"Okay, here we are." Troy says as the two of us stand side by side shortly after getting out of the car, parked right in front of the Jericho gas station.
"A gas station? I asked to go to the lottery shop." I ask looking at my friend with some confusion.
In Brazil, things like lottery and scratch-off tickets are sold in what we call a casa lotérica, an establishment specialized in this and some other services related to money.
He puts his hand on my shoulder. "Look, this is where we buy lottery tickets in America."
"At a gas station?" I ask again, totally skeptical.
"Yes, at a gas station."
We enter and go straight to the attendant, so I can carry out my trickery...
"Booyah!" I celebrate by punching the air, my fourth scratch-off in a row with a $200 prize.
"H-h-how?" the gas station attendant asks in disbelief, Troy beside me is as surprised as he is.
[Scratch-off]
-A XXX lottery scratch-off, costing only two dollars, contains a prize of two hundred dollars. A great deal for the lucky one who buys it.
...
Exactly, my beloved download system allows me to know the prize of each scratch-off just by touching them. All it took was a little conversation for the clerk to let me just touch my fingertips to them before buying, and voila! Easy money.
Ending the internal monologue, I give the attendant and my friend a fox smile.
"Well, I guess it's my lucky day."
.
.
.
With the stars already twinkling in the night sky, Troy and I walked out of our last stop for the day. I'm wearing a brand-new leather jacket and new black Rayband sunglasses over my face, a backpack with freshly purchased hygiene and everyday essentials, my pockets a little heavy from this afternoon's profits.
"Lucky day? I have a lucky day when I find twenty dollars on the sidewalk..." Troy talks to me still in disbelief as we walk towards his car. "You woke up from an accident with a gorgeous body out of nowhere and won forty thousand dollars in scratch-offs!"
I give the most satisfying smile of my life, equally silly by today's results. "Really, I think I'm having the luckiest day of my life."
I open the door on the passenger side of the car, taking a seat, and Troy does the same in the driver's side.
"Luck is my ass, winning prizes 100% of the time? That's a big cheat indeed." He retorts by turning the key and releasing the handbrake. The car backs out of the fifth store space we "cleaned" today and hits the road at thirty miles an hour.
"Well, maybe it's God blessing us after going through that hellish incident." As much as I'd like to tell my only friend here about the system, in all cases it's best not, to just blame everything on Chuck.
Remembering the night of three days ago, Troy's mood drops noticeably for me, as he gives a complicated look to the road ahead of us. "... Can be it." He says with his hands gripping the steering wheel more firmly, I'm sure if some unlucky figure appears on the road he won't hesitate to run over.
'I would do the same.'
Following the weather, I turn my gaze to the window to my right, watching the scenery "running" outside.
Life-or-death situations always leave a deep mark on people, and he and I are no exception to our encounter with the woman in white.
"Hey Troy, what are you going to do now?" I break the ice in the vehicle after three minutes of silence.
"What you mean?" Him keeping his eyes on the road.
"About life from now on... Like, we found out together that ghosts are real, and probably other 'things' are too. Now what?" I explain by leaning my elbow on the car door and resting my face on the handle, being careful of my still healing nose.
"So about that... I was thinking for a while too after I woke up..." He took a deep breath. "I've decided I'm going to settle down from this party life and spend more time with Amy."
"Is this Amy your girlfriend?" I ask and he nods once. "Yes."
"When we were being attacked, when that thing was digging its fingers into my chest I really thought I was going to die... My life flashed before my eyes, man." He looks at me a little as he gestures with his left hand, keeping his right on the steering wheel.
"I went over all the parties, all the times I broke our dates to go out with friends and all the girls I was with behind her back. Always just thinking about myself, having fun." The car shakes a little as it pulls up to the side of the road and Troy turns his attention back to driving. "I decided to change, value what is really important and be a good boyfriend."
"Wow." I comment really impressed.
The conversation dies down once more, staying that way for the remaining minutes before we arrive at Troy's parents' farm.
"You can put your 'mountain' of stuff in the guest room, I already called my parents and told them you're staying for a few days." He informs me and simultaneously mocks looking at my only bag as we're getting out of the car, right in front of his parents' house. "Seriously, who goes to another city with just their cell phone and a wallet with foreign documents?"
"Thanks. And come on man, I told you I was pretty drunk." When asked earlier how I ended up alone with nothing in an unfamiliar city, I made the excuse that I was partying in a nearby town, went out in a car with people I met at the time, and one thing led to another.
"Haha... You're going to have to tell me that story again later." He laughs whenever he remembers.
"Yes, yes, now let's go." I punch Troy lightly in the shoulder and step into the house right after him.
.
.
.
-- Jericho, California, United states 11:08 PM...
"Hehe... A fun night for the lovebirds." A little tipsy after a few rounds of beers with Troy, his parents and his girlfriend, I take my leave while opening the door to the guest room on the second floor.
"Oh shut up, and go to sleep man." Answers Troy supporting his girlfriend a little more drunk with one arm and the next door, the one to his room, with the other hand. The girl laughs at our exchange and gives my friend a look that is more than enough to prove my words.
I close the door and then throw myself back onto the bed in the guest room, my bandaged wounds stinging a little from the abrupt movement, but I ignore it and start thinking about the latest events.
The Mr. Squire is the typical burly man in the red plaid shirt one thinks of when imagining a farmer, he's twice as good a drinker as me and his son put together and full of amusing stories to tell. Some even involved some embarrassing situations from Troy's childhood, which he did his best to keep Amy (his girlfriend) and me from hearing.
The dinner and drink accompaniments that Mrs. Squire prepared were great. It was the first time I tried meatloaf, I even downloaded her cooking skills in the meantime.
'Today was a very good day...'
My eyes stare at the white ceiling of the room and after that thought my mind wanders a little bit about what Troy and I talked about in the car.
Episode 1 of Supernatural: Pilot begins in the moments before Troy picks up and is killed by the woman in white and later in the same episode Sam and Dean find his girlfriend ten days later, still relentlessly putting up missing person posters with the face of Troy. Troy around town.
It was a stroke of luck that I met him at the party and was there for the meeting with Constance Welch to change the course of events.
'Troy, Amy, Mr. Squire and Mrs. Squire.'
As merely supporting characters used to build the background of the first case in the series, I remember not feeling anything about them when I watched it. but knowing them as living people, with their own lives right in front of me... I feel bad thinking about what they went through.
'A terrible death, a boyfriend and a son disappearing without ever finding the body or an explanation.' Respectively.
'What about the others?' My mind goes a little further. 'How many other real people lost their lives and loved ones during the fifteen seasons of the series?'
The previous conversation with the cosmic old man when I was in the hospital also comes to mind. The way he looked happy that I saved Troy… Is that why I transmigrated here?
"Whether it is or not, I have made up my mind."
Taking a deep, sobering breath, I roll over to lie on my side, staring at the furniture in the Squires' guest room.
"I will become a hunter."
Normally it would be impossible, but with the help of the download system I can do it. I will become stronger with each case by downloading the files of each creature I face.
And just like I did this time...
'I'll save everyone the Winchesters couldn't.'
.
.
.
-- Jericho, California, United states 02:30 AM...
My eyes heavy with weariness, the soft bed I'm sitting on tempts me to put this daring idea aside and surrender to Hypnos reign. But I consciously bite my tongue, using the pain to keep myself awake.
(A/N: The Greek God of Sleep)
I tap twice on the screen of my cell phone lying beside me. The screen lights up showing the time.
'Two-thirty should be enough.' I grab my cell phone, get out of bed and, taking careful steps not to generate noise on the hardwood floor, I leave the guest room.
As expected from a secluded house, with the night sky not providing any light through the windows, the second-floor hallway is pitch black. I swallow, feeling a little scared.
Who knew that after the age of twenty I would be afraid of the dark.
'Damn woman in white...' The ugly face of her true form still haunts my memory.
I raise the screen of my smartphone to see, as the flashlight brightness would be too intense, at the risk of waking someone up.
'Okay, here I come...'
With the right hand holding the cell phone in front and the left leaning against the wall in order to give me some security. In about ten steps I find a doorknob, illuminating the door with my cell phone I find a written sign: 'Troy'.
I turn the handle carefully, making the *click* as quiet as possible. I quickly enter the room and close the door.
'Okay, here I am.'
It's a simple room, a closet, window, shelves with different things from Troy's hobbies on the walls and a single bed in one corner where he and his girlfriend are together sleeping the way they came into the world.
'Oh my…' I put my hand to the side of my face, blocking my view from the side of the bed. Seeing Troy naked with his legs spread out like that might traumatize me more than the Woman in White.
Not wanting to stand there and test that theory, I quickly reach down, grab Troy's jeans off the floor and pull his car keys out of his pocket.
'It's not stealing, I'm just borrowing without asking.'
I convince myself.
.
.
.
-- Jericho, California, United states 02:58 AM...
In the back of an inn, in the middle of the night, I carefully watch through the window of each room. I do this just needing to be careful so that no one inside finds me, since there are no security cameras on this side of the building.
'No, no... Wait.' The fifth window is blocked with blinds from the inside, I press my face against the glass to see a little bit of the messy room.
I smile. 'It's the same one.'
I look around one last time, confirming that no one is there, and pull out what I affectionately call my 'Home Invasion Kit' from the inside of my jacket; a roll of duct tape and a wrench. Yes, my faithful companion that I used to strike the first blow with the Woman in White.
'And not so faithful, as soon after I was disarmed...'
Whatever.
I imitate what I've seen in some movies and cover part of the window with duct tape before giving it a few hits with the wrench. When I feel the glass break enough, I remove the tape and slide my arm through the opening, unlocking the window from the inside and opening it.
'I feel the very butch Cassidy African descent.'
Pushing the blind back, I clumsily scramble through the window, almost falling and ripping the blinds off with my grip on them, but I manage to get inside. Successful invasion.
Hearing the crunch of sand, I look down at my feet. My right foot on a line of a circle of salt. "It's here."
The room I broke into has walls covered in stuff; Stories about missing men here in Jericho over the last twenty years; Texts about evil creatures with illustrations of them worthy of the beginning of some exorcism horror movie.
"Mortis Danse, Devil + demons, Sirene, Witches, the possesseds, Woman in white... How bizarre."
I get chills just reading the titles written in pen above some columns of pictures. The thought that I'm in a world where all of this is real makes me want to have a panic attack.
To ease my soul a little, I look at an ordinary photo there. An adult man smiling with his two children.
If it isn't already clear enough, this is the room John Winchester stayed in when he came to deal with the Woman in White.
"Yeah, burning the bones wasn't enough for Constance, John. Now I'll collect my reward for finishing your work..."
I look away from the photo and the creepy stuff and start scanning the room.
"Cruxifixes, more salt, pentagram... This reminds me I need to get a tattoo."
I pick and pocket any item I know would be useful to a hunter, until finally I open the bottom drawer of one of the furniture and set my eyes on what I came for.
"As I thought, the police got it by investigating the room the Winchesters were in."
A screen of my beloved system opens as soon as I have the item in my hands.
[Diary of John Winchester]
-Since the death of Mary Winchester on November 2, 1983, John Winchester has been hunting creatures for clues as to what killed his wife. It contains all of John's knowledge of evil.
--Files:---
-[Creature info]
Size: 500.00MB
-[Item Information]
Size:330.00MB
-[Manufacturing Process]
Size: 1.1MB
Total Folder Size: 831.10MB
Current download speed: 9.8 MB/s
-- Start Download from Folder? --
[Yes No]
"The first step to becoming a hunter."