John’s fist kept colliding with the table as he failed to completely suppress the wild desire to punch something so hard it shattered into a thousand pieces. At the same time, the constant knocking only annoyed him further. “And I had just fucking calmed down,” he growled, reading the latest update.

In response to Beatrice’s appearance at their set, the network had just taken a photo of her at the reception desk and written an article that could be summarized with: we release our VODs a week after the actual program, we will not be bullied by an angry tyrant into changing this policy.

The photo was a masterpiece as well. They shot Beatrice from behind, at a moment where she was leaning onto the desk in what could be interpreted as a threatening manner, while also hiding her inexhaustibly passive expression. Thanks to her outfit and white hair, this much was all that was needed to identify her. John had to concede that battle and recall her from the premise, before her presence could give them even more fodder.

So, they were doubling down on their narrative. John couldn’t quite work out the station’s motivation though. Was it really just for the clicks? Did they care that much more about increased traffic for a few weeks than they did about their integrity? No, that couldn’t be it. If it was just them, then there was no way so many other media companies were following their reporting by echoing their sentiments in their own articles.

In other words, there had to be a reason. John had already sniffed one out, a very likely one, but whether or not it was true, well, a number of calls would confirm that. Grabbing his business phone, the Gamer looked for the number of Berden Drechsler. A tooting sound reached his ear when he confirmed the call.

“Ah… hello, President Newman…” the hesitating tone with which he was greeted already caused the Gamer’s expectations to sink tremendously. “A pleasure to hear from you. Do you have anything… you want to talk about?”

John noticed everything dodgy about formulation. From the way he clearly knew what was going on to him intentionally dodging the phrase ‘anything I can do for you’ just to avoid any potential requests on that suggestion. “Yes,” he answered regardless in a hopeful, almost chirpy tone. He needed to sound like he was unfazed, as if the whole thing really didn’t matter. Because it actually didn’t, all that mattered about this whole affair was what people believed to be true. “See, it seems parts of the media have decided to go about smearing my name. Pretty baseless, most of it. I already published a written response to disperse initial misconceptions, but it would be preferable if we could start some sort of broadcast.”

“Ah, yes, I see… well, I do agree that it would be a good idea…”

John closed his eyes and silently, slowly inhaled. ‘Here it comes,’ he thought.

“…but I am afraid I have no time for it. Your investments have given me a lot of things to work on, aside from Sunday being a bad time. You know, all the media people are at home and all that…”

‘Sure, let’s pretend that it takes the same amount of effort to get a small response video done as it does to create a press conference,’ John held his bitterness in his thoughts as he kept a smile on his face to keep his tone genuine. There was nothing to be gained from him trying to force anyone to do something they didn’t want to. The best outcome there would be that he mitigated the damage of public perception at the cost of his reputation with the actual ruling people. “No, no, I understand. I must say it’s rather disappointing, however.” A little shaming could maybe achieve something though.

“D-don’t get me wrong, Mister President!” the old investor stammered into his phone. Berden stood to lose an essentially bottomless well of lending money if he fucked up here, so John understood him to be quite nervous. “I will look into this and make sure my media team takes appropriate measures to support you!”

Appropriate likely translating to something that was utterly neutral. Lip service to both sides at once, a little message that made clear they acknowledged the thing going on, while doing their best to keep their heads down. “I am sure you will,” John said, lowering his tone in the process. “Have a nice day, Mister Drechsler.”

He barely waited for the response before ending the call and rubbing his face as if he just awoke from a bad dream. Then he selected the next number. Over the course of two hours, right up until noon, he went from one local contact to the next. The answers he got were always the same. “I would, if I had the time, sorry.” “I don’t know enough to weigh in, sorry.” “Ah, I’ve flown out of town for today, sorry.” “Can’t help, sorry.” “I am not important enough to be of help, sorry.” “Sorry.” “Sorry.” “Sorry.”

“Spineless, unambitious cowards,” John cursed when he had gone so far down the list that he didn’t even need to bother. No one, not a single one of the businessmen, had the will to stand up to anything. Their strategy was to keep their head low and just wait for the whole thing to pass them. Just don’t invite controversy, that couldn’t possibly work out. Avoid at any cost.

It was remarkable how people with that amount of wealth and power were that afraid of a mob on social media. Then again, and this was something he only got after some more pondering on the issue, there was another layer to this than the usual fear of boycotts. This was the Abyss, sufficiently ruining one’s reputation could lead to fireballs flying at the face. Especially a danger for the leadership of Amacat, who all had powers or abilities focused around administration rather than combat.

John growled at nothing in particular as he fell back against the backrest of the couch. Whatever video response he did, without support from the local community, it had next to no reach where he actually needed it and would do no better than his text already did. It was pretty clear, at this point, what the intention of the media attack was. A simple delay in Fusion’s annexation efforts.

It was absolutely clear at this point that Amacat was just waiting for someone to give them the right incentive to join a larger federation. Nobody with power around had interest in making a proper political body. They just obeyed the common ethics that worked over in the mundane economy and continued to make money. The oligarchs wanted access to a bigger market and had no care for having lawmaking powers, the people wanted some way of representation, Fusion could provide both in addition to international relationships and more funding than anyone locally could dream of. For them, it was anything they could ever ask for.

Basically, John was pretty certain he could just announce Scarlett’s plan to the council, they would nod along, act like they totally could not do that, negotiate for some period of time, then skip the whole middle part and go directly to where they joined Fusion in a slow process in exchange for debt forgiveness and some concessions about trading rights. All it took was a lot of encouraging talks, time and convincing deals with the individual top members. Anyone who knew Fusion’s values and power as well as Amacat’s inner workings could see that at this point.

Including the Lake Alliance, whose leaders must have been enormously annoyed at that point in time, that geographical distances had prevented them from integrating this economically strong area into their own federation. The Lake Alliance that John currently was at war with and who really couldn’t care about whether or not something was a well-executed smear campaign or not.

Although the Gamer had no idea how exactly they had their meddling fingers in this affair, it was clear that they profited the most from it. If John had to pause negotiations for a week, the stated duration of his visit, then he would leave with nothing but a few niceties exchanged. They had taken great advantage of the leadership’s cowardice and essentially put his progress on ice. From a distance, making negotiations was much harder. It would take a long time to get that done. So long that the war would be over by then.

Was it a terrible setback? By no means. A few months at worst, a few weeks at best, if he got the Lake Alliance to agree to a simple peace. Regardless, having wandered into this trap and now finding himself unable to get out of it annoyed John fiercely. Getting outmanoeuvred on a political level was something that was bound to happen at some point, even the greatest minds made mistakes, but that didn’t make it any less frustrating.

‘How can I get out of this?’ John thought desperately. ‘I could lengthen my visit… but that means I have to celebrate my birthday here…’ It was a rather arbitrary limit to set for himself, especially when the thing to be gained was such a massive increase in size and power for Fusion. However, it would be his first complete year in this world of might and magic. He didn’t want it to be filled with negotiations and nagging. He wanted a proper anniversary full of relaxation, fun and festivities.

His own wishes aside, he couldn’t imagine his girls would approve of staying. What were the alternatives? Accepting the loss. That just made him grit his teeth and kick the floor in frustration. A petulant feeling, for sure, but taking a loss was just the worst. The third option was that this scandal blew over in a matter of a few days.

Thing was just that John had basically no influence over that. His generally averse stance towards the media meant that he had few friends in that field. The few he had were almost all part of the CPDI station and that news station was, although John found them pleasantly in-depth, pretty niche and not taken that serious on the basis of being a porn program. Which was, to be fair, a pretty good basis for scepticism.

The ways the scandal could develop were threefold, as far as John could see. The most likely option was that the concerted effort of the adversarial programs continued to double, triple and quadruple down, keeping the story alive for as long as they could. Less likely was that the counter-narrative of pro-Fusion forces took hold fairly quickly. Which one of the two the majority of the public believed wasn’t even that important at that point. All that mattered was that the investors and CEOs believed that there would be massive outrage coming their way if they associated with John.

The third option was that a whole different, bigger scandal simply drowned out this one. That was a total gamble. It could happen, it could not happen, who really knew? Certain was only that such a thing was hard to fabricate, especially on a short notice. John had no scandal he could suddenly pull on other people, neither did he have the channels to distribute it, even if he could.

Therefore, all he could do was wait and pray that something would happen that he could capitalize on. Which was absolutely the worst. It was like playing a game where he had to rely on a teammate to revive him, but this was gym class, so Frank would beat up anybody who dared to help out the nerd after class. Doubtlessly at the behest of Vanessa, his queen bitch of a ‘girlfriend’.

‘Pleasant thoughts, John,’ he scolded himself, since the weak-bodied, socially shut-off person from back then really wasn’t what he wanted to remember on a day that had no reason to be terrible. “Well,” he spoke up, causing the girls who had left him to get through with his planning and thinking, to turn their heads, “turns out I can’t do anything.”

“Okay, that sounds bad,” Rave commented.

“It is pretty bad,” he said, gesturing in the direction of the exit. “And I am willing to bet that any step outside of here is going to be met with the worst kind of paparazzi descending on us like a swarm of locusts trying to drink every fluid in your body.”

“Didn’t ya use that metaphor for them before?”

“I’m using it as often as its accurate, which is always,” the Gamer retorted as he dropped Scarlett a message. Since he had bottomed out on resources that could help in this case, he could only try to see what the media expert amongst his girls and allies had to say.

John: Last ditch effort, you wouldn’t have a plan to get me out of this mess, would you?

Scarlett: Maybe, maybe not.

John: Noooooooo, you are not doing this to me right now, are you?

Scarlett: Time will tell.

Scarlett: OR WILL IT?!

John: I should have never shown you TTS.

Scarlett: I have read every article on 1d4chan by now.

Scarlett: My memetic chaos knowledge is through the roof.

Scarlett: Tzeentch is objectively the best chaos god by the way.

Scarlett: Anyhow, I have a gamble I can take. It’s less of a plan than it is dangling bait in front of people. Also, telling you right now would be boring.

Scarlett: So just sit there and wait, big boy.

John: Alright… I trust you, you know that, yes?

Scarlett: And I will have fun with that~

“Right, so Scarlett is being a massive cunt,” John exclaimed, to the confusion of nobody.

Regardless, Rave couldn’t help but make a joke, “Ya mean she is pulling a you on you.”

“She is pulling a Richard on me, yes,” John corrected and agreed at the same time.

“Are ya admitting you’ve basically become the same as that furred dick?”

“It’s absolutely undeniable at this point that I have the same dickish tendency to wave around my intellectual ‘supremacy’,” he had raised his hands to put that last word in air quotes. “Anyway, apparently we have to sit and wait now. So, since there is nothing else to do… Aclysia, get me another drink. We are going to just waste the day in the name of carefree sex, booze and videogames, I guess.”

“Oh no!” Rave shouted, acting out the greatest shock she could. “Those are my three favourite things! How will we deal with this crisis?”