AN: FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND RIGHT IN THE WORLD, PLEASE READ:

Welcome to Of The World, sequel to It's The End. If you want to read this story, I beg of you, PLEASE READ IT'S THE END FIRST. It introduces characters, sets up the plot, and gets the mysteries/action/romance started. You can think of these two stories as one big book, which I split into two based on season: It's The End follows season 4, Of The World is season 5.

What I will tell you is this: It's Cas/OC, Action/Adventure, and expands on the plot in a unique way that is not A: just a recital of episodes line-by-line (though some chapters do follow the episodes pretty closely), and B: while following an original character, doesn't take too much of the world-saving focus off of Sam and Dean. This isn't to completely rewrite the plot; rather, it's to add more dimension, mysteries, character growth, and romance, plus a female who kicks some ass and shakes up a familiar story.

Also, after the first few chapters, it will be rated M for blush-able scenes (and who doesn't like that?)

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy, and please review with any and all thoughts you might have. And hold on tight!

Love, Maat

Chapter 1: Sympathy for the Devil

Dean and Sam winced, throwing up their hands to block the blinding, fiery light, expecting to be burnt to a crisp. After a few moments of white nothing they heard the soft buzz of air-conditioning and their legs were suddenly molded onto small, soft seats.

Dean mentally checked his vitals: Still breathing, check. Heart pumping, check. Had not peed himself in fear, check, thank God. Slowly he lowered his hands from his eyes and looked around.

"What the hell?"

They were sitting on a plane, still half hunched in preparation for the oncoming attack. A children's movie buzzed blithely in the background. The other passengers were reading or dozing lightly, completely unaware of the two men who had just appeared in their midst.

"I don't know," Sam breathed, patting himself down to make sure that he was really still there. His head shot up. "Where's Eli?"

They scanned the seats around them. "There," Dean muttered, pointing to the blonde at the edge of the center aisle a few rows down. The two brothers unsnapped their seat belts and squeezed out of the seats.

"Eli, hey!" Sam said, squatting next to her. She was unconscious, her head lolling back against the headrest, her breathing rapid. Her eyes were scrunched up as if in pain. "Eli, come on, wake up." He shook her lightly, sharing a panicked look with his brother.

Eli let out a huge gasp and sat straight up in the seat, her green eyes wide and terrified, lashing out instinctively. One closed fist slammed Sam in the eye.

"Ow, shit!" Sam exclaimed, falling back on his butt and quickly righting himself. Some of the other passengers glanced at the trio – the tall man crouching in the aisle, holding his eye, the man in the leather jacket looming over him, the woman with the freckles looking like she had just woken from a horrible dream- with disinterest before returning to their magazines.

"Sam? Dean? What the fuck happened?" she yelped a little too loudly, looking around her. "Are we dead? Is this heaven?" Her head pounded with fear and adrenaline, her fingers clenching convulsively around the armrests so that the plastic dug into her skin. It certainly felt real enough. "Because if so, this sucks."

"We're not dead," Dean said, then eyed the plane suspiciously. "At least, I don't think so."

"We're not dead," Sam confirmed, taking his hand away from his eye; the skin was already starting to puff and yellow, forming what would become a nice shiner. "Something must have pulled us out of that room."

Eli inspected her hands and arms with wonder. "And put me back together," she mumbled. Her clothes were cleaner than they'd been in years, and a tentative prod revealed that there was no blood on her face. Her whole body was perfectly intact. She felt balanced, and knew instinctively that everything was back to normal. She could no longer teleport. Her power boost was gone.

The intercom crackled and the pilot spoke, his voice the familiar, calming drone of all pilots. "Folks, quick word from the flight deck. We're just passing over Ilchester, then Ellicott City, on our initial descent into Baltimore—"

"Ilchester?" Dean asked. He turned, leaning over an elderly couple to peer out the window at the patchwork of lights below. "Weren't we just there?"

The pilot continued to speak. "So if you'd like to stretch your legs, now would be a good time to—HOLY CRAP!"

A blinding column of light shot up from the ground, whirling like a luminous tornado. A high frequency noise whined in their ears; Eli covered her head and groaned, feeling the familiar shaking of the atoms she got when near extreme power. The plane banked, hard, to avoid the light, tossing people violently. Sam and Dean, still standing next to Eli's chair, were thrown roughly to the ceiling before crashing in a heap on the floor.

"Son of bitch," Dean moaned, in a distinctly terrified voice. "This is not my day."

They sped down the road in a rented car, the night slick and wet around them, lights rushing by the windows in a haze. Sam was switching idly through radio stations, hearing only bad news. After a minute he shut it off, unable to take it anymore.

"Dean, look," he started quietly. Dean shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road.

"Don't say anything."

The minutes ticked by. Finally Dean drew a long breath and said, in a clipped voice: "It's okay. We just got to keep our heads down and hash this out, all right?

Sam swallowed quietly. "Yeah, okay."

"All right," Dean said, relieved to change the subject. "All right, well, first things first—how did we end up on Soul Plane?"

Sam shrugged. "Angels, maybe? I mean, you know, beaming us out of harm's way?" He turned to Eli, who was sitting curled up in the back seat, watching the raindrops snake steadily down the widow with a blank look on her face. "You have any ideas, Eli?"

She looked at him slowly, her eyes hollow. "None," she said in a flat voice. "I have absolutely no idea how we're all sitting here alive right now. Or why we were even saved." Then she turned back to the window, her hands twisting thoughtlessly in the folds of her sweatshirt.

"Well, whatever," Dean said. "It's the least of our worries. We need to find Cas." He glanced in the rear-view window at Eli's pensive profile. "He's okay, Eli," he said with confidence. "You know Cas, he can take care of himself."

"Yeah," she said quietly, but without conviction.

Chuck's house looked like a tornado had hit it.

The three hunters walked through the devastated hallways. Beams lay haphazardly on the floor; books and papers were scattered everywhere. Paintings were upturned; glass and tile and broken china crunched under their feet. It was deathly silent.

"You better be the one to do what we talked about," Dean said to Eli in a quiet voice. "We can't risk your mind getting blown away too." She nodded and headed into the kitchen, drawing a knife from her boot.

There was a rustling noise. Chuck jumped out from the shadows, wielding a toilet plunger, which he used to whack Sam violently upside the head.

"Ow!" Sam cried, holding his temple and stumbling backward. "Will everyone please stop hitting me in the face?"

"Sam!" Chuck exclaimed, surprised. Sam nodded, clenching his jaw, his hand still pressed to his head.

"Hey, Chuck," Dean said as casually as he could, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.

"So...you're okay?" the prophet asked nervously, looking intensely at Sam. Sam gingerly lowered his arm from his face.

"Well, my head hurts," he said flatly.

"No, I mean…I mean, my… my last vision," Chuck stuttered. "You went, like, full-on Vader. Your body temperature was one-fifty. Your heart rate was two hundred. Your eyes were black. And then I saw Eli disintegrating in Lucifer's light…" He paused, looking around with panic in his eyes. "Where is she? Is she okay?"

"I'm right here, Chuck," came Eli's voice from behind him. She walked wearily out of the kitchen, looking like crap: skin sallow, bags under her eyes, hair flat and sticking to her face. "I'm okay." She stared at him with a sick look of fear. "Is Cas…"

"He's dead," Chuck said apologetically. Eli's face crumpled. "Or gone. The Archangel smote the crap out of him. I'm sorry."

She hung her head, breathing deeply, then raised it again, her eyes cold, jaw clenched, face impossibly stoic.

"You're sure?" Dean asked, glancing at Eli. "I mean, maybe he just vanished into the light or something."

Chuck shook his head. "Oh, no. He, like, exploded," he said in a shaky voice, like he could hardly describe what he had seen. He wrapped his half-destroyed bathrobe around his thin body, looking slightly crazed. "Like a water balloon of chunky soup."

Eli closed her eyes. Chuck looked back at her and gulped. "Oh, ah…sorry." She said nothing, just shook her head and turned her back on them.

Sam was oblivious to the undertones of the conversation. He stepped forward, tilting his head and looking at Chuck with a mixture of embarrassment and disgust on his face. "You got a…" he started, motioning to his own ear.

Tentatively Chuck reached into his hair. "Uh...right here?"

Sam shook his head, indicating the other side. Chuck switched the toilet plunger he was still holding to his right hand. He rooted around in his thicket of messy hair for a moment, then winced, a look of absolute horror on his face. "Oh. Oh God." He pulled something out from right above his ear, holding it as far away from his body as he could while still looking at it intently. "Is that a molar? Do I have a molar in my hair?" He sighed, close to tears, and let out a little whimper. "This has been a really stressful day."

Dean groaned, shoving his hands even deeper into his jacket pockets. "Cas, you stupid bastard."

"Stupid?" Sam asked. "He was trying to help us."

Dean threw him a look, then glanced at Eli, who was still standing ramrod straight, her back to them. "Yeah, exactly."

There was a pause. "So, what now?" Sam asked. Dean shrugged.

"I don't know."

Chuck suddenly winced, looking heavenward. "Oh, crap." Eli spun around at the exact same time, sharing a look with the prophet. Her hands, one of them bloody, slowly clenched into shaking fists.

"What?" Sam asked, looking between the two of them.

"I can feel them," Chuck said nervously.

"Thought we'd find you here," a jovial voice announced from the devastated kitchen. Sam and Dean walked toward it, while Eli shrank back, hovering near the door. Chuck came to stand next to her; he put a hand on her shoulder reassuringly and she leaned into it, grateful for the support. "Playtime's over, Dean," Zachariah said pointedly, taking a step toward the brothers. "Time to come with us."

Dean took a shaky step back. "You just keep your distance, asshat."

The angel looked slightly confused. "You're upset."

Eli stood perfectly still and let them argue. She stared at Zachariah through lowered eyes, her face twisted into something ugly. There was a rage bubbling inside of her that was like nothing she had ever felt. It was like all of the panic and fear and desperation and deep, bone-aching sadness had been melted down and converted into sheer, blind hatred. She wanted to kill Zachariah. She wanted to kill him like she had never wanted to kill anything in her life. Her hands literally shook with the desire to wrap them around his neck and choke him until the light flickered out of his eyes. She thought back to the molar Chuck had found in his hair, then forced it away. She wanted anger; she wanted this slow burning, blind fury. It was so much better than despair.

She pulled herself back to the conversation. "His vessel?" Dean was saying with incredulity. "Lucifer needs a meat suit?"

"He is an angel," Zachariah said, turning to look at his two angelic cronies with a slight condescending chuckle. "Them's the rules." He faced Dean again, suddenly serious. "And when he touches down, we're talking Four Horsemen, red oceans, fiery skies—the greatest hits. You can stop him, Dean, but you need our help."

Dean took a slow, steady step forward. "You listen to me, you two-faced douche. After what you did, I don't want jack squat from you!"

Zachariah face warped, the genial façade gone. "You listen to me, boy! You think you can rebel against us? As Lucifer did?" Suddenly he looked past Dean, really noticing Eli for the first time. "And look who's here as well. The rebellious little Nephilim. You know, we finally figured out how you jumped up the power ladder." He chuckled, but there was no mirth in it. Eli's face went dangerously closed, becoming so furious it drained her of all visible emotion. He swung a finger back at forth at her like it was a ticking pendulum. "Naughty girl. Shouldn't have been surprised, though, considering what your father did. Your very existence does seem to corrupt those around you, doesn't it?"

Eli did nothing but clench her fist tighter, and blood dripped from it to spot the ground sticky red. Zachariah looked puzzled. "You're bleeding."

"Dean's idea," she spat in a voice that was lower and harsher than her usual tones. "A little insurance policy in case you dicks showed up."

In one swift movement she pulled out the sliding kitchen door and slammed her palm on the angel-banishing sigil, watching with satisfaction as it flared with power.

"No!" Zachariah managed to cry out, lurching forward, but white light filled the room and blew him away. Dean smirked.

"We learned that from our friend Cas, you son of a bitch," he yelled to the empty room. Eli merely dropped her hand from the sigil and stared at her bloody palm, her shoulders slumped and face blank. Behind her, Chuck let out a groan.

"This sucks ass."