...
...S9.5 AU
...
"I found him in a storm drain," Emma said, holding the skinny boy close to her side. "Can I keep him?"
Deanna sighed, and sent Atropos to fetch the shivering kid a blanket. When the child was thoroughly cocooned in flannel and eating a bowel of soup, the hunter took her adopted daughter aside.
"Emma, this isn't a good life for a little kid."
"Why? I grew up fine, and Mary and Jim are the happiest kids I've ever seen."
"You guys are special circumstances," the hunter tried to argue.
"Yeah, well so's Ben!"
Deanna frowned. "Just because you found him after a hunt doesn't mean that-"
"He said he was some kind of science experiment for the military before he escaped a few years ago." The Amazon's eyes flashed with red highlights. "They kept him in a box his whole life, just because they want some perfect little soldiers."
"Emma, calm down," Deanna laid a hand on the woman's shoulder, her stomach twisting into furious knots at the tale. "I know this is running close to the heart for you, but you need to stay calm, for Ben."
The young woman took a few steadying breaths. After a moment, her eyes returned to a more human appearance.
"Good girl." Deanna patted her shoulder. "Now, it's been a long night for everyone. I'll set up a cot in your room for Ben, and we can talk more in the morning. All right?"
Emma nodded, giving the hunter a quick hug before she left the room.
"Is she the Blue Lady?" the child whispered, wide green eyes following the hunter's retreating back.
"Who?" Emma said, gathering him into her arms.
"The Blue Lady. She helps you and makes sure you don't get sent to the basement with the 'nomalies."
The Amazon bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, grip tightening around the little body. "I suppose she's like the Blue Lady," she said carefully. "Deanna saved me when I was about your size. It's what she does; killing things helping people." She chuckled. "The family business."
...
"Hey, where's Emma?" Sam said, looking around the bunker, which was significantly less crowded than usual.
Deanna shrugged. "She took the other Amazons to break up an immoral military organization creating child soldiers."
"Oh right." He looked at his sister oddly. "And you didn't want a part of that at all?"
She looked up from the table, unimpressed. "I trust Emma to handle it. She's a big girl now."
"Uh hu. And the angels are gone because...?"
"They needed to stretch their wings before they got flabby, so I sent them to Wyoming."
"Where Emma and the girls are staging their operation."
The hunter threw a pen at him. "Shut up bitch."
...
"This place is more secure than the bunker," Amy reported, eyes monster red to better see in the dark. The Amazons couldn't risk turning on any lights during their stakeout of the Manticore facility, lest their prey catch onto their surveillance. "The only weak point we could find was the back field, and that's only when they let the kids out to train. We wouldn't be able to save more than a squad."
"That's no good, we need to be able to get them all in one go," Carol said, frowning. "Kayleigh broke onto their server and found protocols to blow the barracks if any of the children escape, or if the facility is compromised. That corroborates with what we learned interviewing Ben."
Their leader looked green. "That's sick."
The monsters exchanged a look. "Emma, I think we're in over our heads," Kayleigh, ever the voice of reason, said. "Maybe we should call Deanna."
"No."
"But-"
"I said no," Emma growled, instincts itching under her skin. "These children are ours to save. We are warriors, and if we dare to call ourselves mothers by the end of this, we have to take full responsibility all the way. Deanna has enough on her plate managing the rest of the Letters. This is our trial to overcome, to prove that we have what it takes to be what she was to us."
"Well we cant storm this fortress with just the four of us!"
"Perhaps we may be of assistance?" a new voice chimed in.
As one the four Amazons spun, claws out, and eyes flashing red.
An angel, wearing a mousy brunette in overalls waved back at them.
"Raziel, what are you doing here?" Emma said, as she and her sisters relaxed at the familiar face.
The woman smiled. "Domina sent us in case you required help."
"Don't let Deanna hear you call her that," Carol sniggered.
Raziel ignored the comment. "My garrison is at your disposal for the duration of this mission," she said to Emma.
The blonde refrained from expressing the relief flooding through her breast. "Awesome. Now, we've got the blueprints of the building, but we don't know how many kids they've got stashed in there..."
...
Mary stared at the intruder in her favorite library chair with all the unsettling weight a daughter of the angel of Thursday would muster.
He stared back, unnerved.
"I'm part angel," she shot out.
"I'm part cat," he replied in kind.
"I got wings and six pairs of eyes."
"I got... the ability to run really fast."
Mary smiled. "I like you. We should be friends!"
He tilted his head in confusion. "What?"
The nephilim tugged insistently at the older boy's hand. "Come on. Your Emma's baby now, so that makes us cousins."
...
"I was going through the old case notes, and we might have actually tangled with Manticore before."
"Really?"
Kayleigh nodded. "Around 2009 Garth had a run in with what he thought was a group of ghouls, but turned out to be some eugenic obsessed terrorists. He stopped them from setting off a bomb, and left a tip to the police."
"We sure these are the same guys?" Emma said.
Her sister nodded. "They killed a little kid. From the description, sounds like one of Ben's friends."
The amazon's eyes flashed red. "Those monsters!"
...
"Excuse me? Ma'am?"
Deanna looked up from her table of maps and smiled at the small pre-teen standing beside her. "Yeah kid?"
Ben carefully didn't meet her eyes, lips pressed nervously together. "Where's Miss Emma?"
"Your Momma's out rescuing the rest of your brothers and sisters."
"Who?" Ben said.
Deanna ran a hand over his stubbly head, where blonde hair was growing in. "Emma. She takes care of you, and Cas knows she loves you. That makes her your mother."
...
"Leader, we've got a problem," Carol said.
Emma looked up from the facility blueprints, marked up with sticky notes. "What?"
"Kayleigh found a file on the conditioning they put the kids through. Even if we rescue them, they won't want to come with us. They're programmed to want to go back to Manticore, and we don't look military enough to order them around. It would be like if a man tried to take us away from our den-mother when we were still growing."
The blonde Amazon swore.
"Abner!" Emma called. Immediately a kindly faced man with dark hair fluttered to her side, holding a clipboard and pen. "Who do we have, who is discreet, that I can send to do a full psych profile on the people in there?"
The angel communicated telepathically with his siblings. "Chamuel is the most accomplished in dream walking."
"Really?" The young commander's mind whirled with the new possibilities this presented. "Set up a meeting with her in the morning. I need to discuss whether she would be willing to communicate to the children what will happen. If they are expecting the raid and know who we are, they might be more willing to come with us."
Abner made a note. "Right away."
...
Sam frowned at the children. "You know, Ben looks an awful lot like Mary. They could be siblings."
Deanna shrugged. "It's probably coincidence."
Her brother looked over at the map spread out on the table. "What are you doing anyway? Is that a case?"
"Road trip," she said, tracing a backroad between the Grand Canyon and the everglade.
"To Orlando?" His voice wobbled with laughter.
"Cas has been watching too much daytime TV again, and wants to take the family on vacation," Deanna grinned fondly. "Dweeb somehow got us tickets for Disneyworld, then Charlie's taking us to Comi-con. She called up one of her cos-player friends, so the babies have both got these adorable little wing outfits. She even made a hat with Cas's four heads!"
Sam carefully covered his twitching mouth. "And you?"
"Sexy nurse, duh."
...
The angel tilted her head. "Some of the beings in there would make suitable vessels. I may be able to contact some of my non-corporeal siblings who wish to spend time on earth."
Emma's lips pressed together. "Those kids in there won't have a concept of saying no when someone gives them an order. That's not consent."
"We would gain valuable eyes inside the facility, as well as assuring the children that the plan is real, and not simply a figment of their minds."
The young woman clenched her fist in conflict, but nodded resolutely. "Fine. Do it."
...
Remiel was walking through the bunker. Normally the angel would simply fly to his next location, however he had just spent a few moments in the Memorial (as the bunker's inhabitants had begun to call the growing shrine of pictures to the fallen) and wished for a few moments of human contemplation.
His steps stopped when he heard violent thumps and whimpers just down the hall. Rounding the corner, the angel say the bunker's newest inhabitant seizing violently, his head banging against the plaster wall.
Remiel quickly reached for the boy, using his grace to calm his body's rebellion and temporarily fix the chemical imbalance causing his distress.
"Are you well?" he asked, when Ben's shivers stopped.
"Please don't tell anyone I have the shakes," the boy wept. "They'll find out I'm defective and send me away."
The angel frowned in confusion. "As I understand it, it is normal for humans to suffer from health problems. Deanna would not allow you to be cast away for such a reason."
"But I'm not normal," Ben said, breath coming fast. "I'm a transgenic. I'm not a person, I'm a soldier. Persons don't have barcodes on the back of their necks!"
Remiel's brows furrowed. "What does a body ornamentation have to do with whether you are a person?"
"It means I'm property." The boy's voice was muffled by his hands pressed against his face.
The angel tilted his head thoughtfully. Like a viper, his hand shout out to cover the back of child's neck. Ben didn't have enough time to do more than look up with tear stained eyes, before the hand was gone.
Remiel contemplated his palm, before tilting it to show the boy. Branded into the skin was the trangenic's serial number and bars. Ben's hands shot to the back of his neck, fingers searching.
"I took it from you. So now you're as much of a person as your soul says you are. You are free now too." He closed his hand into a fist, and when he opened it, the brand was gone in a flash of heavenly grace.
Fresh tears spilt down the child's face. "It's gone?"
The angel nodded.
Ben threw himself at the celestial being's waist, squeezing him so tightly that a human's bones would have broken.
"Thank you, sir." The boy's voice shook.
Remiel slowly wrapped his limbs around the tiny clinging body. The hungry look which occasionally crossed his features seemed to now be fulfilled.
"I was a soldier too, you know," he said softly.
Ben pulled back and wiped his cheeks, trying to regain his composure.
"Really sir?"
"Yes. We were discouraged from expressing aspects of humanity by our superiors. I did not know how to exist in any other manner, until Deanna found me."
"The Blue Lady," Ben whispered reverently.
The angel tilted his head. "She dislikes titles, though she holds many. Righteous Man, Mater, General, Domina- she only allows us to call her Deanna, though by my people's ways that is not all there is to her name."
"She helps everyone, doesn't she."
"Of course, that is her way. 'Saving people, hunting monsters. The family business.' "
"She helped me when I was in Manticore," the transgenic mumbled into the angel's shoulder. "When Ava got shot, and they told us not to cry."
They sat in silence for a few minutes, Ben hiccuping, and Remiel rubbing circles on his back, in a motion he had seen other humans do to soothe children.
"Would you like to see where we remember those who have left us?" the angel asked.
A tiny head nodded, still pressed against his vessel's collarbone.
Remiel led the small boy to the memorial, which had grown exponentially since its initial creation weeks ago. Newspaper clippings of victims of supernatural attacks, those too late to be saved on a case, had plastered one corner by the door, but the angel took his companion to the most colorful collection.
"Mary drew this sun for my brother Ambriel. She perceived his true form to be that of plasma, similar to that contained within Sol." Remiel pointed to a river stone, attached to the wall by string run through a nail. "My sibling Dumah never took a vessel, but they held fondness for the weathering patterns of earth. This stone reminds me of our time together."
"Zack liked to hide under rocks," Ben said, clutching the angel's hand as he stared at the memorial. "And Max had dark brown hair, like wood."
"Would you like to put something up for them?"
The little boy hunched down in his shoulders. "What would I put, sir?"
"Anything, so long as it has meaning."
Ben bit his lip. The fingers not wrapped around Remiel's arm crept to the back of his head. The taller being smiled in understanding.
Laying his hand against the wall, a flash of grace ignited against the paint. When the angel drew his hand away, a familiar serial number and coded bar was left behind.
Fresh tears ran down the little boy's cheeks.
Remiel let the child bask in the freedom to expression emotions, till his young soul was worn out. He then led him to the bunker's kitchen, and got him a drink.
"I have been experimenting with the varied beverages humans refer to as tea," the angel said at the child's questioning stare. "I have been informed of the biological calming properties of some, which can be advantageous in times of psychological stress."
The boy sniffed the mug curiously, pink tongue peaking between his lips to test the warm liquid.
Remiel sat across from him, savoring the dance of molecules on his vessels tongue as he drank.
"S'good," Ben purred, nose practically inside the cup.
"I'm rather fond of catnip too." The angel smiled.
...
The transgenic known only to himself as Mole had led a horrible existence. Of course, compared to some of his siblings, he was pretty lucky. However, in a place where 'lucky' meant seeing tomorrow, without seeing your insides on a slab, his life was pretty horrible.
He supposed it was only natural that his mind finally broke under all the stress.
"You are not mad," the voice in his head insisted, in a soft tone of voice the transgenic had never encountered. It sent pleasant shivers down his scales and calmed his heartbeat, making him want to listen forever.
"You are not mad," the voice insisted again. "You are chosen."
"For what?" Mole mumbled tiredly.
"To help save your siblings from this place."
That made the transgenic sit up. "What do I have to do?"
"Say yes."
The Mole agreed without another conscious thought. The next thing he knew, warm desert breezes wrapped around him, rocking his mind into a soothing slumber.
"Be at peace," the voice whispered, "And I shall sing thee to thy rest."
The lizard-man's eyes opened, flaring holy blue in their depths.
...
"I have gained the trust of the transgenics in the location known as the basement," Sariel said, lizard eyes blinking in the dim starlight. "Those who are capable will follow me when the time comes. Those whose minds or bodies were beyond repair I have escorted to heaven."
Emma closed her eyes for a momentary prayer to the fallen victims of this horrible facility. She looked back up at the angel's scaly face. "You did the right thing. They suffered enough in that abhorrent place."
The angel inclined his head. "Several of my siblings have also taken vessels similar in characteristics to my own. Five of the guards and a janitor have also consented. We are ready to assist however we can."
"Awesome." The Amazon took a breath, shoulders set in the taught line of leadership. "Have three of your team report to Carol. She's working with Raziel on planting explosives for the facility's demolition. Those with more human appearances should go to Amy, who's organizing the evacuation plan."
Sariel nodded, and vanished in a flutter of wings.
...
"They put cat bits into my DNA," Ben mumbled into his milk. "The X5's were the first to look so normal."
Remiel tilted his head. "Humans put much stock into physical appearances. I don't understand it."
"That's because you look so normal too!" the boy blurted. His face paled the instant the sound waves left his lips.
The angel frowned. "This isn't my true form," he said patting his chest. "This is a vessel. My real form would burn out a human's eyes, or at the very least drive them to madness."
"What? Why?" Ben's eyes were wide. "What do you look like?"
Remiel hummed, drawing out the child's interest in a teasing interaction he had seen between Deanna and her children. "The closest approximation I can guess that a human can perceive would be..." He tapped a thumb to his lips.
"Yeah?" The boy leaned forwards expectantly.
"Two of my heads are wolves, neither of which exist on earth any more. Structurally my wings are more like a bat's, though the feathers are somewhere between octarine and what the inside of a daffodil sounds like. I have many more limbs than you would expect, but fewer than what you're thinking, and my configuration does not lend itself well to bipedalism."
The milk sat completely forgotten in Ben's hand. "Really sir?"
The angel nodded, nudging the glass closer to his charge. "Yes."
...
"I am capable of driving an automobile," Gadreel assured cooly.
"Yeah, well these dozen buses are going to be full of confused para-military pre-teens." Emma kneaded her forehead with a fist. "Abner, has Samandriel found a place to house the kids yet? We can't take them back to the bunker all at once."
The angel consulted his notepad. "He secured an abandoned property called Camp Chippewa in Montana. The cabins have been repaired, and he has acquired sustenance and clothing to accommodate the evacuees."
"Right," the Amazon took a deep breath. "Operation Echidna will commence at midnight."
...
The operation went off without a major hitch.
The transgenics, guided by weeks of dreaming and promises of structure without the inhuman treatment of Manticore, discreetly gathered in their bunkers, while the assorted angels flew them out in units to waiting buses just outside of the facility.
Some had to be carefully retrieved from the medical and psych wings. Those poor souls were immediately taken to the surprisingly well equipped field hospital at Camp Chippewa.
When the last innocent was loaded up and driving away, Emma grinned at her sisters. She waved a detonator box invitingly in her hand. "Who wants to do the honors?"
...
Weeks later, after something of a routine was established for the rescued transgenics to feel comfortable with a marginal amount of autonomy, Emma returned to he bunker to fetch her son.
After being smothered in hugs by her adoptive mother and uncle, she found Ben in the kitchen, drinking what smelt like tea with an angel wearing a young brown haired man.
When he saw her, the little soldier jumped to his feet and saluted smartly. The Amazon felt a warm spark flood her heart, and enveloped him in a hug.
"Hey there kitten, sorry I was gone so long. Who's your friend?"
"His name is Remiel. He's been looking after me," Ben said, snuggling into her shoulder.
Emma considered the angel. "Has he."
"Ben is an exceptional child," Remiel said, muscles on his back stretching.
The Amazon hummed thoughtfully, cheek pressed against her son's fuzzy head.
...
"Ben, this is your twin," Emma said gently, laying a hand on the sleeping boy's forehead. Immediately his terrors calmed. "He was in cognitive reconditioning when we found him, and can't wake up yet."
The transgenic looked apprehensively at the mirror of his own face. "Ma'am," he said, voice forcibly steady. "Are you going to keep him instead of me?"
Emma looked at him askant. "Of course not! Oh, kitten, come here." She reached over to wrap her son in her arms. "Neither of you will replace the other! I fell in love with the both of you the minute I found you. You're both my boys."
Ben pressed his face into the Amazon's collar bone, breath evening as he inhaled her familiar scent of salt, steel, and predator.
...
The Men of Letters's bunker, while capable of comfortably holding a small family of seven and uncomfortably being able to house six more Amazon teenagers, it was not equipped to also house a small army of even smaller genetically altered child soldiers, nor their older animalistic looking precursors.
Luckily, Deanna literally had legions of angels begging to be at her beck and call. After Atropos heard the problem, she immediately scheduled for everyone to be out of the bunker for a week.
When Deanna and her entourage returned, it was to find two new underground floors full of bedrooms. Half were painted a soft blue, and the other a cheery yellow.
She revoked the angel's access to daytime TV and Martha Stuart after that.
...
"No."
Balthazar rolled his eyes. "Look, if you want to explain this whole humanity thing to a bunch of beings with no concept of it, then I'm your angel."
"No." Deanna chanted.
"Love, Atropos and Abner both called me individually to help, especially after my stirling work with those cupids in Mexico."
"They formed a sex cult in the Andes!" the hunter yelled.
"Yeah, but no one suspected them of being more than human, did they?"
The hunter's teeth ground together audibly. "No."
"Look, Deanna." Balthazar's normally jovial countenance turned serious. "Despite what you thin, it's not your choice; it's Emma's. Those are her people that she saved, and she asked me for my help."
...
Emma kissed the tops of the twin's heads. Ben grinned happily, while Alec flailed away, flushing scarlet in embarrassment. The Amazon laughed, snagging the pre-teen in a one armed hug, which devolved into a cat-pile when Ben tackled his brother down too.
Castiel held his wife close.
"Our little girls are all grown up," she sighed into his tan coat.
"Mortals have a tendency to change the most in the moments you look away."
"Cas," she sniffed, punching him in the shoulder. "You don't say things like that aloud."
...
...
A/N:
Who saw that Dark Angel crossover coming? Certainly not me! I was browsing my favorite tags list, and then Emma was like, "Hey, monster kids! I call dibs!"
So...yeah. Amazons raising transgenics.
Camp Chippewa is a reference to the summer camp Wednesday Addams and Pugsley were sent to in Addams Family Values. Another awesome movie you should see. :)
Echidna was the mother of Chimera in greek mythology.
...
...Epilogue
...
Emma turned Camp Chippewa into a satellite base for the increasing collection of hunters, angels, and monsters brought under the flag of hunting down evil. Remiel respectfully asked to accompany her. She gave him a long, long, look, before saying yes.
Most of the transgenics, used to a sparse military lifestyle and uncomfortable around 'normal' civilians, went with Emma too, eager to put their skills to the test against the various creatures which went bump in the night. A few, mostly those with less than human appearances, stayed behind at the bunker. They were endlessly fascinated with Deanna's entourage of angels, who took great delight in describing their true forms to the transgenics, in as much as a human could perceive them.
Atropos and Abner coordinated to increase the hunting organization's response time to threats. They even approached Deanna with plans to set up another safe house in Arizona to more thoroughly handle threats in the southwest.
The general gave their plan the green light without looking too hard at what she was signing, too preoccupied with the calls pouring in from the various Vatican, Canadian, and European supernatural organizations, who wanted to re-establish contacts in the States, after the last major organization went radio silent in the 1950s.
Sam was giddy to play ambassador, having finally given his role as head researcher fully over to Henry in exchange for slightly more time on the field. Deanna still had yet to let her brother live down finally growing sick of researching.
Castiel contented himself with looking after his children. Jim had begun to express a prodigious talent for smiting, much the same way his sister had translocation. Occasionally, the seraph would fly back to heaven for a case, but these trips were becoming less common as the long line of trials dwindled.
Bobby was the same as ever, if a bit more grizzled and grey around the ears. He had yet to accept Deanna's invitations to live at the bunker, citing his need for privacy. That never stopped the groups of hunters and angels from crowding at his door.
The angel Sariel discovered a passion for scavenger hunts, and could usually be found in the junk yard with a laundry list of spell components and books the old hunter required. The lizard-man would flit across the globe, sometimes on the wing, sometimes using more mundane methods of travel. Rumors of scaled chameleon aliens increased exponentially. Last anyone heard of him, he had met up with some friend of the Doctor, and left on a short vacation to expand his cultural horizons.
At the height of Balthazar's business's popularity, the angel grew bored. He gave the host his two week's notice, told them not to send him any more jobs on human-heaven interaction lessons, and went off to join the Cupids in South America.
Mary and Jim grew up into fine nephilim, well adjusted and loved in ways neither of their parents ever experienced, but never failed to deliver. Mary considered attending school in a different universe, just so the host of angels who dogged her family's step would stop being so helpful all the time. She's stuck between Hogwarts and a place called Ouran. Ben is determined to keep her out of trouble wherever she ends up.
Heaven continued on its new path of trial by jury, and everyone was all the happier for it. Even Raphael didn't mind too much, after the nihilist found a liking for earth thanks to the miraculously hedonistic cult, and their ambrosia distilled brews.
The Colonel just thinks all the bipedal beings around him are silly.
Thus the round-world turned.
...
The end.
...
...
A/N:
Mary is a month past 4yrs old by the end of S9. Jim is about 2yrs old. Imagine him learning the word No, while having 'prodigous smiting talents.' That's gonna be fun.