Kiss of Death

Dean did not miss high school. Not the angst of hormonal teenagers. Not the smell of sweaty gym socks fighting for dominance with budget cafeteria food. And especially not the boring as all hell classes (that rarely taught him anything useful). But also the Lord of the Flies mentality ran rampant in high school; teenagers could be vicious (and Dean was discouraged from throat-punching them for it.)

God. Dean was so glad those days were behind him. Give the Hunter a straight forward monster that wants to rip his throat out with its teeth any day. At least then he could shoot it in the heart or lop off its head and be done with it.

A lot of fellow students he knew referred to high school as living hell or a sort of purgatory between childhood and real life. Having experienced the real Hell, Dean would prefer high school. However, having experienced the real Purgatory, Dean would prefer Purgatory. (The douche-bags there were honest about it.)

So. If one really thought about it, it shouldn't be surprising that a lot of ghosts and demonic summonings come out of high school. Serious shit coupled with lack of life experience and wildly fluctuating hormone levels is a perfect storm recipe for a supernatural blow up. Which is why Dean Winchester was back in a high school, wandering up and down hallways behind an EMF meter.

Classes were out for the day, but it was early enough that all of the after-school clubs were still going strong. Students strolled here and there, heading for sports practice or dragging themselves to detention. Dean played his regular game of "Guess Who's Legal" almost automatically in his head, but they all looked so damn young these days...

"Oh, hey, wow! What is that?" A teenage boy's voice chirped at Dean's shoulder, interrupting his thoughts.

The Hunter glanced up to see the boy staring at the little bit of electronics in Dean hand. "Its just a scanner..." Dean began. He'd worked out this whole cover story worked out that the principle had been too busy to bother to listen to. And as he hated to work without a payoff, maybe he could actually use it on the kid. Then at least someone would appreciate the effort.

The kid nodded and cut him off. "Yeah, from the frequency and the strength of the alerts its been giving you, I bet its scanning for EMF. It went off super loud outside Mr. Windale's classroom. Which makes sense, because the power company transformers are right outside his window. Oooh! I bet it'll go off pretty loud on Mr North's lab, too. He's got some solar panels and the batteries would give off significant, measurable voltage. You might warn him before you go by his room. After all the attacks here in New York, he got some pretty bad PTSD and doesn't do well around sudden alarms or loud noises. But he's a great teacher!"

Dean blinked. Freaking Eggheads, too smart for their own good and not needing any explanations. And don't teenagers ever need to breath?

The kid continued blithely on. "And I can think of a few reasons why someone would be tracking EMF through a high school, but that's not what I meant. I guess I should have asked, 'what was that?' because that doesn't look anything like the EMF meters we use in science lab."

"Oh." Dean stared down at the device. He wasn't use to people who had experience with the off the shelf version of the thing They weren't that common outside of certain circles. "It started life as a Sony Walkman," he told the kid, a little bit of pride slipping into his voice. He turned it around to show the brand name on what was left of the original casing.

"A what?" the kid asked, brows furrowing in confusion.

"A Walkman," Dean repeated.

The confusion did not clear up.

"A personal cassette player?" Dean tried.

The younger face cleared and lit with understanding. "Oh! Right. Before streaming and smart phones, you had to have a different device for... well, everything, huh? That thing must be an antique."

"Antique?!" Dean sputtered, indignant at the term. Sammy would be laughing his ass off if he'd heard that. Good thing he was flipping his way through old year books in the library.

"Well... maybe not antique," the kid acknowledged. "That would be vinyl records, I guess."

Dean's brain fitzed out for a moment. Vinyls weren't that old; his dad had owned quite the collection back in Lawrence, before the fire. "Classics" were not the same as "antique." What would this kid call a phonograph? Ancient?

The kid had not stopped talking for Dean's momentary lapse of attention. "But they are definitely old-fashioned. I mean, cassette tapes were before CDs, which was the thing before digital copy. MP-3 files were kind of the Kiss of Death for hard copy music. Seriously. No music production company has mass-produced cassette tapes in this decade."

"This milennia, technically." A girl's voice contributed. Her tone was dry and bored as she continued. "By the year 2000, cassette tapes accounted for less than 5% of total music sales."

"MJ!" the boy greeted, Dean temporarily forgotten. "What's going on?"

"Peter. We have study group and you're going to be late." She paused, and added, "Again."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, I'm coming, I just got a little sidetracked." Peter gestured at Dean and the Frankenstein Walkman.

"Uh-huh. You get distracted and vanish a lot." MJ cocked an eyebrow. "It's kinda weird."

"Oh." Peter deflated a little bit.

"You're lucky all your friends are weird, too. They like that about you. Don't be late." Message having been delivered, MJ started walking off.

Peter turned back to Dean. "So, uh, I gotta go. Its been nice talking to you and all, but MJ's right I'm gonna be late. I got this thing for class and after that I've got this internship thing for Mr. Stark. But its been nice and -and I will definitely look into that 'walking man' thing later. I'm sure its a fascinating bit of science history Bye!" Then he trotted off down the hall back to his teenage, high school life.

"History?" Dean sputtered. "Antique? I'm not that old!"

Another random teenager walking past snorted and said, "Yeah, you are."

Dean whipped his head around, mortally offended.

"Flash!" a teacher's voice called down the hall. "Be respectful!"

Once the hall cleared again, Dean nodded to himself. "Yep. I would rather be in Purgatory than back in high school. Definitely."