Chapter 531 – Victory & Mouth 7 – The fuse is lit

Chapter 531 – Victory & Mouth 7 – The fuse is lit

“...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!

“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.



The clock was ticking.