trans_9 | He is my defense, I shall not be greatly moved.

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He is my defense, I shall not be greatly moved.

Nothing had ever, ever prepared the MacManus brothers for being abducted by aliens. This wasn't covered in school, or in any of the extra lessons Ma made them take. Nobody at the slaughterhouse ever talked about this, though one or two people may have mentioned it in a pub or bar or insert place serving alcohol here. Those people, though, they hadn't taken very seriously. Here, even the unshakable certainty of their Mission was trembling in the midst of so much foreign and bizarre.

So after the 'OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK' factor had died down a little - definitely not completely, but a little - and the big group had been disbanded, the twins went where they felt sure to get some guidance.

During the very brief tour of the city, Connor noticed something in the distance. He'd nudged Murphy about it, but they left checking it out until later. When 'later' came, and they checked, it was, well, "Jesus fuckin' Christ! That's the fuckin'- that's- that's the-! Fuck!" the Vatican.

Ten minutes later, they'd calmed down sufficiently to stop cussing and were walking through the eerily quiet St. Peter's Square. Slipping wordlessly through the doors of the Basilica itself, they made their way to pray. At the moment it didn't matter why these buildings were here. The aliens might be overstepping themselves, in which case they would die soon. On the other hand, it might just be a sign. Before they could decide, Murphy and Connor needed advice.

Nearly an hour later they reemerged, troubled but much calmer. There had been no direct answers - there rarely were - but the two of them were ready to wait it out. Whatever happened here, their Mission remained unchanged.

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"Look, in every fuckin' good action movie that ever was, what d'ya always need an' never have? Rope." Bow to Connor's logic!

"Riiight," Sam said, looking at Connor like he were crazy. He shook his head at the random logic Connor seemed to be using to justify carrying around a large length of rope. Glancing around at the city around them, something caught his eye. Off to the side, wedged between to massive buildings that Sam didn't recognize, stood a shack. There was no other way to describe it.

To say that it was out of place amongst the rest of the massive structures would be an understatement. Everything else in the city was not only big, but also impressive in its design while this tiny building looked like it'd been practically thrown together at the last minute.

"Ok, that's strange," he muttered aloud to himself.

He glances at where Sam's looking.

"Strange? 'S just some old shack. Maybe they keep the tools there." After all, whoever 'they' are, they obviously need to build all these things somehow. A tool shed makes perfect sense.

"Doesn't look like anythin' t'me." Connor shrugs. "Looks borin'." Come on, there are pretty shiny big buildings, who cares about a shack?

"Yeah, that's what I mean," Sam replied, his gaze still transfixed on the seemingly uninteresting shack in front of him. "Every other building here is practically an architectural masterpiece. Why throw a 'tool shed' right smack dab out in the open amongst all this?"

All right, so it's a weird tool shed, Connor will give him that. But really, sometimes a cigar is a cigar and a shed is a shed.

"Feng shui?"

"Funny," Sam replied, the corner of his mouth curling up in a half-smile. Dean would get along great with these two, scarily, in fact.

He stared at the out-of-place building for a few more seconds before finally shrugging. "Only one way to find out, I guess," he said, nodding in the direction of the shack.

"Personally I'm bettin' it's a toilet. Ain't them 'homey,' country feels back in style for that sort o' shit?"

As he talked, Murphy headed for the oh-so-out-of-place shack, hand on his gun only contradicting his words and confident steps slightly.

"Yeah, for some reason they fucking think people fucking like to shit in a nasty wood box."

Connor appears similarly at ease, but also keeps a hand on his gun- after all, this was a pretty freaky place.

Sam grinned as he accompanied his two companions into the tiny, rust-colored shack. As they neared, Sam heard a low--barely audible--but still distinct ticking sound coming from inside the building. His brow furrowed in perplexed curiosity as he stepped up to the door and pushed it open.

Moving inside, Sam's eyes widened as he looked at the small room around him. All around him, covering all four walls from top to bottom, were clocks. Or, at least, the ones he recognized to be clocks. There were others that looked completely alien to him. "What the..." Sam said, looking around, bewildered.

The first thing Connor thinks when he hears the ticking is "Oh fuck, a bomb."

This was not what he was expecting.

"...Someone likes to stay pretty fuckin' regular."

"Apparently," Sam said with a slight nod. He moved further (as much 'further' as he could considering the shack's size) to give Connor and Murphy more room to enter. His eyes drifted across the room, the expression on his face still perplexed.

"So much for the tool shed idea," he added, though--personally--Sam was beginning to wish it had been just a tool shed.

Connor follows him cautiously, looking around.

"Why the fuck d'ye need this many fucking clocks? I mean, what the fuck?" Connor preffered the toolshed idea, too.

Murphy trailed closely after Sam and his brother, turning to look all the way around.

"Fuck, who keeps around so many fuckin' broken clocks?"

Sam glanced around at the all the clocks and, sure enough, they were all broken. Despite the low echo of ticking that filled the room, not a single time piece--the ones Sam recognized anyway--was moving. All the clocks that appeared to be normal twelve-hour Earth clocks seemed to be stuck. The minute hand bounced back and forth from somewhere in between the eleven and twelve while the hour hand appeared to be locked at three o'clock.

At first he'd just thought it was the one clock, but when a second clock and a third and even a fourth was exactly the same way, Sam realized that there was no way these clocks were just 'broken.'

"Who keeps around so many broken clocks that are all stuck just before three?" Sam asked, returning Murphy's and Connor's questions with a question of his own.

"Someone who fuckin' hates three o'clock, apparently." Connor wanders up to the twitching platform curiously.

"This one's exac'ly the same." In a fit of curiosity, he climbs onto the platform, barely fitting. "What th' fuck do they do if they hit three?"

Murphy followed Connor closely, ready to pull him off. "What the fuck d'ye think you're doin'? Get the fuck down, before it explodes or ya throw up all over the place."

As an after thought, he added, "Move the hand first, so we can find out." Murphy is perfectly willing to sacrifice his twin in the name of science.

Sam rotated in place, his mouth hanging open as he took in all the clocks seemingly trapped between 2:55 and 3:00. Did everything in this place have to be on the Sinclair Lewis side of weird?

"Maybe it's a doomsday clock?" he thought aloud, glancing over his shoulder to see Connor climbing over the face of the large clock in the middle of the floor. "You know, like the one on the cover the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists from the University of..." Sam fell silent, realizing he'd just revealed his 'inner dork.'

"Nevermind..." he said, suddenly feeling self-conscious.

"The hell use would a fuckin' doomsday clock be in here?" Connor can't resist. He pushes the hands around to 3 o'clock, quickly scrambling away from the clock and watching it warily. It wouldn't, well... explode, would it?

Murphy grabbed Connor's arm and pulled him back further. "Fuck! What'd ya fuckin' do that for?"

Ignore the fact that he told him to. That is immaterial and never actually happened.

One by one every single one of the clocks in the shack ticked to three o'clock.

When they did, a single bell chimed three times, and there was an almost insect-like noise, like gears clicking all throughout the shack. The clock behind the platform was a large grandfather clock with the pendulum clicking away, but the pendulum swung to one side and stopped. The panel behind the pendulum slid back like a door--and indeed it was large enough for them to fit through, even if they had to crouch.

A figure flickered before them. ??.

"You've found it. The flash of enlightenment in all the blood and thunder. One speck of truth in the endless black. It isn't God who kills the children, only the ones that think they are Gods. If you dare, take a look. Find out how far down the rabbit hole goes and gain one piece of the puzzle so you can find out who's lopping off heads. But keep in mind, you will not come back unchanged. You impose meaning on your existence--in most cases there is no universal truth. But here, for once, there is, and the truth changes everything."

Sam was just about to cry out 'wait!' when Connor moved the hour hand to three o'clock. Too late. Then came the chimes, and the clicking, then the door, and--finally--the faceless figure. Dressed in a trench coat and a fedora, the man's appearance alone seemed mysterious and confusing. What he (or she, or maybe 'it' was more appropriate) had said was even more so.

Sam stood wide-eyed, staring into the opening of the newly discovered passaged with a mixture of shock and bemusement. "Ok..." he finally said, looking to the twins. "...nice job. Now who the fuck was that?"

Connor just stared, bewildered, at the passage. "Er. I've no fuckin' idea, man, but he was a fuckin' weirdo." He wasn't sure he liked the gist of what the man had said, but...he was also very curious. And he'd always been a man for the truth, of sorts.

"Should we go in?" Nothing ventured, nothing gained; but then, nothing lost, either. T creepy man had said that going down there could change everything; Connor wasn't sure he wanted to risk it. Though, as was said, he was very curious.

"If we're goin' in, you're going first, ye daft fuckin' bastard." Murphy sure wasn't, anyway. Not that he didn't want to go in, because he was curious too. He just wasn't getting eaten for something his twin did, even on his orders.

"You're the one that fuckin' opened it."

"Oi, ye fuckin' told me t'see what happened if I changed the time, y'daft fucker! 'S all your fault!"

Connor refuses to be shoved in first. If he goes first, it'll be of his own free will. And not because of his brother. Damn it.

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