Chapter 798 – Influence

Chapter 798 – Influence

John’s eyes darted over the screen in search for a solution to the problem. ‘If I place this here, then I am screwed if I don’t get a line piece anytime soon,’ he thought as he hammered the left and right buttons to prevent the block from immediately settling. ‘I should really play a version of this that lets you buffer blocks.’ He placed the square in the niche to the side and smiled when he saw the line piece in the ‘next block’ preview.

Then things shifted in the chamber below and he pressed escape, pausing Tetris until he could return to it at a more opportune moment. As a master multitasker, he fluidly pulled along as if he had been paying complete attention the entire time. “Congratulations,” he said as he stood up, leaving his podium to go down to the floor and shake the hand of a tall, green-haired woman, “Miss Jumthek, you are the first Speaker of Commons.”

She was unusual beyond her hair colour. Something like a fish’s side fins sprouted from behind her ears, slits along the side of her neck indicated where gills were and her hands had webbing between them. Simply said, she was some sort of fish girl. She was still notably beautiful, which doubtlessly had helped get her elected, but the ornaments around her arms reminded him too much of wedding rings to even start getting interested.

He offered his hand and she shook it with a broad smile. John then guided her to her seat, only to return to his own. Jumthek immediately took control of the proceedings and John listened with half an ear. She was a competent speaker, but not particularly inspiring. ‘About as expected,’ John thought as his attention returned to Tetris.

He already knew her. He already knew everyone in the House of Commons by as much intel as could be sensibly summarized about them. Knowing about them in every detail was, for John Newman, not an issue of memory space but of time allocated to the task. Watching the campaign recordings of every single one of them would have taken days that he could fill with more productive and fun things. Reading summaries provided by Scarlett and his growing intelligence agencies was a lot more feasible.

It had shortly crossed his mind to utilize that knowledge to make sure someone who he approved of got elected. An initial suggestion by Scarlett had been that she could run for office in the Amaca Coast state. That she would win was basically a foregone conclusion, but John discouraged her from that path. Questions of corruption and nepotism aside, he didn’t want Scarlett even more occupied than she already was. If she became more of a workaholic, he might only see her for an hour a day, and that was simply impossible to unify with his lifestyle. Being separated from Lydia for days or even weeks at a time was already bothersome enough.

He still could have influenced the election of the Speaker behind the scenes by just pulling some strings. In the current situation, John had deemed doing so unnecessary. That would probably change in the future. Politics was a dirty game and there might come a time where he needed to punch through a piece of legislation against quite a bit of resistance. Until it came to that point, he felt it better to keep the system as clean as possible.

As such, the election of Jumthek had happened completely naturally. Given that this was the first session and party dynamics hadn’t formed yet, it was an election similar to that of a class representative during the first year at a new school. Everyone just voted for the person who first struck them as most charismatic and competent.

Basically, John expected her to get replaced sooner rather than later. Whether this would be due to party lines consolidating or just a more popular candidate surfacing, he didn’t know. All he cared about was that the first Speaker didn’t shake the boat too much, and she filled that role so nicely that John was getting progressively more bored the longer she spoke.

‘These are probably going to be your five minutes in the spotlight, use them well,’ he thought as he followed her announcement of her agenda. Since she was a member of the Supernatural People Party, she obviously kept to the benefits people with animal or other supernatural traits could bring to a human run society.

After that speech concluded, things quickly switched to discussions. The protocol for speeches, both planned and spontaneous, was explained to everyone. Rationale was given for why the rules were as they were, if anyone had a question.

Unlike the first House of Exceptionals meeting, which had been purely for the sake of testing, this current meeting had the theoretical ability to design its first laws. John discouraged this, he wanted each first meeting to be purely about people getting used to the new systems. Once the first parliament session had gone through its test run and any potential kinks had gotten ironed out, he was more than happy to just let things go ahead.

‘Convincing the eager members of that wasn’t too easy,’ John thought as the calm session continued. Inside this chamber, he had, as far as the design of things went, next to no power. He could veto, but doing so too often would destabilize the system. He could request a speech, but whether or not he was allowed to hold one, planned or not, was up to the Speaker, since they decided the program. He could schedule an address before parliament without their approval, but that was a different program.

Outside this chamber, however, he was still the most powerful person in the Federation. He had spent the entire morning and, indeed, several days over the past week visiting the most troublesome elements among the representatives and making his case to make things sail smoothly. He didn’t have power, but he had influence in this chamber. Lots of it. Being unable to suggest laws by himself wasn’t too much of a drawback if he could convince people through actions outside the session and speeches within to just legislate in his spirit. Whatever law was then put together would first pass over to the House of Exceptionals, where he could once more leverage influence to have it tailored even closer to what he perceived to be the best version of it.

Which was both quite useful and incredibly dangerous, because of his own mistakes and biases. Something he hoped to have counteracted by other characters of skill and determination pushing against his suggestions and foregoing his influence where they thought it the best.

‘I will have to do my best to not despise them for it. Given how I often react to push-back, that’s going to be a character-building exercise,’ he jokingly reprimanded himself, just as he finally screwed up in the Tetris game.

He started a new round and simply followed the on-goings on the floor.

_________________________________________________________________________



“I would guess both the huge tits and her heat help there.” The Gamer put his nose into her hair and took a refreshing whiff of her aroma. “Holding you is reward enough. We got guests in a minute.”

“I don’t think any of them will mind watching me suck ya dry, tiger.” As she spoke, his pink-haired girlfriend shifted her position a little bit so he could feel more of her squishy backside against the sensitive parts of his lower body. Her hands trailed over the fabric of his pants. “Two of them saw it before.”

“Well, we were all rather drunk,” John responded. “Chemilia and Ted aside, I would feel incredibly awkward doing anything in front of Elu. It’s already weird enough that she is such a naughty grandma.”

“I hope you’re prepared for some comments about putting babies into Eliza.”

“That is what I guess will happen, yes,” John sighed. “My parents and her, they seem very enthusiastic about me having kids.”

“I am enthusiastic about you having kids with me,” Nia suddenly popped into the conversation. Although it was unexpected and John had neither an idea when she had entered the room nor when she had walked up to the couch and kneeled down next to the armrest, neither he nor Rave jumped. Somehow, they were becoming immune to being startled by Nia. Perhaps part of her alien aura announced her presence to their subconscious.

“Right, which we should probably have a talk about.” The Gamer scratched his head. “When did that even start being a thing you thought about?”

Nia tilted her head and stared. “I don’t know.” The answer came after a little while. “Can I have Sylph for a minute?”

“Sure!” the thunderstorm elemental herself answered and flew out of the constant patting at the hands of two people to receive more by the hands of the blank. “Ehehehehe, creepy tender fingers,” she continued to giggle as she got her scalp massaged and her chin scratched.

“I realized it was what I wanted. That is all,” Nia finalized her explanation. “Also, my legs hurt.”

“Well, ya did finish the workout, didn’t ya?” Rave asked.

“Yes.”

“Then they’re supposed to hurt a bit... ya probably going to hate tomorrow. Sore muscles and all that.”

John hummed. “Can Undine heal that?” he asked, not sure of the answer. “I would guess yes, since healing magic replenishes vitality, which translates into mended flesh in the case of humans.”

“Best of my knowledge, does work, yeah,” Rave answered.

“No side effects like losing the muscle gain?” the Gamer investigated a bit more.

Nia shook her head and John was happy to have a more reliable source than his girlfriend. “Not that I know off. Healing magic is purely benevolent, no scars but all the advantages. Which is good. If I negotiate with the world to heal me, I can just reset to my corporeal norm.”

“Wait a second, you can restore yourself with that whole ‘bending reality’ thing?” John asked and got a simple nod as his answer. “...Fucking Alice tested me even while we were fighting that angel...” he grumbled, remembering clearly that she had wanted him to heal her. “Does it take a lot of energy?” he had a follow-up question, which got another nod. “Well, maybe she was just conserving her power for other manoeuvres then...”



He was distracted from further questions by a knock on his door.