D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad

— Lily —

“… a secret! Try asking for something else!” finished Meg after drawing out the silence as long as she possibly could.

*Really! All that build up just to say it’s a secret*! Lily cursed mentally. It really was annoying, and she had the inexplicable urge to claw at Meg’s smug face for the injustice. Of course Lily was much too scared of Meg for that so she just grit her teeth and tried to come up with another question.

Lily wanted to ask about quite a few things… but in the end she decided to ask about something she vaguely remembered Hunter mentioning in the past. Lily wanted to confirm with Kat it existed, but that might take too long for Kat to double check.

Deciding not to risk it, Lily just went ahead and asked “Um… so I think I remember Hunter mentioning that your free to leave the clan if you want, and she was… not all that complimentary about the people who stick around but still complain. So… if you don’t like the clan why not just leave?”

Meg clicked her tongue… or at least Lily assumed so. Meg seemed to make the motions for it but no sound was produced, perhaps because Meg’s tongue was made of the same stuff as her skin? Regardless Meg did answer. “That’s a bit of an annoying question… but I love it. Don’t be quite so scared! I want interesting questions you know.

Gotta make sure they’re at least a bit personal. Make me tempted not to answer! Of course if it’s too much and I choose not to answer you’ve failed… so be a bit careful.

“Anyway… yeah that’s a thing. Sort of. It’s a lot like Hunter to just state it’s a thing you can do without knowing what it entails. I bet she didn’t look into it properly because she has no desire to leave. Well after… a certain issue with my parents I considered it pretty strongly. Here’s the rub though.

“If you leave the clan before getting your name? It’s a massive pain in the ass. First, they make you sign a massive number of forms and go through a rather extensive review process lasting up to a year. Once that’s complete, the clan will, in cases like myself where we’re actually competent, conduct an interview which is more or less an attempt to browbeat you into staying.

“If that doesn’t work, and you’re still set on leaving? Well they hit you up with a choice. They provide an itemised list of everything the clan has ever provided you and you’re given two options. Pay it off, and then choose which Hub you wish to join upon exiting the clan, or, you can go into debt and be shipped off to a new Hub, but of the clan’s choosing.

Usually one with another branch of the clan so they can ensure you pay them back.”

Meg pulled out what looked like a candy bar from her storage and Lily wisely remained silent as Meg bit into it. The cracking sound it made when she did so made Lily suspect it might not be normal candy, but Meg seemed to be enjoying it so Lily just held her silence. Meg kept this up for a while, chewing through the entire thing and then bringing out a canteen and drinking from it.

During this process Hunter was slowly trying to bite her way through some of the blankets that had bound her… but she was having a hard time bending down to grab them. She was flexible yes, but fundamentally she could only bend so far before her chin impact her chest. To combat this, Hunter was trying to dig herself deeper into the bundle but it wasn’t really working out.

Hunter didn’t make any progress before Meg finished her snack and then patted Hunter on the head to show she’d noticed what was happening. “Now, don’t get me wrong. The clan isn’t heartless. If you’ve got no talent at all they won’t charge you for EVERYTHING mostly just food and stuff. They’ll also let you pay it back really slowly across your natural life if you really need to.

“It’s the people like me they try to keep a hold on. The ones that are powerful or have a bunch of useful abilities. I’d be hit up with the cost of all my advanced classes, and they’d use the highest prices they could justify. Then they’d probably try to ensure I didn’t make it to the transport out of the hub on time. It would be a massive mess, and just… a lot of effort to go through.

“But frankly? I’d miss a few people in the clan like my Lil Sis here. That’s a big part of why they do it. Sure some people still take them up on the offer, especially if they’re really not suited for the life… but that’s the thing. If they aren’t suited for the clan, the clan doesn’t want to keep them around all that much either. For people like that leaving is quite easy.

They can skip a bunch of extra forms, and the review process likely won’t take the full year,”

Meg blew out a long breath as Hunter said. “I did not realise it was such a difficult process for someone like you 23HX502”

“And I didn’t know tying you up would drop your IQ to such a significant extent,” retorted Meg. “More questions Lily? I’ll give you… two points for that last one,”

Lily didn’t know what that meant but she was feeling more confident “So… what’s the deal with your parents? You’ve sort of vaguely mentioned things but never the specifics,”

“Oooh, yeah that one is a doozy. It’s… complex and simple. Going over everything in regards to my relationship with them would take too long… so I’ll just stick to the highlights. Hmm… guess we’ll start at the beginning. I was born and pretty quickly forgotten. My parents would hire someone to ensure I was fed, but didn’t seem to care enough to ensure it was even the same one.

“That was not a great start to life, or at least I vaguely remember hating it but I have no proper memories of that time. As I grew up I started to hate hunting because I blamed it for my parents being away. So when I was sent into classes, primarily aimed at learning to hunt, I was not happy. I begged my parents not to go… but they just ignored me.

Thinking it was because I didn’t want to go to school at all. At least, that’s my charitable impression of the situation. They could be much worse… but meh they’re bad enough.

“Anyway, from there I started to have fun sometimes. The clan may be massive cunts but they know how to train people and stoke interest. I just so happen to get top marks in a couple classes on semester, and my parents rewarded me for that. I got to spend a whole weekend celebrating! That was… I think that was the happiest weekend of my childhood.

“They then proceeded to sign me up for a bunch of advanced classes and they were terrible. Just… a lot of boring things that reminded me I didn’t want hunting to be my life. So I said as much to my parents and they ignored me. Still, I tried my little hear out because I wanted to spend time with them again.

“Once it was done, I was told there were a number of advanced classes I qualified for and I asked not to be signed up for them… and I didn’t get a celebration. My parents spent no extra time with me and the best I got was a “we’ll deal with it” from my parents. Now I thought that meant I could go to a different school or something… but nope. They just picked my specialisations for me,”

Meg picked up the ball of Hunter and gave it a squeeze for a few moments before settling Hunter down again. “Now, that wasn’t great and really signalled the start of my disdain for my parents. It was a slow, creepy thing that really broke out when I got into my later teenage years.

I felt like I was being treated like a child, not allowed to choose my own path in life, and it was horribly grating… but that wasn’t the worst part.

“No it was after I left school and started to earn money. See, my parents are both Rank 2 now. They were one for a long, long time and only somewhat recently Rank 2. I shot up from Rank 1 to 2 and then quickly to 3 not long after that. Took me less then a decade to get there. At that point they started asking for money… and we had a huge fight about it.

I disowned them and our relationship has been on the rocks since. Though keep in mind, that’s just the basics and… hmm, it was a decent question but sort of an obvious one so… half a point,”