Disclaimer: Nothing you reconize belongs to me

Warnings: mild language, sexual innuendos and themes, future torture, SLASH GabrielxSam.

Chapter 1: A New Old Hunt

Phillip Mugen sat around in Caterby's roadside bar. Ever since Harvelle's burned down over two years ago it was the closest place to a hunter get-together he could find. A bar where he felt safe knowing that everyone around him was packing and no demon or vampire would be stupid enough to wander into with the occasional innocent civilian passing through the area that would stop in for a drink and to check out the old rock music on the jukebox.

The place was nothing compared to Harvelle's though. He'd seen Ellen only once since it was destroyed, taking the quirky computer genuis Ash with it. Rumor was that both Ellen and Jo were dead now, in heaven with the mullet-headed whack job. He'd give anything to see that mullet again though, or hear Ellen's voice yelling at fellow hunters to put their weapons away when an unknown car pulled up or have his butt whooped by Jo in the old arcade shooting game.

Rumor also was that the Winchester boys were the ones that got the both of them killed. Like father like sons, the Winchester family seemed to always be responsible for a death of a Harvelle and Phil swirled the whiskey around in his glass, getting lost in his memories before taking a long swig. The liquid burned down his throat, leaving a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach and a fuzzy sound in his head.

Craig the bartender wiped imaginary flecks off the counter infront of Phil and looked around to make sure no civilians were around.

"Rough hunt?"

Phil toke another swig and grimanced.

"You have no idea. Ran into this - this creature. At first I thought it was a Leszy...you know, the Salvic forest shapeshifting spirit that likes to play pranks? In Wilmington, North Carolina there was this thing luring stupid college kids out into the woods where they'd get attacked by - get this- sterotypical werewolves. Like those Indians from that Twilight shit, ya know, big 6 ft wolves. Turns out the kids were actually wanted by the police for running an underground dog-fighting ring but still... I have no idea what that creature was but...damn. Materialized a damned saber-toothed lion out of nowhere that almost toke my head off before I managed to shove a stake through it's heart. Seemed to do the trick though." He smirked. "Sonovabitch dropped dead faster than a watermelon being thrown off the top of a building."

Craig shook his head. "Materalized things out of thin air and killed people that deserved it in an ironic way? I dunno pal, sounds like the Trickster to me."

"The Trickster?" Phil asked.

A man with a dark black beard and a scar from his cheek to his chin sat down next to him.

"Yea, you've probably heard of them..they're creatures with unreconizable power over time and space. Vanishes into thin air and creates impossible things from nothing?"

Phil nodded, thinking back to the saber-toothed lion that had been extinct for hundreds of years and suddenly appered out of nowhere just as a seeminly normal man in a red button-down shirt appered, also from thin air, behind him with a soft blow of the wind.

Craig put his washrag away. "Rumor has it that the stake doesn't actually kill the sonovabitch. That he's actually the Norse God Loki and he just pretends to die."

Phil toke a second to think. "But can't most gods and goddesses be killed by being stabbed? I mean, no one worships them anymore so their so weak." He let out a rough laugh that sounded more like a bark.

A asian girl with long black hair, slanted brown eyes and tribal tatoos all the way from her shoulder to her wrists leaned onto the counter on the other side of Phil. When she spoke it wasn't what Phil was expecting at all, anything but an asian accent.

"Well it's eitha the same damned thang pretendin ta die and then healing itself when we're gone, or there are hundreds of Tricksters out thar. 'Cause everone i've eva talked ta about it says he always looks tha same." Her eyes met Phils own grey ones. "Betcha yours looked tha same - dark ginger hair, green eyes, pale with weird ears and looksa lika human bout this tall?" She held her hand up infront of her exampling the height.

Phil nodded his head. "So no ones been able to kill this thing? What is it really?"

Craig slid the hunter with the beard another cold Miller draft. "No one knows, like I said, theres rumors of it being Loki. Your the first i've heard to think of Leszy, but don't those have glowing eyes when their in human form? Some have thought it was a Tulpa, or Coyote... but no one has been able to kill it. Heck, I know some people that have chopped it up into pieces or burned it and scattered the ashes."

"Unless thars more than one and they all jus' look tha same." The asian girl spoke up and Craig nodded, starting to wipe down a dirty pint glass.

Phil sat back, suddenly feeling irritated and the need for another glass of whiskey that Craig gladly filled for him. It angered him to think that those kids had died just because some creature thought of itself as walking karma and he'd spent all that time and almost died to take down the bastard that did it...and it might not even be dead. It might have just sat up and pulled that stake out as soon as he'd walked away. He gripped the glass tightly. If there was one thing Phil hated, it was loosing.

"Tell me everything you know about this Trickster. Everything it's created, everyone it's killed, everything that everyone has ever tried to kill it with - everything."

SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN

A few miles away Gabriel walked into a clearing in the woods. The bloody carcass of his saber-toothed lion vanished with a wave of his hand before he bent down over the remains of his own doppleganger and sighed. Hunters had been getting more and more vicious. He'd seen the cold fury in the hunter's eyes and thought he'd be more aggressive and be one of the ones that liked to hack their enemies into pieces so he'd vouched for creating a double of himself and sitting back in the trees to watch the show.

He had to give the hunter...what was his name again? Phillip Mugen? Props for taking down the large prehistoic mammal but seeing someone murdering something that looked just like you without a second's hesitation or regret never sat well with someone's nerves, not even an Arch Angels. His clone vanished in wisps of light smoke and he ran a hand through his ginger hair.

He'd been laying low for awhile. Going all the way across the country whenever he felt the need to smite some jerk out of pure boredom. Sam and Dean were currently in Arizona so he'd come all the way over to North Carolina to work his mojo. If word got back to the hunters that he was still up to his pranks neither of them would be happy with him. It wasn't enough for him to just be on Team Free Will, noooo, they wanted him to be a good little guardian angel like the kids you see in Children's books with fluffy wings and harps.

He had news for them, Angels were warriors, not lullubies floating around on cummulus clouds. And Arch Angels like himself were the mightiest. Considering he was the only one of his brothers besides the low-ranking Castiel even down here on Earth trying to make any sort of difference during this war, he decided that he deserved a little bit of playtime. Most humans didn't even know the apocalypse was upon them so that difiantly didn't stop them from their wicked ways.

The college kids for example. They figured a good way to earn some booze money was by holding rabid dog fights in their fraturnity basement. They'd trained a Pit Bull and an Rottweiler to be aggressive through months of abuse and adopted poor, weak dogs from nearby animal shelters to throw into the middle of a jeering crowd to fight for it's life against the trained killers. His dad created dogs to be man's best friends...not for this. A weither his dad was a jackass that had Michael throw Lucifer into Hell and then toke off on their torn apart family, he still respected all of his dad's creations. So he'd lured the boys out into the woods, in groups of 3 or 4 at a time, waiting until they were good and lost, and then summoning Fenrir.

He'd been pretending to be Loki for the past two-thousand years, creating a massive Norse wolf like Fenrir came easier than anything else he'd ever manipulated out of thin air. The apperance of the god-like wolf had sent the kids into a panic, screaming and running for their lives the same way the dogs they'd thrown into their basements were. He could have sworn more than once they called Fenrir 'Jacob Black'...whatever that meant.

Unfortuntly a few escaped to describe Fenrir...which had lead the hunter here along with the evidence of the attacked victims. A town like Wilmington was a historic beach town that barely had foxes much less ginormous wolves frolicing around tearing people to shreads.

His mind wandered back to Sam and Dean. He should really probably get back to them. He'd been gone more than a couple of days and when he's absent for too long Dean starts to get nervous and suspicious that he's out there killing people. And he's right of course, but it'd best to avoid the famous Winchester's wrath.

His mind wandered to Sam in particular who was probably sitting up late on his laptop and needed a good hot chocolate topped with lots of whipped cream and a shoulder massage right about now. He smirked to himself before vanishing into thin air, the only sound was the soft flutter of invisible wings taking flight.

Back in Wilmington still, Phil checked his equipment and arsonal in the trunk of his Nissan XTerra. Under one arm he held several manilla folders with different case reports leading to the Trickster that held several photographs as well as any information he could get out of all the hunters in the bar that had gone up against the creature. It unnerved him a bit how powerful this thing was, but Phil had never yet lost a hunt and he wasn't about to start now. He slammed the trunk shut and walked around the SUV, yanking open the drivers side door and tossing the folders across into the passenger side seat.

End Chapter 1