John finally got the plan.

That didn’t mean he all that much liked what he saw in the execution of it. It was effective, if it worked, that wasn’t the issue, it just all felt rather risky. The first step of the entire thing was based on whether or not the enemy media took the bait that was the sudden new advertisement campaign by Planned Spikes.

They didn’t just take that bite. They pounced on it like a famished Bengal tiger on a crippled cow. Minutes after the first photos hit the internet, there were the first blog posts. Hours, the first opinion pieces. A day later, there was the full front of the adversarial news companies.

To them, this must have looked like a gift from heaven. An easy way to further the scandal, keep John’s name on the front pages and show every other CEO out there what exactly they would do to them should they associate with him publicly. They dug up everything, every last detail about Planned Spikes’ past that could remotely be interpreted as something bad. Every decision at every level of management, from mistreated customers to ethics violations of any variety.

John would have loved to see nothing whatsoever turn up. However, not only would that have hindered the plan in this instance, but being a company led by Scarlett, there was actually quite a bit of information that looked pretty bad. Selling of partly untested products (that didn’t seriously hurt anybody, but still), multiple bribery incidents, acquisition of already occupied lands through deals that people couldn’t really say no to and a number of other misdemeanours.

Nothing as serious as the stunts she had pulled back in New York. Nobody had their windows smashed in the middle of the night or their legs broken after being pulled into a dark alleyway. Especially no cases of ‘sudden vanishing from the area’, which basically meant death but nobody found a corpse.

John sometimes wondered how many lives exactly he had saved by now, simply by forcing Scarlett to operate under a system of proper law. Sure, she wasn’t the type to see death as the first solution, but she definitely saw death as a solution. The terrible thing being that she was usually right when she said he would spare himself a lot of trouble if he would just be a bit less reluctant in that department.

The point was, Planned Spikes had a bunch of very real things to take a swing at. Still, all those ethics violations could be somewhat countered. Putting out a faulty product was an honest mistake and the victims were reimbursed for the problem. There was absolutely no evidence for the bribery, just some people that said something. All acquisitions of land had followed the proper procedure, the contracts said that. Those and numerous other excuses could and were deployed by the PR department of the company.

The one thing they didn’t have an answer for, though, was the demand for the person who had put this advertisement campaign into motion to show themselves. Capitalizing on the outrage the adversarial media had created, they themselves used the tool to now beat that unknown CEO into submission. So far the theory, anyway, and right there they fell into the trap Scarlett had set for them.

It was Tuesday, July 17th 2018, John peeked out from behind a curtain, surrounding a hidden area in front of the Planned Spikes headquarters. It was a rather boring office building, five stories, a whole lot broader than tall, with simple walls, simple windows and simple colours. The logo of Planned Spikes was a representation of what the name was supposed to mean as a non-pun, being a line that had resemblance of stock development, spiking at several points.

Over and across a metal fence, guarded by security people in black suits, sat the crowd of journalists that had turned up for this. There was a rather clear line between them, a number of seats down the middle that went untaken as a bunch of the media refused to associate with the propellers of the smear campaign.

John let go of the curtain before anybody could see him. Getting there unseen had been a massive pain in the sides and he wasn’t about to ruin that just because he was too curious to see things with his own eyes. Well, with his own body-attached vision, to be more accurate.

“I don’t really get it,” Rave confessed at that moment. “How exactly is this going to fix the present situation? All I see is ya creating another ‘scandal’ with you at the centre.”

“I mean, yeah, that’s exactly what this is,” John responded. “It’s not exactly elegant what we’re about to do. It’s all about creating incentives and shattering the perception of the news.” His explanation was cut short when the media event finally started. A voice he all too well knew from speakers reverberated through the air.

“Congratulations, you annoyed me into showing up,” she said, as if this actually hadn’t been her plan whatsoever. “I am the CEO and founder of Planned Spikes, Scarlett Evelith.”

‘Really, that’s the last name you’re going with?’ John wondered as he listened. It was obviously something stapled together from Eve and Lilith. To what significance, he wasn’t quite sure. Scarlett couldn’t hear his question, though; she simply continued.

“So, to address the criticism here, you’re dragging my company through the mud because of an advertisement campaign that has a hot maid in it.” There was a pause in which John could hear the sound of a metal lighter being opened to light a cigarette. “Anybody want to explain to me why?”

There was a moment of shouts flying around, as if that was the stupidest question in the universe. John had to imagine all of that, as he looked at the curtain that separated him from view. Before his mind’s eye, he could see the reporters in the enemy camp getting into a light frenzy as the CEO they came here to extract a submissive apology from appeared cocky more than anything else.

“Calm down, fucking hell,” Scarlett mumbled into her microphone. “Alright, you there, just say it orderly.”

A testing sound, somebody clearing their throat, then a male voice, well-spoken and every word pronounced to be perfectly understandable, “You are surely aware of the controversial statements John Newman has made on Saturday. There-“

“No, I am aware of perfectly reasonable statements that you lot took out of context and printed with half of it missing,” the bloodstained technomancer responded. “Then you did the same to his public statement. Do I look like I give a shit about your lies? I first met the Gamer in New York several months ago and have been waiting to work with him since. Your smear campaign doesn’t faze me.”

Just like that, all the reporters had left, was anger, going back to shouting at the woman behind the podium. The main weapon of a smear campaign was intimidation. Not all that effective against Scarlett. That woman was likely to meet any attempts at putting her ‘in her place’ by ripping apart the entire livelihood of her enemies. Her knowing all about the current ongoing surely helped.

“Whatever, you don’t even need to take my word for it. John, you can take over,” that was the Gamer’s signal, quite obviously, to get out of the visually blocked area.

He and Rave walked up to the podium, where Scarlett was standing in the flesh. Until the very last moment, John had thought that the redhead would employ some level of trickery to keep her face out of the public view, but there she was. The usual outfit, a black suit with a red shirt and tie, shades in her breast pocket and a stylish hat on top. Black and scarlet red all over, with the exception of her pale skin and the white paper of the slowly burning cigarette.

The shouts from the adversarial media grew louder as they realized that they had been played. Their thirst for a continued scandal had been channelled into creating universal awareness of this media event, and now John was going to use it as a platform to clear his name. A very forceful tactic, one that wouldn’t have worked if they had played their cards just a little bit more careful.

“I have indeed met Scarlett several months ago in New York, before Fusion was created, even,” he admitted freely. Them admitting to this so easily was due to their first meeting happening somewhere with eye witnesses. There wasn’t a huge chance that would have caused anything to happen, but Scarlett had evidently surmised that it was best to keep the false identity she had built as close to the real one as she could without giving anything important away.

Not the stupidest approach. The fewer lies a story had, the less were the chances that anyone would say something contradictory to the narrative over the years.

“And since nobody else wanted to do business with me the last few days, I got to do a lot with her.” He shrugged it off as if nothing happened, and the adversarial media had, at this point, stopped shouting and was simply seething in their seats, as they could do nothing to stop the Gamer now.

This event was too high-profile to not report about it. Even if they didn’t and risked the rest of their quickly waning credibility, there was no recording they could deny the release of this time. This event was being watched by neutral and John-friendly reporters as well as being livestreamed. There was no way they could drown out this news, no matter how hard they tried.

This was essentially all that John had needed, a platform amplified by somebody who was locally influential. Scarlett had used her first public appearance to become that person and, in the process of having people ‘drag’ her out of hiding, created an even bigger stage. However, it wasn’t like this didn’t come with its own drawbacks.

“A question!” a reporter from the friendly camp shouted and raised his hand. Pointing at him, the Gamer allowed him to speak up, a microphone being quickly carried over. “Alright, so, if you’ve known each other for several months, is it safe to assume that she is part of your circle of lovers?”

Scarlett answered that question by taking control of the podium again, “Yes. Don’t know why that is so important to you, but there you have it. I’m also of the mind that Amacat should join Fusion, but that’s up to the council to decide.”

‘And now that question is on the table as well,’ John hadn’t thought the Technomancer would push that issue right here. Whether that was smart or not, he didn’t know. “Yes, well, if Amacat wants to join Fusion, we will happily enter negotiations,” he therefore put it carefully when he got the podium back. “Right now, however, I want to actually talk about the issue at hand. Which is the ‘scandal’ of the last few days.”

He went through the events from his perspective. From the appearance at the talk show, to his reaction to the smear article, to why he wrote the things into his announcement as he did, over to every single lie or distorted tale that had been told about him in the past few days. The only thing he omitted was the cowardice of the other businessmen, the little jab he had made earlier would be enough to signal to them that they lost more money in investment by ignoring him than the media campaign could have ever cost them.

Now that someone else had taken the brunt force of the fall and they were going to get a look at Planned Spikes expanding rapidly over a few days, the people leading Amacat would doubtlessly flock around him in all their boredom. Just like the first day. Even without a lot of ambition, they had the basic opportunism of businessmen. At least, that was John’s prediction for this.

There was more than one word fight he had through the entire discussion. People were all too happy to shout in that he was the liar, ignoring all decency or protocol. John had the urge to scream ‘You’re Fake News!’ at several points, but that wouldn’t have looked particularly well. Especially since he knew so little about the person who had coined this phrase outside of memes. Real life politics were something he wasn’t particularly in the know about. So he should avoid association.

Regardless, by the end of his speech, he had laid waste to the very foundation of the scandal and its intent. It would continue, there was no doubt about it, the adversarial media was not out of gunpowder to shoot with. In many ways, this whole thing gave them more of it. John having a lover in the upper rankings of the Amacat companies, Scarlett saying they should join Fusion, they were both easy angles of attack.

It was just not a narrative they could pick up and suddenly run with. Which was all John needed to continue buttering up the local leadership.