Here's the demon, studying his copy of the blueprints as he walks slowly behind Sikandros. He's gagged, of course. He coughs, sort of politely, when smoke wafts into his face.

Sikandros WILL NOT COMPROMISE on the smoke. He likes smoke. It's very thematically appropriate for him.

He can, however, provide it in a wide variety of colors and scents, and thin it into a mist so it's less cough-producing.

Cough cough! Waving of smoke away from face with one wing! A quizzical look when the scents cycle around to "vanilla"!

Sure, why not, vanilla smoke.

"I invite you to provide any preferences your binding will permit, demon." How about dry ice? He's personally rather a fan of the steam effects you can produce that way.

Dry ice still gets wafted but not coughed at.

Right, but, see, they get to stride down the middle of a corridor that wasn't there yesterday through a rapidly expanding column of smoke, vaporizing matter as they go. How is this not inherently cool?

The demon cannot comment! He can just lay track and pause occasionally to add various other features like lights and sprinklers and such to the tunnel.

Colored dry ice! Scents! Dramatic tramping! He doesn't literally have a theme song that plays (that's not in the angel powerset) but he's clearly one of these people with an aura of Having A Theme Song.

Any nonverbal comments the demon wants to be delivered can be delivered; if not, Sandy doesn't have much to say to someone who can't talk back.

He may first notice the demon - tripping and falling down gracelessly behind him, getting up, dusting himself off, and collecting his blueprints back off the ground.

The demon doesn't start walking again after that.

Sandy moves to offer the demon a hand up instinctively, but when he rises before Sandy gets there, his response is to give a polite nod and get back to work.

Then the demon doesn't get back to work, he gives a glance over his shoulder - and there he is, not moving.

"Is there a problem?" His voice is smooth and arrogant enough to disguise the genuine question.

The demon shoots him an irritated glance, is unable to nod, but waves the blueprints in the air.

Sandy will superspeed over! (It's so rare he gets to use superspeed for something; mostly it's just used to discomfit people) then, assuming the demon will let him have them, snatch them out of the demon's hand.

All right, what are the... problems... with...

UGH.

"Yes, I see the difficulty."

Right?! Angry tail lash.

"Structurally unsound, and obviously so. The first time there's an earthquake under this tunnel, Limbo will have new inhabitants."

The demon kicks a wall irritably.

"I have no doubt you would have your own choice epithets if your gag was loosened," he says. Pause. "I can provide the requisite forum posts, if all we need is a denouncement, but the word of Duke Sikandros has little sway among the engineers of Earth - and so the question then becomes if we have a way to have the work done well."

Cam blinks at "Duke" and then points at him, makes a "talking" gesture with his hand, and aims his thumb over his shoulder back the way they came.

"Yes, yes, if mere words will serve I have them and to spare." He raises an iron eyebrow. "You have my sympathies. No, if they are prepared to take instruction from an angel and a demon, we can so instruct them, and no harm will be done. The difficulty is that if our summoner desires to dismiss us, we will find ourselves in Hell and Heaven respectively, they will summon substitutes to finish the work, and we will have failed. So we should go - but go as ready as we can, for if our first choice of plan fails."

?

"... Frankly, other than 'blacken their names to the world if they dismiss us without mending the errors', I have few recommendations. Much of my time is spent attending to my own domain, and little enough here on this earth."

Tailswish. Shrug. Turn to go back the way they came.

"No secret schemes? Alas."

And he'll follow. He's ready to invoke his True Name, to engage in blackmail, and to just honestly explain the problems. Hopefully one of these will work.

If the demon has any secret schemes, none of them let him bust his gag.

It's a long walk back to where the trailer office for the project is set up. Their summoner is sitting outside of it with a book, occasionally glancing up to watch robots apply sunny layers of paint to the station that the track they were laying was meant to serve.

"Summoner," says Sikandros. (In case anyone has forgotten, Duke Sikandros is a bit over six feet and has black plates of rune-inscribed metal for skin.) "We have located flaws in the task set," He gives a sweeping bow, and then rises, "and it fails to accomplish your set goals. We must therefore renegotiate or correct this failing, and so bring our instructions into union with your goals."

And if the demon doesn't, he's prepared to point out the problems on the blueprints!

The demon does have the ability to point, but the summoner isn't looking at him, just at Sikandros. "...I didn't draw up the plans. What's wrong with them?" he asks.

"It will collapse in the next major earthquake. If you happen to see here, here, and here -"

And then he can talk quite a lot about bracing and support and the nature of the rock they're driving it through and why this is clearly irresponsible. The engineering textbook he most commonly cites is more than a hundred years old, but that mostly just meant that it was written in the days of 'materials budgets' than that the nature of substances has changed.

"Huh. I can talk to the project lead about it. How about you keep going in the meanwhile so we're not behind schedule if they say it's fine?"

The demon folds his arms and sits on the ground.

"Upon my honor and cold iron, to the best of my knowledge or power, I will not suffer to pass or be privy to the passing of bad worksmanship or faulty material. This oath I have sworn before and this oath I swear again." A dark smile plays on his lips. "I think you had better speak to the project lead, yes."

"You are the most drama queen angel I have ever met in my life," says the summoner, but he goes into the trailer.

"Ah, the mortal realms," he'll say quietly to the demon, after the summoner's goes in. "They never cease to remind me why I forsook them." He considers. "Other than my death, that is."

Not being able to manufacture electronics himself, he's going to make an ear trumpet out of a fleck from his armor so he can try to eavesdrop on the conversation. He'll vanish it if it looks like someone's coming out.

The demon flicks his tail in what might be an agreeable fashion.

"So, yeah, the angel found some earthquake tolerance problem with the specs," the summoner's saying to the project lead. "We can replace him but the demon's striking too, and it took me a while to find one who'd work within budget."

"Discussing dismissing us," Sikandros says, very quietly. "Hasn't made the decision yet." The post's already written and it takes a minute's concentration to dismiss a daeva. He'll start on his extortion if the summoner starts concentrating.

The tail lashes harder, scoring a shallow line in the dirt.

"I hired you to summon the daeva, not put us weeks behind schedule with a respec," says the project lead. "Engineering signed off. Maybe if there was a cloudfluff quake it'd collapse but with rock it's fine, or something."

"Yeah, I thought you'd say that. I can't actually make them work, though."

"I'm aware of the limitation. Go have a talk with the angel about it."

The trailer door opens.

"Trying negotiation first," he says softly, as he makes the ear trumpet disappear.

Wing-rustle.

And he can pull out his computer's projector (a small, dark wand), and display on a wall a section of the relevant building code with his already-written-down explanations of how the project fails to live up to them included!

Their summoner looks at this, rather baffled. "I'm not an engineer, I'm a summoner," he points out.

"Should I show this to the engineers, then? It is they who must correct it, or be liable in front of their fellows among the craft and their superiors beneath the law." 

"They aren't on site, why would they be on site?"

"What engineer would not supervise their work?" he says, confused. "It is the twenty-second century and the cost of travel is minuscule."

"It is the twenty-second century and they can email the plans without getting out of bed and putting on pants," says the summoner, rolling his eyes. "If you have an Earth-networked email setup I suppose you could send it to them but I'm not actually sure what time zone they're in or whether they speak any languages you've inhaled so it doesn't really seem like it should be a blocker on what's next for today."

"What is next for today is mending the flaws in your design, and I would rather expect you would want an engineer to oversee this, since you hardly have a reason to trust the talents of Duke Sikandros if you are not an engineer yourself."

"It isn't my design. I could check your Davidson's profile but you fancying yourself an engineer isn't actually what I was filtering for here, we just needed the tunnel."

I wrote the book on this you imbecilic - (He can't commit physical violence under this binding, very sensibly.) His armor bristles, for a moment, before he regains control of himself.

"I had intended the plural you," he says, with strained precision. "You and the firm you represent. And the demon has the same concerns as I."

"Well, I can send some emails, but if you aren't going to work for the rest of the day I should probably just send you home."

If he's dismissed, he's out of the loop.

"Oh, I have no objections to remaining," he says. "It will be much simpler to coordinate with the engineers from this side of the veil, should they, perhaps, have - questions - about my suggestions? And I doubt my demonic friend here has any objections to remaining, either?" He'll give Cam a glance.

Shrug! He can hardly nod.

"- not sure about that, if you snuck back into the tunnel when I wasn't looking and finished your job you'd start getting loosened up since I haven't paid you yet."

"- Summoner, one of the central elements of this lamentable incident is that I did not want to finish the job. I assure you that I intend no harm to any mortal who walks the earth -" except you but I wouldn't actually do anything "- and that if I did such things as a matter of course, I would hardly have the reputation I presently do." By reputation he means his Davidson's entry, plus online reviews.

"I am aware that you have told me you don't want to finish the job, but while I'm not an engineer, and don't know how to see tiny risks that still aren't worth taking in a blueprint, I am a summoner."