Chapter Text
A young John Egbert stands in his bedroom, body frozen and staring wide-eyed at the sunglasses-clad demon standing in front of him. The same John Egbert, demon hunter extraordinaire, son of the great Brinner Egbert and herald of the great Egbert hunter lineage, pure anti-demon-magic blood flowing through his veins. Although at this moment he didn't feel so extraordinary.
It would probably be best if we started from the beginning.
-
It is now the day before and John still stands in his one-bedroom apartment, although this time no demons in sight. John only a few minutes prior had finished unpacking and now he stands taking in all his work. He sighed, falling onto the grey couch in his living room and letting his head fall back.
Finally, he thought, his own place. Although the apartment was rather small, it was one without a nagging father constantly hovering over his shoulder. John loves his father of course, he taught John everything he knows about life and demon hunting, but Mr. Egbert can just be a bit overzealous at times. He expects great things from his son, and the greatest expectation of all being carrying on the family tradition, which, as explained earlier happens to be demon hunting.
You see, the Egbert blood is special. Let’s say, hypothetically, a demon was to cast an enchantment spell on you. Now most humans would fall into the trap and happily bend the knee to any demand the demon has. An Egbert? Genetically immune to all demon spells and psychic tricks. And so, thanks to his bloodline's knack for being immune to such things, demon hunting was an easy choice on career day at school.
His awesome cousin Jane and super cool sister Jade who—did he mention that they're awesome?—are awesome demon hunters too. Jane was a few years older than John and thus way more experienced. She already had her own demon-hunting team, to which Jade was one of her apprentices. John on the other hand was a Junior Demon-Hunter Assistant, meaning most of what he would do was paperwork. Only a few years on the job and John might be promoted to Junior Demon-Hunter. But after years of being his father's apprentice, John was free and finally in a place he hoped to call home.
Although, only as much of a home as he could make it, John still had to face what he'd been dreading his whole life. Killing demons. Yes, most of his job would be paperwork, but he wasn't called a demon hunter for no reason. He had assisted his father before in the like, but only ever with his father. He'd never killed demons before on his own. Lucky for John, he didn't have to worry about lower-level demons bothering him as they aren't powerful enough to do him any harm, and higher-level demons don’t just casually go out and stroll around the town causing trouble, they tend to stay in their own business and as long as they did that John couldn’t be happier.
And now John stood in his apartment, dwelling on his future predicaments and danger he faced with his new job, remembering with regret that he hadn’t actually started it yet. He decided as soon as he got everything in his new apartment in order he would get started, yet he stood there staring blank-eyed at the ceiling looking like a dumbass.
Though his demon hunting began to dwell on him when he began unpacking the kitchen, stacking bowls and plates in his cabinet. Next to him the sun through the window had almost completely set, the sky turning from a deep orange to black. Night time was demon time and it was approaching, so he had only about an hour left of daylight to do his job.
John pushed up from the couch, gathered his belongings and headed for the door. He stopped at the doorway, making one last check before heading out: keys? check. phone? check. wallet? check. headphones? check. The tiny ghost keychain his sister Jade gave him as a departure gift she called a “good luck charm”? double-check. Pushing in his earbuds and pressing shuffle on his “Spooky and Ghostly Sick Nasty Demon Hunting” playlist, John sighed as he headed out the door for his first day at work.
John ended up making it back home a little before the sun began to set. He didn't actually have to do anything. His job was to go to the local park a few blocks down and check on all the attraction and destruction spells which would, as stated in the name, lure demons towards them unknowingly and destroy them. An easy way of crop-clearing masses of those lower-level ones so he wouldn't have to deal with them face to face.
Other more talented and experienced hunters had placed them in the trees and around the ground earlier that day. He was told he was to check them, make sure they were in their proper places and hadn’t set off yet, but John knew better. What his job really was was to walk around the park and scope out the high-density areas, how and where the traps are set up so when it was his job to do them he did it correctly.
Throwing his bag on the floor and handing the stress of his shoulders over to his couch, he scrolled through his phone. No new messages, a little surprising but no cause of concern. John knew his family was also busy with work, so didn't expect to get anything from them for a while.
Slowly, very slowly, John stood up from the couch and headed towards the bathroom, proceeding to take the longest and hottest shower the apartment's water tank could handle. After getting dressed in an old torn shirt and sweats, he decided on getting dinner which ended up being Chinese delivery and watching Con Air again as a sort of reward from today's events. Although as the movie played through and as Nicolas Cage's abs continued to show more and more through his filthy tanktop, John couldn't stop thinking about his work. More specifically, worrying whether or not he checked all the traps. In the past, John had always been with his dad when deploying spells and traps, but this time he wasn't with his dad. They were all set up by someone he didn't know, making him worry that he didn't check them correctly.
So sure enough, approximately 12 minutes later, John stood at the entrance to the park, forehead dripping, shirt clinging uncomfortably to his chest as he scanned the trees around him. The traps were nearly invisible. Obviously, he wouldn't want any normal person seeing them, but now they were even more hidden from the sun having set behind him.
As John walked around, he was happy to see the traps still in place. Or maybe he wasn't happy, that could mean they didn't work, maybe when he’d checked them he’d accidentally broken them. Or maybe demons just hadn't shown up yet, that’s what he chose to believe.
But as he turned his back to the park entrance something caught his eye, something large slumped on the ground a few feet away. His breath caught, as he slowly walked to a bloody body slumped up against the base of a tree. John's first thought was to panic, second to run away, third to start screaming, and only after did he think to check if this body was dead or alive.
He leaned down and examined the person. His hair and shirt were once white, but were unfortunately stained red in what John hoped wasn't permanent. He wore jeans and red Converse, a pair of aviators barely clinging to his nose. There looked to be a gash across his chest, and John had guessed some force had caused him to slam against the tree, blood and bark scattered on the ground around them. John brought his fingers to the person's wrist to check for a pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief. Still alive. But his anxiety worsened as he scanned the area around them and turned his back to see the remains of a destruction trap.
John went through his 3 step panic process again before turning back to the body in horror, realizing he had caused this. These kinds of traps couldn't hurt regular humans, but that didn't register in John's brain. At the moment, all he could think about was how he caused this, he hurt someone. John quickly disposed of his detonated trap in the closest garbage can to get rid of any evidence and headed back to the body.
Bringing his arm under the unconscious person, John slowly stood as his mind raced with a million ideas of what to do. This person clearly needed medical assistance ASAP, but if John brought him to the hospital how would he explain what happened? He couldn't say what actually occurred, the fault would be on him. Sure, he could say he just found the guy like this and had no idea what had caused this, but John was a terrible liar.
So against all instinct, John pulled the person through the streets, taking the longest way to avoid crowds and made his way back to his apartment.
-
He'd underestimated just how heavy an unconscious adult would be and how hard it would be to carry him up 3 flights of stairs. But after what seemed like hours and the hardest workout of his life, John slowly lowered the body down on his couch and headed to the bathroom to retrieve the first aid.
He stripped the man’s shirt and disposed of it in the trash, unfortunately there was no recovering it, and began to wipe the blood. There were luckily only a few minor scrapes along his face and arms, but the larger one on his chest needed tending. John didn't feel comfortable stitching anything up so he decided to just disinfect and wrap it, hoping it would suffice.
After a few long minutes of John carefully cleaning and wrapping the wound in gauze he stared down at his work. He was slightly proud of what he did, then slumped as he remembered why he was in this situation in the first place. The man lay unconscious on his couch, and John thought for a moment to just leave him there before picking him up again this time bridal style and carrying him to his bed. John laid the man above the covers and placed his sunglasses along with one of John's shirts on the nightstand. He stood there for a moment, before heading back to his couch, falling face first and passing the fuck out.