While many of Yuriko's friends wanted to use 'creative interrogation methods' on the dark cloaked figure... They hadn't even begun the good-cop bad-cop scenario before he began rambling.
"My name is Thard Revar, my birth name was Jingle Hills, my parents were hippies, yes, those kinda hippies, I'm older than I look. I sell magic to the highest corporate bidder, just like my mentor did, and his mentor before him! There are lots of beings out there who despise the Catalyst, both magical and mortal. Normally they just brute force the Catalyst to give up their vision by sending a Cosmic Tough Guy. But considering the firepower you all have, that was deemed to have been far too messy. I was hired by them because I'm disposable. I've taken a literal blood oath, I literally can't reveal who my clients are even if I wanted to, I can't even THINK of who they are right now, so good luck with that. Magical beings don't like the idea of humans being uplifted to something new. Mundane hate the idea of humans being made something else. Oh, and big companies know these singularities have a habit of ruining their definition of wealth and power. Oh. And I wanted to get the soul-drive maid-droid you Catalyst created and dismantle her and sell the information to the highest bidder."
"Soul-drive?" Yuriko asked. "How does that work?"
"I don't know! How does your brain have a soul? They can think and feel, but their existence is defined by their function and they like it that way. A machine-mind that can learn and act on their own, but won't decide turn us all into paperclips."
"Why did you target Hannah?"
"Hannah I figured would make a great successor to my line of 'dark wizards for hire'. And she was a perfect pawn to get close to Darren and either bully him into giving up changing humanity in who knows what, or get rid of him. I wanted to do something grand. Like my master's mentor who took the eyes of a kitsune for himself!"
Ayami had to hold Akira back from tearing Thard limb from limb.
"WHERE IS YOUR MASTER'S MENTOR?!" Akira snarled.
"He died surrounded by wealth and luxury a loved member of the community. They have a engraving of his name at the town hall of the city he lived."
"How did he die?"
"He was preparing to become a lich, then my mentor killed him and took the ritual for his own... I eventually realized I should bolt before he used me as food and struck out on my own."
Ayami said, "You're just lucky I'm not a demon or I'd kill you where you stand."
"I'm tied up."
"Don't get snarky!"