Every dragon had to face a minion war at one point.

These events, where minions envying one another escalated into fighting, usually happened over breeding matters; or at least it did, the last time Vainqueur employed goblins. Two of his lackeys had dueled over a female while he was on a hunt, and he came back to his lair to find the dispute had spiraled into a full-blown civil war.

Worse, they had left his hoard unattended while killing one another!

The survivors of his furious reaction had learned their lesson, but Vainqueur had forbidden minion sexual harassment ever since. So afraid for his wealth, he had even abandoned his matchmaking hobby. His trust in Friend Victor, and his chief of staff's utter inability at breeding on his own with strangers, had been the only reasons he made an exception.

Since he had only employed one kind of creature at once in the past, the Great Calamity never had to deal with ‘race conflicts’ which plagued multi-species minion troops.

“You dirty pigeon scam!”

First time for everything.

Standing outside the Nethermart, with his head reaching over the rooftop, Vainqueur observed the scene with a disapproving eye.

Feathered Miel had been brought by Vainqueur’s guards, mostly for her own protection. She kept her arms and wings closed, fearing for her life, while a crowd of fiends led by Malfy’s lawyers surrounded her threateningly.

Tasty Malfy himself had grown sick and feeble, crumpled in a wheelchair and spitting green blood. A succubus nurse tended to him, while he sent glares to Feathered Miel. “See?” the lawyer said. “Our client recognized his attacker!”

“I did nothing to him!” Miel protested. “This is a misunderstanding!”

“You monopolistic heaven-lovers could not survive in a competitive market, so you tried to murder your competition!” the fiend lawyer accused Feathered Miel. “Infercorp patented this method! This is a violation of our intellectual property!”

“I am an angel, I do not poison people, even fiends!”

“Liar!” One of the demons, a fiendish gargoyle, showed his fangs, as if ready to jump at their rival.

Vainqueur interrupted them by shaking the whole building with his claw. “I will not allow minions to kill one another without my approval unless my chief of staff does it.”

“But Your Majesty—”

“Fiend minion, you are starting to sound like dragon food. Are you dragon food?”

The demon, once reminded of the food chain, wisely shut up.

“Explain to me what happened,” Vainqueur ordered. “We will deal with this matter the dragon way: by eating the guilty party.”

“I can testify,” the demon lawyer said. “Malfaisant, my fellow attorney and I were on our way to see Your Majesty’s grand speech when the angel interrupted us. Malfaisant, aware of her deceitful nature, told her to scram…”

“But then she said she wanted to join the winning side,” the other lawyer said. “Since Infercorp offers a sizable bonus for fallen angel headhunting, and she oversaw Mr. Victor’s insurance file, we decided to humor her on neutral ground.”

“Angels are too cowardly to poison the competition, so we did not use tasters when she offered us a drink.”

“Or so we thought! She served us Holy Water, and Malfaisant could not spit it out quickly enough! She ran away while we were tending to our poor manager! Even now, he cannot speak to condemn this treacherous attack!”

“Feathered Miel, what do you have to say for your defense?” Vainqueur asked.

“Look at me,” the angel replied, widening her eyes in a way reminding the dragon of cat kittens. The fiends booed Feathered Miel in response. “Gaze into the face of a poor innocent lamb, sent to the slaughter.”

Vainqueur did not understand her point. “You look like a mammal manling, which means ugly by default.”

“Your Majesty, I was obviously impersonated!”

“Then where were you when this happened?” one of the demon lawyers snarled.

“I was working on Mr. Victor’s insurance file in my office!” the angel protested. “His Karma Credit Score is so terrible, I had to rework it from scratch!”

“That is why you attacked our manager,” the lawyer accused her. “You knew our Grand Vizier would choose the superior afterhealth care, and so you tried to kill the better Extraplanar entrepreneur in your jealousy.”

“Typical crime of passion,” his fellow added. “Your Majesty, she is obviously the Mother Teresa of Crime!”

“Mr. Victor is devoted to the safety of his soul,” Miel protested, joining her hands. “I know his heart is true.”

The fiends exploded into a strange kind of laughter before one of the lawyers cleared his throat. “If your heart is true, then certainly someone can provide you with an alibi.”

The angel bit her lip. “I spent the entire time alone in my office.”

“So you have no witnesses!” the lawyer accused her. “Your defense does not hold!”

Vainqueur put his peerless, brilliant deductive mind to work on the case. While on the surface, the angel was clearly the culprit, a lifetime of hearing excuses had made the dragon attuned to noticing lies; and the feathered snack sounded truthful.

Could a deceitful villain impersonate her? If so why? To exploit an existing rivalry and set his minions against one another? This sounded familiar. Too familiar.

Intelligence check successful! You recognized the criminal pattern from flimsy evidence, like a crime fiction protagonist!