• Name: Honda Akira
• Age: 29
• Gender: Female
• Appearance: Still dresses like a junior high student. Generally gets mistaken for one, too.
• Personality: "Quiet and keeps to herself" is often the description newer co-workers will come up with, something that's hard to dispute. Akira rarely starts conversations, and doesn't seem to have many friends outside of work (if any), hanging around the office at all times of day and often falling asleep on some out-of-the-way couch in the break room. If spoken to, she's polite--if notably gloomy--and less lazy than she generally seems, helping out without a complaint when asked about the boring parts of the job.
  Her opinions towards others can actually get pretty vitriolic, although the only one who could possibly repeat this is Andrea. If demons don't have emotions, who better to vent to? Not that she'd ever admit to summoning outside of combat, that would potentially cause a lot of problems...
• Skills: She's pretty good at baking, and Akira's main contribution around the office is bringing in cookies or other desserts for people to try. Aside from that... well, if you're into mobile games, she might be useful to talk to?
• Contracted Shadow: Andrea. Her shadow doesn't seem to quite agree with 'being cast by light', it seems to have quite the mind of its own.
• Contract Type: Summon (Demon)
• Contract Rank: A
• Contract Abilities: Obviously, as a summoning contract, the only thing Akira does directly is... well, summon the demon. Despite the slender appearance, Akira has seen Andrea use those nails to cut through metal, and with enough strength to throw things around that she doesn't even have any business lifting. She's strong, fast, and has the standard demonic ability to regenerate damage and return from certain death as long as her soul is intact.
  Mostly, though, she's more noticeable for the lasers. Watching incredibly complicated magic circles--why, Akira has no idea, it's not like a normal person copying them does anything (she thinks, she's tried a few times, but they're so hard to get right)--carve themselves in bright light into the air, or outright onto a solid surface, is entrancing, and the effect is even more so. Mostly, she just fires them off in immediate, sustained salvos. But if the circle is bigger, its construction visibly longer... well, there's more time to avoid it, but the resulting beam is even more devastating. If carved into a solid object, they make for excellent traps, firing only when the demon triggers them.
• Brief Backstory: Seventeen years ago, Akira was a just another schoolgirl--kind of low down the class ranking, but she had a few friends, even if she'd much rather be lazing around at home. Like everyone else, she knew the drill--if the alerts went off, find shelter immediately, there was nothing your ordinary civilian could do against demons except run, hide, and wait for the DDF to come to the rescue. What you never knew was how useless shelters would be if a demon was able to follow your class as it made its way to hide.
  She should have died there. The DDF weren't going to arrive for another five minutes, and everyone else was already gone. What hope did she have? Maybe if she'd been a bit older, or a bit braver, or had even a slight interest in the occult, she could have made a Shadow Contract in desperation, although if Akira had done that it wouldn't really be her that was making the choice. Instead, she was saved by that most unlikely of things: another demon, seemingly more interested in going for its own kin than the terrified schoolgirl.
  Akira was weak. Terrified. Maybe if she'd been less scared, she would have noticed the offer of a contract was an offer, the demon's proud attitude dismissing her as not worth eating compared to the real meal that had just finished. Instead, she agreed, binding to herself the very thing that had upended her life.
  Her transferral to a DDF academy was immediate, the girl an outlier in her new class: not eager to fight the demons, an entirely passive participant in a fight, and her own contract one under extremely strict supervision. Aside from the obligatory 'practical exams', Akira started missing more and more classes, to the point she'd barely scrape by in a normal school, and definitely never have gotten into a high school. But the inherent utility of her contract meant she passed, so far as the DDF cared, as long as she could memorise all their rules and showed no signs of wanting to use the contract to her own ends.
  Attached to Department 247 for the past decade, Akira's deployed far less than you'd expect any A-rank contract holder to be, especially one in such an overstretched department. The DDF is always apprehensive about strengthening any demon, after all, and her contribution tends to be under strict restriction as a result.

• Name: Federica Simonova (Nickname: Rika)
• Age: 23
• Gender: Female
  
• Personality: Willfully accepting the "weird and loud" foreigner stereotype, she makes zero effort to hide her Russian accent, securing her role as the oddball of the group. She likes to think that binding herself to this role lets other, shier people feel more free to express themselves a little more. Breaking the ice with extreme prejudice, she wears a smile that could melt the ice caps, lives to spite the concept of personal space, and makes it her mission to make others smile, or even better, laugh. She can't resist the call to help others in need; she's the type to buy a sweater for a friend just because they said they were cold. Though she dislikes conflict, especially between friends, she is no pacifist; she has a strong sense of justice and difficulty holding her tongue about it. Firmly believes the old proverb that the fastest way to a person's heart is through the stomach. Loves giving food and receiving food—preferably sweets. A bit openly jaded about romance—and secretly a cynical person in general, though few would ever suspect it.
• Skills: A beautician by trade, occasionally dabbling in embroidery. Played basketball and did judo in high school, but can no longer do either. Loves cooking and running (and when no one is looking, DDR). Quick on her feet and has lots of stamina and endurance. Decidedly not muscular, but thanks to her Shadow Contract, she's far more durable than her frail-looking frame would suggest.
• Contracted Shadow: Azazel, the Scapegoat
• Contract Type: Possession
• Contract Rank: B
• Contract Ability - Chôshek Rethuqah (Chains of Darkness):

"Bind Azazel hand and foot and cast him into the darkness: and make an opening in the desert – which is in Dudael – and cast him therein. And place upon him rough and jagged rocks, and cover him with darkness, and let him abide there forever, and cover his face that he may not see light. The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin."

• Brief Backstory:
  Grew up in an under-served area of Tokyo, populated mostly by foreigners like her. This is the cause attributed to the tragedy that took place there. A Devil appeared at the same time that a Titan had appeared in Shibuya, headed towards Aoyama—in the opposite direction of her home. Both were accompanied by scores of Beasts for minions—the local DDF simply didn't have the resources to manage both disasters, and gave it their all to stop the one. Many of Rika's friends and neighbors would die in the ensuing chaos. Rika used everything she had available to defend herself and her mother: a crowbar, the fire extinguisher—and a desperate gambit with a propane tank—but it was all very nearly useless. Her mother would barely survive and spend the rest of her life bound to a wheelchair. Rika herself was hospitalized, losing an arm to the propane explosion, partial movement of her other hand to nerve damage, and spent four days in a coma.
  
  

  ---

  
  During her slumber, many beings would visit her in her dreams, drawn by the desperate fury that still lingered in her mind, knowing that help had never come, and that Devil that had destroyed her life had gotten away with it. Believing falsely that she was at death's door, she would refuse them all; she wouldn't make a deal with a Devil. However, one creature would catch her eye—one bound in chains of darkness—the fallen angel, Azazel. As Rika's life flashed before her eyes, the angel watched, and had pity. All the days of her life, she had been a scapegoat; the weird, shy girl everyone made jokes about, the punching bag of the school bullies, the token Russian girl at the workplace mixer—and now, on what could have been her deathbed, a sacrifice to save her mother.
  
  "Does your compassion for these undeserving creatures have no end?" Azazel would ask her. "Why have you done all of this?"
  
  Rika shrugged. She had no good answer to the angel's question. "The way I was raised, I suppose."
  
  "Ah. Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it. Proverbs 22 I believe."
  
  "I don't suppose demons quote scripture much, do they? Fine, I'll bite. What did you do to end up like this?"
  
  "I married a human woman," Azazel said simply.
  
  "Oh," Rika replied, nonplussed. "Kinda seems like disproportionate retribution."
  
  "On this, we can agree—and relate. Your fate, too, is undeserved. I shall preserve your life. You require a hand, and power to destroy your enemies. I will give you both. Only this will I require in return: you shall be my eyes, that I might see the world once more."
  
  

  ---

  
  When next she woke up, Rika learned the full extent of the damage to her body. She tried to move her hand, to reach for a nearby glass of water, but couldn't quite get it to work. The feeble grasping motion she was able to do wasn't enough to confidently hold it. Her other arm was gone from the elbow down. Her other arm, though, was able to lift the much-needed water to her lips.
  
  "Pffpptt!" Rika coughed, as the grogginess lifted and the whole "third arm" thing settled in her mind.
  
  Later that day, Rika would learn of the carnage left behind by the Devil—who died, and what happened to survivors like her—but she refused to be broken by the news. Unlike her mother, she could still walk—at least, that's how she thought at first. It would take months for her body to heal, and additional weeks of physical therapy before she could actually do it. She pushed through, with just one thing on her mind. "I'll kill them... I'll kill them all," she'd tell herself as she struggled, from hospital bed to shower and back again, relying on her phantom limb only to save herself from falling, in the hopes of regaining the use of her legs as soon as possible. She refused a prosthetic arm, for the simple practical reason of not really needing one, and not wanting to have to remove and clean it all the time just to look a bit more "normal." She was a foreigner living in Japan; how "normal" could she be?
  
  The local DDF had been informed of her new abilities, and almost as soon as she was discharged from the hospital, they offered Rika a job with them—but she refused. Unwilling to trust the DDF, believing that their negligence was responsible for what happened to her life and community, she hunted demons on her own for a few years, looking for the Devil that destroyed her home. The understaffed local branch was, approximately, happy to have her unofficial assistance in covering the area, but the locals who witnessed her work firsthand were a bit more notably unenthusiastic about the creepy girl with the bloody spirit-hand and exploding dolls. Some said her presence there was just one more reason why the DDF wouldn't come to help them, if such a thing ever happened again. A few encouraged her, but not enough to drown out the negative voices. Despite the lack of appreciation, she continued her hunt for the Devil. In the end, it hardly mattered. Her final solo mission was a botched job involving several Monsters that resulted in significant damage to the district's infrastructure, and would have cost her life if the DDF hadn't shown up to save her from succumbing to her injuries after the fact. The DDF then offered her a choice: join them, and be trained properly, or be forced to stop. She still hasn't found the Devil who killed her friends, so she chose to join.