Toffee watched as his men combed the wreckage of his warehouse. He frowned.
"And you found it like this?"
"Y-yes sir!" Lobster Claws replied, pincers clacking together nervously. "I was coming back from a corn run! I pulled the truck up to the gate, but there was no gate! There was no anything! And all the monsters were…"
Toffee put a cold hand on the monster's shoulder, then turned to the Septarian assistant on his right.
"Get in contact with the Temple, we'll need to give their remains proper burials. This was the warehouse with the scissors?" Toffee asked, but it wasn't really a question. The other Septarian nodded.
Toffee raised a single hand, his palm flickering with orange and yellow light. He glanced at it. "It's not here anymore. Have the Temple send in a reclamation squad. We need to have supply lines running again as soon as possible, and more secure. Better training. No further one-man deliveries."
Toffee allowed himself a sigh. This was not only destruction of his supply lines, it was a targeted smash and grab of a limited resource. Someone knew it was here. The destruction was public enough that there would be an investigation to deal with. And on top of that, this was not just the current center of his corn distribution on this planet.
It was also the Earthside center for his search.
He kept backups, of course, but opportunities to align them were not constant. Every sighting, hint, or lead within the last two months relating to the Butterfly had been annihilated. Was it a coincidence?
"There's just… one more thing sir. I hardly imagine you'll care at a time like this, but-"
"Tell me."
"Yes, sir. You've received a message from a native businesswoman. She's, er. Requested a meeting, urgently. Something about cooperation for… something?"
"Pencil it in."
---
The offices Toffee maintained on Earth were spartan. Appealing enough to not turn off investors, but unadorned. Utilitarian. A space designed to be used, not occupied. Toffee took a seat across from the woman who had called him here as the shade of the evening cast long shadows across the off-white walls.
"I am surprised you agreed so quickly." she said.
"I would not have." Toffee replied bluntly. "But I unexpectedly found myself in the area for some time." He opened his hands, a single eyebrow giving the barest hint of interest. "Now, what is it that you want?"
Dominique Destine leaned forward. "I don't think you're a lizard."
Toffee blinked. "Excuse me?" he asked blandly.
"Not the kind you pretend to be."
Toffee dodged the obvious bait without thinking. "And what has placed this into your head?"
Demona Intrigue Check
32+37+30(crit success)=99
Toffee Contest:
76+50-30(bad day, crit fail)=96
Bare success
Dominique's mouth twitched, a moment of hesitation before a significant risk.
"You bear no resemblance to any form of terrestrial lizard presently residing on the West Coast. Your public information bears all the hallmarks of forgery; I know that from experience." She replied. "But that was circumstantial. No, the best evidence I have is that, for the past minute now, you've forgotten to pretend to breathe."
There was a pause.
"Whatever you are, you need the humans to think you are not."
"I'll ask you again." Toffee said with half-lidded eyes.. "What is it that you want?"
"I could say many things." Destine replied. "But a demonstration would be best."
As the sun dipped down below the horizon, Dominique Destine's hands clenched and unclenched. As its rays faded she screamed, fingernails biting into skin even as they lengthened into talons. Skin darkened to blue as a pair of batlike wings burst out of the back of her suit and wrapped around her as if to ward off the lingering pain of the transformation.
Demona stood up slowly, panting. Toffee's eyes widened. "The gargoyle…"
He thought for a moment. "Why don't you start from the beginning."
---
The lizard listened as Demona gave a somewhat truncated summary of her existence, her goals, and her position, from the betrayal of her people by humanity through her capture of the Spear and her painful defeat. She needed an ally, and she was almost sure she had found one.
"And so that is why I am here. My own kind has failed me. But you… you disguise your true nature from the humans. You move among them, you have gained power and status, but none of that is important to you. Whatever you truly want, you need to keep it secret."
Toffee stood from his chair, taking a moment to turn and stare out the window at the last fading rays of the sun.
"Your plans cannot be good for Humanity- you must recognize them as an enemy, I know it!"
The lizard said nothing as the world descended into darkness.
"I am offering you all of my cunning, all of my resources, if you will help me have my revenge." Demona explained, growing agitated as Toffee refused to even turn around.
"Answer me!" she barked.
"No."
"What?" Demona asked.
Toffee sighed. When he opened his mouth again, he spoke every word slowly and deliberately. "You chose to ally with the lowest of humanity to your own benefit, only to cause the death of your entire clan. You drove a clade of humans to hunt you across dozens of generations. You tried to control an unpredictable magical spirit, only to take it at its word when it claimed to aid you. You got the one person you cared about murdered in a gang war."
Demona snarled. "How dare-"
"I'm not finished." Toffee said.
"At every step in your life you have accomplished nothing but the creation of more enemies. You're here before me now because all of them caught up with you at once, and you lost… everything."
Demona Martial Check:
53+35=88
Toffee Contest
88+52=140
Failure!
Demonas screeched with rage, leaping forwards with talons extended.
Toffee caught her wrist without turning his head.
"You went all in on a bet." Toffee continued mildly. "That much is forgivable. But you succeeded. Your plan was exceptional. I should have woken up two months ago to find every human on this planet dead in their homes. But you threw your assets away one by one, and with the prize in your hands you chose to waste just enough time for a variable you should have prepared for to rear its head. Your failure was an act of gross self-sabotage."
Demona Martial Check:
68+35=103
Toffee Contest
58+52=110
Bare Failure!
Demona managed to nick Toffee's suit.
"Any resources I put into you would be a wasteful misstep. Every spare dram of knowledge I parceled out would be a security risk. As you are, you'd have worth to me as a simple patsy, nothing more."
Demona Martial Check:
15+35=50
Toffee Contest
99+52=151
Super-Critical Failure!
When she lunged again, Toffee slammed an open palm into Demona's chest and flung her across the room in the time it takes to blink. The wall cracked and splintered behind her as she slumped to the ground.
"...Then why?" Demona rasped from the floor. "If I'm nothing but a tool for you, why tell me so?"
Toffee stepped across the room, bushing dust off his suit.
"Because you could be more."
Demona stared.
"You possess a brilliant mind. Obvious strength." Toffee said, looking down on the gargoyle. "And you know how to hate.
"But you have never learned from your failures." he continued. "The hate, the rage. The fire is meant as fuel for an engine. But you have let that fire grow to destroy the machine, over and over again."
Toffee fixed her with a stare. "I have a task in which I have been stymied. Truthfully I do not expect you to succeed at it. But in the process of trying it will teach you control. Or… it will finally destroy you."
Demona balled her fists. "...What do you want?"
"A child." Toffee responded. "One whose capture would both eliminate a threat and serve as immense satisfaction. I don't believe in fate, Demona, but I prefer to hedge my bets. Given what you have told me, your arrival here is… serendipitous."
"What do you mean?"
"The girl." Toffee replied. "The girl who stood with your daughter when you almost lost your spear."
Toffee put his hand on Demona's shoulder. She looked up, into his eyes, and within them she saw a black unending ocean, a dark star of frozen hate bound, controlled, and channeled.
"Bring me the girl with hearts set on her cheeks, and I promise you," he said. "We will have our revenge."
---
Toffee has lost most of his recent efforts in finding Star.
Toffee has gained a hero unit.
