It had taken quite some time for Jarett to learn who'd been responsible for the first failed Lewodan offering in the history of the Pantophage (at least as far as Jarett himself knew). At first, the massively corpulent ruler of the Pantophage had sought to target the courier, the boy hero Ben Tennyson, hiring the bounty hunters SixSix and Kraab to track him down. In particular, Jarett was interested in killing him while he was in the form of the Appoplexian known as "Rath." He had failed. But then it occurred to Jarett after the incident that although the boy had indeed so openly defied him that there was no way he could hold on to his pride if he let him live that as much as he wanted to kill Ben for plucking the Tiffin right out of his jaws - no, his stomach! - and smashing his teeth, which he had had replaced at great expense, that the boy had only done so because he'd become attached to the little ice cream scoop.
And that meant he'd spent time with the creature. But how had that come to be? In the past, all couriers had come straight from the Lewodans to him. Something had indeed delayed Tennyson and his companions. Jarett knew that well enough. After all, they'd arrived late. Later than any couriers before them. At the time, Jarett, in his infinite mercy, had allowed it to pass, provided he got the offering that so enticed and delighted his taste buds and satisfied his enormous belly's cravings for the finest delicacies the universe had to offer. But after what was planned to be the mere appetitizer for a grand feast in celebration of his gloriously obese omnipotence had been taken from him from that irritating Appolexian Rath the boy had inexplicably become, Jarett had realized his mercy was in fact finite.
Someone would pay. And he realized that if he could not - yet - get his revenge against Ben 10, then that someone was to be the one who had him and his companions to be late... and in so doing, to commit the unthinkable act of becoming attached to the Tiffin. For a brief instant, Jarett had, in wondering what the humans could possibly see in what was, to him, little more than a sentient bit of marshmallow fluff, admitted to himself that Tiffins were pretty cute... but that moment of weakness had so repulsed and horrified him that he'd ordered his intelligence officers to double their efforts to find out who was responsible for delaying the couriers.
They'd come up with so many names there was no way Jarett had the patience to take his revenge against them all. Some of them were dead. The captain and crew of the Incursean warship had been sucked into a black hole. Jarett supposed he could blame the Incursean Empire as a whole... but even he had to admit to he didn't relish inviting the wrath of Emperor Milleous down upon himself. Others were equally untouchable. Vulkanus was one of the richest men in the universe and had the money to send Techadons after him if he dared cross him. And as for the Vreedles... Jarett shuddered at the thought of having to face their hated and feared parents, especially their mother. Anyone who could scare the warmonger Vilgax was someone Jarett did not want to make angry.
And so at first it had seemed he had run out of options and was going to have to return to getting his revenge against Ben 10 sooner than he would've liked, but finally his intelligence officers had spoken to the bartender and regulars of the tavern aboard the space station where the Vreedle Brothers had first made their attempt to take the Tiffin from Tennyson and his companions. One name kept coming up.
The name of the individual currently chained and on his knees before the Pantophage ruler's throne. Argit. Exactly what he was, Jarett did not know. He'd never seen an alien like him. His intelligence officers were no help, either. While Argit himself was somewhat notorious in the criminal underworld - mostly for failing miserably at everything he attempted - his exact species was unknown. All they'd been able to ascertain was that Argit's kind had venomous quills they styled as hair and fired at enemies to knock them out. They'd discovered this when Argit had done precisely that in an attempt to elude capture when the Pantophage intelligence officers had come for him... and so doing, had discovered, along with the equally surprised Pantophage themselves, that they were immune to his venom. After that, the rodent-like scavenger had gone willingly with them. A decision he was now clearly regretting.
Jarett didn't care what he was. As far as he was concerned, the cowering, spiky-haired thief and liar was nothing more than a rat. A rat he would gladly eat, and indeed had planned on doing just that, anticipating how his quills would feel going down his throat, when the little criminal had begged for his life. Many had. And Jarett had been equally unmoved by their pleas and sentenced them to their horrible fate. Usually in his belly. However, Jarett was not stupid, and he was nothing if not pragmatic, and so Argit's words, while they had not earned him any pity, they had started in Jarett's mind the beginnings of a plan.
It was what Argit said while being lifted to the enormous maw that he had blurted out what, in the presence of someone less shrewd, would've been his final words, in a high and screechy voice as his eyes bulged out of their sockets, legs bicycling in the air. "I can get you another one!"
Jarett paused, dangling him over his mouth. Slowly he lowered him back down, but did not release him. Yet. "What do you mean?" he'd asked. "Another Tiffin?"
"Yes!"
"You're just saying that," Jarett had countered dismissively, though even then he was beginning to see the wisdom of the idea, even if it, at the time Argit had said it, it'd been nothing more than a desperate plea. Something he himself pointed out to the criminal. "You'll say anything to save your pitiful life."
"Yes, I will! But I can do this! Really I can!" Argit grinned nervously in a way Jarett assumed he thought made him look convincing. Charming, perhaps? Though Jarett was neither convinced nor charmed. He made a show of licking his lips hungrily, prompting more babbling from the rodent. "Aaaghhhh! I only tipped the Vreedle Brothers off because I knew that Tennyson and his rotten friends would all sentimental about the little ice cream scoop and try to weasel out of delivering you your oh so deserved and rightful offering, great and mighty Jarett! Please let me go! Let me go and I promise you I'll get you another Tiffin!"
Finally, Jarett had lowered him back down to kneel on the floor before him, before the rat could humiliate himself any further. Jarett found such displays intensely uncomfortable and unsatisfying to watch. Pitiful, really. It was at least one reason he ate those who'd wronged him the more, not the less, they begged. They just simply annoyed him. "Very well, rodent," said the enormous Pantophage king, "you've earned your life. Go and get me another Tiffin."
He gestured and from the shadows emerged some of his guards, who unlocked the prisoner's chains. Argit stood, panting, shaking with relief, unable to believe that he was actually going to walk out of here alive. Both to reassure him, and to make plain the price of failure, Jarett pointed one huge finger down at him.
"But remember this. From now on, every moment you live, every breath you take, is a gift I grant you for the sole purpose of serving the Pantophage. And if you fail to acquire the Tiffin, then nothing will save you the next time we meet."
Argit gulped, nodded, made some promises and pledges of loyalty, during which he had bowed low, acts of submission and desperation which disgusted Jarett, and then, after being told to get out and go do as he'd promised, he had run - scurried, really, like the rat he was - out of the throne room.
And Jarett had never seen him again. Jarett had suspected the little rodent would do such a thing. Cowards like him often did. However, in the years that followed, he'd been forced to admit that it was not his pragmatism which had moved him to allow Argit to live and go free to acquire the promised second Tiffin... it had been his greed, his desperation, his unsatisfied hunger for a Tiffin which had led him to make such a foolish decision as to allow an obvious liar with no intention of keeping his promises go free.
Argit soon found himself at the top of the Pantophage king's list of people he wanted very dead, right alongside the meddling Ben Tennyson. Though he had been reluctant at the time to continue pursuing Ben or to pursue Argit at all. Partially because of how poorly SixSix and Kraab had performed, with the worthless bounty hunters also added to the list for their failure, but affairs of state had taken up much of his time following Argit's disappearance. Specifically, war with the Lewodans. Though it had been Ben 10 who denied him his offering, and Argit who set in motion the events that had caused this unprecedented event, the Lewodans themselves, emboldened, had openly defied the Pantophage for the first time in centuries.
The Lewodan leader, President Caitiff, and his scheming aide Vice Minister Poltroon had fired Zaw-Veenull as their ambassador, and his replacement had never come to the Pantophage's homeworld to renew the Lewodans' pledge to send Tiffins as offerings of peace to their allies. In fact, he never came at all. It was this defiance and refusal of further Tiffins as offerings through diplomatic channels which had caused Jarett to first seek to kill Ben Tennyson and then to hire that traitor Argit to get him another one through illegal means, and, when both of those attempts had failed, Jarett had in a rage declared the peace between the Pantophage kingdom and the Lewodan Republic over. War would soon come to the Lewodans, and Jarett was determined to see them all enslaved to work in the Pantophage's mines as well as to provide him and his people with an endless supply of delicious Tiffins. After which he would of course take his revenge on Ben Tennyson and Argit.
But declaring war had proven to be Jarett's worst mistake. Worse than even letting the obvious cowardly liar Argit go. For the Lewodans' newfound defiance had led them to seek an alliance with the Appolexians. The same species that Ben had turned into in order to deny Jarett the very offering that he'd originally sought, the event that had started this whole mess. Jarett could taste the irony. And it was not very delicious. Fortunately, at first, there was some hope. The Lewodans didn't like the Appoplexians any more than they liked the Pantophage, though for different reasons, and Poltroon had attempted to sabotage the negotiations.
Jarett hadn't hired him to do this or even thought of doing it, though Poltroon had nevertheless assured him through secret messages that after Caitiff was dead, he would take his place as president and resume the state of peace with the Pantophage... including the renewal of the sending Tiffins as peace offerings. In return for which Jarett intended to use his power and influence to make Poltroon president for life of Lewoda, effectively making him a puppet. Lewoda would be his without him having to risk the life of a single Pantophage soldier, though he was willing for them to die in the millions if that's what it took, soldiers cost time and money to equip and train, and any solution that kept his army at peak strength was a solution Jarett was perfectly fine with. And speaking of being fine with things, Poltroon, proving to more devious than even Jarett himself had dared hope, expressed that he was perfectly happy being a dictator who sent tributes to the Pantophage in the form of his people's children.
But it had failed. Thanks, again, to Ben Tennyson. Alas, this had been the beginning of the end for the Pantophage's influence in the universe, and the end of Jarett's rule. The Appolexians were warriors whose strength and ferocity were renowned throughout the cosmos. Just one of them, even though it had only been an ersatz one, had humbled Jarett himself, and suddenly an entire army of them were threatening to descend upon the unprepared Pantophage. Jarett was determined, out of sheer stubbornness and pride, to fight to the last man. Despite his pragmatism which saw him not wanting to waste the lives of his soldiers for no good reason, he had ruled as king for so long that to him, the Pantophage's homeworld, its culture, its very people, were but a reflection of him and his greatness, and to lose them without a fight, even if that fight ended in all of its destruction, would've been a blow to Jarett's ego that he would never recover from.
And so he'd ordered his men to fight.
And they had refused.
They had found the same defiance the Lewodans had. They stood up to him. To ensure peace and save their own lives, they'd rebelled against their king. Though in his rage Jarett had devoured many of his own rebellious troops in attempting to defend himself, he had ultimately been overwhelmed. When the conflict threatened to involve other planets besides the three already involved, the Plumbers and those annoyed caped do-gooders the Galactic Enforcers had become involved, and that had been the end of Jarett's rule. But not his life. He was exiled to a distant moon. His homeworld got along just fine without him and found an uneasy but prosperous peace with both the Appoplexians and the Lewodans. One which didn't involve the latter sending their children to be eaten by them. And worse, the final insult, the conflict had led to some confectionary madman to create an ice cream flavor he called Artificial Tiffin, which tasted just like the real thing. Or so Jarett had been told. He'd never tried the stuff. He refused. Even if it was the last thing left to eat in the universe, the former king of the Pantophage, despite living to eat, would've rather starved than lower himself to such depravity as eating "Artificial Tiffin."
Now, it seemed, all that was left for him was revenge. But by then, Ben 10 was the self-proclaimed savior of the universe, and few were willing to argue with him. That left Argit. Jarett could still crush him. And he swore he would. After all, he still had his ways of finding things out, and after escaping his confinement, he had gone in search of Argit, finding him on Earth of all places. It seemed that the little rat had settled there in a place called Undertown, a refuge for aliens who wished, for whatever reason, to live on that primitive backwater world. But it was not the same Argit who had once cowered before him in his throne room. Suddenly, Argit was a respected, even worshiped, member of the community, head of his own security company and considering getting into local politics. How and why, Jarett never found out. Only that it had something to so with the Incurseans' attempt to take the planet with the help of a scientist named Dr. Psychobos. Evidently, Argit had performed some heroic deed and saved both Undertown and its neighboring city of Bellwood, or at least he'd convinced everyone he had. Worse, he had Techadons. Techadons he had apparently stolen from Psyphon, the former right-hand man of Vilgax himself.
Jarett had been stunned.
All of a sudden, the little rat wasn't someone Jarett, now a deposed and exiled wretch without a throne, could simply boss around and threaten. At least not without consequences. Consequences he was fully prepared to accept if he failed to get what he wanted: either revenge... or what the rodent had promised him in exchange for his life years ago. He decided on the latter approach. After all, Argit was now a businessman and not simply a lowly criminal. A businessman with Techadon bodyguards. And, exiled or not, Jarett was still a member of the Pantophage royal family, not just some brutish thug. He could, if he had to, approach Argit as a prospective client. With a few... gentle and careful reminders of the fact he owed him his life. Reminders he made sure to make.
Argit agreed. Despite his newfound prominence in the local community, the rodent was still terrified of the former king of the Pantophage. He did his best to hide it with smooth talk, but Jarett could tell he was still afraid. Which pleased him. It reminded him there was still some bite to his bark, which brought dreams of either reclaiming the Pantophage throne, or setting up a criminal empire somewhere, possibly with Argit's help. Though the rat was adamant that as far as he was concerned, after he delivered on the promise he'd made to the former king years ago, their acquaintance would be over. He had, after all, a legitimate image to maintain in Undertown and was uninterested in returning to his life of crime. At least so overtly.
Another thing that was different about him was the reluctance with which he did as Jarett asked. And in fact, he had at first tried to talk him out of it. Hadn't he heard about Artificial Tiffin? Argit wanted to know. Jarett had, and the subject only enraged him, something he made clear to the little rat, though tactfully, for although he did not fear Argit, he was wary of his Techadon bodyguards. He was bold enough to tell Argit that he would kill him if he didn't deliver on his promise, despite his fear of the Techadons; even if the robots killed him, he swore he'd kill Argit first. Argit had then proven to him that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same; even with his newfound wealth, power and nearly indestructible robot bodyguards, he remained terrified of Jarett... and made no move to have the Techadons just kill Jarett then and there despite the exiled king's threat, and although he wouldn't say why, Jarett suspected it was because the rat feared the possibility that the huge Pantophage would indeed kill him before his robots could.
And besides. He still liked money. And Jarett, though exiled, still had enough of his own personal fortune to offer in exchange for Argit setting aside his newfound sense of morality, tentative though it was. With an oily smile to hide his nervousness and conflicted feelings, he told Jarett he knew of a Lewodan family who'd settled in Undertown and that he'd take care of everything. His security company, using armored trucks driven by Techadons, would see to it that the kidnapped Tiffin would be delivered at a scheduled time and place. Though Jarett suspected that the little coward would leave the actual abduction of the child to someone else.
But Jarett had not trusted Argit. Perhaps the rat really had turned good, or at least was too much of a coward to have the stomach to have an innocent baby abducted and delivered to him to be eaten. But one of his employees was definitely someone Jarett could count on. Or so the Aracho-Chimp named "Simian" (what unoriginal parents he must've had, thought Jarett) assured him when he approached Jarett later, after his meeting with Argit was over. Simian assured the giant Pantophage that although Argit would indeed have the Tiffin abducted, he had observed hesitancy and weakness in his boss. And besides, he said, even if Argit did go through with it, it was Simian's avowed intention to be the one to sell the Tiffin to Jarett. For twice what Argit's already astronomical asking price was, of course.
At first, Jarett had been enraged at the Arachno-Chimp's arrogance and daring. After all, he'd already made a perfectly agreeable deal with his boss, hadn't he? But the more Jarett thought about it, the more his lingering feelings of resentment towards the rotten little rodent for causing all of this began to resurface, and he decided that Simian's higher price was worth it to see Argit humiliated and not have to pay the man who was the indirect cause of all his misfortune.
And so he sat in the alley, waiting for Simian. And he waited. And waited. Already, disturbing feelings were arising in the former Pantophage ruler's brain. Feelings that he'd been through this before. The last time he'd had to wait this long for a Tiffin, he hadn't gotten it, and he was now concerned history was going to repeat itself. And then three figures had appeared at the alley entrance and walked in. Argit was in the lead, holding a small cube-shaped container. Two Techadons flanked him. Despite himself, Jarett smiled. It seemed that he had underestimated Argit. Or overestimated how much he'd changed. That, or Simian had failed. Regardless, it didn't matter. He was about to get his Tiffin, and for less than he'd agreed to pay Simian. And he could find a way to deal with Argit for being such an annoyance later.
But disappointment fell upon him again! The cube contained Artificial Tiffin flavored soda!
