In return for something dumb (hiring Shang with Jake? using his post-battle ability whilst hiring him?), Drak asked me to not use Garner on him during the Endgame. I said I would not accept hits on his team. He said deal and we did whatever the internet equivalent of shaking hands was. I intended this wording to be my wiggle-room for to loophole my way around this arrangement, and I said as much to my co-conspirator while I was negotiating with Drak. As far as I'm concerned, this was a perfectly valid and remained perfectly valid when Tom did it.
But I do not really care whether anyone else considers it as breaking the arrangement. Besides, it isn't even the fun part of the story.
Around the time of my victory over Lopen in the Prime Timeline, numbers contacted me to chat about something. It might have just been commiserating over how horrible Mercs 3 is and how wonderful it was to be free of it, or it might have been asking me why I departed from the Prime Timeline, as I could have possibly done some damage there, what with being one of the five or so people who was still there. Whatever it was, it was followed by numbers lamenting over Dante's chances against Drak.
So I said that I could tell Tom -- the inheritor of my team and the deals I made -- about the debt he owes Dante -- the inheritor of numbers' team and the deals he made. numbers asked if I would really do that. I answered sure. And thus I told Tom about the deal with Drak, how he would loophole that deal, and the debt he now owed Dante because of the large cash donation numbers gave my team on the final pre-Endgame day of Mercs 3. Tom said all right and went about paying his debt.
Only there was no debt to be paid.
The donation numbers made had nothing to do with any deal. He was initially going to throw all his money at me before KJH talked him out of it, choosing instead to lend me whatever he had left after a few strategic purchases. KJH, by the way, was the co-conspirator for whom the loophole was originally manufactured; numbers was only involved insofar as KJH probably would've asked me to exploit said loophole for numbers' benefit as well. I have no knowledge of how much Dante knew about all this, but I suspect the amount to be none.
So when numbers asked me if I would really tell Tom that, what he meant was would you really make s*** up and lie to the guy taking over your team. My answer was the same, the reasoning being because it would be funny.
So, to summarize in the form of Homestuck gifs...
Drak:
Tom:
Me:
numbers:
Dante:
--
"Oh God, maplejet's trying to be cool again. I'll call the ambulance." - Wylvane