Disclaimer: I don't own Hololive, all rights to the owners.
Yes, I know Glabrezu don't have fire breath, but they do now. My story.
The instant they lock eyes, Kiara knows how it will end.
"Demon of the end, heed my call…"
Black and white candles. Black for the restraining circle, white for the protection circle. Four animal skulls are placed around the main circle. All the circles and runes are made from thin metal chain links. Mostly from cheap jewelry.
"Appear before me in fair and pleasing form…"
The tome of Mori sits heavy in her ungloved hand, with her gloved hand keeping the pages from flipping. This is a demon with a history, and more than one title. The Crownkiller, the Reaper of Countries, she's appeared in more historic artworks than any other demon, and killed more rulers and nobles than any other too.
The Mori inspires awe or fear, depending on who you talk to. Often both.
"Appear! By my command, appear!"'
The candles drop low as if hit by a strong wind, and then spring back to their normal height. A demon now sits inside the circle.
The Mori looks deceptively human. A beauty with floor-length pink hair in high heels and a tight black dress with a gold hem and accessories, and a tattered black cape with spiked epaulettes. To top it all off, the demon has a small obsidian tiara keeping a bridal veil in place, lightly hiding a delicate nose and lips and surprisingly bright pink eyes. Those eyes meet Kiara's in an empty stare, somehow both brilliant and lifeless.
There are no death threats, no sultry promises, and no bribery from this demon. Only resignation.
Kiara knows this will end with fire, just like every other time.
###
Kiara is of the opinion that she was both the best and worst person Cover could have chosen to handle the Mori. On one hand, she's clearly the best choice for getting a demon to open up. That might as well be her specialty.
On the other hand, she's also a much higher risk than the other class five summoners. The only reason she was chosen despite that risk, and despite her history, is that she's the only summoner with class five clearance available. After her last fiasco, she can't imagine they'd willingly hand her a demon like this if they had another choice.
Of course they could have just waited, but even class five summoners are, to a certain extent, expendable. That's just the nature of being a summoner.
"Do demons have cafes in Hell?"
The first challenge is just getting the Mori to talk.
"Or, like, movie theatres?"
Kiara has never needed to make a demon talk to her before. Usually they're more than happy to talk, often in a slew of curses and death threats.
"Actually, do demons have electricity in the first place? Does Hell have air conditioning?"
The Mori sighs deeply.
Both of them are poking around a forest, looking for a rogue spined devil that apparently fled here. There's always the chance it ran further and they won't find it, but they need to make a sweep just to be safe.
It's the perfect excuse to talk at her new demon and wait for her to walk back. That's the reason she snagged this mission rather than passing it on to a more novice summoner.
"Come on Mori, give me something to work with!" Kiara wheedles.
"Is that an order?" The demons asks dryly, finally speaking up.
"Even if it was, our deal and contract don't demand you give me answers to irrelevant questions!" Kiara reminds the demon cheerfully. "I'm just curious! So spill the beans, Mori!"
The Mori goes silent again, and Kiara groans internally. This is what she gets for telling the truth. Who knows how long it's going to take for another chance to crop up.
"...not Mori." The demon mutters. Kiara perks up eagerly. "Hate that title."
"Really? I thought you came up with it. That's what the history books say."
"Well the books are wrong." The Mori says grumpily. "It was an old summoner who came up with it. Not even clever, it's just my last name."
"What's your first name?"
"Calliope."
"Calli?"
"No, Calliope." Calli tries to insist.
"Calli." Kiara repeats, grinning widely. She can't give up such a cute nickname, now can she?
The demon sighs again and looks away, but Kiara counts it as a victory.
(The spined devil they were hunting comes screaming out of the leaves a few minutes later, and Calli kills it in one quick slash before Kiara can even get her gun up.)
###
Calli doesn't want to do it.
Kiara can tell. Calli's expression barely twitches, but considering the demon usually doesn't react to anything at all even the slightest shift is notable.
It's a curious thing. You wouldn't think a demon, much less a demon usually used for assassination, would express dislike for killing a human.
Demons don't tend to act like that, but it's not entirely unheard of. There are some demons on record that showed interest in serial killers, rapists, and other assorted lowlife and desired to spare them. It wasn't a kinship thing so much as finding those horrible humans amusing or useful.
Kiara is long past finding such a notion uncomfortable. She's dealt with demons long enough that it's not surprising. Disappointing maybe, but not surprising. A part of her had hoped Calli was above that sort of thing, but she should have known better than to expect that.
(Her shoulder twinges, and she refrains from rubbing it.)
Kiara decides to play this professionally. She doesn't know how Calli would react to being told to focus, or if it would be appropriate to be sympathetic to her, so she opts for neither.
"He's likely to have demon support, being a summoner and all." Kiara explains while checking her gun. She knows it's fine, she checked it before they even left, but it's a force of habit at this point. "While we're allowed to use lethal force on him, we should also make every effort to capture him. The reasons for that are twofold: first, so he can stand trial, second, because any of his contracted demons are likely to have summoner-defense clauses; clauses that would be invalid if he died, which would probably let the demons roam free. If we keep him alive, his demons should come right to us."
Calli nods. Some tension eases from her shoulders. She flicks her wrist and her scythe appears from nothing.
"If that's clear, let's go." Kiara says. "You take point."
Calli does so with style. She kicks open the front door of the house, breaking it right off its hinges. Her form fades from its usual stylish self to something foggy and smokelike that blends into the darkness of the unlit rooms. While there might be daylight outside, the curtains on the windows are heavy enough to nullify the sunlight in its entirety save for a few small beams that sneak through the sides.
Kiara follows her barely-visible demon with her pistol held up at eye level. She has a small flashlight mounted on the bottom of her gun's barrel to be able to see, and the weapon is carefully counter-balanced at the back so it can be held steady in one hand.
"Contact." Calli growls from a room ahead of her. There's the distinct battle-screech of an imp, followed by an audible crunch as scythe meets bone. There's a small pause, followed by Calli barking, "Clear!"
"How professional." Kiara muses. She opens a closet and peers inside, and finding nothing unusual, closes it. "I guess she's been doing this long enough that someone taught her some form of procedure."
The fact that Calli actually has a recognizable procedure alone makes her more useful than ninety percent of demons Kiara has worked with in the past.
"Contact." Calli says again, from a different room ahead. Kiara hears another crunch, this one much meatier. "Clear!"
Kiara pokes her head into the room to see Calli striding away from the corpse of a legion devil. Its head has been split clean open, and Kiara would rather not describe the gore on the floor.
"Con- wait, nevermind, that's a plushie."
The summoner is taking his sweet time making an appearance, or any sort of noise for that matter. It's also strange that these demons are spaced out rather than in one group. It's almost like…
"Calli."
"Yeah?"
"I think he's stalling for time. Don't wait up for me, just move and find him."
"Understood." The demon nods, and takes off at a (near silent) dead sprint through the house. A few screeches and growls sound out to mark her passage, and Kiara readies herself to fight. She steps through the next door into a hallway and fires a shot at the imp trying to get up the stairs after Calli. The demon spirals to the ground with a hole through its wing.
The gunshot, naturally, brings all the other demons on the ground floor down on her head. There's only one other legion devil, but nearly a dozen imps come crawling out of vents and little nooks to fly at her.
Her first clip goes towards the imps. Believe it or not, they're the bigger threat here. With her clip of ten (one already being used for the first imp), she gets six out of the air before she has to duck into the room she just came from. She drops the spent magazine out, passes the gun to her gloved hand while grabbing a new magazine with her ungloved hand, reloads, then passes the gun back over.
(She used to do a different one-handed reload, which involved holstering the gun to reload it, but thankfully her bad arm isn't that useless anymore.)
In the time it took her to reload, two imps have gotten to her. She slams the butt of her gun into the face of one (sending it tumbling to the floor), takes a tail sting from the other for her efforts, and has to grab at it with her gloved hand to get it to back off far enough to be able to shoot it in the face.
She stomps on the imp she gun-whipped to crack its fragile ribs and gets her pistol up just in time for the legion devil to rush into the room and slash at her with its sword.
Kiara leads the devil on a merry dance around the kitchen table, focusing on whittling away the imps first, before finally turning her attention to the devil. She dodges one last cut from across the table, and unleashes the rest of her clip into their chest.
Thirteen demons down, and only a sting to show for it. She quickly fumbles an antivenom out of her belt (any self-respecting demon hunter or summoner keeps an antivenom for imp stings on them, because imps are the demon of choice for ninety percent of summoners) and injects herself with it and then takes a second to bind the area of the sting before moving on.
"Of course it had to sting my good shoulder." Kiara gripes to herself as she moves to the stairs after her demon. That swiftly proves unnecessary as Calli comes charging down the stairs as a smokey wraith, phases right between the bars of the railing, and zips over to the basement stairs. "Maybe I should just wait."
That decision proves well-founded. Calli comes marching up the basement stairs a moment later, dragging a very unwilling middle-aged man by the shirt behind her.
"Going to have more on us in a second." Calli grunts. She throws the man, the rogue summoner, into a chair and Kiara quickly handcuffs him there. When she looks back up, Calli is frowning at her bandaged shoulder. "Stand behind me."
Kiara has no complaints about that plan, and she tries not to smile as she readies herself behind Calli.
Calli almost looks protective, and despite knowing better than to think the demon actually cares and the flickering of her gun's flashlight like a candle, Kiara can't help but smile to herself.
###
Kiara had asked the question at random as part of her usual rambling before they actually started the mission. She didn't expect Calli to actually respond. "What do demons even do with the gems they get as payment?"
"Money." Calli responds simply. "For us demons, gems are money. Precious metal too. Some use it for jewelry and decoration, but in most cases it's money."
"Huh." Kiara blinks. "I always assumed they just liked shiny things."
"You say that like humans don't."
"Fair enough." Kiara shrugs. "What sort of stuff can you buy with gems? Is there fried chicken in Hell?"
"I can't speak for Hell, but the Underworld doesn't really have food." Calli says. "Unless you want to eat another demon."
"You don't eat souls?"
"Souls? We are souls." Calli huffs. "Or, at least we assume we are. Honestly, our guess is as good as anyone else's on that front."
"The research department will hate to hear that." Kiara chuckles. "We've been speculating for centuries on what demons are for centuries and have no concrete answers. Nothing about you makes sense from a scientific perspective, and magic is still very poorly understood."
"Wonderful." Calli sighs. "Well anyway, most of what you can buy in the Underworld is aesthetics. Clothes, jewelry, a house if you care for one, furniture. Pretty much the only practical things you can get are tools and weapons. There's not much else you're going to need in the Underworld. Honestly, after a certain point you don't really need gems anymore, you keep collecting then 'just in case', but usually that 'case' never comes to pass."
"That sounds really boring." Kiara says bluntly.
"You have no idea." Calli groans. "Our best entertainments are tournaments and plays, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a competent playwright in the Underworld so most people opt for tournaments."
"With all the time in the world, I would have thought someone would have perfected playwriting."
"You'd hope, but you'd be wrong."
###
"I have to!"
"You don't!" Kiara says hoarsely.
"I tried every other way!" The old woman snarls. Her sundress has long since been dirtied with mud and smoke just like her face, and a long, slim knife is clenched tightly in one hand. A towering demon, eight feet in height, with blood-red skin, a crown of bones jutting out of its head, four arms, and a flaming weapon in each, stands by her side. "I gave them every chance, went down every possible path before this one, filled every form and spoke to every damn court that would listen! And you know what they did? Nothing!"
"It's a house!"
"It's my house! My business! My everything! For sixty years! And three hundred before that with my mother, and her mother, and her mother!" The woman snaps. "Bad enough the apartment building right in front of it! Bad enough that they won a fraudulent land dispute to steal half my yard! Bad enough they 'accidentally' cut off my water! And bad enough the city doesn't give a damn! Now the city is just taking it! And for what!? Another apartment building!"
Kiara winces. What can she possibly say to that? "I-"
"Johnathan can keep his shop!" The lady continues to howl. "But not me! Because he's running a 'valuable business'! He's a tow truck driver for God's sake! This is my house, and that's worth less! Why!?" She leans forward, teeth bared, eyes wild. "Because the old woman should just give up and go into a home, shouldn't she?"
"That's not-"
"Move out of the way, agent! This building is coming down even if I have to cut through you to get it!"
Kiara grimaces. Her ungloved hand flicks to her gun. "Ma'am-"
"I see how it is." The woman says coldly. She turns to her demon. "You have your orders. Even if I die, see them through."
The four-armed demon lunges, and Kiara pulls her weapon out while shouting for Calli. She doesn't wait to see the reaper in action before snapping two shots at the Demon's chest, ducking behind a nearby car, and shooting twice more.
Two shots hit the demon on target, not slowing its stride as the small bullets fail to get past its packed muscle. Two more shots go wide, with one sailing off into a car across the street, and another shooting past the old woman's head with only centimetres to spare.
The old woman doesn't even flinch. She marches towards the apartment building with icy determination.
Calli finally intercepts the other demon, rushing him with an obvious overhead slash that she feints into a side-cut. The red demon in turn brings all four weapons (a sword, an axe, a spear, and a mace) to bear in fighting her. The fight quickly becomes a blur of fire and steel as the red demon unleashes a whirlwind of coordinated strikes against the reaper.
There's something elegant about the way Calli fights. It's almost like a dance. She side-steps a mace bash and turns that momentum into a quick back-step twirl to avoid a sword cut while shifting her grip up near the top of her own weapon, makes a short jump in place to land on the shaft of the spear thrust at her, and then pushes forward off the spear while slashing with the head of her scythe to get inside the reach of the axe when it tries to chop across her body.
Kiara's focus, however, is entirely taken up by the fire. Red and orange and yellow rage in ever-changing waves, appearing to leap off the weapons towards her, making familiar shapes as they do: an imp with an uneven smile, a legion devil with a missing horn and a talisman, a glabrezu with a long scar on their back.
(A tipped candle, a smouldering stoker, plain old fire breath.)
Her side aches. Her gloved hand twitches on a trigger it isn't holding, and hasn't squeezed in over a year.
A wordless screech snaps her out of her daze just in time to see the knife diving toward her face. She falls onto her back to avoid it, whips up her pistol, and squeezes the trigger without more than a second of thought.
An old woman falls to the grass, blood staining already matted hair and a muddy dress. Somewhere off to the side, the Crownkiller lives up to her title and beheads her horned opponent with a mighty sweep of her blade.
Silence overtakes what was once a noisy battlefield. Kiara stares at the corpse at her feet, and then at her demon.
(Fire dances on the fallen demon's weapons, looking from this angle like they're licking the hem of the Mori's cape. Kiara tries to focus on the Mori's face, but the flames flicker in the corner of her vision, mocking her.)
"Nice job Calli!" Kiara says, forcing a smile. She knows how fake she sounds right now, but better a smile than the alternative. "You did great."
Calli's eyes dart to the dead woman and the shaky smile on Kiara's face. She doesn't make things any easier for her summoner by quietly saying "...you too."
###
"It's happening again, Ina."
"I know."
"I'm doing it again."
"I know."
"I can't. I shouldn't."
"I know."
"Cover doesn't want another Phoenix Incident. I don't want another."
"None of us do, Kiara."
"But I can't just ignore someone."
"I know."
"What do I do, Ina? I don't want another."
"Stop. Resign. Give her to someone else."
A muffled sob escapes her mouth into Ina's lap. "I can't do that. If there's even a chance..."
Ina's eyes are sad as she strokes her hand through Kiara's hair. "...I know."
###
"So, I know you've told me what entertainment exists in the Underworld and all that." Kiara says conversationally while nudging open a rotting door with her foot. "But what do you do, Calli? Are you a fighter? A poet? A dancer maybe?"
"I don't know." Calli says bluntly. She prods a closet with the tip of her scythe and scrunches up her nose when dust puffs out of it. "Maybe I was something, once, but that was a long time ago."
"Geeze, way to sound like a cranky old man, Calli. What are you, ninety?"
"I'm immortal."
"It's called a joke, Calli."
The demon's response is so quiet that for a second Kiara thinks she's hearing wrong. "Is that what kids call them these days?"
"Aha! You do know how to have fun!" Kiara cries victoriously, pointing at her demon. "You made a joke!"
"Don't know what you're talking about." The reaper mumbles, turning away from her summoner with a red face.
"Aww, don't hide from me Calli~" Kiara teases, trying to circle around her demon to see their face again.
"Just do your job, Kiara."
Kiara gasps. "You called me Kiara!"
"No I- well yes, but it doesn't mean anything!" Calli shouts, glaring at her summoner with her face still red. "That's your name, isn't it!?"
"You've never called me by name before!" Kiara says cheerfully. "So it's important!"
"Just get back to the job so I can go home." Calli groans. She smacks open another door, blinks at the zombie that shambles out of it, and cuts its head off in one clean slice. "You didn't even need a demon for this."
"But I like your company!" Kiara pouts. She hears another zombie shambling around a corner, and guns it down with two quick shots. "And why are you so eager to get back home? I thought you said the Underworld was boring, and that you didn't have a hobby?"
"It is, and I don't." Calli agrees.
"But...?"
"But it's none of your damn business why I want to go back." The reaper snaps. "I don't have to give you answers to stupid questions, remember?"
"I'm just making conversation, Calli."
"Yeah, well, I don't want conversation."
"Why not?"
"I just don't, alright!?"
Kiara continues to pout, but remains quiet for the rest of the mission.
###
Kiara didn't get assigned the tome of Mori for fun. She's a class five summoner, and her assignments are similarly important and require a similarly impressive amount of firepower. It's not unusual for her to get flown around the country to deal with problems rather than sitting in Fakenham and the surrounding towns dealing with imp gangs and vrocks.
Assassination work is new to her though.
"I don't know what management is thinking, honestly." Kiara says as soon as she's done explaining it to Calli. "I get that they're a mob boss and all that, but usually they go for capture so we can try to imprison them rather than just killing them."
"I'm not surprised at all." Calli growls. Her face has been a scowl since Kiara started explaining, and has only gotten worse since. "Humans never change."
"Eh? What? You expected to kill a mob boss?"
"I expected assassination." The reaper says, standing up out of her cross-legged sitting position. Her eyes are droopy, looking exhausted despite not having done anything yet. "That's usually what I'm summoned for. I didn't get called 'Crownkiller' by having tea with people."
"Poisoned tea?"
"Metaphorical tea, because I didn't have tea with them." Calli grumbles. "Point being, this is nothing new. People don't summon me because they want an imp cleared from their attic. I get summoned when someone needs someone else dead."
Kiara scrunches up her nose. "Lovely."
"And it feels like everyone who gets their hand on my tome has a vendetta to settle, or a revolution to start." Calli says. Exhaustion creeps into her tone as her shoulders sag. "I've fought in succession wars, crusades, and conquests. I've killed kings and queens, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, rivals and allies. I've been betrayal given form, or a declaration of war. I've slaughtered my way through entire royal families, assassinated a pope as he slept, and killed a sultan on the day of his greatest victory in front of a cheering crowd. I've fought on both sides of wars great and irrelevant, passed between fallen summoners after defeats so often that I stopped keeping track of which side I was killing for."
Kiara keeps quiet. They should be working, but this feels important.
"I've done that for millennia, Kiara." Calli says, staring into her summoner's eyes. "Day after day after week after year after century. The longest break I can remember having between summonings is maybe five days, and each of those days I sat in the Underworld I was always waiting, expecting to be forced out into this world again, to kill someone again, be paid with something worthless like gems again, before being dismissed for half a day or being forced to stand around like a bodyguard until they identify some other guy for me to kill."
"Calli..."
"You asked yesterday why I want to go back. That's why. I'm tired, Kiara." The demon says, voice barely a whisper. "I want to sleep. Or go see a play. Or read a book. Or anything. Anything, as long as I don't have the worry of being pulled away in the middle of it to kill something again."
Kiara nods. That's a pitiful reaction given what she was just told, but what else can she do? She'd give the demon a hug if it wasn't incredibly dangerous and possibly a trap. "I'm so sorry, Calli."
"Yeah sure." She says dully. "Let's just get this over with."
With Calli's numerous abilities, the mission isn't even difficult. Kiara watches the building she sent Calli into from across the street, and when she eventually hears gunshots she calls the police to have them on standby.
Calli shadowsteps back into the room five minutes later, scythe dripping red, and flatly reports her success. Kiara guiltily hands over her payment, knowing now that gems are virtually worthless to her, and allows the Mori to take her leave.
###
She knows this is a bad idea. She's known this is a bad idea for years, long before the Mori ever came under her control.
It's the first time she's summoned Calli in her apartment rather than on-site. There's no mission today. No foe to kill. Technically it's Kiara's day off, but she didn't want to do this at the office, and it didn't feel right to do it on-site somewhere when it might be urgent she gets the job done.
Calli is weary as always when she's summoned. She sits cross-legged on the floor with her scythe across her lap. Her pink eyes aren't quite as lifeless as they've always been, but Kiara would hardly say Calli looks happy to see her. She looks cautious, especially so when she sees the apartment she's been summoned in.
"Calli." Kiara says, and takes a deep breath. "I've called you today to make an offer."
The demon tilts her head, eyes searching Kiara's face. The summoner keeps her expression as calm as possible, not wanting to let it slip. Let what slip, she's not sure. Her wariness, so Calli doesn't see her caution? Her concern, so Calli doesn't see that she gets no benefit from this? Or her fear, so Calli doesn't see that she scares her?
(The candlelight dances to a familiar tune. Words and smiles and an extended hand. An uneven smile. One of the candles seems to wobble, but when Kiara looks directly at it the candle is perfectly stable.)
"Based on what you've told me, and after some discussion with management, I propose a revision to our contract." She says, keeping her eyes locked on Calli's. "Specifically concerning your reward for successful missions."
Calli's eyes sharpen just a bit. She sits up straight. "What are you aiming for, Kiara?"
"I-I propose..." Kiara says, unable to avoid a small hitch in her voice. "That instead of payment in gems, you are paid in free time proportional to the severity of the mission you undertake, and furthermore, that you may opt-out of missions below a certain level of severity if you are currently using free time. Mission severity is decided at the discretion of myself and Cover using a ranking system of one to five, with level one missions giving two hours of time, level two giving six, level three giving twelve, level four giving a day, and level five giving three days. This time stacks with itself if you choose to interrupt your free time to undertake another mission with me, and missions of level four and above cannot be refused due to their importance."
Calli's gaze burns into her, and Kiara fights to avoid fidgeting as she speaks.
"Due to the nature of this reward and the potential for abuse, free time would need to be taken on Earth, and be monitored at the discretion of myself. Free time can involve anything of reasonably low cost, as defined by me, that is not malicious to others." Kiara says. "You are still subject to all other clauses as defined by our contract during free time, unless I specify otherwise. Is this acceptable?"
"Where would I stay?" Calli asks instead of answering.
"With me, of course." Kiara replies.
"And free time can involve whatever I want?"
"Within reason."
"Sleeping?"
"Of course."
"Shows?"
"Sure."
Calli hesitates for a few seconds, then adds. "...making music?"
Kiara blinks. "I don't see why not."
"Then I accept."
The candles flicker with finality. Kiara's shoulder itches with phantom pain.
"So, considering how often we do missions, that means I might be stuck on Earth pretty much permanently."
"Yup!" Kiara says cheerfully. "Don't worry, I have a fold-out couch!"
"I'm living with you?"
"Well yeah, where else did you think you'd be living, huh?"
Calli shifts. "Are you okay with that?"
"You think I'd be offering this if I wasn't?"
"Maybe Cover-"
"This was my idea, Calli."
The demon pauses, eyes searching Kiara's face for something. Kirara doesn't know what she wants to see, but stares back, hoping Calli sees what she wants to see.
"Okay then." The reaper mutters, looking away. "So, uh, when does this free time thing start? Next mission."
"Well you did deal with a class five situation yesterday with that assassination, so..." Kiara shrugs. "As far as I'm concerned, you have three days starting now."
"Now?"
"Yes. Now."
"...huh." The reaper stares blankly at the apartment, drinking it in for the first time. "I have no idea what to do."
Kiara can't help but smile. "You have plenty of time to figure it out."
###
It feels like a long time (or not long enough) since Kiara cooked for two people. The oven and stove have seen sparse use since the second Phoenix Incident. She's been living off fast food and whatever can be eaten out of a fridge for around two years.
(Anything to keep the smell of fire away.)
Scrambled eggs isn't difficult. That's what she tells herself. Pan over stove, turn it on.
(A flash of orange and yellow under the metal. Kiara pulls her eyes away.)
Give it a moment to heat up. Look somewhere else. Do something else. Start the coffee, get plates, put in toast.
The pan is hot (like a brand). Was there another step? Butter to stop it from sticking? Or was there a spray she was supposed to use before even putting the pan on the stove?
She opts for butter. She cuts a small piece and swirls it around the pan. It hisses as it moves.
(Her gloved shoulder twinges painfully and she tightens her grip on the handle.)
Now the eggs. One-handed, for safety. Crack on the countertop, split over the pan with thumb on one side and middle and ring fingers on the other. Repeat a second time. Poke the yolk with a spatula to break it apart. Swirl it a bit.
The egg hisses and bunches, solidifying into something curled and wavy and gnarled.
(She can see the scar tissue in her mind's eye. Smooth in some places, gnarled in others, All down her arm, her side, parts of her leg, up to just below her collar.)
She shuts off the stove and uses the spatula to cut, then coax the egg out onto the plates. She curses when her gloved hand, holding the pan while her good hand uses the spatula, jolts and nearly sends the egg flying onto the floor.
(Two stab wounds right in the shoulder, forever stopping it from rotating fully. A grinning face with a missing horn and a talisman, holding a red-hot poker heated from a campfire. There are bits of food still on his face.)
Kiara nearly screams when the toast pops.
###
It takes Calli time to adapt.
She approaches every activity, even something like eating or sleeping, as if it needs to be inspected before participating. When she does participate, her posture is defensive. She curls into a ball to sleep, covering her whole body with her cape. She holds food close to her chest, hunching over it and watching Kiara even while eating. When offered the remote for the TV, Calli keeps it permanently in hand, not putting it down after selecting a channel.
It's as if she expects Kiara to try and take these things away from her.
Despite this defensive behaviour, Calli is otherwise a surprisingly model guest. She's casual but not rude, never impatient, obeys any rules Kiara establishes (even ones without force of contract behind them), and eats anything Kiara puts down in front of her.
And she's hot. That's a nice bonus. Kiara is firmly of the opinion that the apartment looks better for Calli being there. No home is complete without a nice-looking lady. That's just a fact.
The first two weeks are awkward. Calli hovers around the corners of the room, keeping her distance, watching, seldom talking. She doesn't take advantage of her free time to refuse smaller missions, instead greedily adding to her time whenever possible. Kiara starts working from home, using the justification that she has to keep an eye on Calli.
(Ina's expression is one of worry, even if the words out of her mouth are playful, when she accuses Kiara of trying to be lazy. Ina's demon watches them from a tree through the office window, her blue eyes piercing and knowing despite resting at a lazy half-lid, meeting Kiara's gaze when she looks up.)
Calli twitches whenever spoken to during the middle of an activity; her eyes narrow in a flash of anger, only to relax when it turns out Kiara is only asking a question, or teasing, or offering her a drink.
She's less happy when Kiara mentions a mission, scowling the whole way out, but never complains. She's as relieved as Kiara is when Kiara gets a day off, because it means there's nothing short of an emergency they could possibly be called away for.
Kiara is very quick to 'forget' what Calli's amount of free time is. With only minor missions coming their way Calli probably ran out several days ago, and should have been dismissed and re-summoned for only an hour or so of free time after each mission, but Kiara doesn't bother. She's too happy to have company. Too happy to be helping, and see the wonder of Calli's face when she wakes up from a full night of uninterrupted sleep for the first time in centuries.
(She's always been weak to a smile or watching someone explore something for the first. So weak she didn't notice the stinger aimed at her throat until it was already lodged there, or the poker growing hot in the fire, or that the intake of breath behind the grinning face wasn't actually due to joy.)
Kiara is doing it again. All it takes is an eager question, pleading eyes, or patiently waiting at the dinner table.
Calli gets that answer, albeit indirectly, when she casually asks "then why did you even become a summoner in the first place?" when Kiara gripes about the blood on her uniform after a routine imp-clearing mission.
Her answer?
"I did it to save people."
And demons have always been too similar to people for her to ignore.
(The sun's fire dances in the sky, always ready, always watching. The phoenix will die again.)
###
"I need work on this alone. It's embarrassing if it's not finished."
Simple words. Reasonable words. Deadly words.
("Can I try? I've never had to tend a fire the normal way.")
She should say no. Insist on supervision, for safety's sake. A small but necessary intrusion, Calli would understand... but the demon's eyes are pleading for just that little favor, a tiny bit of trust.
("I don't know the last time I can say my action were my own.")
Kiara folds like she always does. She goes out for a shopping day, leaving Calli at home by herself, unsupervised.
("I can finally breathe again! You don't know how good this feels, Kiara!")
She can't focus the entire day. She stares at displays so long that employees have to ask her to buy something or please leave. Her lunch gets cold before she takes a single bite. The only thing she buys beyond food are two t-shirts, orange and red, just so she can say she bought something. She fumbles open the door to her apartment with her gloved hand, and-
(A wash of fire out from their mouth, bathing her already-scarred left side in flame.)
(A poker to the shoulder, setting her clothes ablaze.)
(A tipped candle when she didn't notice, the whole room burning as she struggles against imp venom.)
-SOMETHING IS BURNING.
She drops her bag of clothes and moves into the room in a sprint. She swipes up Calli's electric guitar lying on the floor with her right hand and twists towards the kitchen in one swift movement, already aiming for pink hair, looking for the glint of a scythe.
"Kiara! I think I did something wrong!" Calli's voice calls out, panicked. She is not holding her weapon, nor torching the apartment. There is no flames at all, and only a small bit of smoke. The demon is at the oven, hands wide and splayed over the dials, unsure of what to touch. "I did it like you showed me! I swear!"
Kiara doesn't move. She stares at the back of Calli's head, waiting for the trick, the trap, the fire. Her heart thuds in her chest, every muscle tensed. The strings of the guitar bite into her palm.
"Kiara!"
The second call breaks the spell. She drops the guitar with a loud clatter, startling Calli who turns to see her in the doorway of the kitchen and rapidly backsteps at the wild look in her eyes, and then she walks into the kitchen turns off all the dials and the timer, marches to the window and throws it open, then walks directly to her room and closes the door, locking it behind her.
(It burns it burns it burns it burns it-)
She yanks off her glove and throws it aside, and puts the warped scar tissue of her arm over top of the cold air stream coming out of the air conditioning. Her hand tremors and shakes, and the air worsens the prickling sensation coming from her mostly-numb skin.
Without a second thought, she grabs an unfinished glass of water from her bedside table and dumps it onto her arm, and only with the safety of water does it stop shaking and the prickling fade.
Her bed sheets are wet, and she's going to need a change of clothes, but all Kiara can do is stare at her arm and smell the lingering smoke in the air.
###
Neither of them want to talk about it.
Calli doesn't ask, and Kiara doesn't offer. Calli accepts her fixed guitar without question, doesn't request anything, barely speaks, and wordlessly follows Kiara to any and all missions. Kiara refuses to use the stove or oven and goes back to what they can eat from the fridge, and sometimes turns on the tap purely so she can hold her arm under the cold stream of water coming out from it.
Calli catches her with her arm under the tap. The demon stares, some sort of realization flashing through her mind, before turning away and grabbing a drink out of the fridge without commenting.
It takes two long weeks of quiet meals and side-glances before the silence is broken with a gift. Calli, normally protective of her food, passes Kiara one of her cookies from the desert of their take-out meal. It's a simple, stupid little thing, but it makes Kiara laugh and then cry, both at once really, and Calli shrink in her seat, worried something has again gone wrong.
"No, really, it's fine." Kiara reassures again, wiping her eyes. "Thank you, Calli."
"That didn't look fine." Calli says, hesitantly eyeing her summoner. "You haven't been 'fine' in two weeks."
"Wow Calli, five millennia and you never learned tact, huh?"
The demon hunches her shoulders indignantly, but Kiara speaks again before she can retort.
"Sorry, that was rude." She sighs, waving off her own words. "You're right, I haven't been. Just some old issues acting up."
"The scars?" Calli ventures with obvious caution, making a vague gesture to her own left arm.
"Sorta." Not so much the scars themselves as the memories behind them. "I don't do well with fire, or smoke, or burns." She chuckles weakly. "Just ask my colleagues. They'll tell you that fire loves me a bit too much."
"Why?"
Kiara goes quiet. Does she want to answer this? It's a clear signal to Calli about what's been going on and how she can abuse it. She might be setting herself up for a repeat just by talking about it.
(Calli is nice. They were all nice, up until they weren't. The imp liked playing cards, the legion devil loved talking history, the glabrezu had an interest in paintings, and Calli writes songs. They were all smiling, or at least played to her sympathy, until the moment arrived.)
"We call them 'Phoenix Incidents'." Kiara says, bitterness creeping into her tone. "It's not a category or anything. It's specific to me and my particular fuck-ups."
She pulls off her glove and sets it aside, then uses her good hand to pull up the left side of her shirt, revealing a long stretch of shiny, unnaturally smooth skin.
"Imp. Set fire to a house. I burned while trying to escape." She says quietly as Calli's eyes scan the injury. She drops her shirt, and then pulls up her sleeve to the shoulder. The skin there is different, more discoloured than burned, but with two visible puncture scars. "Legion Devil. Heated poker. Shirt caught fire. Stab wounds were worse than the fire that time. Can't fully raise my arm anymore." Lastly, she raises the front of her arm, showing her deformed and gnarled hand. "Glabrezu. Fire breath. Point-blank. Only quick reflexes kept the damage as minimal as it is. By all means my arm should have burned clean off, and I should have a stump."
"That's..." Calli stares, hands gripping her plate tightly. "Rotten luck. Real, real rotten luck."
"Oh, but it's not luck." Kiara says, smiling without mirth. "I wish I was, but it's not. I set myself up for every single one of those. I knew the loopholes were there and that something like that could occur, but I let it happen, I took those chances."
"Why?" Calli asks baffled.
"Hope, and a bit of trust." Kiara says in a dull voice, tracing the lines of red on her skin with her eyes. "You're not my first, Calli."
"What? I'm not... oh..."
"Burn me once, shame on you." Kiara murmurs, slipping her glove back on. "Burn me thrice... I guess I just can't learn my lesson." Her eyes feel warm, irritated. "Can't stop putting my trust into dangerous hands."
"Kiara..." Calli says, hesitantly reaching out. "I won't..."
"Save it. I heard it the last two times." She says curtly. "If you really mean it, you won't stab me in the back the instant I give you a knife."
They quietly eat their food for a few minutes before Calli asks one more question. "Why 'Phoenix Incident' though?"
Kiara snorts. "What better term for a girl who is always dying in a fire but can never seem to stay dead?"
###
The two meter rule is always the first thing to go. It's more of an insurance policy than a life-saving measure anyways. If a demon has found a way to hurt you, the two meter rule might change the timing of their attack, but it's rarely going to be the clause a summoner lives or dies by.
Removing the rule doesn't do much at first. Calli still keeps her distance aside from meals (where there was already an exception to the rule), and Kiara doesn't push it. Maybe they can brush past each other in the hallway to the bedroom and bathroom now rather than one of them needing to back away to give the other space to move.
The first real change comes when Kiara falls asleep at the dining table doing paperwork, and she wakes up to find herself in her bed. She's still fully clothed, and she's lying on top of the bed rather than under the blankets (just like Calli does. She uses her cape as a blanket), but she's been moved, and no one else bar the apartment owner (who has a master key) has access to her place so there's really only one possibility.
She doesn't recall removing the clause that allows Calli to touch her, but Kiara doesn't think on it too hard. That clause is deceptively easy to get around anyways. She's not going to sweat something minor.
Never one to let a good deed, however minor, go unrecognized, Kiara makes sure to let Calli know she's aware of what happened the next day.
"Calli~" She sings, skipping out of her room.
The reaper side-eyes her from the couch where she's listening to music from a laptop with headphones on. "Morning."
"I discovered something interesting."
"Really now."
"I fell asleep at the table last night."
Trepidation enters Calli's eyes. "Right."
"And you'll never guess what."
"What?"
"I woke up in my bed."
"Wow. Fancy that."
"Mhmm." She grins. "And I know for a fact the apartment owner wouldn't do that."
"Sure."
"Which means it had to be you."
"I guess so." Calli says, trying to act indifferent as Kiara leans over the couch next to her, grinning. "Not a big deal."
"Do you remember how I removed the two meter rule?"
"Of course."
"I know I never removed the contact rule." Kiara teases, and Calli immediately looks away. "You had to work around that, just to get me back to bed."
"And?"
"You like me Calli."
The reaper grumbles, and Kiara can hear the words "can't prove it" exiting her mouth.
"Aww, are we shy?"
"You're making a big deal out of nothing." Calli groans, leaning back her head. "And don't mock me."
"I would never." Kiara hums happily. "And I didn't hear you denying it~"
Calli turns back to her music and refuses to speak. Kiara takes full advantage.
"You know, despite this whole 'free time' system, you've never actually turned down a mission." Kiara says. "Why is that?"
Calli narrows her eyes.
"You know what I think?"
Calli sighs.
"I think you're feeling a bit protective." Kiara says, flicking a bit of Calli's hair. "You didn't really need rest, you just wanted a friend~"
"That's not true." The reaper scoffs. "I need rest plenty, it's that I know your hours and your vacation days now so I know when we will and won't be called away."
"Fine, but I still think you're being protective. You haven't turned down any missions." Kiara huffs.
"Think what you want."
"I think you looove me."
Instant regret crosses Calli's face. Kiara laughs.
"I guess I might as well remove the no contact rule if you know a way around it, huh?" She says, and pulls away to get breakfast. "Don't get too handsy!"
She doesn't turn around to see Calli's reaction, but she can hear a long, deep sigh, and that's enough for her.
###
At this point, Kiara knows she's delaying the inevitable. There's no reason for her to not completely free Calli at this point. She's lifted so many clauses and rules that Calli could effortless kill her with only the slightest bit of mental gymnastics. Kiara herself can think of a dozen ways Calli could 'accidentally' kill her, and several more she could do so directly despite the no-killing clause being one of the few still in effect.
She knows she's waiting this time. Waiting for the candle to fall and the curtains to catch fire, or for Calli to pull out her scythe and break her little phoenix cycle with a more permanent method of execution.
That's why she isn't freeing her fully. Uttering those words feels like admitting total trust, and she can't stand the idea of giving everything, again, and being stabbed in the back, proving she hasn't learned anything and was always doomed to fail.
(The flames from the stove flicker at her fingers whenever she turns it on, more than ready to act.)
She knows she needs to pull the trigger at some point. She needs to just say the words and give up the illusion of control. She has no real bearing on what Calli does anymore. Oh sure, she still follows commands on missions, if just to keep up the illusion that Kiara can't order Calli around (because they could both be in trouble if it comes out that she doesn't).
Command probably expects this to happen at some point. This is a similar pattern to the last three phoenix incidents, where she started spending more time at home after making a contract change and eventually got burned and revealed the full details of her delusion after the fact. Honestly, Kiara is surprised they haven't told her to stop spending so much time at home or demanded she change back her contract to its initial state. That's what they did for the glabzeru... which admittedly only made her double-down and go behind their back, so maybe that's why they haven't tried to talk her out of it yet.
Honestly, if Cover didn't have chronic manpower shortages she probably would have been fired years ago. She's let a class one, two, and three demon have more freedom than she ever should have and nearly died from it, all because she was too soft-hearted, and now she's working on setting loose a class five.
(Admittedly, the Mori is only class five because of her extensive reputation. Despite being pains in the asses to kill and catch, Reapers aren't usually capable of the wide-scale damage attributed to a class five, though the classification system has always been a bit weird about what exactly constitutes 'wide-scale damage'.)
The only problem with freeing Calli is that it feels like a guarantee that she's giving up what she has. Which, she realizes, is the exact wrong mindset to have. She never had this mindset before... but that was before she realized this was a pattern.
"Well, what's the saying? 'If you love something, let it go', right?" Kiara thinks, staring at the back of her demon's head while they focus on their guitar. "I didn't try this hard to get her trust just to back out at the last second."
She sets her shoulders and approaches the Mori.
###
Kiara has been waiting for the candle to tip for two months after freeing Calli. She's been looking over her shoulder for the glint of a scythe, or waking up expecting fire licking the corners of her bed, but there never is. Calli tolerated her paranoid distrust with a frown and a raised eyebrow. Kiara got the feeling the demon understands exactly what's going through her head but has no idea how to help.
At least, that's what she hoped.
The first sign she notices is the smell. It has the scent of woodsmoke alongside chemicals, which the back of Kiara's mind tells her is probably from the several layers of paint on the walls of this old, rickety house.
Her mind jumps into high gear as her heart starts pounding. This was an imp-clearing mission she got called out of her usual operating zone to handle because some rich guy was willing to pay Cover a lot of money to get "a real professional, not some fumbling novice" to clear out their newly bought-property when they noticed demon activity (ignoring, of course, that Cover would have handled it either way, but they wanted priority and an expert, so that's why she's here). After clearing out the main hall, she and Calli split up to sweep the house. Calli went down towards the furnace room while she went towards the bedrooms and the attic (the preferred spot of many imps for comfort reasons).
Her hand itches and her side aches. She is nearly stabbed by an imp in her distraction, but rams the stock of her gun into the demon's face at the last second and subsequently shoots it for a quick kill.
"CALLI!" She shouts, against her better judgment. She desperately wants to believe she's wrong, but she recognizes the pattern. It's too clear for her to not.
All she gets in response is the screech of a pair of imps diving out of the attic. She ducks and weaves around the old, tiny room, avoiding their stingers while trying to get a clean shot. She has to settle for another gun-whip to one imp's head and a snap shot at the other imp's wing. She fires a second shot at the imp she pummelled while stomping the imp with the injured wing to death with her boot.
The smell is getting worse. Is it hot, or is that paranoia? Can she see smoke, or is it a trick of the eye?
"CALLI!" Kiara repeats, kicking open the door to the hallway and dashing to the stairs down to the second floor and taking them three at a time to get down in a reckless dash. She's about to go down another level, but the sight at the bottom stops her.
Red, orange, yellow. It slithers around the posts and railing, consuming the old rug and the rotting floorboards. It snaps and crackles, laughing at her as it climbs the stairs towards her. The fire almost seems to have a face, with the two posts of the stairs being the eyes and what remains of the carpet being an open, hungry mouth.
There might be other noise. Voices, screeches, Calli, but Kiara can't hear them. She can only hear the roar of the flames. She flinches away from a loud snap of the fire and bumps her side on a table which causes pain to blossom on the scarred skin.
"Again, again, again." Kiara thinks, not even sure what she's talking about. She stumbles into a nearby room, hoping to find a window and an escape, but instead she finds a room with flames already licking out of the floorboards and thick, acrid smoke that smells overwhelmingly of paint as the flimsy layers of the wall peel away rapidly to feed the flames like birch bark on on a campfire. The old beams and drywall underneath are the perfect addition for a quick, hot fire. "Again, again, again."
Thick black smoke billows from the doorway as Kiara staggers out and up the stairs. She keeps low as she moves, well aware of the threat of smoke inhalation.
Repeat process. Kick open the bedroom door, brutally snipe an imp crawling out of the attic, and rush to the window.
The front deck is below, completely aflame with dry, broken, sharp, wood ready to impale her on impact. She rushes out to the next room, very away of the hungry fire starting to wiggle it's way through the cracks in the ground and grabbing at her heels.
The next room is locked, and the room after that is a bathroom with a window too small for her to possibly fit through. She only spends a few seconds making those actions, but it's seconds more than she can afford. It will take less than half an hour for this building to burn, but far less for the fire to kill every human inside.
Or, in this case, the only human inside.
"What happened!? What happened!?" She asks herself hysterically while climbing onto the sink to avoid the fire crawling across the floor. "What always happens!? She didn't even confront me! She just set fire to the house and left!? No gloating, nothing! Not even a goodbye!"
Somehow that hurts more than being stabbed in the back. She meant so little that Calli couldn't even be bothered to kill her in person. She's being left to die like a rat in a trap.
On a floor below, something cracks and falls. A beam? A wall? A piece of the floor? Smoke lies thick on the ceiling, forcing Kiara to duck awkwardly on the counter or get a lungful. Even in her current position, she's already swallowing smoke as it leaks through the floor and through the doorway.
She not thinking rationally anymore. She's not trying to get out. She's staring hypnotized at the fire clawing up the side of the counter towards her legs. She doesn't notice when some of the smoke forms a shape inside the bathtub until a hand falls on her shoulder and she almost falls off the counter.
Kiara has barely a second to see wide pink eyes staring at her before something dark is thrown over her body and the world goes from hot to cold.
A moment later Kiara's boots meet grass, and she would have face-planted into the weeds of the unkempt lawn if not for a pair of arms grabbing her under her shoulders and pulling her to a standing position.
"I- You- But-" Kiara gapes, grabbing onto the slim hands holding her up. "Calli?"
"Yeah?"
"Calli."
"Yes?"
"Calli."
"Starting to weird me out, Kiara."
Kiara is aware of her bottom lip quivering, but there's nothing she can do to stop it. She releases Calli's hands, turns around to see an anxious-looking reaper whose eyes go even wider upon seeing Kiara's expression, and promptly drops her face into Calli's chest and starts bawling.
"Uhh... did I say something?" The reaper asks, holding her arms out to the sides awkwardly while looking down at her summoner. "Kiara?"
Kiara sobs harder and tightens her grip.
"Look, we're out of the house. There's nothing to freak out about, yeah?" The reaper says hesitantly. She cautiously pats Kiara on the back. "Right? We're good?"
Kiara's "yeah" is more of a whimper than a word.
"Should we call the fire department or something...?" Calli ventures after a few more seconds of Kiara clinging.
Instead of answering, Kiara sniffles. "You came back."
"What do you mean 'came back'? I never left. It's your fault you kept moving around and I couldn't find you."
Kiara starts crying again.
"L-Look, I'm sorry for whatever I did wrong, but can you please stop crying now!?" Calli asks in a panic. "What am I supposed to do? I'm not good at this stuff!"
Kiara keeps squeezing, and Calli fidgets.
"I-I mean, I guess if this is what you need, then sure, I guess this is fine." The reaper coughs. "We can just stay like this for a bit."
...
"You are okay, right?"
Kiara nods.
"Okay, uh, cool. Good I mean."
She really should be calling the fire department, and she's going to be in pretty big trouble with Cover and their rich client later, but for now, Kiara is just happy that her trust has finally been validated.
I think this is the first chapter where the summoner's explicit goal has been to eventually free their demon.
This is another chapter where I started many versions of it, then went back and remade an earlier version rather than a later one to create the finished product. I had five or six starts (only two thousand words at the most) and I chose version... I think this is two? There's one or two I didn't save. I chose version two to keep writing. I knew Calli was going to be this ancient, infamous demon from the start. She was always going to be the Mori. I fumbled Kiara for a lot of the starts, trying to figure out what her deal was. It's only when I came up with the idea of the phoenix incidents that everything came together. Actually, when I first made this start (so when I wrote the first few thousand words and nothing else) the scarring on Kiara's hand was already included without phoenix incidents even being a concept in my mind.
Oh, and in case it wasn't absolutely clear, 'phoenix incident' means 'Kiara thought she saw good in a demon, started giving it freedoms, and then it betrayed her trust and tried to kill her with fire'.
There were several elements I wanted to expend more on, but for the life of me I couldn't fit them all in. I had the idea that Calli was this infamous demon who had been active for almost all of recorded history and fought in a massive number of major conflicts and has a reputation unrivalled even by demons who are far more dangerous than her. Instead there was little mention to her history, almost no use of her reputation, and most of this ended up being a backdrop for how goddamn tired Calli was. Calli's lack of knowledge about anything to do with Earth despite having been around for so long was also something I didn't get to talk about much. She was always operating either as an assassin or a bodyguard and was under pretty strict control, so she only learned things when she had time to listen on guard missions, which would mostly be high-level political bullshit due to the sort of people who summoned her rather than smaller things like music or good food or what exactly television is. Problem is that I did a lot of that with Ina too, and it's much less important for Calli than it was for Ina.
Kiara included pretty much everything I wanted for her, thankfully. It took me long enough to figure out how she was going to work that when I did figure it out, there were few enough elements that it made for an easy fit. The major sticking point was how friendly she was going to be to her demon and how that would be expressed.