Disclaimer: I don't own Hololive, all rights to the owners.
Just so the terminology is clear. "Contracting" a demon just means you intend to work with them at some point. You make a "deal" with them for a specific job. So if you're working with them one time only, the contract and deal are one in the same. If you know you're going to work with them multiple times and want them on standby in between each job, you make a long term contract and individual deals for each job.
As always, Amelia is a mess.
Amelia's best friend is a demon, and her life is just as much a mess as that statement would imply.
"Demon of the deep seal, heed my call…"
One doesn't become a demon summoner and expect to live for very long. Only a dumbass actually thinks they can get away with summoning beings of immense power who require highly specific rituals with very precise wordings, ingredients, focuses, and conditions, of which one slight error can and will be fatal, on a weekly basis with anything less than an iron will and acceptance of your own inevitable death at some point in the near future. Demon summoning is for people with nothing left to lose and who are willing to risk their own life and soul to accomplish a goal.
Amelia has been working as a demon summoner for the government branch Cover for five years. Personally, she thinks it's a miracle she made it two months, and she's still waiting for that Balor she accidentally let loose to come back and tear her apart some day.
But that's aside from the point right now.
"Tonight's episode is supposed to be a doozy." Amelia says, following the lashing tail of her main demon.
"In a good way or a bad way?" The demon asks. She sniffs the air, growls, and stalks down a side alley. "They're somewhere around here, I can taste them."
Gawr is a class three demon. That's exactly the middle of classifications. Class one is things like Imps, and class five is Balors, Pit Fiends, and all the other big nasties. Gawr looks human; she's short with silver hair and a giant hoodie that wouldn't look out of place at a cosplay convention, but her flat, predatory black eyes (lacking sclera or irises, just two black spheres) and saw-like teeth are a dead giveaway as to her true nature, as is the two-foot long shark tail coming out of her lower back.
Strictly speaking Amelia could have summoned a more specialized tracking demon for this job, but Gawr is her main demon and so is easier to summon, not to mention she's much more personable than most demons. She doesn't constantly promise to rip Amelia's throat out, which is nice.
Not that she wouldn't if Amelia ever messed up the summoning spell, but at least Gawr doesn't mention it every two seconds.
"Bad way." Amelia hums. "Massive disappointment apparently."
"Can't wait." Gawr growls. She's not actually annoyed (as far as Amelia can tell anyways, it's not like you can ever actually know what a demon is thinking), it's just hard for her to focus with the smell of blood in the air. "Don't spoil any more of it for me, yeah?"
"Can do."
"Fourth door on the right." Gawr says abruptly. "You or me?"
"You. This is probably going to get loud." Amelia draws her revolver.
"Trident?"
"Be my guest."
Gawr summons her weapon and an ear-to-ear grin splits her face, revealing a maw full of pointed teeth. "On three. Count me down."
"One." Amelia says, pointing her gun at the door. "Two. Three!"
Gawr rams her shoulder into the metal door, knocking it open without effort. From inside Amelia can hear shrieks of terror, and some part of her is satisfied as she follows her demon into the door.
"Cover Homeland Security!" Amelia shouts as she storms the room. She can already hear gunshots, so it's sort of pointless for her to say anything at this point, but it's protocol. "Cease fire and lay down your weapons!"
More gunshots. So that's a no.
"Wreck 'em Gawr!" Amelia commands.
"With pleasure!" The demon snarls.
Five minutes and a cylinder of bullets later, Amelia is standing in the middle of a small room with a broken table, several shattered bottles of beer, six men both semi-conscious and injured, and a tall red demon lying halfway through a wall, very much dead, with a trident in it's chest and a certain shark demon standing on top of him.
Just another day at work.
###
"What are you feeling tonight?" Amelia asks while peering into her drink fridge. "Beer or pop?"
"Beer. If the episode is nearly as bad as you say it is, then I'm gonna need to be drunk." Gura says. Amelia is fine with considering her Gura instead of Gawr in private. Gawr is Gura's true name, but she prefers to be called Gura so Amelia goes along with it. She needs to be professional in the field, but if she wants to call a demon by a nickname in her free time that's nobody else's business.
Calli has occasionally tried to scold her about being so casual with Gura, which is hilariously hypocritical of her boss to say.
The detective fishes two beers out of the fridge and walks back to the couch. She places them in their slots on the built-in table in the middle of the couch (one of those drop-down cushions) alongside the bowl of chips. Gura's hand hovers near the edge, patiently waiting for Amelia to remove her hand so she can grab her beer.
Under normal circumstances Gura has to stay two meters away from Amelia at all times, but Amelia modified their contract a long time ago so that as long as Gura is sitting on the couch and follows all the other rules (don't try to kill her directly or indirectly, don't try to touch her, and so on) she can get within that two meter boundary.
It's both an innocuous and very dangerous exception. There's a good reason every contract has a "stay the fuck away from me" clause even if there are meticulously worded safety measures to stop demons from killing their summoners in the first place. It's an extra layer of protection, and you take as many of those as you can get when dealing with demons.
"So how's Calli doing? I didn't get to chat with her this time." Gura says.
"Tired, like usual." Amelia says. "Still refuses to take time off."
"So like you."
"Yep."
"I keep saying, Kiara could take the edge off. She'd be willing."
Oh sure she could, but Kiara could also find a loophole in the contract and leave Calli as a mindless vegetable. "I'll pass on the suggestion to Calli."
"You think I'm lying."
Believing a demon is a great way to end up dead. "Well duh."
Gura sighs. She chugs her drink and tilts her gaze up to the ceiling. "So why won't Calli take a break again?"
"Too busy. She's the most competent… everything… we have." Amelia says. "Besides, 'vacation' doesn't tend to be in the vocabulary of professional summoners."
"That can't be good for her long-term health."
"Since when do demon summoners think about the long term?" Amelia scoffs. "It's not like any of us expect to live to see our next birthday."
Gura fakes the sad look rather well, all things considered. If Amelia could ignore the black eyes and tail she might be able to imagine the demon was a genuinely concerned friend.
"Now c'mon, enough of the boring stuff, we've got a show to pick apart!" Amelia says cheerfully. It's not hard to push aside the weight of reality and focus on something trivial. Sort of a necessary skill when you expect to die every other day.
"Yeah, okay." Gura nods and drinks the rest of her beer in one gulp. She closes her eyes for a moment, and then opens them with a grin that may or may not be forced. "Let's get this show started."
###
Amelia knew she should have just summoned Gura.
A winged devil soars overhead, spear in hand, scanning the trees for signs of Amelia. That devil was supposed to be helping her find a missing truck right now, not trying to stab her.
"Of course I said it wrong." Amelia grumbles to herself, trying to line up a shot with her revolver through all the branches and leaves. "'Find the truck and report back, you may respond to threats as they arise with equal force' of course means they can try to fucking kill me because I'm a 'threat' to them with the power to inflict worse fates than death because I'm their summoner."
And of course, she forgot to state that the 'don't attempt to hurt or murder your summoner' clause overrides everything else (incidentally, that clause has it's own nasty drawbacks in the wrong situation, but that's currently aside from the point), so now she's under attack by her own summoned help.
The demon's dark red skin stands out like a sore thumb among the green foliage, so at least it's not hard to keep track of the thing. As it scans for Amelia from the sky, Amelia stalks it from below.
When the demon flies over a small clearing, Amelia takes her chance. She snaps three rapid shots, one for each wing and one into the demon's back, and it plummets from the sky. A fourth well-placed bullet into the struggling demon's head takes it out.
Amelia stares at the evidence of her failure as a summoner for a few seconds, then sighs and starts pulling familiar items out of her backpack to make a quick summoning circle.
She's going to do what she should have done in the first place and call on Gura.
###
The best part of having a standard demon to call upon is that you can skip most of the formalities in summoning. It doesn't take an hour to hash out the details of the deal because you can just say "same as last time" or "our standard deal" and that's that, or you can have what Amelia has with Gura which is a standing contract. A standing contract substitutes for needing to make a new one every single time you require a demon's services. Instead you have a standing contract about what you can ask their help for and what compensation it requires, and the demon is considered always contracted to you even when chilling out in Hell in between summonings (if you choose not to have them hanging around on Earth all the time, usually for safety reasons).
That can be useful to prevent anyone else from contracting the demon if you put in a clause that states they aren't allowed to take on additional contracts while contracted to you (such as in Kiara's case due to her absurd level of power) or to ensure that specific demon is always available (which is Gura's case).
The downside to a standing contract is laziness. Out of all summoners who die as a result of their own summons, nearly a third of them die from their standard demon. That number rises to over one half once you look at summoners with more than one year's experience. It's easy to get comfortable, even if you logically know your standard demon is constantly looking for a way to kill or manipulate you like any other demon. You get drawn in by their personality or just stop thinking of them as a major threat, and so you stop paying as much attention and eventually slip up. You mispronounce something in their summoning ritual, or try to make a deal with them while drunk, or forget about a clause that lets them use their powers because you established it so long ago and don't have to repeat it every time you summon them.
Or, in this case, Amelia is having a casual conversation while summoning Gura and accidentally steps over a line.
"It was really good actually. I bought you some to try tonight." Amelia says, talking about a sushi place she tried a few days ago. She calmly lights the hooded lantern next to her which quickly bursts into blue flame, and Gura's eyes snap to it.
"Thank you." Gura grumbles, fixated on the lantern's light. That's the whole point of the lantern. For some reason it's especially effective at keeping the attention of aquatic demons. It's not actually a part of Gura's summoning ritual, it's just extra security. "I'm fucking starved. Haven't eaten since breakfast."
"Well I won't keep you waiting then." Amelia says. She has the box sitting just outside the summoning circle for exactly this reason, and as long as Amelia doesn't touch the ground outside her little secondary protection circle it doesn't count as her stepping out. That's not how summoning circles normally work, but Amelia has worked enough clauses into their contract to make this safe enough. So Amelia scoots to the edge of her circle on her knees and grabs the box's handle, only to overbalance and stumble forward an inch.
When she looks down she swallows a scream of horror when she sees the back part of her secondary circle has been smudged by her knee and she's technically broken her protection. She forces cheer back into her tone and a smile on her face while lifting the box over to Gura. Maybe Gura hasn't noticed, and she can just bluff the rest of the ritual.
"Stay still." Amelia instructs, as is standard for when she needs to get close to Gura. She leans over and deposits the box in the shark demon's restraining circle, very aware of the girl's fanged mouth hovering only half a meter above her outstretched arms. "Try the orangish ones first. It tasted the best."
"Will do." Gura says. Amelia tries not to let the relief show when she sees Gura is still fixated on the lantern. That's exactly why she keeps the lantern with her. If it weren't for the lantern, Amelia would be…
...well she'd probably be just fine, because their contract is still in effect which means Gura is under a clause that dictates she can't attack Amelia, so Amelia was majorly overreacting to breaching the circle. Still, it's a sobering reminder that backups like the lantern exist for a reason, and that she's only a small mistake away from getting killed by her 'best friend'.
Also, while Amelia would be fine and Gura would still be under all their usual stipulations, she technically just unleashed Gura into the world without any sort of orders which can be dangerous in its own right. She needs to finish up this deal fast before Gura notices.
"So, standard companionship deal?" Amelia asks, sitting directly in front of the broken part of the circle so Gura can't see it. "We watch some bad movies tonight, you leave when I say we're done or I fall asleep?"
"Fine by me." Gura nods. She's digging into the takeout box with her hands, trying to sort out the food without taking her eyes off the lantern.
"Then, by law of word and magic, the deal is sealed." Amelia intones, and the magic circle's power fizzles out. Now that they have a deal, she doesn't need to worry about her protection circle being smudged.
Amelia puts a cloth over the lantern so it stops locking Gura's gaze and plops it on the side-table next to the couch, which is within her reach when sitting down. Gura grabs her food and happily drops into her seat, munching on sushi and (hopefully) oblivious to Amelia's pounding heart.
"You're slipping Watson. Pay attention, or you're going to be on the menu sooner than later."
###
Amelia is never terribly surprised to see a body bag when she steps into the office. That's just the nature of demon summoners. Less than ten percent make it past their first year, and less than one percent make it past five. There's so many mistakes that beginners can make that are absolutely fatal that they're lucky to survive making ten summonings total, much less ten a month.
Oh sure, Cover has rules in place to increase survivability. Beginners are never to summon on their own, and are to never have more than a single class one demon contracted at a time, but that only increases the survival ratio so much. Sometimes the supervisor just isn't fast enough when the beginner makes a mistake, or the beginner is prideful and tries to do a summoning on their own.
Sometimes the beginner lets their demon kill them intentionally. Suicide by demon is extremely common among summoners in general, not just beginners.
"Who was it this time?" Amelia asks casually while holding the door open for the people carrying the body bag.
"David." Says Calliope. The pink-haired woman is somehow a top agent, a manager, and everyone's mission control all at the same time, and is absolutely the highest ranked person in the building (and even if she wasn't, she'd probably still have the most authority). She dresses in all black, carries a black and silver double-barreled shotgun with her everywhere she goes, and perpetually has dark rings under her eyes. It's rumored she gets maybe two hours of sleep a day, if that.
There's an office-wide fund to bribe the higher-ups into forcing Calli to take an extended vacation, because the woman hasn't taken more than a single day off in any given month as long as any of them can remember.
"He was trying to discipline an Imp and the Imp used the clause that lets it fight back when under attack to kill him." Calli says tiredly. "David never specified that he was exempt from that clause during discipline."
"Yikes." Amelia mutters. "Glad I don't use physical punishments."
"You're too soft on Gawr, Ame."
"Hypocrite. Your last 'punishment' for Kiara failing a mission was a two minute lecture and not letting her choose what to order from KFC, and then buying her favourite meal anyways." Amelia points out.
Calli grumbles something unintelligible and stomps back inside. How someone so soft-hearted became a demon summoner, much less a highly skilled and respected one, is frankly beyond Amelia. On paper, Calli just doesn't have the spine for it.
Then again, Amelia is hardly any better. The last time Gura failed a mission Amelia 'punished' her by not letting her choose what movie to watch that night.
(Because it wasn't Gura's fault that fucker somehow knew how to mask his scent, but the standard rules of controlling demons state that you have to punish failures, so Amelia has come up with a list of exceedingly inconsequential 'punishments' in case Gura fails a mission.)
She shouldn't care. Gura is a demon, she's evil to her core, but it sits wrong in Amelia's stomach to dole out undue punishment, especially physical punishment. Most summoners opt for a whip or spiked bat for discipline, whereas Amelia doesn't let her demons choose a movie.
Unless she's dealing with a demon that's intentionally sabotaging a mission somehow. In that case she condemns them to sit in a corner for a few hours and think about what they did before dismissing them, never to be summoned by her again.
(There was one demon she summoned who managed to find a loophole in their contract and nearly killed a bystander, and Amelia promptly shot them in the back of the head. Amelia tolerates failure and is lenient on sabotage, not attempted murder.)
"I'm really not cut out for this, are I?" Amelia sighs to herself while sitting down at her desk. "But what else is new? The most important thing for being a summoner that works at any sort of organization is that you're expendable. Skill and passion are just a bonus."
Amelia takes on what would have been David's work that day so Calli doesn't have to. She gets home at almost midnight and collapses into bed.
###
Amelia stares dully at her contacts list. There are five listed numbers.
Two of them are Calli, both her work and cell numbers (which might as well be a second work number).
One of them is for her uncle, her only living relative. He lives halfway across England.
The fourth is the office main phone.
The last one is a pizza place.
Amelia flops back into her bed, letting her phone fall by her side. It's her day off, and she has no one to spend it with, like usual.
"I could always summon Gura." She thinks. "Gura wouldn't mind a TV day. She likes TV days."
It's not like Amelia can casually take Gura out and about. For as well-behaved as Gura is, she's still a demon. Casually walking around town with a demon is a fantastic way to gain a reputation as a lunatic and get someone killed.
It's a shame really. Amelia wishes she could do more with her best friend than work and watch television.
Amelia stops for a second. Her head rolls to the side, staring out of her bedroom into the main room where she can see the basic outline of a summoning circle on the floor. She uses it so often that at some point she just painted the basic structure there permanently so she doesn't have to remake it every time. She has all the materials to summon Gura sitting on a shelf right next to it, ready for easy use. The tome she learned Gura's summoning spell from sits on the bottom of that shelf, not having been touched for over a year at this point. Amelia can recite it's contents by heart.
"My best friend is a demon." Amelia thinks. Her vision blurs, and she curls up into a ball. "My only 'friend' is a demon."
She wishes she hadn't taken the day off.
###
Amelia fumbles open the door to her apartment with bloody fingers. She can hear the roar of the Balor somewhere down the street, and prays that Calli will get someone here on time to stop it. She stalled it for as long as she could with just her revolver, but a small gun is no match for a tier one demon like that, even if it's power is restricted by a bungled contract from a few years ago.
The gash in her side protests every movement Amelia makes and her mangled leg agrees, but Amelia limps her way over to her summoning circle all the same. She can still hear the evacuation siren blaring, and didn't see anyone in the hallway when she staggered her way up here. Hopefully she's the only person in the building. She'd hate to lead the Balor straight into a group of civilians.
She's already having trouble feeling her fingers, and the blood loss has her feeling quite lightheaded. Either the balor will kill her, or she'll bleed out. Those are her two options.
Except that's not true. She has a third. It's no less fatal, but at least she can say it's her choice. At least she can give something back for all she's gotten. A gift to the closest thing she has to a friend.
Amelia claws the materials off the shelf, making a bad imitation of her usual summoning circle with liberal spilling of fish guts and misplacing of candles. She doesn't even bother trying to find the lantern and kneels somewhere random in the boundary. It's hard enough to light the candles without falling over and get the necessary words out of her mouth.
"D-Demon of the seal, heed my call. I c-call to thee Gura, I-I mean Gawr-"
The pain is gone at least. Now she just feels numb. Her tongue keeps getting in the way of her words, and she sways dangerously in place, trying to stay conscious enough to get this to work.
For a horrible second after finishing the incantation she doesn't think the summoning worked, that her spell circle is so sloppy that it can't hold a magic charge, or that she stammered so much the summoning circle didn't register her words as a summoning spell at all.
The candles littered inside the circle burn blue, and a familiar watery portal appears. Something bright lights up the window, and it faintly occurs to Amelia that Calli must have summoned Kiara and sent her on ahead.
Not that it changes Amelia's course of action. She's gone too far to stop now.
Gura practically explodes out of the portal, teeth bared and tail lashing with uncharacteristic intensity. She notes the sad excuse for a summoning circle around her and locks her eyes onto Amelia.
Amelia quickly forces the words out of her mouth while slumping onto the ground on her side. A loud crash happens behind her, and she barely manages to mumble out her last words. The gift of freedom, even to a creature as evil as a demon, makes her feel some tiny spark of satisfaction. "You, G-Gawr, are released from all our c-contracts and deals, ef-fef-fective immediately. D-Do as you please."
The last thing she sees before losing consciousness is Gura summoning her trident and lunging at her.
###
Amelia will be honest, she was expecting Hell to be more fire-and-brimstone rather than sterile walls and clean bedsheets.
Oh, and Calliope is here too. She must have not survived the Balor attack either. The pink-haired girl is sitting in a chair nearby, eyes half closed. It's not fair really. Calli deserves the bed way more than Amelia does. God knows Calli didn't get enough sleep in her lifetime. She should at least be able to rest in death.
If Amelia didn't feel like utter shit she'd get out of bed and tell Calli to take it, but right now she's fairly sure she'd fall if she tried to get up. At least everything is nice and peaceful. That's a rarity in Amelia's life.
It takes a minute or two for Calli to notice Amelia is actually awake, and as soon as she does the quiet of the room is broken by a doctor asking questions and Amelia has to force words out of her dry mouth to answer.
After nearly twenty minutes of questioning Amelia becomes aware of a thumping noise to her other side, somewhere near her head, and the doctor abruptly stops, says "we can continue this later" in an anxious voice, and scurries out of the room.
Calli sighs. "Gawr, I told you not to intimidate the doctors."
"Ame just woke up. She's still tired." Gura's familiar voice grumbles near Amelia's ear. "They shouldn't be bothering her."
Amelia pulls her head around to find Gura, and is surprised to see her sitting on a chair only a few inches from the side of her bed. The demon's tail slowly swings behind her, occasionally slapping the wall (which explains the thumping noise). Gura's gaze falls from the door where she was apparently glaring at the doctor to meet Amelia's eyes.
Amelia doesn't say anything. Gura's expression is a mixture of two kinds of worry: worry for Amelia's condition, and worry for her reaction.
It occurs to Amelia that she's probably not dead, because this seems a whole lot like a hospital.
"Cut it real close this time, Watson." Calli says, grabbing her attention. She looks exhausted as always. "You're lucky Kiara can do energy transfers, or you would have died before we even got you in the ambulance. She says hi, by the way."
Amelia smiles weakly. "D-Don't suppose she's here too?"
"Of course not." Calli huffs. "The only reason Gawr is here is because I can't get her to leave. I dunno what deal you made, but it overrode allowing other people to dismiss her. No proximity restriction either. She's been breathing down the nurses' necks every time they step in."
"I don't know how human medicine works, alright? Sue me." Gura grumbles. "I just see a bunch of people stabbing Ame with needles. Of course I'm gonna watch 'em close."
It's at this point Amelia remembers that she freed Gura from her contract, which is the reason Calli can't dismiss her. You can't dismiss a demon that isn't actually bound by anything.
This also means that, currently, Gura isn't actually under any restrictions, and Amelia can't imagine Calli will be nearly as calm when she knows Gura has total free will at the moment.
"Yeah, uh, Calli, about Gura..." Amelia mumbles. She can feel Gura's eyes watching her; this is a critical moment. "She's not under a deal."
Calli frowns. "But if she's just under contract then-"
"No contract either."
"You changed it?"
"Not any contract, Calli."
It takes a few seconds for her words to properly filter through the pink-haired woman's head. "You freed her."
"Uh-huh."
Calliope groans and leans back in her chair. "Watson…"
"Wanted to go out on my own terms, alright?" Amelia mumbles. "And give a gift to Gura. Sue me."
"You still expected me to kill you?" Gura asks in clear annoyance. "I swear, you humans are so fucking weird. Even when you're super nice you still expect to get murdered."
"What does being nice have to do with anything?" Calli asks with a frown.
"You think demons murder their summoners for funzies?" Gura huffs.
"Yes." Amelia and Calliope say in unison.
"Well okay, most do." Gura admits with a wince. "A solid nine out of ten demons are actually just assholes, but one in ten of us actually take our treatment into consideration. Like, I can't watch TV down in Hell, and unlike my last two summoners Ame doesn't think it's fun to carve up my tail as punishment for failure."
Amelia always wondered where Gura got those scars.
"So, like." Gura shrugs. "Why would I kill Ame? Nicest human I've met in centuries."
Even though she had good reason to suspect any and all demons would try to murder her if given the chance based on centuries of historical texts on demonology, Amelia feels rather foolish.
"Besides, Ame has been saying my summoning ritual wrong since day one. If I wanted to hurt her I could have done so a long time ago." Gura points out.
"Wh-What?" Amelia blinks.
"Yeah. It's not 'demon of the deep seal'. Since when have I had anything to do with a seal?" Gura says. "Like, when summoning Kiara you don't say 'demon of shackles', right? She's got nothing to do with shackles. It's probably 'demon of flame' or something."
"Temptation, actually." Calli mutters. "But go on."
"Yeah, so for me it's 'demon of the deep sea!', you know, exclamation point, not L." Gura explains. "Cuz I'm a shark."
Amelia feels like a dumbass.
"Well this is great and all, but I've probably got four more hours of paperwork thanks to this mess." Calli says bluntly. She glances at Gura. "Maybe five if someone gets wind that we've got a freed demon chilling out in a hospital, which breaks at least twenty laws off the top of my head. So if anyone asks you're totally under contract and no one needs to freak out. Now I need to get going. Gawr, try not to kill anyone or cause problems."
"Gotcha. Wasn't planning to."
"You also actually have to leave once visiting hours are over."
Gura frowns, but nods. "Gotcha."
"Make sure Ame doesn't try to leave before she's cleared like she usually does."
"Hypocrite." Amelia mutters.
"Shut up Watson."
Calli leaves, and Amelia lets her head sink back into her pillow. She's not dead somehow. Gura is free and not killing her. At least half of what she knows about demons is a lie.
She's grateful when unconsciousness (born of exhaustion rather than blood loss this time) comes for her again and gives her a reprieve from her new, confusing reality.
For some reason I adore plotlines that have one party absolutely convinced that the other wants them dead, when the other party wants nothing of the sort and either doesn't know the first party thinks that or just doesn't know how to convince them they're wrong.
I expect every chapter to be more about the summoner than the demon, and each chapter doesn't necessarily share continuity with the others. This chapter and the Calli chapter do, but the others, by necessity of just using the HoloMyth crew for the main summoner/demon pair, won't.