Artificial 6: Exorcist Academy

Chapter 10: Contracts

The next day,
everything is going like normal.
The whole squad met Selena in the cafeteria,
where today's assignment was learning about Bait Balls.
After lunch,
we spent the next two hours going back to the Academy with all the other students who went into the survival exercise,
including the bully,
and we learned about capturing Demons and making a contract with them.
So the long and short of the lessen was that you have 3 Bait Balls.
The smallest was about the size of a jaw breaker and black with a purple colored tent to it.

The medium-sized one was a dark brown and much bigger than the smallest,
and finally,
the biggest one was light brown like a Hershey bar.
Each Bait Ball had a placard placed in front of them with a label on it.
The smallest had E through C written on it,
the medium had B through A,
and the biggest had S through Demon Lord written on it.
Lady Himiko herself taught a 15-minute lesson on how to summon Familiars (Demons summoned through magic circles or demonic circles)
and make contracts with them.

The easiest is,
of course,
summoning them,
the hardest,
going out and using the Bait Balls.
She actually suggested we don't take the easier option as it guarantees a low ranking Demon,
where,
as going out and using the Bait Ball guarantees a higher ranking one and higher safety in the field should we contract one.
So after class,
we were told to meet up at the helicopter at night time,
where we were then given Bait Balls to use as well as an instruction manual on how to summon low ranking Familiars.

Once we all were in the helicopter,
we took off for the Bahamas where Himiko informed us that we would be on Demon hunting grounds as the Bahamas is practically a giant nest for them.
Really powerful ones at that.
Following behind us is the Mexico Branch in their own helicopter to protect us from the Demons long enough for us to actually get Familiars.
Contracting Demons and making them our Familiars is purely up to us,
but byond that,
our safety is guaranteed until we land and split up.

"Hey, failure! I bet I'm going to contract a really powerful Demon compared to whatever the hell you summon!"
The bully Ventus squared up against comes over to me,
Ventus and Azura.
Ventus steps forward,
and I separate the two,
now, noticing that the bully had an eye patch over his left eye and scars on his face from Ventus.
The bully looks at me as Ventus stands down,
and I lock eyes with the bully,
the man that used to be my classmate, Blake Cross.
"Leave us be Blake."
I use my authoritative voice in an attempt to get him to back off only for Blake to turn his nose up,
looking at me with his only good eye.

"Leave you be? As if you have the authority to tell me what to do, I just came over here to tell you that I'm going to capture the strongest Demons in the Bahamas."
I just give him a uh huh,
and Azura tries to get me to stop engaging in this confrontive behavior. "Terra, two wrongs don't make a right!" I divert my attention to her and lost my composer.

"Well, one right and one wrong, don't make a right either!"
Azura looks at me like you dare talk to a lady in that tone of voice.
Back to Blake,
he told me to listen to my girlfriend and that the big,
bad,
scary woman would save me and said I can't call myself a real man if I let a woman do all the fighting for me.
I double down and give him one last warning.

"Back.... off. Or do you want me to give you a matching scar over your good eye, too?"
I don't know what would have happened next,
but what I do know is that Himiko cleared her throat,
lowered her mic on her Exorcist Helmet. "Anything you two want to share with the class?!"
Himiko says in a terrifying tone,
so I immediately reply no ma'am out loud.

"Ah, we were just having some friendly rivalry, smack talking about who's going to get the better Demon ma'am."
Blake said arrogantly, but Himiko wasn't buying it.
"Sounds like you're volunteering to be on the front lines of this lesson, very well, Mister Cross, I expect you to haul in really strong ones, failure to get one stronger then Mister Woods and I'll send you back to the Academy."