Disclaimer: Me no own, you no sue

Arch One: Goggles

Chapter One: In Boston No One Can Hear You Scream (takes place between episodes 11 and 14 of season 6)

Stacey Braddock was ready to quit. The office was horrible, the gossip was worse, and if her ex sent one more booty call, she was going to file for a restraining order. Enough was enough. This was the end. In the morning, she'd turn in her notice, pitch her cell, and buy a new iphone while she was job hunting in Miami. In the meantime, there was a slice of Boston crème pie calling her name – an appropriate farewell to the city.

Plate in hand, she slumped into her favorite chair and turned on the T.V. Nothing good was on. It was one of those nights. Maybe they had better cable in Florida. And maybe she was getting her hopes up too high.

In an hour the pie was gone and she'd given up all hope of finding a show that didn't insult her intelligence. She put the empty plate in the sink, and her thoughts turned to bed. Tomorrow would be a better day. She wouldn't stand for anything less.

Teeth brushed. Silky pjs. Lights out.

Outside, a woman was crying, wailing. Stacey wondered how bad the poor stranger's day had been. As bad as hers? Worse? The stranger probably couldn't escape her grief by going to Florida. She blinked. And suddenly there was a woman two feet in front of her.

Stacey opened her mouth to scream, but the intruder beat her to the punch. It was the worst sound Stacey had ever heard.

And then Stacey Braddock dropped dead.

O.O.O.

"I'm telling you, she just died."

"Just died is not a cause of death, Mr. Fens," Sam said. He tapped a pen against his clipboard, struggling to drum up some patience.

The mortician flapped his jaw, biting chunks of air. "I don't know what to tell you. From what I can tell, her heart just stopped."

Dean glanced at his brother. "So… she… just died."

"That's what I said."

But Sam was determined to get a clear answer, or at least a shred of information to narrow their hunt. "Heart attack?"

"No." The mortician gestured helplessly at the body. "The heart was undamaged. No trauma."

"Poison?"

"No toxins in the blood work."

At that point, Dean intervened on the behalf of the poor mortician. "The man said no already." The brothers exchanged a quick glare, and then turned as one to the confused morgue worker.

With a smile, charming but fake, Sam thanked the man, and then they were on their way.

On their way across the parking lot, Sam asked, "So what do you think?"

"Well," Dean said. "No one dies from nothing."

"Obviously." Sam settled his fingers on the handle of the car door, but the busy thoughts spinning through his mind kept him hovering. "Have you heard of… anything like this before?"

Dean shrugged. "Nope."

"So…" Sam slid into the car. "Research?"

Just as he asked, a pair of blonds in short skirts strolled by. He felt the workload on his shoulders double.

Dean rolled his neck. "Research. Right."

.O.O.O.

The worst part of any hunt was the research. It wasn't the reading, it was all that time spent alone on his laptop while Dean helped the local bars pay off their mortgages that got to him. He researched the victims. He researched the monsters. Dean researched the local tail. It made Sam itch to pick a fight every time. There was no justice in the world, and now…

He'd come back without a soul, gone Rambo, gotten his soul back, slipped off the deep end, and now had his own personal Devil on his shoulder. Even his brother had changed. Or maybe he was the same as ever, and Sam had always given him too much credit. He wasn't just killing because he had to. He was killing because he considered himself judge, jury and executioner. But Dean's womanizing? Nothing had changed there.

Right on cue, Dean strolled through the door, take-out in hand.

"Find anything?"

Sam looked at the long list of Google results burning his eyes through the computer screen. "Lots. Just nothing useful. There was nothing special about this girl – crap job, crap apartment, crap boyfriend. And as for her killer… ghost, demon – people have stories about everything, but no hunters have ever written about a ghost or demon that kills without leaving any kind of sign."

Dean pulled a pair of beers from the bag. "Maybe the chick just dropped dead."

Of course. Because accidents happened and people just dropped dead. Maybe in the normal world. "Since when do things just happen?"

"Okay, okay." Dean held out a bottle, and Sam accepted with more enthusiasm than he wanted to acknowledge. "So she didn't die of natural causes." He took a swig. "Time to look for more unnatural causes."

The beer was deliciously cold. "Call Bobby?"

Dean bobbed a nod. "Call Bobby."

.O.O.O.

Bobby was a bust. "I can't make soup from a stone, idjiots," he said. "You've got to give me more to work with than that. Call me when you've got more intel." He hung up before Dean could so much as whine. Not that that stopped him.

"Well that was helpful."

"He can't have the answers every time, Dean. We'll keep looking."

Dean picked up the pay-per-view flier. Sam was settling in for a long night when someone screamed. It was a girl's, but more piercing than anything he'd heard before. It went straight to the softest parts of his brain. He covered his ears and lunged for the waste basket, sure he was going to throw up. He didn't think he could take another second of it. Then it stopped.

Across the room, Dean groaned and pushed himself up from the lake of vomit he'd spewed.

"Gross," Sam said.

"Ugh. This is why I hate opera. Sound like that came from next door to you?"

"Yeah."

"Well." Dean smiled. "Time for some voice lessons."

They burst into the next room, guns at the ready.

Two figures were there, one prone on the floor, the other bent over the first. It was all very normal – at least for the Winchesters – except for the fact that the second figure was wearing the mother of all goggles. For an instant, Sam actually thought they were blunt horns. He only realized he was wrong when the light from the open door gleamed over the lenses.

"Crap." It was a girl's voice. Dean squeezed off a shot, but the be-goggled boogey vanished before the bullet passed the barrel.

Sam dropped to the prone figure's side. It was another woman. He searched for a pulse, but there was nothing. Dead and gone, and not a mark on her. "Well." He settled back on his heels. "Guess it wasn't nothing that killed the girl in the morgue."

"Guess not." Dean holstered his gun and approached the victim. "Now we've got two bodies. Anything in common?"

The bloodless body staring blankly at the ceiling was unnerving. Blood was normal. Sudden, bloodless death was not. It was difficult to be patient with Dean, when he was struggling so hard to reign in his own dancing nerves. "I don't know, Dean. I just saw the girl. Give me some time."

"Yeah, sure, whatever." Peering around the room, Dean began tapping his gun. "No sulfer. Not a demon."

"It's not cold," Sam said. "Might not be a ghost."

"Think this is enough information for Bobby to get going with?"

"What information?" Sam asked. "That the killer's a screaming girl with goggles?"

Dean shrugged. "I dunno."

The second call to Bobby was much better received. Still full of gruff love, though.

"You idjits. A scream and a strange woman standing over a body? I don't even need a book for this one. Ever heard of a banshee?"

Dean and Sam glanced at each other over the phone. "As in," Dean said, "screaming like a…?"

"Bingo."

"Need a book to know how to kill one?" Sam asked.

They could almost hear the shrug over the phone. "Maybe. Honestly, boys, I've never met a hunter who went head to head with one."

"So…?" Dean raised his eyebrows and let the 'o' pucker his lips long after the sound had died. "Recommendations?"

"Barbeque, season with some salt, smack upside the head with a fire poker, stab with a silver knife. One of the usual methods might work. A banshee is a death omen. Most folks who meet one aren't breathing afterwards."

Sam sat back in his chair and rapped his pencil against the edge of the table. "Limited intel then."

"Very limited. You boys pull this off, I'll write a book about it."

"Just so long as you give credit where it's due."

Bobby snorted. "Happy hunting, boys." Then he hung up.

.O.O.O.

"They were both ending something."

Dean looked up from his burger and frowned at Sam, trying to place the sudden exclamation in some kind of context. "What?"

Shaking his head, Sam reached around to swing his laptop towards Dean. A short obituary for the woman killed the night before was already posted on the local newspaper's website. Middle aged and tow-headed, she wasn't unattractive, but he couldn't get the image of her dead, staring eyes out of his head. Gory deaths he could handle, but this was just weird. Freaky. It was like the ties had come loose and her soul just slipped out.

He cleared his throat. "So what was she ending, exactly?"

"The article says she was a local elementary school principle," Sam said.

"Doesn't sound all that strange," Dean said.

"No, but she decided to change careers just last week. It looks like she accepted a job offer from a local congressman, and she just turned in her official resignation as principle."

Without conscious effort, his eyebrows floated up towards his hair line. He didn't mean to be sarcastic, but he couldn't help the river of snark that flowed out of his mouth. "Bad choice. Everyone knows principles are hotter than political flunkies."

"Ha h," Sam said, utterly unimpressed. "Pull your brain out of your pants, Dean. This is serious."

He took a swig of beer. "So what about the other chick? You said they were both ending things."

"Well Stacey Braddock was ending just about everything: relationship, job, lease agreement. Her friend said she was talking about moving to Florida."

He tried to resist, but he couldn't stop the smile that spread over his face. "You might call that an ending, but it sounds like an awfully beautiful beginning to me. Florida. Beers and bikinis every day."

"Would you get serious?" Sam stabbed a finger at the computer screen. "The toll has already hit two, and we still have no idea how to track this thing."

Another gulp of beer. "But at least we know what the vics have in common now."

"Yeah," Sam said, "but how are we supposed to keep tabs on everyone in the greater Boston area who's made an important change lately? That would be every divorcee, retiring employee, and college graduate, just to name a few."

He had a point, Dean had to admit. There was no way they could cover all of their bases without losing a few dozen innocent habit-breakers. Maybe more. But there were two sides to every murder. "I think we should focus on something else."

Sam raised his eyebrows. "You mean like the screaming girl?"

"Yeah. If we can figure out who she is, then we can figure out what her gig is, you know?"

Sam sighed, and Dean could feel the forces of drama gathering around his baby brother. A queenly tantrum was in the air. "Yeah. Sure, Dean. All we need is her name. Or a good picture of her. Or a license number. Even her cell would work. Do you have any of those? Because I don't. I didn't even get a good look at her last night."

"Well…" Dean let his eyes wander out the window. The motel's little lobby was directly across the parking lot, the windows shielded by blinds. An idea struck, and he gave his baby brother his best grin. "Maybe we'll get lucky."

.O.O.O.

The clerk looked at Dean like the hunter had just confessed his actual profession. "Are you serious?"

"Of course," Dean said, chipper as a lark. "Don't I look serious."

Getting in on the act, Sam leaned forward with his do-gooder puppy eyes and said, "We saw it fall out of her pocket when she was getting in her car. We just want to make sure it gets back to her."

Still incredulous, the pimply kid behind the counter fingered the hundred dollar bill. "Well, thanks for turning it in. I'll make sure she gets it."

"Good! She hasn't checked out yet!" Dean winked at Sam. "Told you we might get lucky."

Sam pressed, forcing his eyes even wider. "We thought we could return it ourselves. We feel kinda responsible. If we'd been faster we could've waved her down before she left the parking lot."

The clerk snorted. "So, what, you want her room number or something? No way. You guys could be perverts."

He'd hoped to resolve this issue like a gentleman, but it looked like he would have to work it like a pimp. Sliding a second bill across the smooth laminate, he schooled his face into the most innocent expression he could muster. It was hard. Innocent? Who was he kidding? When he tried to look innocent, he just made himself look guilty as hell. "We'd really appreciate it, man. You see…" he glanced at Sam, then smirked at the clerk, "my brother here thought she was kinda cute, you know? He thinks this knight in shining armor stuff might score the fair lady's number."

The cash put the clerk's doubts to rest, and he smoothly slid the second bill into his pocket. "Girl with goggles, you said?"

"Yeah." Dean rested an elbow on the counter and tried to peek over as the boy flipped through the registry.

"I remember her." The clerk looked back smiling. "I thought she was cute, too. I have a thing for geeks, you know?"

Sam's puppy face had died, and the annoyance was starting to show so Dean rushed to close the deal. "Who doesn't? Room number?"

"Natasha Dee," the clerk said. "Room 114." He smiled one last time. "You gentlemen have a good evening."

Grabbing the first piece of cash from the counter, Dean gave an answering leer. "You, too."

He all but danced out of the reception office. Sam looked less than thrilled. "Is this the part where you say 'I told you so'?"

"Nope," Dean said. "That comes after we gank this screaming bitch." He was aware that he was swaggering. He must look awesome.

"Right." Sam shoved his hands in his pockets as they walked, eyes skipping along the room numbers. "If she's even in, that is."

But nothing could get Dean down at this point. He was right. Sam wasn't as fast on the uptake as he was, and there would be one less monster in t-minus five minutes. "If she isn't, we'll just wait. Sickboy said she hadn't checked out yet."

"Of course." It sounded like Sam was warming to the idea. Still, it would probably take his college-sized ego a while to get over the swelling caused by this little sting. Dean was so proud of himself.

Room 114 looked as innocuous as the rest of the blank white doors. Numbers, peep-hole, greasy doorknob that had been groped by a thousand sweaty palms. There was o reason it couldn't be a monster's lair. Dean had seen flesh-eaters holed up in moldy caves and upper middle class suburbia. Nothing surprised him anymore. Not after Hell. Not after angels. Not after Pringles made pizza-flavored potato chips.

He waited impatiently while Sam knocked like a normal person. Sensing Dean's stare boring through his ear, Sam glanced over and shrugged. The knock was really just for show. Anyone could be watching. They needed to look like normal people, and normal people knocked. They didn't kick down doors and go in with guns blazing. The boys cast a glance over their shoulders to check for any civilian eyes, and found the parking lot empty. It was two in the afternoon. Most folks had already continued on their merry way, were out on business, or were sleeping off the last pains of some serious binge drinking.

All clear.

Sam gave Dean a nod and stepped back, reaching for the gun in the back of his jeans. Dean crouched in front of the lock and started fishing for his picks.

"Just a second!"

The boys froze. Miss Murder, it seemed, was in after all. Stashing the picks, Dean grabbed his own gun and kicked down the door. No muss, no fuss, just straight-up ass-kicking. He liked things better this way, anyhow.

Goggles girl was inside. She jumped about a foot in the air as her door came crashing in, and Dean had just enough time to aim before she winked out of existence.

Again.

Lowering his gun, he gave a petulant little stomp. "Dammit!"

Sam squeezed through the door beside him and into the room, eyes sweeping the rented space. It wasn't particularly tidy, and the chick seemed to have a serious arts and crafts addiction, but there was nothing useful. No jar full of souls or bone-littered altar.

Blinking and tilting his head back like a quizzical bird, Sam surveyed their find. "Wow. This is… different."

Dean shuddered. "Nerds. Why did it have to be nerds?"

Sam snorted, good humor restored. Nothing like Dean taking a tumble from his high horse to even the score again. "Easy, Indy."

"Whatever." Dean made his way over to the bed, which had been thoroughly stripped and reordered. It looked like a nest. While not a definite sign of creature activity, it was weird. Where was all the blood and guts? Dean was good at blood and guts. This was getting downright frustrating. He just wanted to shoot something and call it a day.

"You have got to be kidding me."

Dean perked up and left the collection of glass bottles by the room's lone window to see what Sam had discovered. Sam was on his knees, head shoved under the bed, and it took every ounce of Dean's self control not to give his baby brother a very literal kick in the ass.

"What'd you find?" he asked.

Sam surfaced from under the bed, gobs of grey dust caught in his hair. "Dude. Dean. You aren't going to believe this."

Against his will, Dean found himself interested once more in the case of the nerdy serial killer. "What?"

Sam shook his head. "You've got to see this." He held up the bed skirt, waiting while Dean took a knee and stooped to peer into the dustbunny cavern.

Beneath the bed was an arsenal. A long sword gleamed just a few inches from Dean's nose, within easy reach of anyone sleeping on the right side of the bed. Further in were bottles and bags of stuff he assumed were salt and holy water. Beside those was a jar of iron nails. There was more, but Dean quickly decided he'd seen enough. Returning to the world of daylight, he tried to find some kind of answer in Sam's expression, but his brother was just as stumped as he was, and they wound up staring at each other for several awkward moments before Sam finally cleared his throat.

"So." He twitched, the motion jerking his head in an involuntary, Castiel-like head cock. "A monster who hunts monsters?"

Dean grappled with the logic. It was hard to pin down, because there just wasn't any. "Nah." He said it in his best blasé tone, throwing in a generous shrug on the side. "Probably just paranoid. Monsters kill each other sometimes, right? Maybe she pissed off another bad guy."

Sam didn't look convinced. "Maybe."

It didn't take a college degree to see where Sam's train of thought was leading him – right off a cliff. Lots of professions claimed that their particular line of work left no room for doubt, but no other job held a candle to hunting. There was no room for doubt. Let doubt in, let a knife slip into your back. Surely Sam had learned that lesson with Ruby. Dean pointed at him and said, "No. I know what you're thinking and no. we found her standing over the fresh body seconds after the scream. No way we got this wrong. She's our monster. We off her, our job is done."

"Yeah, but, Dean…" Sam was wearing that mildly constipated face that meant moral overtones were about to infect the impending lecture. "We've been caught red handed lots of times for stuff we never did. Couldn't it happen to somebody else? Some other hunter?"

"Yeah? Well what the crap kind of hunter can teleport? Or vanish? Or whatever hoodoo thing she's doing?"

"I don't know, Dean, but…"

"Well I don't know either, Sam, and that's our problem. This chick can kill without leaving a mark, can apparently vanish, and we have no idea what to stab her with." Knocking aside some tweezers and twine from the desk, he began digging for some kind of identification. A photo I.D., spell book, puddle of ooze, anything. "Look around. Could be something useful in all this crap."

Softly, Sam said, "But we don't know."

"I do." Giving up on the desk, he returned to the bed and took out the sword. If she kept it so close at hand, it must be useful. Maybe it could even gut her. "Let's go. We've got a screamer to gank."

.O.O.O.

It was back to square one: in other words, searching for a predictable pattern behind the attacks. With the base they had, it would take hundreds of hunters to keep an eye on all the potential leads, so it was a matter of deduction and statistical analysis. College crap. As he walked with Sammy to the Impala, he let his mind drift back to the busty red-head with evident daddy issues in the local bar. She'd made some very interesting promises, and he wanted to see if her bite was as good as her bark. It had been a long time since he had a good fling, and he needed to convince himself that he could have just as much fun as he used to, that he wasn't heartbroken, that Lisa hadn't been as special as he thought she was. Special or not, it was over. Relationships didn't come back from the kind of hits they'd taken.

Fin.

It was a colossal load of shit, but maybe he could imagine it was all golden for a precious hour or two while Sam made dusty love to the local library. Librarians were more Dean's thing; not libraries.

He opened the door and felt a breeze rush by. Shivering, he pulled his jacket a little tighter. He glanced around surreptitiously for the usual breezy things – ghosts, angels, men who'd eaten too burgers – but the parking lot was still suffering from the midday doldrums. Slipping in beside Sam, he adjusted the mirror, checking for frost. Nothing. No ghosties then. There was no trench-coated angel in the backseat, either, so a feathery friend was out of the question. Someone must have had a hell of a burger, then.

Or it was just nature. Screw nature. Nothing was ever 'just' nature.

"Did you feel that?" he asked.

Sam blinked. "Feel what?"

Dean shrugged it off and tossed the shift to drive, stowing the edgy burble in his gut for later contemplation. "Nothing. Just being paranoid."

"Well, that's kind of our job."

"Truer words were never spoken."

After dropping Sam at the library, Dean caved to his desire and went back to the bar he'd swept for information the night before. It was within spitting distance of the motel, actually. He was sort of surprised he hadn't picked up any gossip. Goggles must not be a drinker.

The foxy red-head wasn't there, and nor were any other attractive women. At three in the afternoon, the bar-going populace consisted of weary truckers and old drunks with baggy skin and thin wallets. Dean was by far the hottest piece of ass there. Not that that was unusual or anything. He ordered a beer and turned his attention to the television mounted on the wall. On the screen, a local reporter was reporting the tragic death of 'A Local Heroine' from behind the sterile safety of an over-polished desk. Dean tried not to snort. Everyone spoke well of the dead – unless they really knew them. Thoughts and words, he'd learned, were usually permanently estranged. They kept things together legally for the kids – little baby Sanity and his big brother Decency – but everyone knew it was over.

He swallowed his beer without tasting it and struggled to wedge the pieces of the case together. Endings. Banshees. Goggles. Why did he even bother anymore?

He drank another bottle before he went to pick up Sam (who had discovered absolutely squat), and he realized something was wrong the second he swung through the driver's side door. There was something wrong with his baby. He didn't know what, but something was different, and anything different was wrong. He did a quick check for hex bags, but came up empty handed. Satisfied that whatever was wrong, it wouldn't kill him before he got to the library, he sped off to retrieve his second pair of eyes.

Sam took a step back towards the glass doors when he saw Dean come storming out of his car. But he didn't have a chance to launch a full-scale retreat before he was summoned.

"Sammy!"

Dean always thought the smoke coming out of angry characters' ears in cartoons was ridiculous. He'd done the full range of angry, and he'd never felt the steam whistles blow. But now he was smokin'. He was ready to kill something, but his baby needed his help. And he needed his baby brother to assist in sniffing out the problem.

"There's something wrong with baby."

"What?" Sam frowned as he came closer to the car, sweeping it with his eyes for obvious signs of damage. "Dean… I don't see anything…"

"Neither do I." He was angry, brows trying to crush together, eyes and nostrils flared. "But something's different. Help me find it."

Sam immediately raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay, I'll help. Jeez, chill out, okay?"

"Chill out?" Dean looked at Sam like he'd started drinking demon blood again. "No, Sam. This is my car. This is my baby. There will be no 'chilling' until we fix this."

"I already said okay," Sam said as he sat in the open passenger's side. "Just give me a minute."

Dean paced as Sam scrutinized the passenger area, and quieted his own nerves by raking through the supplies in the back, imagining how good it would feel to cut off that screaming bitch's head, because if she was responsible for this, she was gonna burn.

"Dean, I think I've found something."

He rushed to Sam's side and contorted himself around to fit next to him in the open door. "What? What is it?"

"Look." Sam pointed to the joint of wall and roof, the seam of which was covered by a thin fabric lining. A little semi-circle had been cut out and re-stitched. Dean could just barely see it. The work was impeccable. But that didn't excuse the vandalism. Sewing someone up nicely after stealing their kidney didn't make it okay. This was not okay. This was the polar opposite of okay.

"What," he said, "did she do to my baby?"

"Hold on." Sam flicked out his pocket knife, and Dean had to look away while his brother cut out the careful stitches hiding the wound.

Unbound, the fabric fell free to reveal a horseshoe glued to the roof of the Impala.

"You have got to be shitting me."

.O.O.O.

"You aren't going to like this."

Dean looked up from the day's third bottle of beer and tried to glower away his feelings. "I already don't like this."

Apologetically, Sam glanced up from his laptop and slowly explained, "Every article and website I can find says the same thing, Dean. Horseshoes are for warding away fairies."

And… it was time for the fourth bottle of beer. "Well. You were right. I don't like this."

"But it doesn't make sense," Sam said, smacking a few more keys. "Why would a banshee put a fairy ward on our car?"

"Because she's a sadistic bitch, that's why."

"Stop drinking and think, Dean."

He tried, but the beer was perfectly chilled, and he couldn't waste the moment. He did try to think, though. His thoughts didn't lead him anywhere good. "You're back on the whole this-is-a-big-misunderstanding-and-Goggles-is-a-deserving-little-do-gooder thing, aren't you?"

Sam's eyes tracked away from Dean and around the room. "Well…"

"No, Sam. I have said this before, and I will say it again. No."

"But…"

"No."

Suddenly Sam's eyes fixed on something behind Dean. "Dude, behind you."

He grabbed for his gun and spun to face the threat, turning just in time to see… a closed door. The look he shot at Sam was unfriendly. "Not cool, man."

"No, Dean, seriously," Sam pointed, "look."

And he did. He looked up, to be precise. Hanging above the door was another horseshoe, this one held in place with a nail.

"Are we being haunted by My Little Pony or something?"

The lights flickered, and Dean heard the unmistakable sound of a woman crying just outside the door. Instinctively, he rushed to find the source of the noise, and the door was open before he'd even registered what he was doing.

There was no one there.

He turned to find Sam hovering at his shoulder, also drawn to the source of the wailing, and they shared a look of perturbed confusion. Dean closed the door, and Sam turned back towards his computer.

"Dean!"

He spun to see more than a whole lot of nothing this time. A woman in white was standing at the back of the room, face marred by tear tracks and oozy eyes. It looked like she hadn't slept in a year or a ten. Dean grabbed for his gun, but just as his fingers curled around the handle, the woman opened her mouth, and he forgot about everything except how much his ears hurt. It was the same scream as the night before, only much, much worse. It was closer, and it was being directed straight at him this time. Last time they'd just been collateral damage. This time, they were dinner.

His knees cracked down on the floor, and he felt the room start spinning. Everything grew loose and soft, and he realized he was slipping away. Reality was fading. He knew what was at the other end of this road, though, and he wasn't going quietly.

But that sound.

Just as he was about to give up the ghost, something rolled out from under his bed. It popped up to its knees and knocked an arrow in the most old school bow Dean had ever seen. The arrow went back, and then the archer let it fly. It went straight into the banshee's open mouth. The sound died instantly, replaced by choked gagging. As Dean's vision sluggishly cleared, he realized that he knew the archer. It was Goggles.

She dropped the bow on the bed and snatched up the sword Dean had lifted from her room, which was propped by his headboard. In one clean stroke, she beheaded the gurgling monster. The head went rolling, and the body collapsed in a heap on the floor, but Goggles had lost interest, and was busily gathering up her stuff. With a quick swipe over Sam's bed sheets, the blade was clean. She tossed the bow on her back and headed towards the door, pausing just long enough to crouch by Dean's head. Across the room, Sam was trying to moan something. He probably wasn't trying to moan, actually – he was probably trying to speak – but what the world got was an unintelligible noise of profound pain.

Goggles held the sword up in his face. "Mine," she said. "Do not touch."

She started to rise again, but visions of his poor molested baby flashed through his mind, and he snatched at the closest thing within grabbing distance: Goggles's goggles. She yelped and jerked back, but his grip was strong, and the gear was lashed firmly to her head. In the background, Sam stumbled to his feet, and Goggles sent him a panicked look. With one mighty tug, she ripped away, leaving her goggles and a few strands of dark blond hair in Dean's grasp.

She made it out the door, and Dean watched Sam sway out after her, but he knew she was already long gone. Disappeared. Vanished.

But, hey. He examined the pimped-out goggles in his grip. At least he got a trophy.

A/N: I'm new to the fandom, but deeply engaged and have caught up through, well, everything. I chose this point in the Supernatural story arch as the most fitting place to introduce this character, not because I haven't seen any more. Each chapter is supposed to be like a complete episode, so they will be relatively long, and I can't promise how often I'll be able to update because of that.

Reviews are kisses. Make like Crowley and strike a deal with me! I like feedback. Style suggestions/character pointers/etc. are welcome. Just don't tell me that I use sentence fragments. I worked for four years as an English tutor. There may be typos, but I know when I'm using a fragment and, yes, it really is supposed to be there. Like. This. This is also my first fic under this penname! I like new friends! Sayhello! I respond to all reviews personally.