call me maybe

[from_scratch]

Cam is out flying. There's a decent cloud of atmosphere around the gold plane, now, millenia of demons making air around themselves for comfort and not sealing it up because why would you bother. There's a small forest, here - the effect is kind of ruined by the lamps it has to grow under, but it's still pretty.

He feels an open summons and lets it grab him -

with the Joker (kappa)

with Ripper (kappa)

with Darren (Aestrix)

with Minus (kappa)

with Emma (Marri)

with Facility 3141592 (armokGoB)

with the admin (kappa)

with Jarvis (kappa, Aestrix)

with Miles (kappa)

with Hank (Nemo)

Comments

[eversomuchfun]

He arrives in a circle drawn with what definitely seems to be blood. There is a young man just stepping back from the circle, holding a plastic jug whose label claims 'Orange Juice (100% Juice, not from concentrate)' but whose stains and smell suggest other fluids.

"Oh, for fuck's fucking sake," he says upon beholding Cam.

[from_scratch]

Cam glances at the composition of the circle.

"What, you were hoping for one with horns and cloven hooves?" he inquires.

[eversomuchfun]

"I was hoping and indeed put in extensive research to make sure I would get tumbleweed and the chirping of crickets," he says. "Summoning an actual demon of any kind, however attractive a specimen, was not part of the plan."

[from_scratch]

"This isn't a very good circle, but it's obviously valid. You even did it in blood, did you know that's completely unnecessary? Next time just go ahead and put it down in Sharpie."

[eversomuchfun]

"The objective of the circle is to make it look like someone was summoning demons here," he says. "To someone who wouldn't know the site of an actual summoning from the aftermath of a particularly debauched college party. I looked up hundreds of attested functional summoning rituals, took extensive notes, and made damn fucking sure to do absolutely none of them. And yet, here you are. Perhaps I should write a book."

[from_scratch]

Cam squints at him.

"Weeee are operating out of very different textbooks, obviously."

[eversomuchfun]

"Clearly, yes," he says.

It might bear mentioning that the room in which all this is taking place looks like a high school classroom straight out of the early twenty-first century. There is a blackboard, and chalk, and various ancient equipment he may or may not recognize, like a projector and a VCR. All the desks and chairs are stacked neatly against a wall.

"Perhaps you'd like to elaborate on what you were expecting."

[from_scratch]

"I was expecting to show up actually confined to a circle, and almost certainly also forbidden from speaking beyond agreeing to or refusing some trade for my services offered by some person. Is that a - that's a VCR. What year is this?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Two thousand and eight. And you are not, in fact, presently confined to the circle? Interesting. What services do you generally offer?"

[from_scratch]

"Nah, it's a terrible circle," says Cam, extending a wing over its edge. "I can do whatever I want, you're lucky you got me. Demons make things."

[eversomuchfun]

"Oh? What things?"

[from_scratch]

"Arbitrary non-magical matter with some reasonable quantity of underlying information to go on," shrugs Cam.

[eversomuchfun]

"...Interesting," he says. "Define 'reasonable quantity'."

[from_scratch]

"Give me title and author for a book I've otherwise never heard of and I can make a copy, but I can't go by ISBN or weird criteria like 'first book with a redheaded editor published in 1982 to have an epilogue and have its first edition be a trade paperback'."

[eversomuchfun]

"Hmm," he says. He retrieves an object from a pocket and holds it up. It is vaguely shaped like a pen. "Could you make one of these without knowing what it does?"

[from_scratch]

"Yeah. Do you want a spare?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Might as well, if you're offering, but it's not what I'd call urgent," he says. "Just testing what the boundaries are. You're an interesting kind of demon. What would you like to do with your time in the charming town of Sunnydale?"

[from_scratch]

"I don't know, how long are you planning to keep me?"

[eversomuchfun]

"Oh, is it up to me? In that case I'll keep you until you become boring," he says. "Assuming you don't have urgent business at home to which you desperately want to return."

[from_scratch]

"Nah, no languishing relationships or urgent appointments, no stuff I can't duplicate here just as easily. What constitutes being boring?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I'll know it when I see it. It's like pornography that way."

[from_scratch]

"Maybe I won't tell you how to send me back till I feel like going."

[eversomuchfun]

"If you feel like going some time after you have begun to bore me, you may find yourself staying here a very long time indeed."

[from_scratch]

"Why's that?"

[eversomuchfun]

"I'm not in the habit of doing favours for boring people. Assuming you're not magically obligated to follow me around like an eternal duckling, it's all the same to me whether you stay here or go home if and when you enter that category, but afterward I won't be disposed to go particularly far out of my way to ferry you between dimensions."