The Undergound was a hipster fake-coffee-joint in the dead center of campus, serving sandwiches, salads, soups, and various sweets and salty snacks. When Sam noticed that it was owned by an outside company, by Woodstock for heaven's sake, he was glad Dean wasn't here with him. He'd rampage at the blaspheme of the music world.

"I know, it pains my soul too, but it's the only place with pita chips in a twenty mile radius," Alice commented as the group approached the order counter. At four in the afternoon, the place was deserted. It was Alice's preferred time to be in any of the dining establishments on campus. Fridays were usually her day in Seacobeck Hall, but there was a barbeque or something going on for the staff, so the dining hall was closed to the students.

Alice let Brittany and the Lady Sam order before her. She picked out what she wanted and handed over her student ID card. "Take care of these guys for me, okay Marge? I've got enough meals or Flex to cover whatever they want, so just credit me for it."

"Of course, dearie! It's good to see you with company for once!"

"Thanks, Marge, you're a doll!"

Alice blew her a kiss, knowing the old woman loved her old fashioned compliments, and then she slid into the horseshoe booth that Brittany and Sam had picked out. Within twenty minutes the rest of her friends, and Sam Winchester, had surrounded the table and an impressive spread of mostly edible food was set before them.

The pita chips were stale, rock hard. It was unfortunate, but the odds of getting fresh pita were so low that when it happened, it was actually scary. The cure was to let the stale clump of bread soak in the French onion soup for a few minutes before trying to break it into pieces to share with the people who didn't take the chance and were willing to trade you brownie or cookie bites. It was only as she was breaking up the last of the rock hard bread ball that she realized she was breaking bread with her closest friends on the eve of a great revelation.

"Dude, this had better not be my Last Supper," Alice said, popping a bite of soup-soaked bread into her mouth. "How depressing would it be to have this be the last meal you ever eat?"

"Clearly you're not allowed to kiss Sam tonight," Brittany laughed.

Hannah agreed. "And if you do die, I'm carving that on your tombstone."

Looking to Miae and Winnie, Alice said with mock seriousness, "I'm commissioning you guys to commemorate this moment in exquisite artistic detail."

Both of them nodded and then Winnie made a peace-sign with her fingers, the bracelets on her wrist jingling with an echo of her excitement. Alice responded by grinning and drawing a vaguely box-shaped figure in the air. Sam pretended he knew what any of it meant as the rest of the girls laughed.

By the time Alice friends had pushed her full of food to suit Hannah's standards, she was allowed to head back to her dorm, take a shower, and finally get some rest. The girls came back to the dorm with her, after giving Sam the message that they could figure out how to take care of the rest of the mooks around Fredericksburg in the morning. It had the subtext that if the Winchesters tried to figure it out themselves and then leave without saying goodbye, the girls could and certainly would hunt them down for a proper farewell.

If Sam hadn't been currently pissed beyond words at the ultimate heavenly power, he would have said that their sincerity to that end had put the fear of God in him. On his way back to the motel, he called Bobby to let him know that his idea to destroy Azreal had worked. When he told the old hunter about the visit from Micah, and the revelation that Alice was a shoe-in for the next Messiah, he didn't believe Sam's words the first time through the story.

There was only so much he could take in at once.

"How's Dean doing?"

"I dunno," Sam replied. "Cas took off a few hours ago, and Dean went out after him. The whole God does exist and can directly intercede thing has really gotten to them."

"You don't think . . ."

"No, he's not gonna say yes," Sam said with confidence, the hard earned, regretful certainty of the brother that had already seen Dean cross that line and come back.

Bobby made a strangled noise, one that could have been agreement or dissention, or even an even mix of both. "An' how're you holdin' up?"

"I'm doin' alright, Bobby," Sam said, more honest about it than he'd been in a long while.

"And how about the rest of the mooks in that freaky town?"

"We're still working on that," Sam confessed.

Bobby sighed. "Well work fast, Azreal might've been why all that crap was so damn evil, but don't forget that Alice is what kick-started it all."

"We know, Bobby, we're taking care of it all in the morning, probably; if Dean can get Cas over this . . . whatever this is, it'll be finished before lunch," Sam promised.

"It'd better be," Bobby huffed affectionately. "I think I might have something for you boys to sniff out in Indiana so the faster you can get outta Fredericksburg, the better."

Sam grinned. "Bobby, you've always got some new trail for us."

"There's always somethin' new to hunt," Bobby growled.

"I know, Bobby," Sam replied. It was nice to think that there was something normal mixed up in all of this crazy apocalypse crap. "We're on it."

Sam reached the motel room and hung up with Bobby. He threw Dean's doggy bag on the table and contemplated calling him. Deciding against it, Sam took his shower and tried to relax. It wasn't possible to actually relax, but considering everything, this was the closest he'd come to genuine calm in a long while. He even contemplated going to a bar and even picking up some company, but he tossed the idea out quickly in favor of turning on the news and flipping open his laptop to look up whatever scent Bobby had caught of Lucifer's activity in Indiana. Tourists seemed to be dropping off the radar at random, and the violent weather hitting the area reeked of Lucifer's involvement.

It wasn't until very late that night when Dean slipped into the motel room, expecting his little brother to be asleep. He'd managed to talk Cas back to their cause and the angel had dropped on via his two-fingers-of-death. He would spend the night in Heaven, talking to his contacts about what Micah's intervention meant to Team Free Will's cause.

"I dunno, man," Dean said abruptly, coming out of the shower and flopping onto his bed. "This whole Hunt just doesn't make sense."

"You're tellin' me," Sam sighed.

"I just don't get it, things used to be so simple, you know? A man could know what he was getting in bed with."

Sam watched as Dean punched his pillow, dealing out more punishment than was strictly necessary to make it comfortable. "Bobby says he's got somethin' for us in Indiana. Looks pretty run of the mill for the Apocalypse."

Dean guffawed harshly. "Yeah, imagine that, 'run of the mill' for the end of the world. Dude, we are so screwed." Dean closed his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest, settling in for the night. "If you say things could be worse, I will kill you, Sammy."

"No, you're right," Sam said, grinning at Dean's superstitions. "We are definitely screwed." He turned off the light and the television to let his brother get a better night's sleep, but Sam stayed up going over things on his laptop, desperate to think of something else, something more, that could help them avert the Apocalypse without the big prize-fight.

He didn't get anywhere.

Giving up for the night, Sam decided all he could do was try again tomorrow. The important thing, he supposed, was that he did.

Bright and early the next morning, Sam got a call from Hannah. "We're working on getting Alice out of bed, you guys gonna be ready to figure this ghost problem out in half an hour? Meet at Hyperion?"

"Yeah, Hannah, sounds good," Sam replied, listening through the phone to Julie's voice signing something in a language he couldn't hope to decode.

The Winchesters were ready with salt guns and an iron poker for each of them in a duffle in ten minutes. They were almost late as Dean guided his baby through the streets filled with drivers so god awful Dean was surprised that the town didn't have a reality show called 'Survival of the Paint-jobs'. Having finally gotten the Impala safely parked behind the coffee house, Sam and Dean went inside and looked around as they ordered.

They spotted Alice, looking rather frazzled for reason of it being 7am on a Saturday.

The Winchesters had to grin at her wet-kitten expression as she nursed a steaming two-shot mocha. As they came to sit at the table the girls had claimed, Alice stuck her tongue out at her friends. Then turning to Dean she asked, "So, you gonna call your angel, or what?"

"I'll call mine if you call yours," Dean challenged.

"Fine," Alice returned with a grin.

They each waited a few seconds, staring the other down, before calling their associated angels perfectly in sync. Castiel and Nathaniel fluttered in abruptly, appearing so suddenly in the crowded coffee shop that none of the patrons gave them a second glance. The angels acknowledged each other frostily.

"Hey, mister heavenly guide, guardian, whatever," Alice said, trying to pull Nathaniel's attention away from Castiel. "How do we get rid of Mr. Bomb Shelter Ghost?"

Nathaniel's cool green eyes turned to Alice, a bored and intensely appraising glance. Castiel answered for him. "We should return to the scene of the murders."

"And then what about the rest of the town," Alice wondered, "How're you going to cleanse the whole area?"

Castiel looked guilty for a moment. It was an adorably human hesitation. "Before we bound your influence, I had believed that I could tap into that energy."

"But now you need the whole consent thing," Alice said, her mind flicking back to the awful sensation of the paper cuts she'd experienced when Castiel had destroyed Azreal. This would probably take much more power. "Great, that's just fabulous."

Helplessly looking at Dean, Castiel tried to understand her tone in terms of her words. He'd gotten used to Dean's use of 'awesome' in decidedly non-awesome situations, but Dean was the only human he'd encountered that did so. The angel decided not to comment.

Nathaniel on the other hand replied snidely, "Oh, please. You're pathetic, even for a human. If you're going to be so soft, how in Heaven's name am I supposed to manage you?"

Alice looked sideways at Hannah for a split second before popping the lid off her mocha and throwing it wholesale over Nathaniel. Hannah grinned and passed Alice the mocha she'd gotten, it was well worth sharing her drink to see the expression on Nathaniel's face as he bamf-ed himself back to perfect condition.

"I don't need managing, thank you very much. I need caffeine," Alice chirped cattily. Then she sighed and looked back to Castiel, "So how're we gonna do this?"

Castiel looked to the Winchesters and zapped them away before using his angel mojo on Alice and disappearing with Nathaniel. Still in the coffee shop, Alice's friends let out a collective sigh. Hannah swore and began discussing the possibilities of what the others were up to with Brittany. Julie pouted, saying, "But I brought Twizzlers for them."

Miae patted Julie on the head, cooing, "They'll be back!"

Meanwhile, the Winchesters, Alice, and a pair of angels popped up in the forgotten atomic bomb shelter hidden away beneath the Fredericksburg Museum. Sam and Dean remained standing only because they'd gotten used to Castiel mojo-ing them all over the place unexpectedly. Alice on the other hand decided that she quite enjoyed whatever it was that the angels did to get around; it wasn't quite flying, but it was exhilarating and efficient and best of all, it didn't mess up her hair.

Nathaniel was the first to speak, "Castiel! You cannot simply take the Messiah wherever you please! Particularly not directly into danger!"

"No one can take Alice anywhere she does not wish to go, Nathaniel," Castiel replied.

"She's not involved in your little insurrection, she ought to be left out of it."

"Um guys? Ghost," Alice's announcement tore the Winchester's attention away from the arguing angels. She had her violin case with her, covered in salt-soaked fabric with pure iron detailing, and it served to slash through the aggressive and clearly vengeful spirit of good old Jackson Goode.

Castiel dispelled him for good with a few words of Enochian and the firm press of a mojo-bright handprint burned into the concrete wall.

Hands balling into fists at his side, Nathaniel mentioned, "This is entirely pointless. No matter how pure you make this town, the moment she leaves, more evil things are going to pop up around her."

"But this way it'll be clam enough around here for me to finish up college," Alice countered. "Besides, I need some time to suss out a Hunter team that can utilize my little talent."

Nathaniel turned his not-quite-glare on Alice. "You can't control this, it's not a tool you can use to your own ends."

"Humans are very clever when it comes to tools," Alice replied.

She tried to stare the angel down, but even the flightiest of angels had more patience than a teenage girl. Pouting, because cuteness was a weapon too and she couldn't reach her shotgun, Alice leveled, "Fine. If you're not going to be helpful, go away."

"I'm not leaving the Messiah with a fallen angel, let alone one in league with the Winchesters," Nathaniel retorted.

"Then go stand in a corner or something, your linear thinking is killing my zen," Alice said, shooing him off before turning to Castiel. "So, is there any way we can do this without the whole attack-of-the-invisible-paper-monsters thing?"

"Perhaps; that is why I've enlisted Sam and Dean," Castiel explained.

"And exactly are we gonna do?" Dean asked. He'd been wondering why Castiel had bamf-ed them along for the ride, since they hadn't been of any use at all in the brief tussle with Goode. But Cas wouldn't keep them jumping through hoops unless they could be useful.

Looking between the brothers, Castiel answered, "Exactly what you did the first time we fiddled with binding Alice's influence." A small knife materialized in Castiel's hand. He dragged it swiftly across the skin on Dean's arm and used the beads of blood that bubbled out to draw an Enochian sigil on Alice's palm.

"Jesus Christ, Cas," Dean shouted. "Give a guy some warning, will you?"

"I'm sorry, Dean. I thought I had made myself clear. Sam?"

Sam held out his arm and winced as the blade slid through the top layers of his skin. Castiel's blood marked the third and final sigil, drawn onto Alice's forehead. The fact that having a fallen angel finger-painting on her with fresh blood didn't bother her briefly unnerved Alice, and the so did fact that most of her mind was more concerned with the affect angel blood seeping into the pores on her forehead would have on the development of wrinkles. She pushed the feelings aside though, as thinking about it would only make her all the more bothered.

"If, rather than purging the entire town in one go, we create a Devil's Trap of sorts out of an array of smaller cleansings, it should ensure that minimal strain is exerted on Alice," Castiel explained. "That, combined with her connections to you two ought to make the experience nearly painless and entirely bearable."

Dean shrugged. "If you say so, Cas."

He grabbed Alice's hand and Sam did the same adding, "We're a little out of our depth here, Cas, so whatever you think will work."

"It is not a guaranteed cure," Castiel explained. "Alice will have to stay in contact with Bobby, and whatever contacts of his pass through here, to ensure her safety."

"I can probably do that," Alice replied with a smile.

Castiel hesitated a moment before giving her a half-smile in return. Then he put his hand on her head and tapped into her power. It was a million times better than Alice's last experience, there was an intense tingling and a buzz of radiating energy that spread throughout her limbs. The closest it got to the paper-cuts-all-over feeling was a bit of pins and needles in her legs. Sam and Dean felt it too, but as it was able to spread out more over their larger frames, it wasn't as intense a feeling.

The Angel Air Service that Cas used to zap the human trio to the different stops on his list of micro-cleanses on Castiel's Fredericksburg Face-lift agreed with the Winchesters much less than the tingling sensation. On the bright side, they'd left grumpy old Nathaniel behind, but the brothers were standing on knees made of Jello by the end of the jump-spree.

When Cas gave the all clear before poofing away to who knew where, Dean bent over, hugging his chest to his knees. "I'm gonna be sick," he spluttered.

"Me too," Sam said, looking equally queasy, and latching onto the solid brick of Hyperion's back wall. He watched Dean waddle over to the Impala, and grinned as the car's mystical properties gave Dean his strength back.

When he was sufficiently upright, Alice asked, "Would all you-can-eat pie help make it up to you?"

Dean's attention was caught instantaneously. "Pie?"

"There's a salad bar too, Sam," Alice mentioned. "And I can get the guys to bring out pretty much anything you could possibly want. Saturday brunch is pretty much just me, typically speaking, so they'll be happy to have more people hanging around."

Sam grinned at her. Dean was already sliding into the driver's seat. "Let's get a move on! Where's this magical pie place?"

"It's on campus. Take Williams until Campus Drive, take a right and pull in to the parking lot by Seacobeck Lane," Alice instructed, settling herself into the back seat.

Sam lurched into shotgun and Dean warned, "Don't you dare throw up in my baby, Sammy. I will not hesitate to kill you."

"Jerk."

"Bitch."

The roar of the engine as Dean pressed his foot down at that moment was one of the most beautiful things Alice had ever heard. She smiled in complete contentment on the short drive to the main campus dining hall.

Amber was sitting in the entry way as always, her eyes sparkled brightly with the hint of gossip as Alice led the two extraordinarily handsome Hunters inside. As Alice waited for Amber to swipe them all in the cheeky old woman asked, "Who're your new friends, darlin'?"

"Business associates, sorta," Alice replied brightly. "And good friends besides."

"Well, your other lovelies are already inside, waitin' for you," Amber chirped, handing Alice back her entry card. This was a great week, aside from all the near-death-experiences, because her meal-plan's remainder heading into the break had been halved and she had hardly wasted any money in the purchase of the smallest available option her school provided.

Getting back to the moment, Alice led the Winchesters into the room on the left, the Washington Diner, Winchester Paradise. Cookies, cupcakes, and pies galore lined one side of a buffet and then rabbit food lined the other, everything organic and natural and ecofreaky. Stations behind the main buffet had bacon, sausage, eggs, breakfast potatoes and even biscuits and gravy. Dean had to check his heartbeat to make sure he was still living.

He briefly contemplated that it could have been on par with his memory of that one fourth of July with Sammy, out on their own with the Impala.

"Have at it guys, eat everything you want," Alice encouraged, grabbing a mug for herself off the rack and heading over to make a cup of tea.

The afternoon was spent in general conversation, light and fun, the most simple and idyllic moment of the Winchester's recent years. And the food was great; even if it was only slightly better than crap diner food, it was free and it was slightly better than their average. It was a good moment, a necessary breather.

It couldn't last forever.

As evening began to make an approach, the Winchesters grew antsy. Indiana was hours away and more tourists were disappearing every night. The Apocalypse was creeping onward, and their options for averting it had long since dwindled to one. They needed to move on.

Goodbyes from Alice's friends were quick and only awkward to the barest degree as a little bit more of their collective fangirling-side slipped through their professionalism. Alice followed them outside to the Impala, and gave them each a quick hug as tight as she could make it. Sam grinned at her. "If that Danny kid ever gives you more trouble, just give us a call and we'll set him straight."

"That goes for anyone who wants to mess with you, got it?" Dean asked.

"You guys are in my speed dial," Alice replied. "Bobby too."

Ruffling her hair, Dean instructed, "Take care of yourself, okay, Thumbelina?"

"Can't promise I won't create anymore hurricanes," she countered, "But I'll try. And you two had better not do anything especially stupid!"

"We'll be fine, we're pretty good at our jobs, you know," Dean shouted, slipping into the driver's seat. "Bobby'll be in touch with you soon about that Hunter team."

Sam waved to her from shotgun as Dean flipped on the radio.

AC/DC's Back in Black boomed through the early evening as Dean pulled out onto the road, the Impala's distinct shadow standing out against the purples and oranges of the sky. The boys were on their way, whatever that way was. Alice worried for them, sure that things weren't about to get any easier for them and equally positive that there was no one on earth better for the jobs they had.

Turning to head back into Seaco and to her friends, Alice whispered, "It's not a bad ending to the latest chapter of my kdrama chronicles. I think I like it."

Just before she returned to life-as-crazy-as-usual, she threw one last look over her shoulder, and sealed the movie-perfect ending in place. With her hand on the door, Alice called to the ether, "Ciao, boys. And good luck."

Finite.

A/N: Here's some notes on the Angels, in case you were wondering.

Azreal, angel of the Fallen, not quite demon, not nearly an angel; (god's light) angel of grief

Muriel, angel of tending, looking after, and emotions

Micah, angel incarnate of the Divine Plan (close with Joshua, much higher paygrade)

Nathaniel, angel of fire, passion, and protection

Thank you so much for reading! I've definitely gotten enough of a response to think about putting at least one more story up here!