Danny decided not to argue with the demon over his decision to end their talk after one more question, and simply ask the demon what he wanted to previously, before being cut short by Tutu.

Danny already made his mind to bargain with the demon over the crystal issue after this session was done, so it was better to comply with Tutu on this matter and hopefully keep him in a better mood and cultivate some goodwill. If that was even possible, that is.

“Very well. What I meant to ask was: what do you mean by ensuring the integrity of the plane? Is there a risk to the planet associated with your arrival?”

Danny still didn’t know where the demons and other invaders came from, and wouldn’t figure it out this night as it seemed. However, from what he gathered from what Tutu had already revealed, they definitely were not from Earth itself.

He could not help but worry about some kind of spatial fissure opening up as a result from the outworlders meddling and end up swallowing the planet whole, killing everyone in it, after hearing the demon say “ensure the integrity of the plane”.

Danny already had enough troubles as it is, so he hoped that spatial anomalies were not added to the menu as well.

“It is nothing as complicated as that.” The eel laughed at Danny’s exaggerated fears.

“As a matter of fact, it has very little to do with us, and very much to do with you humans.” The demon stated.

“With us?” Danny interjected, not at all expecting this response.

“Oh yes, indeed. You see, while most native species in newly colonized planes like this one usually try to resist their downfall from prominence, not all are capable of such widespread and unhinged destruction as humankind.” The demon said in a tone that indicated he was very much agreeable to this human trait.

“Really, it is quite Interesting to see how much chaos and mayhem your kind was able to unleash with your crude and primitive ways. Even if those methods would not be able to avoid the inevitable ruin of your kind in the end, it is still very fascinating.” The eel stated simply as if it was a teacher praising its student for a stick drawing.

“Still, why would both powers allow a kid to throw a tantrum and waste much of what would soon be theirs? There is no point in that. Therefore, it is only reasonable to prevent that foolish and ignorant child to even raise its fists against its betters in the first place.” The eel chuckled evilly, as it downplayed humanity’s weaponry efficacy in defending its populace.

“Then, that means that those ‘powers’, as you called them, intend to sabotage humanity’s many defense systems?”

“Intend?” The eel looked at Danny as if it heard something funny and laughed. “It has already been done silly Danny. Didn’t you feel the shakes a few days ago? Maybe falling flat on your face wasn’t hint enough.” The demon mocked him for his poor showing during the events of day one. However, Danny also realized Tutu had let it slip that he had watched Danny from somewhere at the time.

It was the first time he had gotten any confirmation that the demon was around during his more ordinary days, when Danny could not see him. At the very least, he had been present at that particular moment, or had a way to monitor Danny’s situation and whereabouts.

The revelation was only a passing thought though. A mere sidenote Danny made in the background of his mind as he processed the main issue at hand. Tutu was now unexpectedly unveiling to him the reason behind the quakes!

“What are you talking about? A few tremors, no matter how strong are not enough to cripple all of humanity’s weapon systems.” Danny knew it couldn’t be as simple as that, but he played dumb and employed his acting skills to the best of his ability, hoping that Tutu’s ego and pride would make him gloat some more and reveal all the details behind the conspiracy.

“True. If they were simple earthquakes, they wouldn’t be able to neutralize your kind’s ability to squirm. If being the key word.” The eel said mysteriously before receding into the darkness.

It returned after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence as a tiny spider with a scorpion’s tail right besides Danny’s head. “The quakes are secondary. Just a small nuisance of no importance in fact.” Tutu whispered mischievously. Danny wouldn’t even have noticed the tiny critter if it hadn’t spoken up in its usual creepy voice.

Upon hearing Tutu’s voice so near to him, Danny almost jumped screaming, but he managed to contain his impulse at the last moment.

After spending so much time seeing Tutu come back and forth from the same place of the room and in much bigger sizes as well, Danny was unpleasantly surprised by the change. He had simply forgotten for an instant that bigger wasn’t the only size Tutu could assume. Stealth and darkness were the demon’s allies in the end and served him well in masking his presence, hiding his changes and concealing his true location.

No doubt the demon had done so to get under his skin like so many other times in the past. Even though Danny had already seen this ability and was familiar with the demon’s nature, could someone really ever get desensitized to the fear and scare caused by a black spider-scorpion thingy suddenly speaking up just a few centimeters from your ear?

Danny turned around and faced the little monstrosity that hung from the ceiling on its shadowy web, trying his best to suppress the shivers that coursed through his body and the twitches they caused that were virtually impossible to contain. He could do nothing about the hairs that stood on end at the base of his neck and on his arms, but Danny hoped that the demon wouldn’t pay attention to those.

It was mostly a futile effort, really, given that he was positively sure that the demon immediately realized that it had achieved its goal of scaring the shit out of Danny with its trickery. Even so, it didn’t hurt to try to maintain his dignity, right?

Danny didn’t complain about Tutu’s behavior as well. In one hand, that would only make the experience even more enjoyable to the impish demon. On the other hand, Tutu soon resumed furthering his explanation, so Danny got what he wanted in the end. If a few shivers and a scare were the price he had to pay to keep the demon happy and talking, Danny would do so with no regrets.

“All it takes to completely mess up your kind’s carefully laid out plans and pitiful attempts at playing king of the hill, is one simple reshuffling of the deck.”

“… reshuffling?” Danny asked confused, not understanding at all what Tutu meant by this choice of words.

“Yes. Reshuffling. I bet that if you go out and walk around for a bit, you will find the place to be very different than what you would expect it to be.” Tutu simply stated, as if that would clarify all Danny’s doubts.

Danny was about to speak up and urge the demon to stop with his antics, asking him to speak clearly for once and drop the mysterious act when it finally hit him.

“Reshuffling… no… can it really be?” Danny thought flabbergasted.

The demon wasn’t referring to a reshuffling of people or weapons. No. He meant a reshuffling of LAND.

What connection could there be between the earthquakes, the sabotage of Earth’s capabilities to widely unleash weapons of mass destruction and the word ‘reshuffling’? Simple. Somehow, the invaders remade Earth’s landscape.

In some way, the demons and whatever enemies they were facing were able to simply redraw the planet’s maps.

Would humanity be able to launch nuclear missiles if all infrastructure was gone? Would they even be able to target a specific place without knowing where was where? Imagine that the whole USA was divided into a hundred pieces and scattered across the globe.

Sure, there would definitely be some places and strategic locations that would manage to survive the ordeal unscathed or at the very least still in some kind of operational order, however would that even matter?

With little to no communication, how long would it take to reestablish order? Decades? Would the ones still capable of unleashing the mighty strikes of such weaponry have the determination to press that red button without knowing for sure who they would hit?

That also without taking into account whether whatever authorities that could still manage a counter-strike knew about who was to blame for all this chaos or not. And even if they knew, or eventually discovered the truth, so what?

From the way the demon spoke, they didn’t really feel threatened by humanity’s thorns. They were merely containing the damage to a minimum. The whole purpose of this ‘reshuffling’ was to keep whatever resources they wanted to obtain from here intact, and not completely disarm human kind.

So what if a few places managed to get through their muddying of the waters, remaining in an operational state? It would only amount to a few more casualties and loss of resources. No big deal.

Danny kept telling himself that he had to have reached the wrong conclusion. That this switcheroo of places was too absurd to be possible, even though he kept coming to the same deduction no matter how he looked at it.

Literal demons coming from who knows where in order to take over the planet? Sure, I can believe that. Crystals suddenly popping up inside people’s skulls? Weird… but okay. However, picking up a whole planet, dismantling it AND reassembling it as if it was no different than a goddamn Lego that you can build however you want? Danny felt that this transcended what mortals were able to do and intruded into the realm of godhood.

Construction was always harder than destruction. The effort to build a castle was way higher than the effort to topple it. How strong and how advanced a civilization had to be in order to remake geographical features like that without destroying everything in it and killing everyone on Earth?

That was an astonishing feat that was more complex than the concept of terraforming a world, one could often find in works of science fiction. Just the energy involved in such an undertaking had to be ridiculous. Could it really be done?

Danny knew he would not like the answer for that question.