The remaining hours to the meeting were spent in equal parts fucking and training his sight replacement strategies. John didn’t make any meaningful progress on the latter front. He could sit or stand and stare, even with both eyes open, just fine, moving was really the problem. It would likely have been easier to have two small drones act as his eyes, flying close to his head, since it was his old, natural eye habits that caused the majority of problems. Three reasons kept John from favouring that approach.

Number one, practicality, having the main source of his sight off his body meant he could get separated from it. Not a great plan. Number two, pride, John refused to give up on this path now that he had started it. Number three, familiarity, he didn’t want to lose the ability of having eye contact with people. So much of communication happened through the eyes.

Granted, that last one would be only partially reinstated, given that he could look elsewhere with the possessed lenses without giving any indication to anyone around, but that was just how that worked out.

“You know what I loathe most about this?” John asked, walking around with one eye closed from supporting wall to supporting wall. He wanted to get to the door before going back to the more reliable glasses. “Like, honestly, absolutely hate about this current state?”

“Fire away?” Rave answered in a wondering tone.

“It’s that this whole ‘keeping one eye closed’ business makes me look like the turd that did this to me,” the Gamer spat out. Now that he was done with gluing himself back together, he had the presence of mind to be absolutely furious at Sigmund. A well-placed anger by all accounts. From the ‘murdering of allies and friends’ down to the ‘losing two battles against him’, everything about Sigmund put him squarely on John’s list of people he actually wanted to kill. Currently, there were only two people on that and the other, Maximillian, was not an earnest entry.

“Happy thoughts, tiger,” his girlfriend reminded him. “Nothing gonna come of it if we search for the guy now, fight and lose again… why am I even explaining that to ya? Not like your super-brain doesn’t realize it.”

He sighed, forced to agree that she was right and that he did actually know better, “Yeah, yeah… got to stick to the things I can do right now.” Stopping in front of the spiralling staircase, his mouth formed a few very dry words, “Welp, let’s see what this falls under... somebody please walk ahead of me.”

Rave and Metra heeded that request and John started his descend. It was less awful than expected. Keeping one hand on the railing and taking it slow, he made it down there in a completely overstretched time, but smoothly. Felt pretty good. A few days of this and maybe he would be able to run, then the training with two eyes could start. At the door, he put on the glasses and switched his Possession target. Although useless, he left the contact lenses in this time.

‘So many things I need to adjust now,’ John thought, wondering if there were some contact lenses he could just keep in forever or if he could use Possession with something different than his hands. He couldn’t throw Arcane Echo’s with his feet or summon Mana Blade’s on his dick, so probably not? ‘Wait, but I can use spells with Spellcarrier… I can throw Shardbound with my eyes, theoretically… huh.’

John got a whole new idea about how to use Possession now. Not necessarily useful applications, using spells away from his body seemed way better than using them from different points on his body, but interesting nonetheless. Anyway, he didn’t want to run around with his eyes closed the entire time, so leaving the lenses in the spiritual sense was the proper way to go about this.

They got to the Transport Station, teleported back to DC, left the White House barrier as quickly as they could and made their way to the place the Hidden Tradition had named in the message they had left for John. It was a surprisingly nice little café, at the outskirts of the city, hidden in a Protected Space within an alleyway. The entrance was narrow, a green door sitting between two other buildings with only a small window next to it, and the inside too small for more than maybe three groups of friends or one large gathering to fit inside.

The wooden walls were tightly covered in little things: dream catchers, animal horns, decorated tools, many other things John would call cliché Native American and even more things he had absolutely no idea about. A bar that was halfway hidden under a large chalkboard that listed prices for the beverages here. Almost entirely different kinds of coffee, only a few soft drinks and a couple of beers. Between there and the entrance were only about ten steps. There was no way to keep a secret from a table over and the whole thing had the air of a hippy paradise.

John was entirely confused and greeted with a happy wave by the pair already sitting at a table, the only two people in this café. One of them was a bald guy with a thick, black beard in a uniform that consisted of a white shirt and a beige apron that harmonized with his reddish skin. The Gamer understood him to be the owner of this fine little establishment. He was the most hipster looking Native John had ever seen. Otherwise, Observe made him out to be pretty unimportant.

Next to him was a woman easily in her seventies, in appearance at least. The deepest trenches in her face came from the very same expression she was making at that moment, smiling widely, which she must have done a lot in her life. With very high cheekbones and a face that had seen a lot of sun recently and over the course of her life, she looked like the friendly grandma out of many fairy tales with shy little farmer’s girls as the protagonists. She wore loosely fitting clothes made from light brown leather decorated with feathers and her white hair was tied together into a knot, fixed in position by wooden pins that looked like crossed arrows.

This felt less like a negotiation about him getting help for his current predicament than him seeing a grandparent he hadn’t visited in a while. His own clothes didn’t help that feeling, since he was still in a nerdy get-up. He would go shopping for a new suit, be it only an intermediary one, later. Even odder, at least for John, was that Observe worked on this old lady. It had been a while since another political force let that work on them.

And it really didn’t look like he was talking to someone who lacked the resources to hide their true identity. “My, my, I thought you would come a little bit later,” the, surprisingly strong, old woman said in the friendly tone of a grandma about to offer some cookies, gesturing at the seat on the other side of the table. “Please, why don’t you all sit down.”

John looked at the seat, a stool that was so heavily cushioned and decorated with multi-coloured cloth that he couldn’t even see its legs, with suspicion. It was barely just a cylinder of softness. This entire situation stunk, as far he was concerned. No such thing as genuine niceness existed in his political opponents, they all wanted something. He glanced over his shoulder, Beatrice and Metra taking it as their signal to turn around and wait outside. Not that there was any more room at the table anyway. Between him, Rave, Aclysia and Eliza, every single seat was taken.

John almost fell over when he sat down; the thing was even softer than he had imagined and, apparently, had no actual legs. It was just a cylinder shaped cushion. The half-fall made his glasses slip partly off his face, but Aclysia caught him before anything embarrassing could happen. Although afterwards firmly balanced, John felt rather disgruntled already.

“Be a dear and make us a pot of tea, yes?” Elu friendly patted the arm of the establishment’s owner, who answered affirmatively and got up. Not hastily or anything, he was remarkably relaxed as he wandered behind the counter and began finagling with some things John couldn’t see. “Did you go mute, John Newman?”

The question was asked humorously, but John’s paranoia immediately put in an ‘along with blind?’ in there. Trying to keep himself from panicking or react harshly in any way, he put on a nice smile. “No, sorry, but I was just expecting something different. I have a lot on my mind, you surely understand.”

“Yes, your current situation is pretty bad,” the apparently friendly grandma nodded and reached out into thin air. When her hand vanished into a dimensional pocket, a very costly, inferior version of John’s inventory, he tensed up. Even as her hand appeared again with nothing but a pre-loaded pipe in hand, he didn’t relax completely. She snipped her fingers and a spark jumped from between them into the tobacco, which caught fire immediately. “Which is why I’m here to talk to you.”

She huffed and then blew the smoke as far away from the guests as the turning of her neck allowed. What could that gesture possibly mean? Did she want to show them that her faction was rich enough to buy these pockets but they had no reason to act mean towards the already weakened Fusion federation?

“You’ll have to forgive an old lady a question, my memory is getting worse on my old days,” Elu remarked with a giggle. Once more, John noted something, being that he was told that he would have to forgive this. Clearly, this woman knew that she was in control. “Since you’re here, I assume you do, but just in case you don’t, you know our offer, yes?”

John’s eye twitched. What was this? This woman was harder to read than Abraham had been, at least he had taken clearly veiled diplomatic actions. They were spelled out in their intention due to the ultimate purpose behind them being clearly in serving to an actor with certain interest. With her, John had no idea what she wanted, why she wanted it, what she knew and what she wanted him to know she knew. Absolutely obnoxious.

“Yes, I heard that you want to try and separate Eliza and Thana,” John omitted the part where they wanted to help him in exchange. Negotiations as to what that pertained could be struck after he was sure he was even fine with what he needed to give in return. He was the weaker party in this, he had to know what was expected of him before he could be sure to accept any deal.

“Ah, yes, it is good that you heard that, very good,” Elu continued to smile. What a truly devastating weapon, in the diplomatic sense, a smile like that was. Distrusting a friendly grandmother type was incredibly hard. She had an aura that made everyone feel like they could complain about their day towards her and leave with some good advice and freshly baked goods. “Well, what do you… oh, you are a treasure!”

That last bit went out not to John but to the barkeeper, who was bringing them their tea alongside freshly baked cookies, oddly enough. With chocolate chips still liquid inside the steaming dough, the batch was resting on a wooden plate that was quickly put down on the table. “You should let the tea rest for a few more minutes,” the owner advised, “to let it cool down and properly expand its flavour.”

Elu was already pouring herself a cup, putting her pipe down by resting it on an ashtray. “You know I don’t mind hot things, why else would I keep coming here?” she joked as the translucent green liquid filled her porcelain cup. The pot wandered back onto the table, the Native American then going over to the cookies, grabbing one, dipping it in her tea, then taking a delightful bite.

“The cookies here…” she mumbled between chewing, “…are really good… you should try some…” she swallowed and smiled widely. “If you can see them, with how dark everything must be behind those glasses.”

She definitely knew that he had gone blind, John could see no other reason she would make that joke. From where? Did the Apothecaries already sell him out? He wouldn’t be surprised; those people had no loyalties to anyone but their research funding.

He clenched his teeth, the utter disrespect he was getting bombarded with here was staggering. “So, how about it? Want our help in trying to split your girl from that abomination within?” Elu continued between bites of her cookie.

That did it. Veiled insults were one thing. Not being taken seriously he could also stomach, barely with his already damaged pride. Her now presenting what they wanted from him in return for their help as a favour? That was just too much.

Despite knowing that he needed their help to secure his guild’s immediate future, John let out a rant that was just coated in bitter bile. “You are coming to me at my most vulnerable. After I lost my eyesight, there is an ultimatum out for my head, my guild about to be disbanded, my allies dead or crippled and I have no other choice but to consider letting you exploit one of the people I hold dearest in the world for some experiment in exchange for help.” He took a deep breath, trying to rein himself in, but he wasn’t quite done. “And if that wasn’t just FANTASTIC enough, you are also mocking me every step along the way. Fuc-“

The sound of a cookie dropping out of an old shaman’s fingers and falling into a pot of tea interrupted John’s insult. Elu, with her mouth hanging open, and the owner of the café next to her both stared at him with absolute bafflement.

John bit the inside of his cheek, cursing himself. Now he had to grovel before them in apology. Hurt pride or not, he still needed their help, unless he wanted to sacrifice everything he had worked for so far.

“Uhm… you are blind? No, pardon, one thing after the other,” the Matriarch of the Shamans grabbed her pipe again and took a few unsure huffs. “…It seems I got a bit too familiar too quickly. With the way you came in here and your loose reputation, I thought... Excuse me, I’m really sorry, President Newman.”

John blinked a number of times. Nobody saw that behind his glasses, but it was still the gesture of confusion he was used to. A confusion so strong that Aclysia shared it, tilting her head askingly for him.

“I am… I mean…” he stammered, not sure what to answer. In a move that no politician would normally make in negotiations, he asked their intentions outright, “Why are you apologizing to me? Are you not here to force my hand into giving you something you want in exchange for your help?”

“…I think we need to take this one from the start again,” Elu looked just as confused as he did.