The Devil was bored. He wore the skin of a man in a sharp, charcoal suit, blending perfectly into the grey hum of the city. Pausing at a street corner, he watched a toddler turn the crank of an old vending machine. Clack. Clink. Roll.
A bright red gumball tumbled out. The child popped it into his mouth, his eyes wide with a simple, nauseating joy. The Devil leaned over, his eyes flickering with a faint, sulfurous light. "Tell me," he whispered, "if that little thing were alive, would it stay sweet? Or would it be as bitter as the world that made it?"
On a sudden, dark whim, the Devil tapped the glass globe of the machine. He pressed a fragment of his own ancient restlessness into a solitary red sphere at the bottom. Inside that shell, something woke up. It didn't have a heart, but it felt a rhythmic, pulsing hunger for ruin.
"Surprise me," the Devil whispered, walking away. At the bottom of the bowl, the Gumball's first sentient thought was a silent, screaming promise: I will kill everything.