*Previously*
"Forget it!" The man on his knees shouted out. "You don't even believe in the Greek gods, you wouldn't understand!" He gripped the floor to keep himself from falling over.
"No, we don't." Sam agreed. "But if anything, we're practical, and practically speaking, we need some hard proof someone's following you before we even consider—"
CRASH!
Something collided hard with the metal wall of the warehouse behind them, on the wall of the door. It sounded like a rock, only the size of a car perhaps, and it made the entire structure shake. Sam and Dean instantly had the guns back up, pointing at the door at the disturbance.
CRASH!
What sounded like a giant rock hitting the metal wall sounded again, only this time, a dent the size of a semi-truck appeared in the middle of it. The brothers shared an unnerved look before looking back at the wall.
"He's here…" Utley moaned. "The Angel…"
CRASH!
This time, a rock the size of three semi-trucks broke through the wall like it'd been tossed by a giant. The rock was obsidian black, glossy and darker than the deepest midnight, and as soon as it broke through the metal wall, instead of following its momentum and going straight through the warehouse and possibly the one behind it too, it dissolved into a massive cloud of black sand, that swirled and then fell to the ground as gravity took hold.
Standing in the gigantic, freshly-made hole was a figure, way too small to throw that gigantic stone, standing on the edge of the metal that was bent inward as the wall caved in. It was worse than that though, for not only was the figure the size of a regular man, but he was only a child. A scrawny, weak child from the looks of it too.
The figure, still cloaked in shadows making it hard to get any particular details, leapt from the wreckage and strode swiftly and confidently up to the table, like he hadn't just entered the building via massive stone. He was wearing some sort of jacket, his hand shoved into his pockets casually.
"What kind of spells are on this place? Way to make it freaking impossible to get in…" They heard a soft voice complain from the shadows that swirled around the figure.
"Who are you?" Dean demanded, brandishing his gun and Sam held his ground as well, both hiding their uneasiness about what was happening. Utley again looked ready to wet himself, if he hadn't already. The figure, upon hearing Dean's voice, came to a screeching halt, and for the first time, seemed to acknowledge the other people in the building besides his target.
"Uh…" Came a voice, clearer now and definitely belonging to a child, but also vaguely familiar though Sam couldn't place it.
The figure took a few more steps forward, coming into the glow from the lanterns on the table, and the shadows seemed to melt off him like cloth falling away, revealing the kid fully.
Sam almost dropped his gun in surprise.
"Nico?!" He gasped, and Dean seemed to be having an aneurism.
Nico just blinked, eternally shocked to find the two men from the worst night of his life standing guard over the man he'd spent the week hunting down to drag back to his father.
"Uh…" He said cleverly. "You two…?" He said uncertainly. "Why are you guarding a murderer?" Well, it was the first thing that popped into his mind, if not that creative. The brothers looked at each other, then down at the man on the floor behind them.
"Oh, we're not protecting that bastard," Dean assured him with his eyes wide, pointing to Utley as if accusing him of stealing the cookie from the cookie jar.
Nico seemed cheered by that. "Oh. Good. Less complicated."
"Less complicated in what?" Sam asked, still uncertainly.
Nico's eyes flashed with a black fire scarier than the demons the brothers had faced many times before. "He has committed an unspeakable crime. He is to be trialed before my father for his fate."
Sam felt his jaw drop. Nico was still a kid, yet he was talking like, like…
"How old are you? Ten?!" Sam accused, still shocked at the boy's words.
"Yeah, and I thought your family was dead!" Dean said, none too gently in that blunt way of his.
Nico straitened as if he'd been electrocuted. "I resent that." He sniffed. "I'm twelve if you must know. My father is dead, technically speaking, but he has still entrusted this to me, I'm not going to fail him just because you're sympathetic to a murderer."
Sam backtracked. "I'm not sympathetic to him; we were here to question him about murder of a girl-"
"Marcia Harper?" Nico said sharply, and they all fell silent.
"Yeah…" Sam said. Nico looked outraged, and downright frightening. But he was just a kid, right? A kid who'd thrown a massive rock through a wall…
"Please!" Utley finally spoke, hands over his head at the sight of Nico so angry. "Have mercy!"
Nico laughed, and Sam had a flashback of Lucifer in his head as a comparison to the heart-chilling laugh from the boy.
"Show you mercy?! I've figured it out in my travels hunting you down: you know that girl you killed? You had to trick her mother into claiming her before she reached the sanctuary of camp, didn't you? You tricked the goddess of wisdom, and you expect me to feel sorry for you?" He laughed humorlessly again.
Wait…
"Goddess of wisdom?" Sam asked, suddenly very afraid. That didn't happen every day, not even in his line of work.
"Woah, you're not suggesting that girl was actually a- a demigod or whatever you call it? Half mortal, half god?" Dean tacked on, also sounding a bit panicked.
Nico looked like he just remembered the brothers were there, and guilty glanced away like he'd said something he shouldn't've. At Dean's words though, he looked interested.
"You know about that…? What, exactly, do you know?" He hedged, not looking at all scarily to the brothers as he did to Utley, but like the curious little kid he was. Sam explained everything from the book, about the gods and how they had half-mortal children and Utley was trying to steal their powers.
Nico stared at them for a long time with an unfathomable, until they were shifting uncomfortably.
"Marcia Harper was a daughter of Athena." He finally broke the silence, and the brothers gaped.
"Bull shit." Dean dead-panned.
"Say that to the gods," Nico rolled his eyes, and thunder cracked across the sky, thought they could have sworn it was a clear night. "I don't know exactly what you two are into, what you think you "job" is, but it can't be bad, I suppose, if you help people." He paused, thinking it over. "The things I tell you, you can safely forget, because unless you see me again, you'll never run into another Greek or Roman demigod again."
Sam blanched.
"You're..uh…"
"Son of Hades." Nico nodded.
Sam wished he could remember what he thought of that declaration, but his mind simply went blank, simply refusing to accept what he was hearing. He came around somewhere in the midst of Nico explaining that the Greek gods were very much real, though he didn't know about a "God" with a capital "G", but he figured anything was possible if just on a larger scope, above all the Greek gods he'd met – he'd met, and talked to—and how the night they found him he was running from a camp – aka the Delphi Strawberry Service—for demigods when his sister died on a quest for the gods, which apparently was a common enough thing for demigods.
Dean seemed to come to his senses a bit and explained a little more about what he and his brother did, and Sam found it eternally fascinating that Dean was the one to keep his wits through this.
"And… now you work for your father… as what, a bounty hunter?" Dean asked the kid. Technically speaking, this kid was devil spawn, something they were both trained to kill on sight, but he was decent enough.
Nico's eyes flashed again, and Utley whimpered as he felt a hateful glare on him.
"No mortal has killed a demigod in over 800 years at least, if not longer. The lives of demigods are painful, excruciatingly difficult, and often short. I've only ever met six who lived over twenty in the Greek world. It's a bit more common on the Roman side to have kids, but that's if they manage to settle into New Rome, a protected city, after and if they survive their adolescence with monsters coming at the left and right, quests, missions, and parents who love to use their children as pawns in the "greater picture" every other day." Nico ranted, so acidicly, the men actually leaned away.
"And this scum of the earth," He continued, shooting Utley glare that had if looks could kill running through Sam's mind. "decided to make it even harder, by classifying mortals as potential threats now too!"
"Well…" Dean said hesitantly. "I think I can relate to the 'being used as a pawn by god' bit." He said, and Nico's eyes softened a bit.
"Yes, I'm sure you could. You have 'vessel', written all over you." He sniffed, tilting his head to inspect Dean, and the man shifted uncomfortably at the scrutiny.
"How did you-?"
"Know?" Nico supplied. "I didn't really… whatever pantheon you two belong to is unfamiliar to me, though I can assume it'd probably be classified as something of Catholicism." He mused. "But the concept of vessels was started by the Egyptian gods and their pantheon long before that- I think. I don't know much of Catholicism, but I've dealt with the Egyptian pantheon and their magicians enough to know a vessel when I see one, and I see two before me now." He nodded to the brothers.
Sam blanched. "So… you're telling us the Greek, Roman, and Egyptian gods exist? All in the same world?" He accused.
Nico shrugged. "Well, the Greek and Roman gods are basically the same entities—like mortals with extreme multi-personality-disorder, and the Egyptian gods are on an entirely different level with different followers and history with their sources of power coming from different worshippers… it's much too complicated to explain right now, but yes, there are many different plains and dimensions and worlds to support many different gods. Gods get their power from supporters, so as long as they have worshippers and, let's say, children to pray to them, they'll be immortal."
The brothers shared a look.
"And you trust us with all this?" Dean frowned. Trust wasn't something they dealt with too often, especially when this kid was spouting out information even Castiel didn't know.
Nico raised an eyebrow. "Who, besides your angel friend, would you tell about this? Other 'hunters' then? You're on the same boat I am, so to speak. Demigods, Egyptian Magicians, and Hunters, in my opinion, are all fighting the good fight against very different monsters and Apocalypses in their own pantheons. I didn't know about Lucifer rising, and you didn't know about a giant Egyptian snake-god-thing trying to eat the sun or the earth goddess Gaea trying to unleash the gates of Hades and destroy everything one earth, did you?"
The brothers shook their heads in shock.
"Didn't think so." Nico said smugly. "You keep fighting your Apocalypses, we'll keep fighting ours, and the world will keep spinning, sound good? Alerting the media isn't necessary, it'd only make both our jobs harder, right?"
They nodded, dumbstruck.
"Excellent! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to watch a murder stand trial before Hades and Athena and then get tossed into the fields of Punishment. Dad might even let me help pick out the torture!" He said brightly, slipping past them and grabbing Utely by the scruff of the neck, and the man whimpered and clutched the ground like he could anchor himself there.
He shot them one last grin. "Nice to see you two again, by the way."
Before they could respond, the shadows sprang to life around him, and despite the glow of the lanterns, shot forward and engulfed the two, cutting off Utely's startled shriek. Just like that, the shadows melted back into place, but they were gone without a trace.
The brothers stared for a long time at the spot on the ground where the two had once stood, the silence deafening.
Finally, Dean stood up straighter and turned on his heel, heading back to the door.
"Where're you going?" Sam asked, turning to watch him go.
He replied curtly without turning around or breaking stride:
"Bobby's. I need a drink."