Renovation

[ask_nicely]

Adana gets to work. She starts off with less in the way of money than she'd prefer, due to laws about summoning and counterfeiting, but she has a demon bodyguard who can make just about anything. When given something so obvious to work from, she will exploit it as much as possible.

She offers her services to every lunar colony that will give her the time of day. Most of them accept. Cam is instrumental in most of what she does, but Adana summons a few angels to help integrate shiny new things with the older structures in place. The two angels that Cam meets are nice to Adana, but less so to him - he gets the cold shoulder and some pointed glares and insinuations, but nothing else comes of it besides that. Adana keeps the peace as well as she can, distracts all parties involved with things to do, and they carry on without any real incident.

While fixing things is something that she's happy to do, she wants things to be organized in such a way that they don't need her to keep functioning. She has Cam make several factories, specialized in maintenance materials. Then she sells the rights to use them to companies that she background checks as 'not idiots.' She undercuts what it would cost to have them built normally, accepts several commissions to make other factories for things like shuttles and polymer repair gel, and has Cam build those, too. Along with those, miniature black holes are created and sold, to give gravity to space stations and the like. Soon enough, she is rich.

Once she has money to play with it, she starts using it. She bribes several companies into making deals with one another, hires more staff to do her bidding, and then slowly expands. Disaster relief structures are made, funded by her business in services such as extranet ports and factories. She negotiates the disaster relief's neutrality to international laws, and then they get to helping lunar colonies that are having problems.

Meanwhile, she negotiates with Mars and its colonies to set up terraforming. It's slow going, there are a lot of separately governed colonies to get to play nice together, but she makes steady progress. They should be good for terraforming the planet within a year. She realizes that she could just grab Cam and go do it whenever she likes, with or without permission, but she isn't anonymous anymore.

She becomes known as a demon summoner. A very effective demon summoner. Soon it's common for people to look at her nervously when she walks into a room. She doesn't care, except to behave extremely nicely, and play nice with all laws that she can. No need to make people afraid of her or Cam, she's got time to be patient.

True to her word, the binding on Cam is loose and pretty flexible. She doesn't stop being nice to him or treating him like a person just because he is working for her. Actually, if anything, she's nicer - cheerier, happier, thanking him every time he makes her something useful. And there's usually something useful to make, too, because she's always doing something or working on various projects that are all leading towards one goal - make the solar community as nice a place to live as possible.

Comments

[from_scratch]

"I always went by the 'Cam' part, yeah, I don't remember getting called Campbell except when Renée was really mad or it was the first day of school and I don't use the whole thing at all since dying. I think I would've liked you if we'd met in school, although who knows, maybe it wouldn't have shown off our potential to much effect if all we ever did around each other was recite oral reports on Stonehenge and give everybody in class Valentine's day cards because you can't leave anyone out."

[ask_nicely]

"It's possible! Or Zane might have scared you off, he did that occasionally with people. I never did the give everybody in class Valentine's day cards thing, I basically just stayed out of it and accepted candy offerings. Because it's candy. I lent out notes a lot, though, so we might have met that way, though I doubt that would do anything to show my actual personality. So back to square one, we've got no idea."

[from_scratch]

"What did your brother do to scare off well-meaning future demons in your class?"

[ask_nicely]

"Partially his personality, he's a bit abrasive if you're not directly friends with him, but he would also start making insinuating remarks about what he would do to people that hurt me if people were bothering me. Very violent things, it was a bit annoying."

[from_scratch]

"Eugh."

[ask_nicely]

"I mean, I get why, but yeah. Annoying."

[from_scratch]

"Maybe I should be glad I'm an only demon."

[ask_nicely]

She giggles. "I do love him, he's my twin and all, we can translate each other and I know he's got my back. So it's not all bad, it's just annoying when in a social setting."

[from_scratch]

"Is he going to threaten me?"

[ask_nicely]

"Not if I explain things first! He has been known to actually listen to me when I explain things. I don't even know how he would threaten you, though. You're indestructible. I guess he could mildly inconvenience you for a little while, but um - you're a demon. You'd pretty handily win."

[from_scratch]

"I'm indestructible, not invulnerable. Assuming you don't want me to fight back since he's your brother and stuff he could give me an unpleasant time. It's sort of like attacking a watermelon with a plastic fork - it will be challenging to get anywhere but the watermelon is still scratchable."

[ask_nicely]

Wince. "Fair enough. I'll make sure he doesn't attack you. I do not want you to get hurt."

[from_scratch]

"Thank you."

[ask_nicely]

"You're very welcome." Snuggle!

[from_scratch]

Snuggle!

"I don't suppose I can be of any direct use convincing the Martians to let me end their reliance on glass domes."

[ask_nicely]

"I kind of wish I could say 'Yes, here is the thing' but uh. They're racist, quite frankly. I think most of them would freak out just at you being able to talk." She pets his hair. "Sorry, my dear."

[from_scratch]

"It's okay, angel. I suppose you'd just get in heaps of trouble if I took off my extra appendages and you were caught with a stealth demon?"

[ask_nicely]

"... Only if you were caught," says Adana, slyly.

[from_scratch]

"I don't have a good sense of how big the risk is," Cam points out. "Also, I cannot snuggle you with wings I do not have."

[ask_nicely]

"It would probably get me thrown in jail. For the rest of my life. It's an option, and a good one, but uh - probably a better idea to stick to official channels as long as they're still being somewhat cooperative."

[from_scratch]

"Okay. Let me know if it ever becomes a good plan." Nuzzle.

[ask_nicely]

"Mhmmm," she says, nuzzling back. "I mean, make no mistake, it is an attractive option, you could actually get treated like a person. Huge bonus."

[from_scratch]

"I think you have more hangups about that than I do. I mean, when people do not treat me like a person I am quietly judgmental, but I'm much more concerned with how much this inhibits my ability to accomplish things, or I wouldn't ever answer summons and then where would you be?"

[ask_nicely]

"Without my boyfriend and possibly traumatized," agrees Adana. "I know, but it's still... You are obviously a person. So you should be treated like one."

[from_scratch]

"It's only that obvious," Cam sighs, "if you let me talk."