"Great. We just had to run into a dream root case," said Dean tiredly.
Sam had been the one to lose the coin toss, so he had gone in to talk to the kid.
And was stupid enough to accept a beer from him.
"What's so bad about dream root?"
"Nothing much...unless a magical gets a hold of it or someone with the right aural frequency. And unfortunately for you it looks like this is both," said Dean flatly.
"Dammit. So what now?"
"Now I get to dose your ass with this while I snag a piece of hair and then beat the crap out of this kid!" said Dean far too cheerfully.
"No! No way in hell am I taking that!" said Sam, recognizing it on sight.
The last time he was dosed with Draught of the Living Death, it took him a week to work out the kinks because the antidote was off!
Suddenly Loki appeared.
"Hey babe, what's got you so upset?" he asked, popping in a sucker.
"Dumbass drank a beer that belonged to someone with dream root and the aural frequency to use it. And here's the kicker...this kid's a squib!"
Loki winced. That was never good news.
"So basically Sam's choices are to take a chance and sleep, knowing this kid could come after him, dose himself with that overly strong sleeping potion in your hand, or stay awake?"
"Pretty much," said Dean amused.
"Loki, please tell me there's a fourth option! I am not drinking that crap twice!"
"Well there's always an out of body experience," offered Loki.
"An OBE? Seriously? That would open him up to possession!" said Dean scoffing.
"Not if you're the one holding his soul in possession. Master of Death remember? Or would you rather send in your animal form to take out this idiot?"
"You mean Stitch?"
"No, I mean your other form. The one Mort locked because you couldn't sustain it until you and Harry merged," corrected Loki.
"My animagus form?" said Dean surprised. To be honest, he had forgotten all about that form once he got Stitch. He was happy with his blue alien of chaos.
"That's the one. Apparently it's so magic-intensive Mort locked it early on. Now that you've regained your full power, you can finally use it. Small problem is that it's definitely not meant for enclosed spaces."
"Big?" said Dean weakly.
"Massive. And recognizable on sight for what it really is. You use that and any hope in hell you had of remaining unnoticed goes out the window," said Loki cheerfully. One of the perks of being him (his real self, not the pagan form he took) was that he could see into people's souls. It didn't hurt that Mort had told him shortly after telling Dean where the portal was to leave hell with his dog.
Though to be fair, Dean having that form was unsurprising. It certainly explained the overprotective tendencies.
"So how do I send my animal form in again?"
"You two are telepathic, right? Just wait until Sammy falls asleep and make sure you have a hand on his shoulder. Then I want you to visualize sending your animal spirit into his mind to protect it. Kind of like an outside Occulmency deal," said Loki helpfully.
"How can I do that when I've never seen my animal form yet?"
"Don't need to. So long as you hold onto that fierce instinct to protect family it should respond appropriately. Who knows, you might be able to find Sammy's animal form since it refuses to show itself!"
"Oh, I know what my animal form is, but the last thing I want is to end up like, well that," said Sam.
"Now I have to do this, if only to find out what it is!" said Dean a little too eagerly.
Sam winced. His brother would never let him live it down once he knew.
The idiot who had turned killer with dream root dove into Sam's memories, trying to find something suitably traumatic so he could kill the guy.
He wasn't expecting what he found instead.
"So, you're the moron trying to hurt my brother. Too bad for you, we know you have dream root," said the man beside the massive thing sitting calmly dripping fire and acid in it's wake.
It wasn't hard to know what that thing was. Any idiot who read fantasy could identify it on sight.
"Now, you have two choices. Either surrender and hand over the dream root and possibly live a normal life."
"Or?"
"Or I lay waste to your mind and turn you into a vegetable that will die by morning," said the man flatly.
"How about neither?" said the idiot, trying to use the power of the dream root against Dean. It hit a shield made of the thing's wings. The beast growled.
"Oh, tough luck. You just pissed him off. Well, nice knowing you loser!" said Dean far too cheerfully. He saw nothing, he heard nothing, and above all he knew nothing. You tended to learn how to drown out screaming when you spent three months in hell.
He vanished into Sam's mind to find his animal form. Three seconds in and he left Sam's mind laughing his ass off.
"Dude, you're a black unicorn!" said Dean cackling.
"And you will pay for telling Loki that," said Sam deadpanning. He wasn't surprised Dean had such a huge and terrifying animal form, or that Mort had locked it.
He would have locked something like that up until the person was able to handle the strain of it too, if he had one like that.
"He's a black unicorn?" said Loki, a slow evil grin on his face. "Those are extremely rare you know."
"I know. But the fact I'm something that girly is embarrassing enough," said Sam. "Why couldn't I have gotten a wolf or something that cool?"
"Because you suck," said Dean happily. He had the perfect blackmail against his brother, and there was no way in hell he was letting Sam live this one down.
"Not everyone can have that as an animal form Dean. Coincidentally, how the hell did you end up with..."
"Mort and I have an ongoing bet that his protective streak towards family is actually the hording tendencies going into overdrive," said Loki.
Sam blinked.
"That...would explain so much actually."
"So is the guy dead or what?" asked Loki.
"He either died from that attack or he was turned into a vegetable. Either way, he's not our problem anymore and it's his fault for not taking my warning," said Dean.
Dean took one look at the two idiots, and his mouth started twitching. Not from a grimace. No, this was him trying to suppress his massive evil grin at the two before him.
It was those fake hunters! The one he left that surprise for when they nearly messed up that tulpa hunt!
Apparently they recognized Dean too, because the first words out of their mouths were...
"IT'S YOU! YOU'RE THE ONE WHO LEFT THAT STINK BOMB IN THE TRUNK!"
Oh yeah, they were pissed.
"Hey, I'm not the idiots who pissed off the man who has the world's worst stink bomb and the creature that makes the smell in his possession!" said Dean, though he had given up trying not to cackle.
Sam was pinching the bridge of his nose. Bear barked in amusement while Hati and Skoll laid down. Until Sam called on them, they let their Alpha deal with it.
It was just Sam's luck that Dean found a hunting partner and he got the laziest damn hell hounds Crowley happened to own. Loki found it hysterical. On the plus side he had managed to get them to settle into something that, while not really that manly, was better than some pampered poodle or god forbid a Pomeranian.
Both dogs were comfortably settled into the form of a Pugs. They might not have been tough guy dogs, but they were better than some of the ideas Loki kept suggesting, and few people took a tiny Pug seriously.
"So are you two morons here for the ghost hauntings? You do realize that the survival rate has been zero so far right?" continued Dean cheerfully.
"Say what? And who are you calling morons?!"
"Dean, if we don't get them out of here before..."
"Sammy, look at these idiots. Do you really think we could remove them before the time limit is up?" said Dean.
Sam looked at the two and their friends. These guys were complete idiots and still greenhorns who thought they knew everything.
"I see your point. Bind and through them in a salt circle until we kill the ghost?" said Sam.
"Don't forget to erase the tapes," said Dean. He took Bear into another room while Sam gave an apologetic look towards the civilians who were really in over their head.
"Thank Loki and any god listening for memory charms. Stupefy!"
It took Sam ten minutes to knock the civilians out, less than two to insure they wouldn't be getting in the way anytime soon and another minute to put a thick salt line around the bodies which were ramrod straight. He then set a magnet where the cameras were (effectively wiping them clean since they were digital) and made sure one of the dogs stayed with the group with orders to maul anything stupid enough to come close to them that wasn't Sam, Dean or another hell hound.
With Bear around, the likelihood of running into a fourth one was extremely unlikely. Especially with how territorial Bear was. He barely tolerated Sam's two hell hounds and that was because he had met them before under different circumstances.
After that it was a simple case of finding the bastard, pinning him down long enough for Dean to use one of his new 'powers' he had gotten from the upgrade in the pit, and then wait for the spells Sam had put on the group to wear off long enough to obliviate them.
He was not dealing with these people any longer than he had to dammit!
Dean was tired, he was cranky, and above all he was pissed. And the second he heard his birth father's voice he was in the mood to kill something.
Unfortunately for the Crocotta, Dean knew how to trace things like this to their origin. It took him half an hour to find the bastard and gank him before he turned into Stitch.
For some reason being in Stitch form always seemed to cheer him right up. Especially since Sam didn't mind scratching his ears while driving.
The only downside was the twin pugs in the other seat snoring away. Bear never got to sit in the front. He was just too big.
"So we either go on vacation or hunt down a modern-day Frankenstein?" said Sam.
"Pretty much. Mort said it's up to us when we kill him," said Dean.
"...How long will this take, and can we go on vacation after?" asked Sam seriously.
"About a few days, once we set Bear on his ass, if that. Remember, he's got a ton of conflicting scents so he shouldn't be too hard to locate," said Dean. He was way too cheerful about this.
Probably because he knew that had he not filled that deal early and then come back, Sam would have dragged him on this hunt to find out how to duplicate the research.
As it was, the minute Bear found where he was hiding Dean was destroying every last note. It was why Mort had asked for his help in the first place. The man was ignoring the laws of Death in a rather gruesome fashion.
Since Dean was effectively Death's mortal hand when reapers couldn't do the job, it fell on him to deal with it.
And because that usually meant taking out monsters who went after regular humans, Dean rarely had a problem with doing it.
Sam however was more worried about the humming. Whenever Dean hummed, he was bothered about something. It was one of the major telling signals he gave off.
In this case he was fairly sure he was hearing Dean hum a country song of some sort, which was weird even for them.
"Dean, is something bugging you?" asked Sam carefully.
"Have you seen the date lately Sammy?"
Sam went over it in his head, and winced. No wonder Dean wasn't happy.
He had less than a month before he would have to go into hiding to keep the upper demons from figuring out he had already beat the contract through a loophole they hadn't realized existed. Which meant he had an entire three weeks before he had to quit being Dean for a while and hide as someone else. And he hated that kind of thing.
He was highly tempted to just go Godzilla in hell and say screw hiding. (Godzilla was what he immediately called his animal form, despite the fact it looked nothing like the King of the Kaiju.) But Mort, the dirty bastard, just had to appeal to his Marauder self.
Plus he promised pictures of the looks on the demon's faces when they realized yes, Dean wasn't coming to hell on their schedule and still was on the loose on Earth.
And since he had regained his full power, the odds of them repeating the same thing they did to get Dean into hell plummeted. Especially now that he could turn into Godzilla, which Death assured him could kill any demon (or angel) stupid enough to get within blast range.
Personally Dean couldn't wait.
Dean suddenly stopped humming as an evil idea came to him. Sam became very worried.
"Dean...?"
"Sammy when Bear finds this bastard you might want to climb really, really fast. I don't want you to get nailed by accident."
"Dean, what are... Quit smiling like that! It's creeping me out!" said Sam freaking out.
"Sammy, you of all people should know patience is not my strong suit. And dammit all, I'm bored!"
Sam winced.
"How about after I get a good look at Godzilla I apparate back to the car and get it started for a quick get away?"
"That would be perfect."
Since Dean had already asked the reapers (the chick inside was dead before they got there, so he didn't feel a whit of guilt disposing of everything inside) he waited until Bear went to Sam before turning into Godzilla.
Sam whistled in spite of himself.
It wasn't every day you got to see a dragon bigger than the average skyscraper that could shoot fire and acid. The talons alone were bigger than he was tall!
In retrospect, Godzilla was a fairly good name for Dean's animagus form. They both meant one thing when they were around...absolute chaos and outright distruction.
Sam disapparated back to the car with Bear, a good half a mile away. So he did get to see some of the destruction.
He just wasn't in blast range.
He just couldn't wait to unleash his blast could he?
This is Dean. You know how he feels about hiding when he would rather be in the thick of it. Besides, he's been wanting to unleash that for months.
Well, all things considered he could have picked a worse time to test it out. And he did complete my request, even if the destruction is ten times worse than it could have been. But you had better leave and fast, because the one who is tracking him would have felt that.
Thanks for the warning.
Dean came back whistling and looking particularly proud of himself. However he was also sensible enough to know they needed to leave. Like yesterday if possible.
They were gone before the poor bastard sent to bring the current Master of Death back to England came within fifty miles of the place.