You sigh as you rise back up from your comfy chair and your quiet evening. No time like the present. Whatever's going on with Janna and the reptile, you think you need to know.
It takes you a while to find her. You know this building like the back of your Inators, but the girl is hard to track when she doesn't want to be found. It takes more than a few employees pulled off their jobs before you clamber onto the roof of DEI, quietly and grudgingly thanking Temujin for all of those training sessions. Janna is staring out at the curtain of smog above you. She doesn't even have Feldrake with her.
You inch slowly along the curved purple roof until you can sit down next to her. "Janna. What's going on?"
"Heh." She snorts, refusing to look at you. "Just relaxin'."
"But, what happened down there…"
"It's not a big deal. Don't worry about it."
"Janna!" You say, finally fed up with her behavior. "That was a huge deal down there! A lot of people in Doofania will be angry at me if they find out I got handed corn a silver platter and I turned it down. So you will tell me what is going on this instant!"
Janna stares out over the smoggy chaos of Doofania.
"I'm scared." You hear, so quiet you can barely make it out.
"What?"
"I said I'm scared ok?!?!" Janna turned to you, face displaying human emotion for the first time since you've met her. "I don't know what to do! I can't control any of this! She left! And I was mad. But I get why she left, because a month later he was everywhere! Everyone got suckered; or intimidated, or something! Every day I woke up wondering if someone would be coming for me next."
You watch, dumfounded, as Janna becomes more and more frantic. "So Max showed up and I thought it might be the end, so I start punking him, just to buy time, except he seemed fine, so I thought, 'heck with it, you know? If I'm dying might as well be a blaze of glory', and then I came here and it seemed like I might actually be safe, and maybe I could do something. But now he's here, and he's got his hooks in, and I don't even know why I'm telling you thi-"
"Janna! Janna! Stop!" You yell, concerned and having no idea what to say. "I'm not taking the deal."
"You… you're not?"
"No. No, I shredded it. The card too."
Janna stares at you for a moment. Then she laughs.
"Heh. Haha." You watch as the laughter becomes hysterical, and verges into tears.
"I… I need help." She chokes out eventually. "I need to find Star. Marco went to find her. I don't think he did. Toffee's after her. I know he is."
"Okay, slow down. Who's Star? Who's Marco? And what's so bad about a lizard businessman from Arizona?"
Janna wipes her eyes and smiles ruefully. "He is so much worse than you think. He's not from Arizona. He's not from anywhere near Arizona."
"What, is he like an immigrant or something? That's not so bad, so am I!"
She snorts, then pauses for a few seconds as the snort turns into choked sobs.
"He's not from around here." She says at last, pausing for breath.
"He's from another dimension."