Riley lays sideways on one of the chairs in Jerry's office. Her legs and head dangle over the armrests and she tosses a hacky sack into the air, and catches it. Each time she doesn't flinch, despite it almost hitting her in the face every time. Among Riley's many talents lies mastery of hacky sack.
You tend to pick on a few things when locked in a boring hotel room while your father and grandfather go out and hunt monsters.
"Stuff's covered in Sulfur." Jerry tells them. Riley glances at him and she almost doesn't catch the hacky sack. "You're sure?" Sam asks. Jerry nods and backs away from his computer. "Take a look yourself." Riley hears a loud clang out in the warehouse followed by swearing. Jerry sighs. "If you fellows will excuse me, I have an idiot to fire."
Riley points after Jerry with a smirk. "This is why I like him." Dean walks around to look at the microscope. "Riley, you like anyone with a sarcastic attitude or uses dark humor." Riley smiles. "You ain't wrong there." Dean hums as he looks at the sulfur. "Not too many things leave behind a sulfuric residue."
"Demonic possession?" Sam asks. Riley sits up. "Who called it? Hmm? Who called it not being a spirit?" Dean rolls his eyes and Riley goes back to her hacky sack. "It would explain how a mortal man would have the strength to open up an emergency hatch." Riley grabs her hacky sack and looks at her father. "Are you forgetting about Captain America?"
"If the guy was possessed, it's possible." Dean stands straight up. "This goes way beyond floating over a bed or barfing pea soup." Riley chuckles at Dean's 'The Exorcist' reference. "Pazuzu was one bad bitch." Riley says with a laugh.
"It's one thing to possess a person, but to use them to take down an entire airplane? You ever heard of something like this before?" Dean shakes his head. "Never." Sam and Dean turn to Riley. She looks at them and her hacky sack hits her face. "What?"
Dean raises an eyebrow at her and Riley sighs. "No, I'm not getting any weird vibes." Sam creases his brows. "Why are you acting to hyper?" Riley shrugs and grabs her hacky sack off the floor. "Dunno." She says honestly. "Why? You missing the bitchy attitude?" Riley says with an eyebrow raised. Dean chuckles. "There she is."
△
Riley lays on the hotel bed, eyes glued to the TV screen. She's watching 'The Conjuring 2' and keeps laughing. It's so unrealistic, and she is a trusted critic. She's met her fair share of demons. Speaking of which... "Riley, how is that helping with research?" Sam asks as he tapes another picture to the hotel wall.
Riley smirks. "It's educational. Helps you learn how not to be a dumbass in a hunting situation." Riley takes one of her hands out from under her chin. "Like, seriously, why did Ed just run in with nothing to use against Valak?" Riley puts her hand back under her chin and shakes her head. "Dumbass." She mutters.
Sam shakes his head. "So, every religion in every world culture has the concept of demons and demonic possession, right?" Riley snorts as the crosses in Janet's room flip upside down. "Christian, Native American, Hindu- You name it." Dean shakes his head. "Yeah, but none of them describe something like this."
Sam points at him. "That's not exactly true." Riley rolls her eyes. "Count on Sam to stretch it out. Never goes straight to the point." Sam glances at Riley. "According to Japanese beliefs, certain demons are behind certain disasters, both natural and man-made. One causes earthquakes. Another causes disease."
Dean makes a face. "And this one causes plane crashes." Riley makes a noise. "Well, it's important to have hobbies." Riley turns her body so she is facing Sam and Dean. "I myself have an evil plan in mind." Dean gives Riley a look. "And what's that?" Riley smirks. "So, say my life goes down the drain,"
Sam laughs. "Shut up Sammy." Riley snaps. "As I was saying. My life goes down the drain and I get a job at a fast food place. I go to hand the person their food and instead of saying 'Have a nice day' like normal people, I say 'Enjoy your food'." Riley smirks. "Everyone would automatically say 'thank you' and when they realize what happened, they will spend the rest of their day questioning their entire existence."
Riley smiles sweetly and Sam and Dean stare at her. Dean shakes his head. "You are so weird." Riley instantly shoots back. "I take after you." Dean rolls his eyes. "All right," Dean stands off the bed. "We have a demon that's evolved with the times," Riley laughs imagining a demon having a social media page.
"And found a way to ratchet up the body count?" Sam looks at his computer screen. "You know, who knows how many planes it's brought down before this one?" Dean 'humphs' and walks across the room. "What?" Sam asks. Riley glances at her father. She knows what this is about and she hates it too.
"I don't know, man. This isn't our normal gig. I mean, demons, they don't want anything- Just death and destruction for its own sake." Riley rolls her eyes. He has a point, but he's hiding what he's really worried about. Planes. The two Winchesters hate flying.
Well, Dean hates flying, but Riley hates heights.
"This is big. I wish dad was here." Riley frowns. "Yeah. Me too." Riley doesn't speak and Dean glances at her, seeing the pale look on her face.
Riley has tried to text John again but he won't answer. It's making her start to worry.
Dean's phone begins ringing and he pulls it out. "Hello?" He pauses for a moment. "Oh, hey, Jerry." Riley sits up on the bed and looks at Dean. "My pilot friend Chuck Lambert, is dead." Riley's eyes widened. "Wha- Jerry, I'm sorry. What happened?" Sam looks at Dean.
"He and his buddy went up in a small twin about an hour ago. The plane went down." Dean glances at Riley. It's the demon. It's escalating. "Where'd this happen?" Dean asks. "About 60 miles west of here, near Nazareth. Try to ignore the irony in that." Dean nods and hangs up.
"Another plane crash?" Sam asks. Dean nods. "Yeah. Let's go." Riley hops off the bed and stretches. She doesn't feel as hyper anymore which is good. "Riley, hurry up." Dean calls from the hotel room door. Riley nods, grabs her jacket and runs out the door.
△
"Sulfur?" Dean asks Jerry. They had gotten a sample of the yellow powder at the crash site then rushed back to Jerry. Jerry nods at Dean's question. "Well, that's great." Dean says with a sigh. "All right, that's two plane crashes involving Chuck Lambert. This demon sounds like it was after him. With all due respect to Chuck,"
"If that's the case, that would be the good news." Riley rests her head against Dean's arm. She's tired. She couldn't sleep last night. She kept dreaming of a black smoke that was almost constricting her.
"What's the bad news?" Dean asks as he puts an arm around Riley. "Chuck's plane went down exactly 40 minutes into the flight. And get this- So did flight 2485." Riley tiredly blinks her eyes. "40 minutes? What does that mean?" Jerry asks. Riley tries to force her eyes to stay open.
"It's biblical numerology." Riley answers groggily. Dean picks up her sentence. "Noah's Ark, it rained for 40 days. The number means death." Riley once found $40 on the sidewalk. She grabbed it and was almost hit by a car. She honestly doesn't know how she wasn't. Dean wasn't around and Riley was a daredevil as a child. She constantly ran off.
"I looked back and there have been six plane crashes over the last decade that all went down exactly 40 minutes in." Dean makes a face. "Any survivors?" He asks. "No or not until now, at least. Not until flight 2485, for some reason it's changed. And the cockpit voice recorder- Remember what the EVP said?"
"'No survivors'." Dean and Riley say at the same time. She's given up keeping her eyes open. Her mouth hangs open and it looks like she might start drooling onto Dean's shirt. "It's going after the survivors." Dean realizes. "It's trying to finish the job."
- author's notes -
So the hyper thing was an idea I started to have, but I scraped it because it wouldn't work for what I have planned
Riley was originally going to have some sort of reaction to sulfur. It would have made her hyper, or even high
but it doesn't work for my plan so it isn't happening