Inconvenient. He emails kid saying that he should write a note saying 'Minor, summoning you now' right before finishing the circle so Minor can make sure he grabs the right one.

He gets dismissed.

A note, a circle.

A demon!

"Yo," says the kid. "Do you have like a speech you wanna give or anything."

"Not really. I've found that just, like, asking people how their day is going and if I can get them anything freaks them out about as much as the most stirring thing I could have Timothy come up with."

He laughs. He escorts Minor on the train to the testing center.

Minor wishes people a good afternoon and asks if he can get them anything. (He can't unless his summoner is willing to renegotiate the task.)

...Minor is ignored apart from the examiner notifying his summoner that he does know that's an autofail?

"What is, letting us talk?"

"Yes," says the examiner, perhaps automatically.

"I know," says the kid.

"Just demons, or does everyone have to get gagged for the summoning test?"

"If you bring an angel or a fairy you don't have to gag those," says the kid. The examiner studiously ignores him.

"I should get feathery wings. I hear they make them with free civil rights, these days. Is the 'if there is a talking demon, pretend there is not' thing also some kind of official best practice or is that just everyone scared that if they get my attention I'll steal their soul, because if the latter I actually feel mildly bad about that. Like, not enough to stop talking, but enough to make another video dubunking the stupid souls thing."

"Most people don't watch your channel," says the summoner. "Sometimes there's talking demons but they're like on long term jobs and not so public facing. Am I flunked yet?"

"You are."

"Pleasure doing business with you." He about-faces.

Minor goes with him. "I've gotten a lot of 'it can talk? can demons even talk?' so I don't think everyone knows that. And I know most people won't see it either way but it's not like I have access to a bigger audience."

"I guess. People who watch already know the basics though."

"They're teaching everyone to do something actively dangerous, and they think I'm lying when I try to explain why. It's very frustrating."

"I bet, yeah. Summoning teachers vary on how hardass they are about it."

"I know someone who was a really good summoning teacher, didn't go in for gags at all, but then he got shot and now he's a demon."

"Poor guy."

" - I mean, being a demon is great. I get worked up about the gags but you can just never take summons, and most demons do, or you can get a long term thing like that guy has."

"What's he doing?"

"Uh, dating my brother and doing multiverse stuff."

"Two of your brothers are dating demons?"

"Yeah, we're all just waiting for Theodore to find himself one at this point."