“…Forever, the Little Maryland shall resist such foreign cowardice!” Abraham’s voice echoed out of the speakers of John’s office computer. None but the owner of this space were there to hear it. “John Newman himself could have or had the opportunity to rain down this level of destruction! This is an attack on us and it can only ever be understood as a declaration of war!”

Everything on the table jumped when the mentioned man punched his table in a fit of useless rage. Emotions had been boiling inside him ever since the initial message by Scarlett. Through the attempts to find out more by calling Abraham and getting subsequently ignored. Only to find his campaign opponent railing against him on a livestream two hours later. What had he even held his peace for?

“WHAT A COWARD!” John shouted, grabbing something random and throwing it against the closest wall. The object came right back for his head; he caught it in time, sparing himself the embarrassing scene of doing damage to himself. He looked at the golf ball, the only one that had a justification to be in this room, with utter disgust. He had to hold himself back from squashing it in his palm, instead, as calmly as possible, placing it back on the table.

It rolled for a moment, then found a resting place in the depression John’s knuckles had formed. In an attempt to push down his rage, John fell into his chair and did his best to not break his phone. His eyes were hidden behind his hand as he listened to Abraham finish his speech.

“Let it be known then, that I will give this war to him if he so desperately wants it! He is to relinquish his claim on this country immediately. Those of you that are against me, keep your grievances until we have dealt with this threat to our way of life. Stand with locked shoulders against this tyrant!”

Why? Why was he doing this now and like this? There had to be a reason. Imerella’s death, the death of her whole army segment, what made it necessary to Abraham’s plans? Her mortal remains hadn’t been shown in their entirety, only her face as she had apparently been turned into a pulp from the navel downwards. Part of John really wanted to believe that was just a prop, but nobody in their right mind would try keeping a person of the general’s level locked somewhere.

No, if Abraham wanted to use this thing as his casus belli, then nobody could have survived. Anything but to assume that she was actually deceased – murdered – was naïve and wishful thinking. “Why did you do it, Abraham?” John mumbled towards the phone.

“Informed of this cowardly strike, generals Chemilia Smith, Ted Smith and Terkal Wodfell have all declared their loyalty to the enemy.” Just the enemy, that was what John was now, what a brilliant stroke of rhetoric to convince the patriotic person. “Their punishment shall be met in due time!”

Then, John understood. The delay, he didn’t understand the reason for yet. Maybe Abraham had needed to negotiate with a strong mercenary to help or he just wanted the tension to be as high as possible. With tensions high enough, Abraham had the opportunity to kill every single member of the army friendly to John in one swift strike. Meanwhile, him getting the initial message out through their public communication channels would net him better support with the population, at the very least long enough for him to pull off his entire plan.

All he had needed to do was wait until the Gamer wasn’t around to jump to help soon enough. Now, the traitorous president could clean everything up before John even arrived. At least, that was the way John expected Abraham to have planned this.

Doubtlessly, he had tried some sort of simultaneous strike on all unaligned forces in the military at the same time. It had just been the most important to remove Imerella first, since she was the strongest of the lot. Pure pragmatism, fuelled by the paranoia that the brunette wouldn’t have kept her public oath to neutrality.

Should the generals and their forces all be eradicated before John arrived, that left the upstart guild master with no army to occupy and Abraham himself could claim being the defender. It was all so wonderfully crafted, if one had no ethics and no qualms about being a snake. It was almost admirable in its ruthless effectiveness.

‘John, everything is prepared,’ Aclysia mentally informed him and he immediately moved. All this speech was now was the crowd applauding the lies anyway. Even John’s Wisdom couldn’t control his temper right now, and the look on his face reflected, if only a portion, of the wrath boiling inside him.

He exited the building to a scenery of cable works and busy people, a hastily thrown together place to hold John’s own announcement. A podium that had been placed in the middle of the walkway was where he quickly took his place. The lamps on the camera switched on, they were live.

“I did not kill Imerella, she was a friend of mine,” he wanted to say the most important things first. “I have barely been given the information that she has been murdered, then I am already accused of such a vile act. The truth is that I am not even in the area,” he gestured at the Statue of Liberty behind him. “What a disgusting action, to declare, on the corpse of the woman that stood for the peace between us, that it is war. Sadly, I see no more way out but to answer in kind!

“I am deeply sorry to everyone who will be involved, but I cannot sit idly. Abraham has refused any attempts to communicate, he won’t negotiate with terrorists, so he says. What a great lie to dodge the need to defend his own conspiracy.” The rim of the podium began to splinter under his grip as he kept staring into the camera. “I did not kill Imerella, she was a friend that I knew much too short!” he shouted. “And when the other generals that have put their trust in me to displace you democratically have their lives threatened by your arms, Abraham, then I will answer in kind! You wanted a civil war, the entire time! When I tried to keep you down, to hold against your rhetoric of hate peacefully, then you dared to accuse me of this! You are a liar, a charlatan and you have broken your own country’s constitution, you no longer hold your land lawfully. All else I could want to say, you will hear soon enough.

“I am coming to save my friends,” he ended his announcement with a growl and stepped away from the podium, that camera following him for a few more moments and showing the gathering of his harem and the elite fighters that they were beyond his girls.

_____________________________________________________________________

Twenty minutes later, they were all gathered in the Thorne HQ; it was easier to hold the meeting there than have Scarlett sneak out over to John’s place. Time was a resource they simply didn’t have right now. “…I still can’t break through,” the redhead informed John. “They use a mixture of normal interference and Technomancers, weaselling through all of those layers of protection is going to take a bit longer. I could force myself through easier, but I have to do like 3 things at once right now.” Her red irises were indeed alight with more circuits than he had ever seen run through them.

Aside from the attempt at establishing a connection, she was also currently coordinating the effort of the small cast of supporting Technomancers she had unofficial control over – without them even knowing. An effort to keep John’s just recorded answer speech running on the Little Maryland’s public channel. To some people, that probably made him look all the more guilty, but he needed the narrative challenged. Otherwise, he was just guilty by default in the court of public opinion.

“In other words, we have no idea about the state Chemilia and the others are in,” John ground his teeth; for all he knew they could already be dead. Communications stopped shortly after he had told them what he had learned and Chemilia had told him they were going to talk to the president. “Maybe Abraham just wants to bait me in with this bullshit.”

“Maybe, but we can’t risk losing them; without those extra troops, your future efforts will be delayed demonstrably,” Scarlett pointed out with cold pragmatism.

“Ya can keep your logistics out of this,” Rave went into discussion, arms crossed and eyes glowing with vengeful determination. “As John said, we’re going to save our friends. If there’s a chance they’re alive, then we WILL go!”

“The only question is how we will get there,” John agreed; there was absolutely no doubt that they were going to take the quickest intervention route possible. Not only to up the chances of arriving before it was too late but also because this war had to end as quick as possible. The way things were now, the Lake Guilds could potentially intervene.

The only lucky break that John had in this situation was that the Little Maryland was so heavily centralized around Washington DC. As they were already fighting there, both the generals and enemy government forces were entirely focused there. John’s winning conditions were liberating the generals and their troops and then occupying the White House. Abraham had to eradicate the same and then only defend until he could convince their shared, much larger neighbour to help him.

Time was of the essence. They couldn’t waste much more talking; every minute they arrived late was a minute somebody could lose their life.

“Any planes we can take in time?” John asked Scarlett, as she quickly dug through travel times. Flying was obviously the first choice, but there was the chance that time between flights would make it a longer waiting time than driving. The need for a private plane was suddenly more apparent than ever.

“One flight NYC to DC in thirty minutes,” she reported back in no time. “If you are lucky and leave now, you might still get through that entire ‘getting on board’ process in time.” John nodded and she booked the tickets for him. “Only three seats open, though,” she added.

“That will be enough,” he answered after quickly thinking about it. Aclysia, Beatrice and the elementals didn’t need to or couldn’t use the plane with them anyway. Through his inventory or by simply staying immaterial, they could come with anyway. Only he, Rave, Metra and Nia actually needed space on the plane, and the blank could stand by unnoticed.

Magoi commented from the side-lines after John explained this happenstance, “I guess that takes me out of the equation, then.” The High Fateweaver was a near invaluable asset in most situations, but in this specific one, having another combatant was more important than potentially cutting off the enemy’s retreat. They were heading out to face an army the actual strength of which, especially its leadership, they could only roughly guess. Speed was of the essence, and for all the things the High Fateweaver was, quick wasn’t one of them.

“Yes,” the Gamer stated, “I can’t imagine you’re particularly unhappy about that.”

“I can live without having to be involved in many more war situations, yes,” Magoi agreed from behind his mask. “I didn’t get under your employ to die for your ambitions. Honestly, if you’d ask me to support you in any endeavour too dangerous, I would probably refuse.” It was a bit cold, but the High Fateweaver had been repeatedly clear on the point that he was looking at his position in John’s guild as his retirement.

Next to him, Eliza was grinding her teeth. The want to come with was evident all over her face, but she knew she wasn’t going to be of any use. Best case was that she was going to do nothing, worst case Thana would run rampant on the battlefield and slaughter everyone indiscriminately.

John was ready to leave when his phone suddenly rang. “I fucking got it!” Scarlett triumphantly called out, and the Gamer hastily grabbed his phone. The number on the display was Chemilia’s; the Technomancer had connected them manually. “Do it quickly, no idea how long I can keep this hidden!”

John rose the phone to his ear. “Hello?” he asked, only to be met by a beeping noise. The general on the other end still hadn’t picked up. Then, the clicking sound, followed by a raspy cough. “Chemilia?!”

“John? How… no time for that, you got the news of Abraham’s response by now?!” the general’s voice rang out, slightly distorted from the many winding paths their connection had to take.

“Yes, I know…” he desperately wanted the moment to actually grief, but this wasn’t it. Right now, he needed to salvage this collapsing house of cards. “Imerella is dead, I came to know this a couple of hours ago by chance.”

There was a loud, angry shout in the background, evidently John had been put on speaker. It belonged to Terkal, as did the next sentence, “Then why the fuck aren’t you here yet?!” He sounded more like a beast than a man.

“I tried getting in contact with Abraham before and honour what Imerella would have wanted – which is get this situation cleared before we make any hasty decisions,” John answered in a grave tone. “Not that I need anymore evidence that the asshole is behind this himself by now. Played right into his hand.”

“We can lament this later,” Chemilia got their priorities straight. “When will you be here? We managed to pull our forces together on the Roosevelt Island, but we are holed up with nowhere to go.” That wasn’t terribly far away from the airport.

“A maximum of two hours,” John told her and looked at the clock, “around 19 o’clock, we’ll hurry along as best we can.”

“You be-“ the connection suddenly cut off. Luckily everything that had needed to be said had been.

“What a bunch of beginners,” Scarlett huffed with the proud smirk of the validated master at her craft. “Followed a full three false proxies before finding the right line.”

John had no time to listen to the rest of her boasting. “We are getting to the teleporter,” he announced and they got moving. ’48 hours,’ John thought, ‘we should end this conflict in less than that. That’ll keep it from spreading too far and the Lake Alliance shouldn’t be able to respond in that time.’ That last bit was speculation, but it was better to give himself a timer that was somewhat accurate than none at all.