"Oh! OK, cool. Classes are much less stressful when you can just say when you think your brain is done. Annnd - " she tears out another page of her notebook with a book title on it. "Payment is one book rec, which I am sure you desperately wanted."

"I was languishing without it, thank you." Wag.

Giggle. "So d'you wanna do this again... every other day? Ish? At least until we make it through all your slides? Or like if you have stuff happening we can schedule it around your things, I'm not in a hurry."

"I have plans for Tuesday and next Friday, other than that I'm free."

Notes. " - oh, I did have another question I forgot to ask about earlier?"

"Yes?"

"You said you've taught a course on summoning before, and the lecture you just gave at least implies that it was for human summoners and not for demons being summoned, if you're re-using materials. You also said you've never been summoned without a gag before. I'm sure there's some fourth piece of information that makes sense of the previous three, but I can't off the top of my head think what it could be?"

"I mean, I did rearrange and update the material for you, some of these circles weren't developed yet when I was teaching."

"I suppose it's possible that you're a very talented teacher who can write entire lecture - one that includes at least, what was that, a dozen pre-prepared examples of evil plans? - with three hours of prep time and not run into anything you haven't prepared for, in which case I want that skill after I learn how to summon people safely." She does not sound very convinced.

"I'm good at thinking of evil plans on the fly! You saw me do it the first time you summoned me and I was correcting you."

"This is not untrue! In my experience formal presentations are harder to come up with under time pressure than other things, but I guess that might not be true of everyone? Do you want me to drop this, 'cause I can drop this. You should say 'Kalia, drop this,' before you feel the need to lie, it's mean to lie to your students."

"If you want to look at my lecture notes you can, I have the slides labeled and some notes but I didn't write out everything in advance, I can see why you'd imagine that would take longer than I had."

"Nah, I'm good. I'm sure you taught a perfectly legitimate but very different course at the University of Hell and are just much better than me at revising things on the fly, and that you also have perfectly sensible reasons for not wanting to say this directly. M'sorry for being annoying about it."

There's the sound of a baby crying in the next room.

"Annnnd that's my cue to go. Wednesday's good?"

"Wednesday's good! Also Hell does not have a single University Thereof."

"I did figure there were too many of you for that. You should cover Hell social studies after summoning, though, that sounds fascinating too. See you Wednesday!"

And dismiss.

After a minute he is gone.

Classes become a regular part of Kalia's schedule. She has a lot of suggestions for things they should cover, it's almost like she has a goal of continuing classes in addition to a goal of mastering any particular material. Baby Zana becomes a bigger baby and then a very small child and then a child who is big enough to communicate in simple sentences.

Things are good.

Then pirates attack!!!!

They crash into the roofs of both arcologies with shield-piercing ship hulls, pour into the habitats with knives and clubs in hand because one doesn't use guns in a habitat protecting one from an airless environment, and set about incapacitating everyone, moving in packs from corridor to corridor. Someone hits an alarm; the lights and sirens blare accordingly.

Suzanna Teller is pretty sure that this is an emergency. She knows what to do in emergencies! You're supposed to get the emergency kit!

She very determinedly toddles off to find one of those. 

She manages to evade pirates till she gets ahold of an emergency kit! There are circles, rolled up and folded, for fairies and angels and demons.

Zana is pretty sure she wants a fairy, fairies could move the bad men very far away, but she can't actually read the labels and therefore has no idea which ones are which. She grabs a demon circle and completes it.

A moment later a demon appears. He is surprised that his summoner is a little child, but can't really comment on the situation, as he's gagged. He looks around for other adults, but the nearest adults are Zana's parents, who are busy being clubbed to death a couple rooms away for not being easily convinced to join the pirates' pressgang.

"You're not a fairy," says Zana, disappointedly. There's a scream somewhere on the station. "Bad things are happening," she tells the demon, very matter-of-factly.

...the demon waves his hands in what he hopes is a communicative fashion, looking wildly about.

Zana blinks at him uncomprehendingly.