'm gonna check out the box, see if I can figure out how it disappears and moves. We good?" Everyone nodded.

"Peachy," he smacked his hands together, "Move out. Meet back here in half an hour if something happens."

Dean continued down the path as it declined, making his way towards the blue phone booth, as the other three went back the way they came.

He came up to the door and tried pushing it in. Of course it was locked, so Dean pulled out his lock pick and started working the tumblers. The lock was grossly complex for a wooden box, but what was he to expect when that box also vanished into thin air and appeared in another region of the country?

After about ten minutes of shamefully difficult lock picking, the door finally swung inward. Dean put the lock pick back in his pocket as he stepped inside. He looked up and did a double-take.

The inside of that six square foot box was the size of a football field with a ceiling higher than a cathedral.

"Holy shit," he breathed in awe.

The inside was dark, the walls gray, but illuminated by orange and blue lights that patterned the walls in circles, hexagons, and lines. Bookshelves lined the balconies above and chalkboards all over the room were covered in complicated equations and foreign symbols. In the center, sprouting from the floor and growing into the ceiling was a tube with glowing orange fluorescence that seemed to have some kind of hexagonal control panel attached to it at stomach-height. The panel was littered with seemingly random buttons, levers, switches, dials, and lights.

Dean walked towards the tube and noticed a screen on a track above it. The monitor was stuck on some sort of screensaver of circles with lines and other linear shapes inside each one.

"Someone liked geometry," Dean muttered. He tried tapping the monitor with his finger; no change. He tapped harder; nothing. Swiping; nada. Getting frustrated, Dean began smacking the side of it with the palm of his hand. The screen went static for a second and reappeared with a different pattern of circles.

"Huh," Dean shrugged in a "seems legit" sort of way. He hit the monitor a few more times, each time only getting a slightly new arrangement of line-filled circles. Eventually he got bored watching the shapes hardly change and decided to explore the balcony.

He turned away from the console only to be suddenly swept off his feet and land with a painful "thunk" into a wooden chair that hadn't been there earlier. Before Dean could get up, he heard a humming noise and suddenly ropes just appeared, binding his wrists and ankles to the legs and his torso to the back. Dean looked up.

"I don't appreciate knife-wielding idiots on my Tardis," said the Doctor as he smugly slipped the rod that Cas had described into his jacket, "and I don't think you'll appreciate what happens to them."

...

Managed to choke out two chapters before school! Not bad! Good Noodle Star for me!

So I accidentally witnessed a gang initiate a new member behind a Walmart today. I asked my brother to run them over. He wouldn't. Just wanted to share.

Thanks to everyone for almost 700 reads! Y'all are fantastic! Every time I get another read I geek out in my room and my parents yell at me for being loud. ((Worth it))