Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Happy New Year! Enjoy this sequel to Tricksters and Gods!
Sam Winchester was looking for a cheap apartment to rent. After his fight with his father and his brother, he wanted nothing to do with hunting for a long, long time. And besides, law had always interested him.
While he was looking through the ads, he almost ran down some poor guy who had a coffee in his hand. Beside him, his companion snorted in amusement.
"Not easy being short, is it?" snickered his friend.
"I am so sorry about that!" said Sam, helping him up.
The man was about five foot six, maybe eight if he were pushing the guess. He had short red hair that just barely reached his neck and dark eyes that seemed to see right through you. He wore clean pressed clothes, mostly a clean white shirt with red trim covered by a black coat. His jeans were fairly new and from what Sam could tell brand name. But it was his aura that really drew you in.
"It's alright. Though if that laughing lunatic doesn't shut up I'm going to kick his ass later," said the man he almost walked over.
He noticed the ads in Sam's hand.
"Looking for an apartment are we?"
Sam looked sheepish.
"Most of them are either already taken, the other person living there is impossible to deal with, or they might come on to me later," he said. He was not rooming with a girl. No way in hell. That path could only lead to disaster.
The guy snorted.
"I might be able to help. I recently found an apartment, but the rent is way too high for me to get it on my own. You would not believe how much they complain when you keep trying to sneak in a dog in the cheaper ones, and after a year of trying to find a cheap pet-friendly place I've about given up."
Sam blinked, before a slow grin found it's way onto his face. He had always wanted a dog, but traveling on the road constantly and the fact there was limited space for him once he had his growth spurt made it impossible.
"Sam Winchester."
"Harry 'Loki' Potter," he said, shaking Sam's outstretched hand. Seeing Sam's look, he smirked. "People call me Loki because I love pranks so much...and they claim I have the silver tongue of the god himself."
"He's also the best hacker on campus," piped Harry's friend.
"This lunatic is Gabriel. And don't freak out if you can see through him occasionally, he's actually an AI."
Sam blinked.
"AI as in..."
"Artificial Intelligence...though some days I swear he's more intelligent than half the idiots in the Law Club," said Harry annoyed.
"Also his personal assistant, the reason why he still has electricity, water and internet, and the only one who can tolerate his snark on the really, really bad days when he has to deal with morons," chirped Gabriel.
Sam stared.
"I didn't know AI's actually existed," said Sam impressed.
"You just need to know how to program them right. If you're lucky I might make one for you by Christmas," said Harry, "They can be uploaded in almost any electronic with a wireless signal, and they run off the batteries."
"I have a laptop," offered Sam.
"Which would make the perfect place to store the main programming for the AI. Honestly, sometimes it's harder to escape Gabriel."
The AI actually stuck out his tongue at Harry, making Sam laugh.
"And this...is the apartment. We can have up to a medium-sized dog, if I pay him a hundred extra," said Harry...before he added "Or I can pay him two hundred for a large breed. Personally I would rather wait before I started giving him that kind of cash."
Sam agreed completely.
"This is ten times better than anything I've seen in a week. What did you say the rent was again?"
"Between the two of us two hundred fifty. Not including the extra amount for the dog. The utilities are mostly covered, but I'll pay for the internet," said Harry immediately.
Sam grinned.
"Count me in."
"I was hoping you'd say that. Hope you don't mind, but I put the lease in my name," said Harry.
Sam shook his head. He could care less about the lease. He was just glad to be moving out of those noisy student dorms for those who were lucky enough to get a scholarship. Studying was nearly impossible with all the partying. And best of all, Harry was studying Law the same as he was.
It took him two hours the next day once the security deposit was paid, and he was finally able to sleep somewhere quiet. He hadn't known what a luxury silence could be when he had opted to stay in the student dorms the first week. Five minutes of hearing drunken idiots partying and he was almost ready to rent a crappy motel room!
He did, however quickly realize that his hunting habits weren't entirely gone when Gabriel walked in, translucent. He started to reach for a salt-shell gun when he remembered A) Gabriel wasn't some ghost, and B) he didn't have any guns on him. All he had were his knives, which were the only weapons he had left.
Harry had taken one look at his collection and actually snorted.
"You call those knives?" he said. Then to the eternal shock of Sam, he went into his room and brought out several knives and daggers of varying sizes.
"You're not going to quote Crocodile Dundee are you?" asked Sam suspiciously.
"Who?"
"We are so having a movie night if you've never heard of Crocodile Dundee," deadpanned Sam, before he asked "And where on earth did you find so many blades?"
"I collect them and statistically there are more uses for a knife than there is a gun. Besides, this isn't actually a knife, but a short sword," said Harry, lifting the longest one up.
Sam looked over his collection. Most of them had seen some use, and it looked like Harry at least practiced with his weapons instead of hanging them up like most people. He had the tell-tale signs of slight nicks on his hand from where the blade slipped, or he tested the sharpness.
"I'd be careful with that one. All of them are sharpened regularly," cautioned Harry. Sam had picked up one of the smaller daggers.
"So you're a blade fighter?" asked Sam.
"I prefer them to guns. So much more reliable, unless you buy something made of the cheaper metal, or worse, precious metals. Those have the worst habit of breaking unless it's made by someone who knows what they're doing," said Harry.
Hearing that, Sam immediately went to get the three silver weapons he had on hand. Just because he gave up hunting for a while, didn't mean he was going to put down all the lessons.
Harry inspected them critically under the light.
"They've seen some use, and they were sharpened by someone semi-competent. However you'd be better off getting new ones soon. These things are almost ready to break."
Sam snorted.
"Like I could afford that. I can barely pay the rent," said Sam.
Harry gave Sam a calculating look.
"How good are you with the longer blades?"
"Awkward, at best. Why?"
"Hang on..." said Harry, before he returned five minutes later. In his hands was a short sword made of what was clearly silver.
"You really do like collecting blades," said Sam amused.
"Like I said, I prefer knives and daggers to guns. Less noise and easier to conceal. Did you know there's actually a decent amount of space on the roof? I could show you how to fight properly with a sword," offered Harry.
Sam almost suspected Harry to be a hunter like him. Except none of the hunters he knew would have something as advanced as Gabriel bothering them during a hunt, especially since he could easily be confused for a ghost.
"The only issue being that we might have to deal with horny idiots," said Sam.
"A few firecrackers should be enough to dissuade them of using it," deadpanned Harry. Sam snorted in amusement. That sounded cruel, but hilarious.
Sam had never been more thankful to have Harry as a roommate than when finals came around. Not only did he have a good idea what most of the questions were asking, he was able to come up with logical arguments for the mock cases!
He never would have known how effective history could be when using it against someone else.
Most people in the law club had to fight to be on their tag-team, because Harry was not only ruthless when he was the 'prosecutor', but every time they took on a mock case, they always won! And when they were the 'defense' (which was rare) their client always got either a lesser sentence or off completely of whatever charges they were on.
Unless of course the person acting as their 'client' annoyed Harry too much. Then they were lucky to avoid 'prison'.
Sam was just glad Harry didn't mind having him act as his 'assistant', since he preferred to keep Gabriel under wraps. Well, that and he didn't want it well known that Gabriel wasn't even a real person. The less people knew about the fact Harry had working holographic technology, the happier they were...besides, the sheer prank value alone when he walked through things barely big enough for his 'avatar' to go through and scare people was worth keeping his silence on the matter.
"I swear Harry, sometimes I think you're already a lawyer with how good you are at this."
Harry smirked.
"You're not the first to say something like that. Which reminds me, remember how I said I would make a personal AI just for you?"
Sam perked up. Gabriel was beyond useful and he also made one of the best conversation partners he ever had.
Harry had in his hands a USB.
"Consider this my Christmas present to you," said Harry. Sam had actually forgotten Christmas was right around the corner.
Once Sam hooked it up to his computer and waited five minutes for the file to download, he looked at Harry oddly.
"Where'd you get the idea for this one?"
"I have this series I follow obsessively called Supernatural, and one of the main characters was called Sam. So I figured the Dean character would match you perfectly."
"Ironic my AI has the same name as my brother," said Sam. He was trying very hard not to be freaked out that Harry had somehow known what Dean looked like, or close enough that it was easy to tell who the AI was based off of. He even got the eye color right!
"You have a brother?"
"Dean's older than me, but he's not as interested in learning," said Sam.
"Sounds like my family. Out of all of them I'm the only one who would ever bother going to college. My older brother is an idiot," said Harry in fond annoyance.
Sam blinked.
"What's your older brother like?"
"Tall, blond with blue eyes, arrogant and a complete idiot who thinks smashing things is a wonderful way to use diplomacy," deadpanned Harry.
While he did miss Thor, the fact of the matter was he was much happier being far, far away from Asgard and the worry Odin would have a total bitch fit over the fact he had three of the needed artifacts to complete the set. No way was he dealing with that.
"Smashing things?" said Sam in disbelief.
"My brother sometimes works as a blacksmith, and thanks to the size of the hammer he uses he has absurd strength. Most of the time he works as a professional soldier and as a result his decorum is lacking. Though it's still better than the idiots he calls his friends."
There was no love lost between him and the Warriors Three. He hated them and they barely tolerated his existence. The only reason they put up with each other outside the battlefield was to keep Thor happy.
Sam snorted.
"I doubt my brother would even know what the word 'decorum' means. Not to mention he's a damn man-whore," said Sam.
"Care to get drunk while we debate our older brothers to see who's is worse?"
"Count me in," said Sam.
He was soundly beaten by Harry, though it would take weeks before he got over the weirdness factor with his AI that looked (and much to his horror acted) almost exactly like his brother Dean. It even countered the same way Dean did when he was annoyed with Sam.