"I'm hungry... where the hell even am I?" Henry muttered, dragging his boots across the ash-choked wasteland.
The sky was a stagnant, sunless gray, and he hadn't slept in what felt like twenty-four hours — mostly because he'd spent the whole time hacking through waves of screeching, rotting things he'd started calling "zombies" just to keep his sanity intact.
His ether reserves were scraped hollow and his stomach was loudly threatening to eat itself.
He pulled up his system interface, eyes on his only ticket out of this hellscape. He was almost at 1000 SP.
[Void Blade]
Can tear a path through reality and enter the desired location. Can also act as a homing projectile. Once locked onto a target, it will not stop until it pierces it.
Price: 1000 SP
That blade was his way back to Earth. But to grind out the last few points, he had to keep fighting — and if he didn't get calories into his system soon, he was going to pass out and become a very easy meal.
"Let's hope these ten Common and five Uncommon gacha rolls give me something useful," he muttered, swiping through his inventory. At this point he didn't want a legendary artifact or a mystical shield. He just wanted a sandwich.
He fired off the ten Common pulls. The system chimed and the rewards materialized on the jagged ground in a pile.
Henry stared at the loot. Spare gun magazines. Boxes of hollow-point bullets. A heavy-duty military rocket launcher.
He let out a dry laugh. "Perfect. Exactly what my stomach was craving. High explosives."
But as the final pull materialized, a cheap plastic crinkle reached his ears. A stack of ten beef-flavored instant noodle packets dropped onto the pile of ammunition.
He stared at the square bricks of sodium and carbs.
"It would have been better if I pulled hot water, too," he grumbled.
Beggars couldn't be choosers in a demon wasteland. He collapsed onto the rocky dirt, ripped the packaging open with his teeth, and started crunching on the dry, raw block of noodles like an oversized cracker.
He forced the last block down his throat, coughing up a small cloud of artificial beef flavoring, then tossed the wrappers onto the ash and wiped his mouth. He fell flat onto his back on the jagged ground and stared up at the sunless gray sky, giving himself thirty seconds to breathe.
"Let's hope Dean and Sam got out," he muttered.
He pushed himself back up, joints popping, and grabbed the rocket launcher, hoisting the steel tube onto his shoulder. Ahead of him, the dead woods seemed to stare back, shadows vibrating with the low shrieks of an approaching horde.
He cracked his neck and leveled the launcher. "Well, one thousand SP... here I come."
***
Earth
A month had passed since the museum incident.
For the first fifteen days, Sam and Dean tore apart every lore book, occult text, and dusty library they could find. Summoning spells. Tracking rituals.
Attempts to replicate dimensional rifts. Dean even swallowed his pride and prayed for angelic help, but the angels — being their usual selves — refused to lift a finger, washing their hands of Henry completely.
Hitting a wall, the brothers had no choice but to accept it. All they could do was hope Henry was tough enough to survive wherever that vortex had dropped him. They packed the Impala and got back to work.
Which is how they ended up in a brightly lit comic book store in Ohio, investigating a routine haunting, and having the proprietor stare at them like they were wearing clown suits.
"I gotta say, you guys are really committing to the bit," the proprietor said, adjusting his glasses. "The role-playing is top-tier. You even got the gruff voice down perfectly."
Dean blinked, exchanging a look with Sam. "The what?"
The guy walked to a discount rack and tossed a paperback onto the counter.
Dean looked down. A pulp-style illustration of a black Impala, a familiar shotgun, and the word Supernatural printed in bold, bloody letters. Author: Carver Edlund.
They bought every issue the store had. An hour later, sitting in a cheap diner, they read in stunned silence. The books documented their entire lives over the past four years. Every hunt. Every argument. Every near-death experience.
Then they found the online fandom.
Sam stared at the laptop, color draining from his face as he clicked through a forum. "Dean... there are fans. Hardcore fans. Sam girls. Dean girls."
"Well, that makes sense," Dean said around a mouthful of burger, looking far too pleased with himself. "What else they got?"
"And then there's... slash," Sam muttered, looking sick.
Dean leaned over to squint at the screen. "What the hell is slash? As in, Sam slash Dean? Together?" His face twisted in disgust as it hit him. "They know we're brothers, right? That's sickening. Who writes this crap?"
"It gets worse," Sam said, scrolling. "Look at the top trending tag."
Dean leaned in. "'Dean slash Henry'?" His voice pitched up. "Are you kidding me? Who's shipping me with the magic glowing prick?"
Sam cringed, reading a line off the forum. "'Henry's ether barrier wasn't the only thing protecting Dean's heart that night...'"
Dean slammed the laptop shut hard enough to nearly crack the hinges. "I'm gonna puke. We're finding this Carver Edlund guy right now, and I'm beating him to a pulp."
An hour later they stood in the cramped office of the book's publisher. The woman behind the desk rolled her eyes the second they walked in.
"Look, I don't know what you boys want, but the Supernatural series is basically dead," she sighed, waving a pen. "Nobody wants gritty hunting stories anymore. People just want Dr. Sexy, M.D."
"We're not here for a pitch," Dean said, leaning on her desk, still radiating murder from the forum. "We need Carver Edlund's real address."
She crossed her arms. "I don't give out personal information to obsessive cosplayers. Security's down the hall."
"We're not cosplayers," Sam said. "We're his biggest fans. We even have the tattoos."
Dean sighed and unbuttoned his flannel, pulling down his collar. Sam did the same, revealing matching anti-possession symbols inked over their chests — identical to the ones in the books.
The publisher stared, her defensiveness dropping into surprise. She rubbed her temples.
"Fine. You guys are hardcore." She grabbed a sticky note, scribbled an address, and slid it across the desk. "Carver Edlund's a pen name. His real one's Chuck Shurley."
*****
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