“Alright, here is Eliza’s phone,” John placed it on the table as he finished giving instructions to Tamara. “I’ll be calling in when I have the time, so please pick up for her.” Eliza herself had been placed on the couch, the handcart parked as best it could be in a corner of the room. “Here is another one for you,” he placed the spare flip phone he had used to call the Horned Rat next to it, “use it in case of emergency.”

He would likely hear about it from Scarlett before her, if she even survived that emergency, but Tamara didn’t know that and he was not about to inform her about it. That aside, everything had been set. Arrangements regarding the way Tamara would cope with new withdrawal symptoms had been made, knowledge where cameras were shared, the fridge stocked and everything designed so the two unlikely roommates could enjoy this week with each other. Only the human element was likely to lead to some problems.

Nevertheless, John left that room with Aclysia shortly thereafter, since he had nothing more to do. He tried to give Eliza at least a head pat before he left, but since she snapped at his fingers the moment they made contact with her head, something he only barely pulled away from in time, even that had been too risky.

“Jesus, let Eliza control that beast sometime soon,” he almost prayed in earnest as he wandered back to the teleporter.

“That’d certainly be nice,” Rave agreed from the other end. “As much as I would love to keep chatting, I think ya gotta do things now, right?”

“Yeah,” the Gamer agreed. Now that he had solved one problem, it was time to address another. Namely, the chain of command between all the departments had to be sorted out. With a quick goodbye and demand to be told what the whole catgirl thing was about later, Rave hung up the phone to leave John to it.

Magoi was on vacation, well earned with how much John kept relying on him for things. Although it was slightly disrespectful, John didn’t trust Magnus to take over all of his father’s responsibilities. The eldest of the Magus children was reliable, without a doubt, but he had none of the talent, charisma or experience the High Fateweaver had.

Nevertheless, John was giving Magnus a lot of what his father would have to do in the Gamer’s absence. This happened because John recognized the need to give Magnus that experience, since he was going to succeed Magoi as one of the most important people in Fusion one day. Furthermore, Magoi insisted on it and John wasn’t about to deny a called in favour from the raptor-masked fellow.

Magnus would therefore be responsible to keep Fusion, the Hudson Barrier in particular, organized in the case of emergency. He would be the one to oversee public constructions in the barrier, and should diplomats come by, it would be his job to greet them.

For everything else, John would normally delegate things to Rave. Already publicly known as his girlfriend, quite powerful in her own rights and with experience in administration of the non-bureaucratic variety, not to mention charming, beautiful and all that jazz, she was a pretty suitable stand-in for his non-elected position as president.

Problem being she wasn’t here at the moment.

However, the non-elected part partly solved his problems since he could leave a lot of the paperwork to the now elected district representative and the rest to his now pretty well worked in bureau. John was still somewhat uncomfortable with this, since it left much of his guild in the hands of people he only barely knew.

As it was, of his harem, only Scarlett and Eliza would remain in New York. The latter was, of course, useless in this predicament, but the former put John somewhat at ease as he was pretty sure she would be able to keep any internal combustion from occurring through manipulation under the surface. Still, no one was around that could act as his chosen representative. No one he trusted completely, anyway.

‘Perhaps this is a good time to start the General Assembly?’ John asked himself as he teleported onto the ceiling of his palace. The representatives had been elected, but the actual government body had not been put in session yet. He kept pushing it off, as he never felt like he had the time to deal with all of the consequences of putting Congress into action.

Once there was an assembly of voting people, they would form parties of interest. Once there were parties of interest, there were voting blocks, dealings between leaders of the parties, upstarts who wanted to rise higher in the party and the politicking went on and on and on. That aside, the entire system would have to go through several reiterations once it started moving. What John had designed was just a simple outline and there were moving parts in it that he probably didn’t even know about himself yet. Maybe not about their necessity and definitely not about their own internal structure.

‘Yeah, bad idea to start it a day before I leave… I will just have to pray everyone keeps calm while I am gone then,’ the Gamer concluded. It wasn’t like he was unhappy with that in a general sense, he found it much preferable to leave the majority of governance to the local guilds rather than have this half-republic, half-power dominance hierarchy impose everything from the top. All he wanted to do was set the ground rules, the constitution, and then let everyone sort it out through non-violent means.

It was how the USA was (supposedly anyway) doing things and it had managed to grow to the world’s sole superpower. Couldn’t have been that bad a set of ideas. Question really was more about whether the Abyss was a place like the real world where those values could stick. All men being created equal was a nice principle when the largest difference between two people was how effective they were at their work, not that one could create city eradicating fireworks with their hands and the other could just sew quicker than normally thought possible.

Putting that aside, with administration and diplomacy covered, there was the question of military. Who would have supreme command while he was gone? They were still in a war and guerrilla strikes or just basic terrorism could very well happen. Just because John had no interest in turning the war hot right now didn’t mean that the Lake Alliance had the same idea.

The elite forces that John had were scattered all over the east coast, and if the enemy put together some capable team, they could wreak havoc before John had a chance to respond properly. ‘If it’s military, it should go to one of the generals,’ the Gamer thought, ‘but none of them are here right now…’

Chemilia and Ted were still busy in the south, and Elu with the actual forming of her units along the guidelines set by Fusion, pulled almost whole cloth from the Little Maryland. It would take at least another week until he could delegate anything to her. Either he would have to have her drop that and leave it to her own subordinates, something that would delay the border defences in turn, or he had to pull back at least one of the old generals and leave the other person to rein in Metra.

While he didn’t doubt that Metra had extensive knowledge in all kinds of warcraft, he wasn’t as confident about her choosing a strategy that would conserve their already low manpower. Knowing that dirty blonde incarnation of wrath, she would just charge the enemy lines until they broke. Worked for her, but for people made out of more vulnerable squishy biological parts, probably not the recommended strategy.

‘I don’t think they’ll be happy about being separated like that… but it is my best option,’ John concluded and pulled out his phone to call Chemilia. He got an answer relatively quickly, so it seemed they were in a safe setting right now. “Hey, John here,” he greeted.

“Ah, Mister President,” Chemilia answered jokingly, “what can I do for you today?”

“Well, long story short, I am leaving the Hudson Barrier for anything between one or four weeks,” he summarized for her, getting an understanding hum from the other side. “So I need someone to hold the fort while I am gone. I don’t really have any other choice but to ask you or Ted to do it.”

“I’ll do it,” she answered surprisingly quickly. “Honestly, I haven’t gotten used enough to my leg yet, so I am more of a hindrance anyway.”

“She is right!” Metra shouted from the background. “I had to drag her ass out of a trench today!”

While that was pretty rude, Chemilia’s only reaction to that was laughter. Probably some sort of funny situation John was not in the know about. ‘Damn people having lives when I am not there and creating inside jokes I don’t understand,’ he grumbled internally. “If push comes to shove, you’ll still have to fight here, you are aware, right?”

“Yeah, but at least I’ll have the proper leg instead of this stand-in appendage,” Chemilia retorted. “The point of the matter is I need time to train more. Ted doesn’t have it as bad, what with all his original joints still being there.”

“…Between me and you, can your husband actually keep Metra in check?”

“She’ll listen,” was Chemilia’s entire answer and John trusted her enough to believe that.

“Alright then, I am leaving on Monday, so you should probably come here as quickly as possible. I’ll have everything arranged that people know you’re in charge of grand strategy until I get back.” Carefully formulating, he added. “You can also ask about the current plans after getting your new leg.”

There was a cracking sound as a third person entered the call. “You can just say ‘ask Scarlett about it’,” the Technomancer stated in a bored tone. “Anyway, I am on board with this plan. So, go ahead and come on over.”

“…Well, you heard her,” said John while stepping off the stairs and walking towards his apartment. “Any further questions?”

“Nah,” Chemilia waved off. “Just put it all into paperwork so the bureaucrats have something to shut up about.”

“Basically, done already,” John informed her. He had forms for delegating powers where he only needed to put in name and duration, as well as put his signature under it. The formality of it was the easiest part. “Alright, see you tomorrow then,” he finished up the conversation and threw his phone into his inventory afterwards.

“What does the schedule demand of you next, Master?” Aclysia asked.

“I actually have a bit of me time now,” he told her. “You know, having lunch, training with the contact lenses some more, having sex, probably not in that order.”

“I would be more than happy to assist with all of those,” the weaponized maid declared immediately, grabbing his left arm as they walked. Immediately, John’s cock began to swell in his pants.

“Alright, let’s see if we can’t combine these activities for some time saving,” he said with a wide grin. Blowjobs under the table was an easy way to get two things done at the same time. Similarly, he didn’t have to make all contact lens training about just walking. Fucking her doggystyle throughout the room was its own exercise at moving.

Aclysia was open to do anything, so they entered John’s apartment to get the more relaxed activity done first. There was still goulash, so he was quickly presented with a hot plate of that, only for the caring white-hair to vanish under the table. A moment later, there was the depraved echo of Aclysia’s soft lips sucking greedily on her own preferred meal.

‘This is the life,’ John thought as he closed his eyes and concentrated on the duality of pleasures which his own tongue and that of Aclysia granted him. As he had used the time Aclysia needed to heat his dinner to fiddle in the lenses again, this actually had the intended effect. Closing his eyes would have done fairly little if he was still watching through his glasses.

Slowly eating, not wanting any involuntary moan to cause him to spill anything, John thought about what he had to do on Sunday. The list was extensive but summarized by: nothing of particular importance. Indeed, there was only one thing, happening around midnight, that may have his attention.