« Back
Generated:
Post last updated:
call me maybe [ripper]
Demon Cam and Ripper
Permalink Mark Unread
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 -
Permalink Mark Unread
- and finds himself in a small and pretty thoroughly wrecked-looking apartment, in a circle drawn with green Sharpie on masking tape on carpet, facing two drunk boys with markers. One of them has a book in his right hand; he squints at it, then at Cam.

"I think we fucked it up, Rayne."

"Gimme that," says the other one, reaching for the book.
Permalink Mark Unread
Cam looks at the circle. It's terrible.

"Just a little," he understates. "What can I do for you?"
Permalink Mark Unread
The hell of it is, the circle is clearly drawn very very carefully. It's just wrong to the point of barely functioning.

"We did everything right," says the second boy, examining the open pages of the book and comparing a diagram there to the circle on the floor.

"I told you not to trust that fucking book," the first one grumbles. "Didn't I bloody tell you? Now look what we've done."

"Well, no use crying over spilled milk," says the second. "We got something." He addresses Cam. "We want you to clean our apartment."

"Ugh," says the first boy, rubbing his face with both hands. "Why do I ever listen to you?"
Permalink Mark Unread

"The trouble is, your book is not a very good book. I do not, in fact, have to clean your apartment," points out Cam, amused.

Permalink Mark Unread
"See, even the demon knows your book is stupid."

"It's a sad day when you're so keen to say you told me so you'll look to a demon to back you up," says the second boy, previously addressed as Rayne.

"The demon is prettier than you," the grumbly one points out, although the logic behind this statement is anybody's guess.
Permalink Mark Unread

Cam snorts. "I'm flattered. Anyway. If I offer to clean your apartment for you do I get anything out of it or did you expect to be able to make me do it for free and you're into casual slavery?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Well, what do you want?" says Rayne.

"Don't bargain with demons drunk, Rayne," says the other one.

"I'm not half as drunk as you are, and you can't stop me."
Permalink Mark Unread

"It's funny, I don't usually get asked to specify. Most people who summon demons don't let us talk."

Permalink Mark Unread

...Both boys squint confusedly at him.

Permalink Mark Unread

"This is a really bad circle. You're very lucky you got me, you could have gotten someone seriously unpleasant and they'd have landed completely off-leash. I am nice, although if you want to dismiss me rather than hope I'm telling the truth I will understand."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Well," says the apparently very singleminded Rayne, "are you going to clean our apartment?"

His friend just sighs.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you actually live here? It looks like the set for a depressing period drama."

Permalink Mark Unread
"You don't have to be that rude about it," says the grumbly one.

"He's a demon, Ripper," Rayne says affectionately.
Permalink Mark Unread

"No, I'm serious, what year does your interior decorator think it is, nineteen-sixty or something?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Interior decorator?" says Rayne, giving Cam a funny look.

"He's a demon, Rayne," says, apparently, Ripper.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes, I'm a demon. Is that a landline telephone?" Pause. "That's... okay. What year do you two think it is?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"It's nineteen ninety-five," says Ripper. "Why, are you a time-travelling judgmental excessively pretty demon?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apparently! Last I checked it was 2159!"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Does that mean you're not going to clean anything?" inquires Rayne.

"You're just not letting that go, are you," says Ripper.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Nineteen ninety-five in a terrible circle in a place Earthlike enough to have English-speakers I'd better spend my time patching your ozone layer and letting you hire a cleaning service," snorts Cam. "Which one of you finished this diagram?"

Permalink Mark Unread
...They look at each other.

They shrug.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, for crying out loud," sighs Cam. "Okay, so ninteen ninety-five, where did you even find that misinformative book you got this circle out of?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Rayne got it from a drug dealer who's into the occult," says Ripper, "because Rayne is occasionally an idiot."

"Not all my friends are dealers, Ripper."

"This one is."
Permalink Mark Unread

"And you decided it might work to summon a demon to clean your apartment - that it was worth your time to try - even given the fact that you're clearly both drunk, how'd that happen?"

Permalink Mark Unread
Ripper points at Rayne.

"It was perfectly logical," sniffs Rayne.

"To you, because you're lazy and irresponsible," says Ripper.

"You helped," says Rayne.

"I always help you with your bad ideas. That doesn't make them good ideas."
Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean not why did you think it was wise to obtain a demon, I mean why did you think it was possible."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Just because we were misled by our sources this time doesn't mean we've never managed it before," says Rayne. "But nightmare demons aren't much good for domestic chores."

"And knowing you, you'd duck out of the work somehow even if you were possessed," snorts Ripper.
Permalink Mark Unread

"...Okay, I don't think you did time travel, I think you pulled me from an alternate multiverse."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Great," sighs Ripper.

"The important thing," says Rayne, "is will you clean—" Ripper elbows him in the ribs. "What?"

"We just accidentally summoned an unknown kind of demon from an unknown universe," says Ripper, "the state of our floor is not our biggest problem anymore, will you give it a rest."
Permalink Mark Unread

"So, tell me about this place. Like I'm from outer space, because I can tell you're speaking British English and can guess you're counting years from the supposed birth of Christ and you apparently play something I can identify as a guitar, but I'm not sure what depth of similarity that implies."

Permalink Mark Unread
"I," says Ripper, "am much too drunk to explain Earth to a demon who thinks he's a space alien."

"I'm not," says Rayne. "What do you want to know about? Magic?"

"What do you know about magic," says Ripper.

"More than you do."

Ripper picks up the not-quite-useless demon summoning text and throws it at him, not very hard. It bounces off his arm.

"Ow."
Permalink Mark Unread

"The basics of magic, and just for completeness can you - I don't know, list the continents and name random extremely famous people and things in case I don't recognize them all? If you're thorough I might even neaten the apartment some, although I draw the line at interacting with anything you may have puked on."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Europe, Africa, Asia, North and South America, Antarctica," says Rayne.

"We haven't puked on anything," says Ripper. "We're not that kind of drunk."

"I don't think the nice demon needs to know what kind of drunk we are, Ripper. Famous people and things..."

"Hey, is Australia a continent?"

"Probably."

"Ha, you missed one."
Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, so standard continents. I'm just going to start - listing things. Revolutionary War. The Mandarin dialect of Chinese. High heeled shoes. Daffodils. QWERTY keyboard layouts. The film 'Jurassic Park'. Icebergs. Do all of those things sound like things that are?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Yeah," says Rayne. "Name a famous person, Ripper."

"John Lennon."

"Name another famous person."

"Freddie Mercury?"

"Name one who's not a musician and not dead."

"Oh, fuck off."
Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. And on top of your Earth stuff you have kinds of demons who are not my kind of demon and magic that is not my kind of magic?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Apparently," says Ripper.

"We have more kinds of demons than we can count," says Rayne. "More than a few kinds of magic, for that matter. And gods, do you have gods? Gods are a nuisance."
Permalink Mark Unread

"We don't have gods. We have demons and angels and fairies."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Oooh, angels," says Rayne, with moderate sarcasm.

"And fairies?" says Ripper.
Permalink Mark Unread

"That's what I said, yes. And humans can do little tidbits of magic aside from summoning us - the catchall term is daeva - but most of the heavy lifting is summonses."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, that's pretty much nothing like this universe at all," says Ripper.

Permalink Mark Unread

"So, tell me about this universe," sighs Cam, "please?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"We have magic. It does things. It has complicated self-contradictory rules that often don't make any sense, but somehow it works anyway. Humans can mostly use just about any of it, but humans also mostly don't know it exists."

"See, you're not too drunk to explain it after all," says Rayne.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Can non-humans use it?" Cam asks, gesturing at himself.

Permalink Mark Unread
"Yeah, most of 'em," says Ripper.

"Want to learn some magic?" says Rayne.

"Don't teach magic to the demon," says Ripper.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Why not?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"Because it seems like a bad idea?"

"But Ripper, you always help me with my bad ideas," says Rayne, batting his eyelashes.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Why does it seem like a bad idea, though?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I know you're not one of our kinds of demon, probably, but I don't know what kind of demon you are, and most of the kinds of demon I know about are bad enough with the magic they can already do."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I can make arbitrary nonmagical matter. If wanted to suck the entire planet into a black hole, it would already be done. My knowhow is not the limiting factor on how bad I can get, but it might be the limiting factor on how much useful stuff I can accomplish while I'm here."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, but do you really want to learn magic from two drunk guys who are careless enough to let you convince them to teach you magic while they're still drunk? How do I even know you're telling the truth about the black holes? I don't know a damn thing about your magic."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I didn't say how about you start giving me lessons right now, I was wondering why it was such an obvious bad idea. I'm not going to even entertain the idea of me demo-ing the black hole on a planet's surface but if you want something else made I'll consider it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anyway, what do you mean, accomplish?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Arbitrary nonmagical matter includes, like, the ability to patch your ozone layer, I can't remember if that's known to be a problem yet? It's a problem later. My Earth, anyway. There's things I can't do, though, even with my sci-fi gadgets from the time travel part, so maybe magic could make me more well-rounded as an ozone-layer-patcher-errant."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I can't even think about this right now," says Ripper. "If you want to prove you can make things, you could make me another guitar."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You want a fancy futuristic guitar or one like you've got?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"If you can make me a fancy future guitar, make me a fancy future guitar!"

Permalink Mark Unread

And lo, there is a fancy futuristic electric guitar, very sleekly built. Cam hands it over.

Permalink Mark Unread
Ripper admires it.

Rayne snickers.
Permalink Mark Unread

"It's got its own amp in it, so don't turn that dial on the end too far unless you want to deafen the entire block."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Okay," says Ripper, still gazing at the guitar.

"Do you two need to get a room?" says Rayne.
Permalink Mark Unread
Cam snorts.

He starts peeling up the masking tape that holds the circle.
Permalink Mark Unread

Rayne looks at him suspiciously, then decides that this qualifies as cleaning and is therefore acceptable. Ripper is much too busy with his shiny new guitar to take particular notice.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam does some general tidying, although not with much efficiency. He's mostly casing the place for hints about the world he's landed in.

Permalink Mark Unread

Books, guitars, a broken coffee table that he may safely assume was the victim of drunken shenanigans of some kind. Various empty bottles, together comprising an excellent education in local cheap alcohol.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam can't heal the table as seamlessly as an angel could, but with a firmly attached layer of intervening wood knitting the broken parts together he can do a passable job. It looks pretty much like a crappy apartment in the First World just before the turn of the millennium ought to look. Except for the booklist, maybe.

Permalink Mark Unread

The booklist is a little weird. There are other books on magic, although none of them are about summoning demons in particular.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam investigates a book on magic.

Permalink Mark Unread

This is enough to distract Ripper from his guitar. "Hey, what are you doing?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Reading your books. Would you rather I do this without your supervision by making my own duplicate copies somewhere else? Because I can do that if you're going to be a pill about it."

Permalink Mark Unread

He rolls his eyes. "Fine, your funeral."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Nah, that was a hundred fifty years ago."

Read read read.
Permalink Mark Unread
"What I'm trying to say is that you are doing something dangerous and it would be a good idea to stop," says Ripper, trying to peer at the book to see what page Cam is on without getting up from his stable position on the floor.

"Oh, what's the worst that could happen?" chirps Rayne. Ripper gives him a dirty look.
Permalink Mark Unread

"What is merely reading this book liable to do to me?" inquires Cam, pausing in doing so.

Permalink Mark Unread
"Ask me in a couple days when I can think straight," groans Ripper. "In the meantime, don't read anything out loud."

"I set Ripper's hair on fire once," chirps Rayne.

"You did that on purpose," snarls Ripper.

"Yeah, but I didn't have to do much more than read a book to do it."
Permalink Mark Unread

"Fine," says Cam. He puts the book back, shrugging, and goes back to curiously tidying.

Permalink Mark Unread
"Thank you."

"Aww, but it would've been funny if he'd set his hair on fire," says Rayne.

Ripper makes an exasperated noise and flops over so his arms and head are in Rayne's lap.
Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm relatively better equipped to handle being suddenly on fire than you are, presumably, but I don't think it qualifies as actually funny."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It doesn't have to be funny to you," says Rayne. Ripper mumbles something unintelligible.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam gives up on talking to them. He does as much cleaning as he feels like and then makes an upholstery cover on their couch because he doesn't quite trust it and flops thereupon and makes himself rashers of bacon to nibble on, one at a time, and a stick-shaped computer with a futuristic screen projection to operate with the other hand.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ripper, to all appearances, falls asleep in Rayne's lap. It doesn't look especially comfortable.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam takes notes, makes himself a key to their apartment and a leather coat and goes for a quick stroll around the block to check it out and lets himself back in, and then falls asleep on their newly covered couch under a conjured duvet.

Permalink Mark Unread
By the time he gets back, the pair of them are in bed.



The next morning, he is likely to be awakened by Ripper complaining loudly and unintelligibly about his headache. Rayne, less miserable or at least quieter about it, shuffles into the kitchen to make tea.
Permalink Mark Unread
Cam wakes up.

"Hey - is your name actually 'Ripper' or is that some in-joke I'm not in? - you want science fiction hangover drugs from a demon?"
Permalink Mark Unread

"...Yes! Yes I do!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You want to swallow 'em and wait fifteen minutes or you want 'em intravenously via demonic magic and no wait?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In for a penny," he mutters. "I'll take the no waiting."

Permalink Mark Unread

Bam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Wow," says Ripper, blinking rapidly. "Wow. I could kiss you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Figure of speech, or...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, figure of speech but you are very pretty and you did just cure my nasty hangover so I'm very fond of you at the moment."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, you said I was pretty when you were drunk too. I'm assuming here that you weren't blackout drunk and know why there's a demon on your couch."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I vaguely remember that Rayne had the brilliant idea of summoning you to clean the flat, yeah."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you summoned me, and I cleaned the flat, slightly. I am wondering how long you are planning to keep me."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm wondering how to send you back."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I could tell you, but I don't even know which of you actually summoned me. Which one placed the last mark on the circle? I mean, you didn't know last night, but now you are sober, so."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't think we're gonna figure that out," he says. "We were both working on it at the same time. 'Pens meeting at the end' kind of deal."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, you could both try dismissing me, but I'd actually rather stick around for a few years at least."

Permalink Mark Unread

"A few years?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, till the next time Hell has a concordance with Limbo, because I want to send some letters, but until then I have no pressing business or languishing relationships at home."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So you want to stay here and... something about ozone?" he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Patch the ozone layer, catch the field of medicine up to 2159, maybe get you started on space colonization, save the honeybees."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Sure," says Ripper. "Knock yourself out. Don't get eaten by a vampire."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...You had neglected to mention those."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They're a kind of demon. Sort of. They look like humans most of the time, but they bring out the fangs when they're about to try to drink your blood. Mostly they drink human blood, but you might run into a stupid or adventurous one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, do they do anything else interesting, and do they usually bite to kill?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Usually, yeah. I don't know, what's 'interesting'? Is catching fire in sunlight interesting?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mildly. Does it have to be natural sunlight?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure. I think I've heard of someone using a sunlight spell."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Garlic, crosses, running water, spend daylight hours comatose in coffins...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Garlic yes, crosses yes, running water no but holy water gives them nasty blisters, and I hear coffins are getting old-fashioned. Modern vampires squat."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Do they listen to reasonable attempts at talking to them, and is there a way to check if holy water counts short of flicking it at one?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Not usually, and... I've never heard of a magic shop selling fake holy water... but you can make things, right, no I have no idea how to check if yours holds up without giving it the smoke test. So to speak."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay, that should be exciting, I suppose. Are they common? Do people know about them, by and large? For that matter what do people in general know about magic and demons?"

Permalink Mark Unread
"People in general are - Rayne, did you fall asleep in there?"

He goes into the kitchen. Rayne is sitting in a chair beside a long-since-boiled electric kettle and two mugs containing one dry teabag each. He is indeed asleep. Ripper sighs and picks up the kettle to refill it with fresh water.

"Sory, where was I?"
Permalink Mark Unread

"You were telling me about the general population's knowledge of things. Do you want me to just make you tea?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right. General population doesn't know a thing." He puts down the kettle. "Yeah, go on then. You're very helpful. Did I ever get your name?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Cam makes him a cup of tea and hands it over. "I'm Cam. How do you exit the general population in that respect, in what way are you non-general?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Thanks. Well, the way I did is I grew up with it. Not sure about Rayne. But it's the kind of thing you learn from a friend or relative, or maybe picking up the wrong book and accidentally doing some magic, or being lucky enough to survive a vampire attack."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And this has managed to escape someone going public with it how?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm supposed to know?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, for example, why don't you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I have better things to do with my time. I'm not powerful enough to easily prove I can do really real magic and not some kind of trick, people can be amazingly skeptical when they don't know. And I wouldn't see the point if I could, what would I get out of it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Aha."

Permalink Mark Unread

"This is good tea," he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Of course it's good tea, why would I make you bad tea?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"How should I know what your definition of good tea is? You're a demon. An American demon. From another universe. Maybe in your world they make tea out of grass and goat shit."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Ew."

Permalink Mark Unread

He laughs.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Anyway. What can you do which would be so insufficiently impressive on television?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Light candles, not very reliably. Other odds and ends. I haven't studied a lot of spells; I haven't found many that seem worth the trouble. Who wants to be able to turn themselves into a rat?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can one change back?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Not with any spell I found in that book."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Then yeah, that sounds like at best a last resort sort of thing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And honestly, I'd rather not learn how to turn myself into a rat even if someday I might be in a situation where every other option looked worse. There have got to be better last resorts than that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And do you have one?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Admittedly no. But I'd know where to find one if I thought I was gonna need it. More or less."

Permalink Mark Unread

"So you're unprepared for nasty surprises but not for nasty predictables."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm more prepared for nasty surprises than most people. I don't think it's possible to be prepared for all the nasty surprises this world has to offer."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How well do you think my indestructibility will hold up against local magic and demons and such?" wonders Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I wouldn't count on it," he says. "You might be safe against vampires."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. I'm not even actually invulnerable, just indestructible, this is occasionally inconvenient," sighs Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"What a shame," he says dryly.

Permalink Mark Unread

"And before that I was murdered at age twenty-two," says Cam, equally dry, "it was tons of fun."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sorry to hear that," he says, much more sympathetically.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Speaking of which, whichever one of you summoned me might have becoming a daeva upon death to look forward to. If you're hooked into my world's afterlife setup and I am not wrong about how it works."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...D'you want to maybe explain that some more?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I was a summoner, I got murdered, I woke up in Hell with demonic powers. Most daeva are not ex-summoners, but a small percentage of us are. Most dead people wind up in Limbo, but according to letters from Mom and Dad, they can't find any ex-summoners there at all."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...so... Rayne's going to want both of us to summon - daeva? - as soon as he catches wind of that," says Ripper. "He'd hate the thought of going off to be a demon in another universe while I went who knows where around here. Or the other way around."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, no guarantee you get to be the same kind. There are three."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, he's going to hate that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And what do you think of it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm... not happy," he sighs. "But I wasn't exactly expecting anything specific before now."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think it's to do with some kind of personal sympathy with the kind of magic," Cam mentions. "But I haven't known either of you long enough to produce guesses."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Cross that bridge when we come to it, I s'pose."

He looks contemplatively at Cam over his tea.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. You guys are close, apparently? In spite of - due to? in concert with? - bickering like an old married couple."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Best friends for years," he says. "'In concert with' probably covers it best out of those."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, even if you get different kinds, every few years there's a concordance between whatever pair of worlds. There's mail. Fairies are kind of shit with it but they're better than nothing."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Rayne still wouldn't like it. I don't know if I'd mind as much, but I'd mind. Too late to do anything about it, though, I guess. Want to give us tips on making better circles?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Maybe. Are you going to do anything with them than summon a random angel for ten seconds just to qualify as summoners?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I won't. Unless there's some wonderful thing I could do instead that I don't know about because I don't know your magic. But knowing my magic, I'd much rather stick to the basics than get into anything dangerous."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Demons make things, angels change things, fairies move things, is the basics."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Demons seem most useful by far out of that list, but then, maybe I'm biased."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What, 'cause I'm pretty?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"You're pretty, you make an amazing hangover cure, you made me an amazing guitar... are you sure you don't want a kiss?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"What? I never said I didn't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You never said you did," he points out. "You asked me if I was serious, was I not clear enough that I was serious?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I did not think you were serious!"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, now you know."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not sure I do, all this talk and no actual kiss."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right, I can take a hint when it's written in very large letters," says Ripper, and he puts down his tea and goes for that kiss.

Permalink Mark Unread

Mmm kiss.

Permalink Mark Unread
Mm! Kiss!





Rayne applauds.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, joy, an audience," says Cam, rolling his eyes.

Permalink Mark Unread
"Rayne, fuck off," says Ripper in more or less friendly tones.

"Well I'm hardly about to go back to bed," says Rayne. "You might need it."

Ripper raises his eyebrows at Cam. "I don't know, do we?"
Permalink Mark Unread

"Not if needing it means having to discuss that in front of the audience we don't."

Permalink Mark Unread

"He does live here," Ripper points out. "Not discussing it in front of the audience, we can do, but if I lock him out of the bedroom he's going to know why."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you probably don't want to come along while I build myself a house in the nearest middle of nowhere to be a base of demonic operations."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I don't know," says Ripper, "that sounds sort of fun."

Permalink Mark Unread

"It might not be immediately convenient to give you a lift back here, you know."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Less fun. Well, depending on your definition of immediate. No one will cry if I'm gone for a few days. Rayne might cry if I'm gone for months."

Rayne snorts but does not actually object to this characterization.
Permalink Mark Unread

"More in the neighborhood of days. I want a place to be but that won't take long, and - 1995, your internet's probably for shit, I'd be better off making paper books."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Books about...?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Might start with a recent encyclopedia. Nineteen-ninety-fucking-five. I wonder if I'm running around being seven or eight years old somewhere?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...That would be weird," says Ripper.

Permalink Mark Unread

"A bit, yes, but I suppose I might as well check, if I am I have plenty of time to give myself all kinds of useful information and then he can start doling it out when he's like sixteen and I'd just as soon go home."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

"So I'm going to go out, find a place where I will have room to take off in a cute little atmosphere-friendly space shuttle, make one, and go check - what month is it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"December."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Check Phoenix, Arizona for a tiny little successor to my various plans. We have at least some matching musicians, maybe I match too even though I am not a musician. I do loosely qualify as a historical figure back home."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Have fun with that."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm outlining my plans so you can decide if you want to come along for the ride," Cam clarifies. "Arizona, check for mini-me, build house in the desert, loiter in a library and hope nobody asks why my coat's so lumpy, go home and make my own copies of useful references, sometime in between these errands I can hop you back to I'm assuming somewhere in Britain."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sure," he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You accompanying or no?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eh, why not," he says. "I should find some clean clothes first, maybe."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm not in a particularly tremendous hurry," says Cam agreeably.

Permalink Mark Unread
"Rayne—oh, you're asleep again. Never mind."

He yawns and trundles bedroomward in search of clothes.
Permalink Mark Unread

Cam tucks his futuristic computer into his coat pocket and waits.

Permalink Mark Unread

He returns, wearing clean clothes! Much better.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Where's a good place to take off in a mini spaceship from here?" Cam inquires. "A roof will do if we can get to it."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...I s'pose we can get to the roof of this building... not that I've tried," he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I can get to the roof of your building, but not carrying you and not without getting stared at, I imagine."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Wings, right. Well, let's try the stairs."

Permalink Mark Unread
"Sure."

They try the stairs!
Permalink Mark Unread

This method is successful!

Permalink Mark Unread

And on the roof Cam makes a cute little spacecraft in about half a minute and hops into the pilot's seat.

Permalink Mark Unread

It's very cute. Ripper is charmed. He climbs into what looks like a passenger seat.

Permalink Mark Unread
And then Cam lifts off and gets high enough to examine the shape of the British Isles and proceeds west.

The ship is fast and quiet.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Cool," says Ripper.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yep! This one is actually like thirty years out of date, but I know how to fly it and it's good enough for the purpose."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Plenty sci-fi enough for me," he says.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, I'd imagine. And, bonus, there was a war on when this model was designed, so it should be plenty proof against anything short of actually looking at it that could detect it. So we are unlikely to be shot down."

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Handy."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I think of things like that."

Permalink Mark Unread

Permalink Mark Unread

The ship is very fast. Presently they are flying over the Eastern Seaboard of the United States. Cam whistles.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ripper is silently amazed!

Permalink Mark Unread
Cam starts angling south, scanning the ground below.

He slows down when they approach Phoenix.

He lands in the desert a ways away from the city but within reasonable walking distance of the highway, and makes a large rock between the road and his ship to conceal it from casual view, and hops out.
Permalink Mark Unread

The climate causes Ripper to make a face.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Do you want a tiny air conditioner?" asks Cam, only slightly patronizingly.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You know what, yes."

Permalink Mark Unread
Cam makes him a little object that fans cool air where it is pointed. "There you are. Battery should last a few days."

And he starts walking towards the highway, leather-coatedly unobtrusive.
Permalink Mark Unread

Ripper and his tiny air conditioner follow. It seems likely to be more interesting than staying by the ship.

Permalink Mark Unread

"How do you feel about motorcycles?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I feel good about motorcycles!"

Permalink Mark Unread
"All right."

Now Ripper is wearing a motorcycle helmet and there is a motorcycle. Cam hops onto said motorcycle. Cam is not wearing a motorcycle helmet.
Permalink Mark Unread
Ripper also hops onto the motorcycle!

"Your magic is amazingly convenient."
Permalink Mark Unread
"The problem with it," says Cam, starting the motorcycle, "is that the stuff piles up. But I'm only going to be around for a few years, not a few centuries, so as long as I don't go overboard with massive projects planetside, I should be good."

Zooooom.
Permalink Mark Unread

Whee!

Permalink Mark Unread
And here is the city of Phoenix. Cam tools around from memory for a while, eventually gives up, stops at a corner, pulls a map "out of his pocket", and then resumes.

They come to a house.

"That," sighs Cam, "is not my mom's house. If there is a tiny me he is probably not gonna be easy to find."
Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, how else would you find him?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Probably via his parents. They're both public employees, it should be doable, just mildly complicated. Okay, back to the desert to make myself a little house."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Sounds good."

Permalink Mark Unread
Cam drives them back to the desert, parks the motorcycle by the side of the highway, and strolls back to the large rock concealing his spaceship. He adds a fair amount of rock to the rock, and then makes a charming little bungalow, with a solar-paneled roof and a cute little cactus garden out front for completeness. It takes about a minute, although it seems to be a minute of intense thought.

Then Cam opens the front door. There is furniture and plumbing and two bedrooms and a prettily-carpeted living area, but he has neglected to include a kitchen, probably because he can just make food out of nothing.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Cute place," says Ripper.

Permalink Mark Unread
"Thanks. At home I have one sort of like it - bigger, no cactuses but more houseplants - but it's on a little magnet-riddled shell around a tiny black hole for personal gravity. The magnets make sure the black hole doesn't suck up my stuff except when I toss it something."

There is a bookshelf. Cam picks up a volume of the encyclopedia on it and starts flipping through it.
Permalink Mark Unread

"Your magic is very science fiction."

Permalink Mark Unread

"One thing I find really interesting about my magic, actually, is that it becomes so much more useful as more things about physics and engineering get learned. Hell is naturally an infinite empty void. Most demons live on a giant plane of solid gold that someone grew until it was big enough to exert a gee. It's extremely tacky. No one had discovered black holes or, like, gravity, at the time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Seems to me they'd discover gravity pretty fast at that point, wouldn't they?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"There is actually not a lot of history kept in a written-down-and-therefore-conjurable-later form about early demonic science. There are demon scientists, but mostly they don't share, so nearly everything cool I have was invented by live humans."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Huh. They don't share? Isn't sharing half the point of science?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"In human culture, yes, absolutely. Demons pop into existence fully formed and adult, and when they aren't ex-humans, they don't even come with languages installed. Talking to each other at all took a while and might still be unpopular if it weren't for the fact that we tend to appear near other demons. Writing took a while, the scientific method took a while, and there's not much, like - improving the welfare of demonkind, motivation. We are indestructible and can all have whatever we want any time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Bizarre."

Permalink Mark Unread

"The angels have a different result from a loosely similar background situation, admittedly - but they aren't quite as powerful, even if you give them a head start by supplying all the cloudy fluff Heaven is made of that they can use. Fairyland is way more interesting all by itself than a void or an expanse of fluff, but they don't have much good magic helping them along with the sciencing, they're pretty much just telekinetics."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your world's sounding stranger and stranger."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey, at least we don't have vampires and a million kinds of demon, do your million kinds of demon do much science to speak of?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't know. Depends on the kind, probably."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And if they do they're not sharing, at least with you?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I don't actually talk to demons all that often."

Permalink Mark Unread

"You summoned one to clean your apartment but this isn't routine for you?" snorts Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"Hey, that was Rayne's idea."

Permalink Mark Unread

"And you don't talk to the demons he summons when he has them in to change lightbulbs and fix the sink?"

Permalink Mark Unread

He rolls his eyes. "And he's never done that before either, but it's the sort of thing he'd do. Needlessly magical, needlessly dangerous solutions to ordinary problems that don't need them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What a swell roommate."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Has his ups and downs."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm going to have to take your word for it." Page page page. "Okay, this world is missing a couple key notable figures who I would have expected to appear in the encyclopedia and know for a fact were only notable because of things related to summonings they did. So either the magic's too different, those people outright don't exist, or it's not straightforward to go from being able to summon to being rich and famous."

Permalink Mark Unread

"'Magic's too different' seems likeliest," says Ripper. "I think the only thing I've seen that's not different is 'there are demons and you can summon them with circles', and even that isn't all that similar if you get into any more detail."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, I mean, an angel could turn you into a rat if they really wanted to."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm getting the sense they wouldn't do it with an invocation to Hecate, though."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nnnno. They would just skip straight to the rat part. Does Hecate exist?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. In some form or another, a lot of the minor Greek and Roman gods seem to. Hecate and Janus, but not Jupiter or Athena."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That's weird."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well, to me. We don't have gods, just daeva."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Mostly gods don't bother you if you don't bother them. Mostly. Unless somebody invokes one at you."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What happens if two people invoke the same one at each other?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"I haven't tried."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Your magic seems deeply impractical. I'm not sure I'll be able to do anything useful with it at all, which means it's mostly just something that might be able to make my life really inconvenient in ways things back home cannot."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Eh, I can't really argue."

Permalink Mark Unread

"In which case my priority there is learning about how it could inconvenience me. If I manage to make a lot of magic people very angry, what can they do to me?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Depends what kind of magic people," he says. "Heavily depends. Set you on fire, drain all the life out of you, imprison you in a statue for a thousand years, turn you into a rat, lock you in a hell dimension, curse you, get another demon to possess you... I mean, most magic people can't do most of those things, but some magic people can do some of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can you expand on that? Is the fire and/or statue in fact literally magical or can I solve those problems with water or aqua regia or whatever? What are hell dimensions like, what are curses like, how does possession work, and what precisely is life such that it can be drained out of one?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Fire can be magical or not, statue's almost certainly going to be magical - covering you in a layer of stone would be harder than turning you into stone or trapping your soul in a statue somewhere. Hell dimensions are all different from each other but they're usually not nice, usually full of demons, and often have a lot of fire. Curses vary, I could list twenty more things without covering half of it, and I don't have the right books on hand to make sure of the details anyway. Possession also varies, but the basic idea is that you're sharing your body with something other than you and it's more in control than you are. And there's always going to be things I can't tell you about because I've never heard of them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"What books would you need?" inquires Cam. He has pulled out his computer and begun to make notes. "How did you learn about this stuff in the first place?"

Permalink Mark Unread
...He sighs.

"You know what, gimme pen and paper, I'll write you a list. And I'll tell you which ones are dangerous and what's dangerous about 'em."
Permalink Mark Unread

Cam makes him a pen and a clipboard with some paper clipped to it.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ripper starts scribbling. He crosses out enough mistakes that he has to turn the paper over and start fresh, but what he ends up with is a very neat list of a lot of books - very few of which seem to have authors - with the occasional brief note along the lines of 'sensitive to Latin' or 'corrupting influence unless opened and read with ritual'.

Permalink Mark Unread

"I miiiight not be able to make these with titles and no authors," comments Cam. "And I'm not sure I can duplicate the magical effects - is there one with a relatively innocuous magical effect so I can test that?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They don't have authors. I can probably guess date of publication for some of those if that will help, at least as close as which half of which century. I think the closest you'll get to an innocuous magical effect is the ones that do strange things if you speak Latin around them."

Permalink Mark Unread

"They don't have authors in what sense? They came to exist spontaneously? They are curated compilations of writings by multiple authors?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"They were written before it was common practice to put your name on books you write. Some of them probably by multiple people, but we don't know, because none of them put their names down."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. I might be able to go by approximate publication date and title. What's one that will do relatively minor parlor tricks if I Latin at it?"

Permalink Mark Unread

Ripper points out one of the ones marked 'sensitive to Latin'. "Do you speak Latin? Don't Latin-at-it anything you don't want it to actually do, like, say, catch fire."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I speak Latin. Can I tell it to rise to the ceiling, it's not picky about what it'll do? Will it also fetch and roll over?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Don't... assume that it's going to do exactly what you tell it to. Assume whatever you say is being interpreted by someone who's a bit thick and doesn't like you all that much."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. But if I tell it to rise it will probably at worst dent my shiny new ceiling?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, sounds about right."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Right." Cam produces a book which is sensitive to Latin, and in Latin suggests that it rise.

Permalink Mark Unread
The book hops a few inches into the air and then falls. It is large and heavy and leather-bound.

"Yeah, looks like you can make magic ones."
Permalink Mark Unread

"It does! I wonder if I can make friendly magic ones. Why is this book magic?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some of them just get that way. Old books about magic in particular, I mean."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Old - texts, not old specific volumes, I imagine? Since I just made this one."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Until now I don't think anyone's done what you did. Copies of books this old were usually made by hand around the same time as the first one, so they're just as likely to be weird."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How peculiar. Okay, anything that would be really nice to have for magical reasons of which the primary drawback is rarity or difficulty in manufacture or something as opposed to it trying to bite your face off?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"...Hell, I don't know," he says. "I'll think about it. You probably don't want whatever I'd think of off the top of my head."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I mean, I'd also take a referral to anyone better informed than you who would not be super racist against me in any way I couldn't head off via cosmetic adjustments."

Permalink Mark Unread

"All the people I know who know anything about magic know less about magic than I do," he says. "And the people I used to know who know more about magic than I do would be a bad idea for you to go talking to even if you hid the wings and tail. They'd find out somehow. It wouldn't go well. They're not that keen on outsiders regardless."

Permalink Mark Unread

"How would they find out? Under the wings and tail I'm basically human, just indestructible, would they attack me unprovoked or do you think I'd trip some kind of magic detector?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Some kind of magic detector, or someone scrying to see where you came from, or if you said something weird and they realized you weren't from this world... and, again, even if you didn't trip anything up that way, they still wouldn't just tell you things about magic if you showed up out of nowhere asking."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, fair enough. Are there people you don't know personally but do know of who I could try?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Nnno. I'd say to check out local magic shops, but not all of those sell real magic, and a lot of the time it's mixed in with the fake crap. I don't see any really good ways for you to tell the difference every time."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I'm tempted to find such a shop and offer to make fifteen of any single item suggested by the proprietor for them, but that has obvious prospects of backfiring."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah. They could be shady types and suggest, I don't know, the Gem of Amara. Don't make any Gems of Amara. It's supposedly a jewel that confers absolute immortality on any vampire who wears it. Completely useless to you, it'd make some scheming bastard rich, and then there'd be fifteen unkillable vampires in the world."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Is the jewel itself indestructible?" wonders Cam.

Permalink Mark Unread

"It hasn't been seen in a couple centuries, and I'm remembering a book I read about it when I was ten. My information's not that specific."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. So, yeah, not going to do that, it was mostly thinking out loud anyway. The Gem of Amara sounds unfathomably useful to vampires. Has no one bothered to make something equally cool for use by other species?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Apparently not. A lot of 'unfathomably useful' stuff like that is old, so old nobody remembers when or how it was made."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Damn. Is this place designed specifically to be inconvenient?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yes," he says dryly. "The whole world exists just to piss you off."

Permalink Mark Unread

"That explains everything. I am currently tempted to go with the strategy 'anonymously go around doing things until caught, wing it on the assumption that nobody knows anything about me even if I don't know anything about them either'."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Could work. Could go horribly wrong somehow. Probably won't go that horribly wrong."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Can I count on you and Rayne to dismiss me if I ask or a certain date passes, if I tell you how and also give you instructions to summon and then promptly dismiss a fairy apiece so you can both definitely be summoners?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Yeah, sure."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Okay. Getting rid of me's not hard. You just focus on wanting to for about a minute. Nothing arduous or costly that it's extra inconvenient to have both of you need to try. And here is a circle you can use to get a random fairy, who you dismiss the same way. Optionally after having a brief chat with them, but please don't try getting them to clean your apartment. Or do anything else. Just summon and dismiss." Cam makes a sheet of paper with an appropriate circle drawn on it.

Permalink Mark Unread

"All right." He takes the paper.

Permalink Mark Unread

"You want to come along while I fix the ozone layer? This is likely to be boring except for the part where it involves being in a spaceship. I could also drop you off at home on the way."

Permalink Mark Unread

"Well - was there also something we were going to talk about while we're not on the same continent as Rayne and he probably can't hear us?"

Permalink Mark Unread

"Oh, yes, it had slipped my mind, I get very excited about having things to do. But you could be something to do if you like."

Permalink Mark Unread

"I most definitely like."

Permalink Mark Unread

Kisses?

Permalink Mark Unread

Most definitely kisses.

Permalink Mark Unread

And wing-wrapping, does Ripper also approve of that?

Permalink Mark Unread

Hell yes he does! It's so cuddly!

Permalink Mark Unread
It is! Very!

And there is a bed in this little house. Two actually, but one that Cam has chosen to steer them towards since he knows where it is to be found.
Permalink Mark Unread
How convenient.



Ripper turns out to be a pretty great thing to do.
Permalink Mark Unread

Cam is not too shabby himself.

Permalink Mark Unread
Excellent!

There will be much snuggling.
Permalink Mark Unread

Wingful snuggling. It just doesn't feel right without the wings involved.

Permalink Mark Unread

Ripper does not have wings of his own - or a tail - but he manages pretty well with his available limbs.

Permalink Mark Unread

No complaints. Cuddles.

Permalink Mark Unread

Cuddly snuggly huggly cuddles!

Permalink Mark Unread

And eventually Cam goes and patches the ozone with Ripper in tow, and then drops Ripper off at home with a kiss goodbye and that fairy summoning circle and half a walkie-talkie pair that should work while Cam's half is most places on Earth if need be, and he flies away again.