"So you're telling me that not only did the angels screw up that time line...they also closed off heaven?" said Gabriel, snacking on something very sugary.
Sam looked tired, but all around much happier after visiting Gabriel. Dean didn't ask, as he had a good idea what the two were up to while he was in that alternate.
Dean nodded.
"Idiots... what the hell did they expect to happen with your trust issues back before Arael showed up?"
"And to make matters worse, the idiot who was my alternate abandoned Sam after River Pass. He said they had a fight, but what the hell could they have fought about that would lead to him not even bothering to keep an eye on his brother?" ranted Dean.
"Probably the demon's blood. Let's face it, thanks to your father you two aren't the most accepting of people if they have contact with demons," said Gabriel, slinging an arm around Sam.
Dean felt a pain of irritation. Sam had found his best partner, but the odds of him finding anyone that understanding were next to nill.
Then Gabriel did something unexpected. He snapped his fingers and created a fake body...and proceeded to stuffed Arael's mind in it. Sam and Dean were shocked to finally come face-to-face with the angel that had been with them for the past year.
She opened her eyes revealing a stunning shade of blue and said "Hello Dean."
"Arael?"
Sam didn't need to see the seraph glomp Dean, and was very, very glad Gabriel could cast a silencing ward without having to go into the room when the girl dragged Dean into the next room for several hours.
Sam almost winced when Gabriel offered to adjust it so Arael could manifest without him having to snap up a new body every time. They were so getting separate rooms from now on. At least Dean wouldn't pick up a new hussy every hunt.
Bobby looked up when he heard the Impala (it no longer needed gas to run since Dean merged the two souls of the car) and raised an eyebrow when he saw the red head with blue eyes in the back.
Blue eyes he had last seen Dean have when Arael took over.
"Who's the girl?"
"Hello Bobby. Nice to finally see you properly," said Arael.
Bobby's eyebrows shot up.
"Arael? How..."
"Gabriel adjusted it so she could come out in her own body as a joke."
"They haven't let me have a night's rest since," said Sam irritated.
"Like you and your sugar-daddy are any better?" said Dean. Arael choked back a laugh.
Sugar-daddy was one of the more interesting names she'd heard for Gabriel.
"So this is Arael. Does this mean you're vulnerable to Micheal now?" asked Bobby.
"Not really. My mind might be in this body, but the rest is inside Dean. He's more of a container than a vessel when I'm out, and containers can't be possessed so long as the angel they're acting as a battery for is within arm's reach."
"Wait, does that mean..." said Sam.
"If we got separate cars you wouldn't have to worry about Lucy? Yep," said Arael.
Gabriel's biggest pet peeve was Dean. If Sam were driving his own car and followed him, then they could have separate rooms and everything.
Besides, it was clear Gabriel had a thing for Sam, not that Dean cared. He always knew his brother was a girl.
The second they stepped foot in town, Arael manifested.
"There's a cambion here," she said without hesitation.
"A what?"
"Cambion. People often mistake them for the anti-Christ for some reason. Basically the child of a female demon born from a virgin woman. Though I'm not entirely sure this one has gone evil yet," she said hesitantly.
"How can you tell?"
"They can literally rewrite reality within a certain distance, and they're damn near impossible for an angel to track unless they make waves. They're like the Rider, only a hell of a lot more dangerous...an even mix of two worlds."
"Again, how do we know this thing isn't evil?"
"Because there's only one death so far that got onto our radar, instead of hundreds. There's a reason why people mistake the cambions for Damien," said Arael.
Dean grinned at her reference to the Omen series. Just because she had a body (sort of) now didn't mean her addiction to movies had abated. Far from it.
Gabriel had, as a way to amuse her and make up for leaving her behind, set up a laptop that could get a signal anywhere. And her subscription to popular movies services were paid automatically by the brothers.
Sam was just glad she hadn't found the Japanese porn sites yet. It was bad enough that she tended to tackle Dean whenever they got separate rooms and made enough noise to keep him up for an hour before he learned to invest in ear plugs.
Best investment he had ever made, next to the subscription to Hulu for Arael.
It took them a full day to figure out where the cambion might be, and by that time Arael had immediately changed her hair color from red to a bright sunny blond.
"Why'd you change it?" asked Sam.
She pointed at her screen in disgust. There was a picture of what she had just finished watching. Dean took one look and started laughing.
It was The Little Mermaid. Arael had been entirely unaware that there was a fictional character named Ariel who had red hair.
"So why blond?" asked Dean, entirely too amused by the whole thing.
She flipped it to what she had been watching before she switched to Disney.
"Naruto?" read Sam. He had heard about the series, but never watched it.
"I like it. Besides, how far from red can you get outside of going blond?"
Dean snickered. Arael had a few weird quirks, but he still loved her.
Arael took one look at the cambion kid, saw that his soul was still pure if a bit odd, and did the one thing she always wanted to do around human kids.
"HE'S SO CUTE!"
Dean lasted for exactly three seconds before he started cracking up at the startled expression on the poor kid's face. To his credit, Jesse's head was right in the middle of Arael's impressive bust and he was merely blushing.
Sam shook his head.
"So this is the kid you were warning us about?"
"He hasn't turned Damien-level yet, but if they find him that could change. No way am I letting that jerk Micheal send anyone to hurt this cutie!" she agreed.
Arael loved kids. They were so innocent and pure. She hated it when they grew up and their society warped them into little monsters, or worse.
So long as the cambion wasn't harming anyone, she could live with an abomination against nature. It wasn't their fault that a demon possessed some poor bastard.
A few hours later Arael came face-to-face with a surprised Castiel who had discovered Jesse's presence.
"The cambion is off limits Castiel. Jesse can be trained and he could be useful later on if given a chance. I'm not letting the other angels screw up that poor kid when he's still an innocent."
"Cambions are not innocent. They are abominations," said Castiel, repeating the common consensus about the creatures.
"And if Gabriel says that he's off-limits and agrees to train him?"
Gabriel loved children too, besides, this was a good excuse for him to get active without being stuck dealing with Lucifer right off the bat.
Arael had a horrible feeling at the mere thought of Gabriel confronting Lucifer directly. As if something terrible would happen and she would be left to pick up the pieces again.
The mere idea of that made her shudder. The last time she had to pick up the pieces of Gabriel's disappearance, she ended up in the Pit for several centuries.
Castiel blinked.
"If you can get Gabriel to train the child, then I will not come back for him. Otherwise I will have to take him out."
The arch angels had to remain uncontested. They were the closest thing to their Father the angels had left. If Gabriel took the boy under his wings to train him, then it would take a majority vote to overrule his decision, and most of the others liked him enough to side with him anyway.
At the very least he could train Jesse to use his powers as a fledgling Trickster so that the position of Loki would at least be filled. A cambion-turned-Trickster was far less dangerous than a cambion who was tired of being hunted simply for existing. Besides, as Gabriel had so handily demonstrated, the pagans didn't really register on Heaven's collective radar, and most of the powers Jesse had shown could be mistaken for a Trickster's power.
"You want me to what?" said Gabriel incredulous.
"There's a cambion that hasn't turned evil and if I don't do something Micheal will send Uriel to smite the entire damn town just to insure the poor kid is killed. You know how they feel about cambions. The kid's an innocent," said Arael.
"Exactly how innocent."
"So innocent he could easily take over as Loki and no one would bat an eye. The kid turned common pranks like a joy buzzer lethal, though I blame the parents for trying to corrupt him away from the greatness that is pranks," said Arael.
She heard Gabriel mock-gasp over the phone in horror.
"The blasphemy! To not know the fun of a simple prank like a joy-buzzer?"
"I thought that would get your attention. Now imagine how much chaos he could cause if trained properly to cause chaos like you love to do?"
Gabriel thought about that. An apprentice didn't sound that bad actually. And the idea of flipping off Micheal on something as harmless as turning a cambion into a Trickster to replace him when he was forced to go home did sound amusing.
Almost as funny as the 'screw you' messages Arael kept sending when she sent demons to heaven just to piss off the other angels.
They were killed immediately on entry, but the mere fact they made it that far really pissed Micheal off. They were so uptight about demons.
"Fine. But only if the kid's on board with it as well. I'm not dealing with an unhappy cambion dammit!"
Arael had a sudden flash of inspiration. One that would annoy her boss and amuse Dean.
"Wizards are real?" said Jesse with wide eyes.
"Well not wizards exactly. There are witches, but most of them are like really annoying and super whiny. They pretend to be high and mighty but when it comes time to pay for using their magic they always complain like prima donnas. But pagan gods like Loki exist. And he said he might be interested in teaching you how to use that power of yours to play pranks on those who really deserve it. Like that kid Billy you told me about. The one who likes to make fun of you because your parents aren't always around?"
Jesse nodded. He didn't like Billy but he didn't want him dead. Just embarrassed.
"So what's Loki like?"
"Let me put it this way... if a god were a kid in a candy store, Loki would totally steal the entire store just to eat all the candy."
Jesse giggled.
"He's that big a sugar nut. And if you ever want to prank him back, slip something foul into his latest treat. Like switching the sugar for the salt or maybe baking soda. Or better yet slip something really nasty into his soda like Tabasco sauce."
"What about my mom and dad?"
"Leave that to me. I can arrange it so you can at least have supervised visits with your parents. As far as they know, you're going to a really special school for kids like you. Loki won't teach you maths and stuff, but he can teach you history in a way that won't make you fall asleep."
And it wasn't like Jesse couldn't just pop up a diploma to fool people once he was trained.
It took her all of an hour to convince his parents (and hopefully set up a date they could see their son with Gabriel keeping an invisible eye on them all) and another two before Gabriel got bored and popped into the diner they were pausing at to pick up Jesse when he felt they were taking too long to find him.
His expression turned scandalized when Jesse immediately set the tone of his apprenticeship by using his power to switch the sugar that Gabriel was so enthusiastically pouring into his tea for the low calorie sweetener instead.
Sam hadn't laughed that hard in a long time. Dean didn't hold back his guffaws at the look on Gabriel's face when he realized that he had put Sweet 'N' Low into his drink rather than ten packets of sugar.
Gabriel gave Jesse a look, and grinned.
"I think this is the beginning of a fun apprenticeship. I'll turn you into a junior Trickster yet!" he beamed.