Not Until We Are Lost

Piotr got Rayne settled into a hotel room and took one of his own nearby. They'd run into a little bit of trouble with the money thing, discovering that the money he carried did not look at all like the money that their current planet used. Rayne did something that caused the clerk at the desk to trust that they would pay, and gave them the rooms. Piotr knew that he was going to have to find a job, he couldn't let Rayne down. She had also done her thing to assure that the room was safe for her to be in during the day. He hadn't asked questions, not wanting to risk her being distracted before she got a chance to finish her work. He figured he could ask later, when the sun wasn't threatening the horizon.

He'd decided to go out and gather some supplies while she was sleeping, and to see if he could find a suitable job for himself. The fact that he had a Russian accent was going to play badly for him in this era, as it had already started to show him. He hoped that if he continued to claim to be a defector, that somebody would eventually grant him work.

Most of his morning was a failure, manager and owner after manager and owner turning him away without hesitation. He had a feeling that he was going to have to resort to manual labor. Something with construction or heavy lifting, something that he could keep his mouth shut for. Prove himself with his ability to lift more than the humans here. If he could reply to questions in monosyllables and play dumb, maybe he could get by.

Before he continued that quest, however, he decided to stop into a book store. He wanted to get Rayne a few things to read, and some for himself as well. There was a small, quaint chime of a bell when he opened the door.

Cas and Anna and even Mary had moved on to finding places to stay for the night. Jo still wasn't sure how to feel about Mary and Johnny, though she was starting to accept it. Despite Mary's reassurances to the contrary, something was there. While Jo didn't want to see either of them brokenhearted when they did find a way to right things, she also didn't know how long they would all be stuck like this. Never aging, moving from planet to planet. At the mercy of some sadistic aliens who thought they were a science experiment of some sort. If they were stuck for awhile, Jo supposed that Mary deserved someone who might bring her comfort and maybe even some happiness in all of this.

That didn't mean that she wasn't worried. Her expression was set in a grim line after her future daughter rode off into the sunset with the cowboy. The fact that Dean hadn't even bothered to look her way and seemed too busy drooling over some brunette didn't exactly help her mood.

She wasn't sure what was going to happen for the night, but she didn't want to go anywhere with Dean until they'd cleared the air about the lies that had been told regarding Sympathy. In fact, she wasn't sure where that left them at all.

Jo moved among the people still in the diner and spotted a guy who didn't seem to be grouped up with anyone. There was a moment where she couldn't help but notice that he was cute. Hey, two could play the ogling game, right? Jo moved over to the guy and gave him a small smile. She hadn't seen him before the meeting, so she wondered if he'd been in Electric City too.

The strains of 'I'll be seeing you' started playing on the jukebox in the diner. There had been various songs from the decade that they'd landed in playing the entire time they'd been there. It only served as a reminder that they were not anywhere near 2012 or home.

"Nothing like the golden era, huh?"

She'd just cracked something of a joke to Jo, though she'd also meant it a little bit. If her roommate had given her the go ahead, there was high possibility that Betsy would have done just what she'd offered. Her temper was hair trigger enough on a good day, but when she was abducted by aliens, it was a whole new level of fucked. Jo had said something about not doing it, though, and then a guy had joined their little group.

But she wasn't in that house anymore.

Right away, Betsy recognized it as a diner. One of those really old school ones, back when diners were just hitting their stride. Except, she got the feeling it wasn't just a reproduction. The people who were filling up tables and booths - those that weren't the people she'd been at a meeting with - weren't greasers and rockabilly kids. They were wearing actual 1940s style clothing, not merely modernized versions.

Glancing at herself, Betsy saw that she was also wearing the style. She took a moment to appreciate the dress she was in. It was very cute. It hugged her curves nicely, but not in a trampy way. Her shoes were stylish and comfortable. The one thing that was a little bothersome was that everything was in black and white. Betsy would have liked to know if she was at least wearing a color that suited her.

Luckily, the suddenness of the change and new surroundings hadn't triggered her panic, and she felt no overwhelming elephantine transformation coming on. She supposed that being moved around without her say so was old hat after the first time it happened. Or second, technically.

"Well." She said, looking around. "Could be worse."

Eventually, Piotr decided that enough socializing had gone on. People knew that their friends and loved ones were here with them, and that was a good thing. They could catch up further later, however. If he didn't interrupt, the meeting would go on far longer than anybody wanted it to. He'd provided some snacks, but no actual food. There would be a need for actual food at some point.

He cleared his throat to get the attention of everybody present.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

"I will do this in the most orderly manner that I can, so we can get the information and compare notes as needed."

Piotr turned to Castiel, who had spoken up first.

Piotr was anxious to get everything rolling. While putting the meeting off had given extra time to round up others who might need to be in on it, it meant a delay of information that he wasn't truly comfortable with. He'd managed to play it off with everybody that he'd encountered, making as if this wasn't as big a deal as it really was to him. Inside, Piotr had been twitchy. Anything could happen at any time. They were all dealing with the unknown. There were too many variables, the risk was far too high. Lingering only swayed things away from their favor.

It was very domestic, the way he readied for the guests. He didn't let Max lift a finger. It was the only way he could keep himself from stewing, really. To move, work. Put plates together. Ready beverages. Create a spread that Martha Stewart would have been proud of.

He even dressed up.

Black suit, crisp white shirt, black tie, shiny black shoes, hair combed impeccably, guns tucked away in their holsters under his arms and hidden carefully by the jacket of his expensive outfit. Not a lick of metal showing anywhere to give him away, and that was more a throwback to the long nights of watching a mark than anything else. Piotr didn't have any good reason for it now, but it felt right.

When there was nothing left to do, he leaned against the arm of the couch and worried his lip between his teeth. There wasn't a watch to check on his wrist, so he glanced every few minutes at the clock on the wall, ticking away in its hideous orange and purple motif, strange detached bunny ears the hands, a mangled face grinning behind them. It was disturbing at best, though Piotr didn't really see the image, just the minutes.

The doorbell rang and he opened it, taking up the entire doorway. He smiled at the first guests and stood aside to allow them in. He made motions toward the table of snacks and directed them toward the kitchen for drinks. Every single newcomer got the same treatment. Max still not allowed to do anything that might have taken even an iota of the control out of the Russian's hands. They weren't military people, those who were showing up, they weren't highly trained like he was, but he would be damned if he wasn't in command of everything.

There were so many faces that he didn't recognize, and still no sign of the one that he was still seeking. Rayne was not with any of the others that showed up. Piotr couldn't help the worry he felt for his charge. The strange woman who he'd met in Malden, what felt like a hundred years ago now. He didn't ask after her, knowing that if any of these people knew her, she would have been here. He'd been careful to set the time of the meeting right after sunset to accommodate her and any others that might be like her. If she was here, by some strange chance, and had not been informed of the meeting, and hadn't come looking for him, if she had, in fact, decided to keep herself secret, then she had a reason for it, and it wasn't Piotr's place to draw attention to her. The hope of that was beyond slim, however, and he knew it. She wasn't here, he just had to admit it.

He let everybody mingle for almost an hour, to make sure that all the people that had been told had a change to show up. That and it was obvious that some of them had been looking for each other for a while, and they were just now discovering one another. He couldn't bring himself to break that up. He knew how he would have felt if he'd found his friend. He wouldn't have been able to focus on anything else but making sure that she was alright.

Finally, he stood in the center of the living room, his eyes skating over the seating, knowing that there wasn't enough for everybody and regretting it, and cleared his throat to get the attention of the assembled.

"We are all here right now for the same purpose." Piotr's voice wasn't loud, but it was demanding. His accent cut through everything else easily. The edges of it were sharp, the middles heavy. He wouldn't, couldn't be ignored. "All of us were brought to this place, world or dimension, and we have all been seeking answers since we woke up. It is time to share what we have found."

He smiled a little at Mary, at Cas, then at Rob, still not giving up his position.

Apples...check.
Bananas...check.
Squash of all shapes, sizes, and colors...

Rob had filled his carry basket with just enough to get him through the week. He'd found that he'd come to this place with a decent amount of money, and he knew how to spend carefully. Being raised as a hunter and a Man of Letters had certainly given him an interesting look on spending frugally. He looked over the squash and gourds, amazed by just how many pumpkins and pumpkin-like vegefruits existed. Pumpkins seemed too much like vegetables, even if they were technically fruit. He knew there were different pumpkins, but this was just too much.

Claiming a spaghetti squash that was oddly colored, a slight pinkish hue to it, he stuffed it in the small basket and turned to find something that wasn't at all good for him. He needed something to off set all the healthful food in the pink and purple basket he had hooked his arm through. He needed something that said living free and single and male - it wasn't that he was thinking in that way, so much as he did want something that would balance out the basket. No one needed everything that was good for him or her, a little bad was just right.

He turned the corner of the snack aisle, not paying complete attention to where he was going. Some chocolate covered cake shaped like a bat had caught his eye just as he was rounding the corner.

Johnny left the house that contained the woman who had tried to eat him. Even though she claimed that that wasn't what she'd been doing, that she'd been feeding and not eating he'd come to call it that in his head. Not physically like some might, but there had been an attempt at consumption. That bothered him. Though, not as much as the fact that she couldn't do it. Whatever she'd been doing, she'd been stopped somehow. Something about him was different enough that she couldn't take what she wanted from him. She'd been just as bothered and confounded by it as he had.

He was so unnatural that he couldn't feed whatever kind of creature she was.

There was part of him, that part that Jo had started to build and he'd been constructing with Mary, that thought Bo might be the kind of thing that needed to be hunted. That part was small, though, and he'd gotten to know and understand the woman enough to let her slide out of that hunted status. She was a little odd, but nice enough, and she'd not actually tried to kill him. Or anybody, for that matter. That he knew of.

Despite whatever dark thoughts were circling around in his head, Johnny still had a need to find Mary. They'd grown close. And the idea of her not being here with him bothered him. He didn't want to be apart from her. He didn't want to lose... whatever it was that they had. He knew that it was different for her, that she had him in the future in a way that ... well. It was different.

Being out of the house wasn't really any better than being in it, since the weird decor extended to the exteriors as well and seemed to take over the whole block. As he walked and left the street, he saw that it went through the whole neighborhood, and also the rest of the town.

Johnny found a newspaper and picked it up, reading The Caldbury Times emblazoned across the top of it. At least he knew where he was, he supposed. He didn't read it, but tucked it under his arm. He wanted coffee. He didn't know if he needed it, but he wanted it. He walked a little bit, a little freaked out that he wasn't getting the normal kinds of stares, but instead eliciting smiles from the passersby. Unable to take much more, he ducked into a coffee shop, nearly running headlong into some kid.

The symbols had been right. Everything had been perfect; he'd worked the equations, done the translations, and researched. He'd done it all as he should have, or so he thought.

Rob sat up in bed, sweating. Something was wrong, and it wasn't just that he wasn't in his room back in the bunker. It wasn't the doilies with a rather unique bat pattern. It wasn't row of Easter eggs on a low shelf near by with book titles that made no sense: The Bloody Bunny, Duck Sauce: One Bite is Enough, and Pumpkin Soup for the Soul. It wasn't even the lack of darkness in color scheme.

No.

What was wrong was that his spell didn't work. Exploding, sure. Making him bleed out of his eyes, okay. Time travel in the wrong direction, quite possibly. But, complete loss of time - his time - and clothes was not one of the adverse side effects of the homing spell. One that should have found Mary even if she were in Hell itself.

"There is no way this is Hell." He got out of bed, ignoring his limited clothing - boxer briefs and that was it. His bare toes curled into the rug on the floor as he gave a quick bodily run through, checking and double checking that everything seemed to be in working order. A quick stop in the gentlemens' verified that everything was working fine. He took a moment to look through the bathroom, finding little out of the ordinary.

As he couldn't walk around wherever he was, even if it was Hell and he was beginning to consider the possibility that this was some branch of it - he'd heard Crowley was a very creative Prince of Hell type - he couldn't walk around Hell in just his underwear. He found a pair of jeans, boots, and a shirt. It wasn't his usual go to, but it'd work. He even relented, hearing his father chide him for going out without some sort of protection, by carrying the gun he'd found in the closet, covering it up with a light jacket.

He was ready. As he stepped out of the house, he wondered for what exactly he'd gotten ready.