A Few Dozen Good Soldiers

A Supernatural/Dark Angel Crack-Shot

A/N- I have no excuse. The plot bunny wouldn't go away.
Summary- John Winchester discovers some disturbing news, and decides to do something about it.

It was supposed to be a rumor, one of those crazy conspiracy theories that rate on up there with Roswell Grays and Bigfoot. John hadn't even heard it through the Hunting grapevine. One of his old contacts back from his time in Vietnam, Luke, had been the first to mention it. Luke was half crazed from the things they had seen together, seriously PTSD, but he always came through when it was mission time. He'd called John up, drunk, and muttering about how he was going to ground and that John should do it too. John told him he already was. Traveling around the states hunting monsters tended to make it hard to be tracked.

The top brass was up to something, Luke claimed, and he wasn't going to be caught up in it. They were looking up old special forces units, bringing them in for something. Testing. Luke didn't want to be tested. Horror stories were passed around units on deployment like ghost stories around a campfire.
John brushed it off as Luke's paranoia and went on to the next job.

It was the first time he let Dean go on a hunt with him. The boy was fourteen, scrawny, but a mean shot. He was a talented kid and as John watched him move with cat-like grace fatherly pride filled him. Dean held the sawed-off he'd made himself like it was part of him. But it didn't help.

It was supposed to be a routine haunting, something to get Dean used to listening to the vestiges of animal instinct that would tell him when the supernatural being was around that every other sense insisted wasn't there. John had done all the research and told Dean bare minimum so he could see how the boy reacted in the field.
The research was wrong. It was two ghosts, father and daughter, and they got the jump on both Winchesters. John cursed as he drove with a broken wrist to the emergency room while Dean bled out shaking in the passenger seat.

A Hunter had been tracking a werewolf when it passed through Wyoming. He got the thing, but as he burned the corpse in the early morning he could swear he heard screams and gunshots echoing distantly through the woods. He checked out the area in case there was something else that needed to be put down but all he found was an old military research facility.
John was nursing a beer in a bar when a name drifted to his ears and tickled something in the back of his mind. Manticore. His gaze swept the room, picking up a man with military bearing arguing with someone on a phone. The name brought up a list of legends and facts and John went back to his beer.

It was supposed to be a silly rumor. John hadn't paid much attention to the news and going-on's of the world as he was busy raising his kids, hunting things, and learning how to work around the law. Then Sam was at the library and decided to google himself, whatever that was, and Dean. The kid found a conspiracy site, somehow, and brought up a story about military experiments.
Then it got personal. It didn't matter how true it was. The conversation with Luke came back full force and John started making calls to 'normals' that he hadn't seen since the War.

Manticore was filled with modern day Alchemists. That's the reasoning John gave to the Hunters that came with him. They needed to be put down before the monsters they were making escaped and screwed things up for everyone else. A EMP bomb that Dean had made to test our on ghosts was used to take out the generator and computers. For twenty glorious minutes John felt he was back in the war, with less shrubbery, as he and his fellow Hunters moved through the base.

Mike and Jared cut a swath through the soldiers, knocking them out with tranquilizers, while others went for wounding. It was the scientists they wanted to kill, the alchemists. Rachel carried a pack of home-made C4 into the research labs. John headed for the basement where intel said the failed experiments were. He passed a medical room on the way, easily took out the pencil-neck personnel, and paused.

A little girl was sprawled out on a cold metal slab. Her body was sliced open and her organs being placed in jars. She looked to be about five. Maybe.

Swallowing, John kept moving. He took a hit and cursed before ducking into a room and firing several shots. He reloaded and emptied the clip into a group of soldiers. When he looked up he realized he was in some kind of dormitory filled with kids. They were staring at him. Dean was staring at him. Five year-old Dean was staring at him and clutching a picture of... Virgin Mary? John growled and changed his magazine as he stalked over to the kid. They had cloned his son. His. That made this kid his too. "What's your name, kid?"

They could all hear booted feet echoing down the halls as the Alchemists scrambled. Stupid witches, alchemists, whatever.

"X5-493, Sir."

John arched an eyebrow. "Well, 493, you're coming with me. You know the way to the basement?"

The fear that rippled through the children was visible as they slide from their beds closer to the mini-Dean. One of the girls moved as if she was ready to pounce on him. "The basement, sir?" The boy's eyes widened. "Am I, defective?"

John frowned. "No. I just need to kill the unnatural abominations that are in it. You are going to show me the quickest way to get there. Then we're getting out of here."
The boy was shaking, but he was walking forward. "You're going to kill the nomalies..." He looked up, picture held to his chest as if in prayer, "My unit..."

"They your family?"

Child eyes darted around. "Yes."

The family unit. Sacred. John sighed. "Alright then... get down!" John yelled and turned back to the door as a barrage of bullets came through. The kids had scattered and John grunted as a bullet buried itself in his arm. Luckily it didn't hit anything too important. John pulled out a spare pistol and tossed it back toward the kids.

While he fired at the uniforms, mentally thinking that they either had really lousy aim or didn't want to risk hitting the children, one of the girls picked up his weapon and joined in the firing. Once they had a clear path John charged out, divested the downed soldiers of their weapons and ammunition, and barely noticed the children arming themselves.

"You are?" He asked the girl that had taken charge of the clones.

"X5-766, Sir."

John found it odd they were keeping pace with him, but was proud that they moved just as well as his son did. It gave him a terrible, terrible, idea. "Are there more of you?"

"Yes, sir."

"Basement?"

"Take a left, there are stairs."

John pulled out a walkie-talkie and gave instructions to Kyle.

Dean stared at them. They stared back. One of the kids nudged one of the mini-him's and whispered something. Dean blinked. "Dad, we're going to need a bigger car."

End Crack.