John hated not being part of events.
This was not born from any fear of being excluded nor was it because he thought he could do everything better. No, the problem with these things was that, when he did not have any fingers in the pie, he had no influence in whose face it was thrown.
Given the horrific events that had played out over the past hours, he refused to continue with the pie analogy.
Hypercrush had been released from prison. So far so expected. John would have loved to delay the matter until he was back in the Guild Hall but the signers of the petition had made a big fuss out of it and threatened to make an even bigger fuss out of it with every hour he stalled. Since he was still on thin ice with his elites, he decided to give – only after telling Moira what was occurring and only after making sure he had the Creator Puppet ready.
He had underestimated the powers of a fellow Latebloor.
Hypercrush had, in short order, robbed a supermarket, drank all their beer, disappeared into the aether, and then flaunted all of John’s expectations by appearing in the Guild Hall of all places. The Gar had anticipated him to attack the Bae Circle, not the Guild Bank. There, a fight broke out, in which Hypercrush had nearly killed Hank, actually killed dozens of people, and then made out with the Court Dust. Court Dust that he had then swiftly partaken in, leading to him beating Moira in a duel, and then disappearing again.
Moira had not let that go quietly and, after recovering, imdiately given chase. The Creator Puppet was with her. He admired the willingness to seek a rematch, but the damage was already done.
Dozens of Fusion’s citizens were dead. It was a true tragedy. Losses during the Hudson Brawl had been regrettable, but such was the nature of war. This was an act of terrorism against his population. No, worse than that, it was pure, senseless violence, catching people in the crosshairs who had simply been there on regular business.
Obviously, a retaliation was required, but Hypercrush was coked up on fairy speed and had teleported to who-knew-where.
“Any progress?” the Gar asked.
Lorelei held the lock of white hair in her hand. Just in case, John had cut it from Hypercrush’s hair and kept it in storage. This scenario was altogether more brutal than the case he had imagined, but sothing like it had been in the cards. It paid to be prepared.
Usually.
“The strands of destiny are scattered.” Lorelei’s eyebrows quivered with annoyance. “The sinner has no certainty. I see islands of sches among churning oceans. He swims from one to another. He is about to reach the first and there are four more. After the fifth, I see your face in the sky, John. He will co for you.”
John sucked on his gums and contemplated. “We should leave and return to-“
“No!” Lorelei suddenly interrupted him.
“No?” John asked.
“No…” she muttered, suddenly reaching out to take his hand. “Certainty shifts as you move.” She clutched his wrist, involuntary convulsions shifting through her. The ring of tal around her head covered her eyes. Her second sight was directed through him and into a network of possible outcos. “I can see this clearly. If you stay, your clash with the addled one is inevitable. He will find you. If you move to find him, however, your paths will not cross here and he will instead return to the Guild Hall and he will rend asunder all you build. We must remain in this barrier.”
John’s jaw clenched. Lorelei’s prophecy put him between a rock and a very hard place. He could stand and fight Hypercrush here, in the Nympholympics, before the eyes of the international community, or he could return to the Guild Hall, with all of the civilians and infrastructure, and apparently face a much worse outco.
There was no good choice here.
“Tsk,” John clicked his tongue. “We will have to stay then. Momo, can I leave contacting the organizers to you?”
“I’ll break the news as best we can.”
“Tell them that whatever damages will co of this, we will cover,” John promised. “That’s the least I can offer.” The Gar gave a final glance to Lorelei, to see if she would reveal to him that the presence of the people was sohow necessary. She did not and so he nodded to Momo. The Chancellor of Fusion moved on fae wings to deliver the news. “Should have teleported back…” he muttered to himself.
He had hesitated on moving out of the Nympholympics. He had fun there and he had put faith in the people in the Hudson Barrier that they could protect themselves with the help of Moira and the Creator Puppet. Another part of the miscalculation on his part. One on Hypercrush himself and the other on the fragility of the Federation.
John had known about both and in both cases he had underestimated the scope of the issue. He had no one but himself to bla for that. ‘Was it arrogance that pushed to this?’ he asked himself. ‘Was it excessive faith in the abilities of others? Did I just not want to be part of an issue for once, to just enjoy this mindless frivolity I am offered?’
The Gar’s eyes darkened as he sat down.
The mood in the room was heavy. Not even Sylph dared to try and make an uplifting comnt. Over fifty people had died deaths that could have been prevented if they sat in the Hudson Barrier and acted as protectors.
John’s phone had not stopped buzzing since the events had started to unfurl. He had taken the first few calls, but they had all been the sa. diocre n voted into positions of power that aid to offer him advice that they thought brilliant and he knew to be trite. They all demanded he listen to them, thinking they had the solution to problems they had not even taken the ti to study.
It was all so tireso.
John tilted his head back and looked at the ceiling. A simple white ceiling, a few decorations shaped from plaster around the edges. He thought back to his first night here. He had resisted even the pleasure of having a drink and now he was validated for it and he hated it. He was beginning to loathe all that he had burdened onto himself.
“This isn’t what I had in mind,” he said, causing rustles from the shifting won around him. “I wanted to use my power for good… and yes, I wanted to be loved for it. Yet, in my accomplishnts, I find little validation, and in all mistakes, people seem to find the source in .” He was feeling anger, deep in his chest. He let it rise and then dissolve, knowing of its uselessness.
“In niz bogzarad,” Ehtra stated.
“This too shall pass,” John translated from Persian. “Indeed, it will… but I suppose now is the ti to address the matter for good.” His eyes drifted downwards, to the only people in the world that he would happily die for. “What do we owe the people?”
The question was lost on most of the won with him. So many of them were attached to the Federation because of him. They would protect Fusion, because it was their ho, but they did not consider it sothing that they were obligated to defend the sa way he did. To them, Fusion was the nest they had made. To him Fusion was… what, exactly?
Undine put his thoughts to words, “Are you a protector that acts out of benevolence or a guard dog on a leash?”
The answer to that was obvious. He knew the answer. He lived the answer. He only craved one answer. Yet, if he accepted that answer as true, then from there flowed other truths. For if he was the sovereign of his own fate, no one else was. If no one was his sovereign, then what was he in Fusion? Indeed, if he was sovereign alone, if he was the power of state alone, if he had been invested by Gaia with the wisdom to create this state, then he was, more than anyone could ever have been in mundane history, a king.
He did not want to arrive there.
“It’s not the people that order you back,” Delicia spoke up. The alchemist had shed the transmutation in light of recent events. Her arms were crossed over the frills of her maid outfit, covering her breasts. She stared with erald eyes at him. “It’s just so idiot politicians that think they are entitled to things. The population still loves you. The average person has a brain and just enough intuition to know that you deserve breaks.”
John nodded and held onto those words. An escape, even if a temporary one, from resolving that knot of contradictions he so desperately wanted to retain. Yet, his erudite mind betrayed him. It yearned to resolve the untenable position. The soul warred for what he had managed to create. To hold the people sovereign while retaining his own liberty to live life. To listen to officials while enacting his vision of the world. To be king without being king.
Crisis and logic slamd into the foundations of his positions like a sledgehamr.
“Do not fret, my mate.” Before John knew it, he was pulled into the embrace of Nathalia. He sunk into her feminine form. Her hands brushed through his hair. “Ours is the might to make work what we desire and those that would threaten your peace are to be ash scattered by the beating of my wings.”
John listened to her voice and let her presence wash away the darkness in his mind.
There were questions he had to confront and answers he had to find, if he had to, and forge, if he could.
Not today.
He dared a little smile. “I believe you once said I should not live in the shadow of your wings.”
“The words of a prouder woman to a weaker man,” she answered simply. “Yet true all the sa. Would you live in my shadow were I to let you?”
“No, of course not.” John let out a long sigh and smiled as best he could at the gathered won. It was not a wide smile nor was it a long one, but it was honest and it served to uncoil so of the tension in the room. “Thank you,” he said at Delicia specifically. “I need more reminders that those…” he gestured at the still buzzing phone, “…are not the people that I am truly working for.”
In what way he ant that ‘for’ was left open to interpretation, most of all his own.
One of the Fae Maids in the room suddenly shifted. One mont the red-eyed copy of Momo stood there like a doll, the next she shifted her weight to pronounce her hip, the sa way the sassy support usually did. “She is not enthused about us making her ancestral stadium our battleground,” she reported, “but she will oblige. She knows she has little choice in the matter. The Gobbo Nation is practically part of Fusion already.”
“Tell her that I appreciate her wisdom and wish that there was another way.”
“She believes there is. She’s not very convinced by the prophecy story.”
“Can’t bla her,” John sighed. It sounded far-fetched and how many Abyssals had used ‘fate tells this is the proper path’ as an excuse throughout ti? Enough, certainly, to take such statents with a grain of salt. From the outside perspective, it could be considered that he was simply looking to have the fight here because it ant there would be less damage to his infrastructure.
John considered presenting that as the explanation instead. It would be a lie but it would sound like the truth and the truth was respectable.
“I got it,” Momo assured him, before he could make a decision. “I’m quite charismatic, may I remind you.”
“I suppose that is sothing I caused,” he joked, drily. Charisma was not an almighty Stat. People were layered creatures and even their extre Charisma could not convert people away from deeply held beliefs in a single conversation. People held the oddest things in high esteem and so it was often unpredictable what could actually be done.
“I will go talk to whoever I can to make sure this goes down as smoothly as it can with the guests,” Rave said and jumped to her feet. “Claire, can I get ya to co along?”
“I will weather the daystar for this,” the vampire agreed and fetched her parasol.
“Be back within 2 hours,” John requested.
“Will do,” she promised and the two of them went out. The work they were about to do was necessary for Fusion to retain as much face as possible. There were elites from all over the globe here and they would rember the interruption to their favourite event. Optimally, this would only interrupt it for a day or two and then things would continue normally.
Alas, it was a clash between all of them and a drug-mage on the strongest kind of cocaine in the world. There was only one way this ended quickly.
“Well then, let’s prepare,” John said. “This man has, to put it mildly, annoyed the fuck out of .”
“Let’s rip his fucking liver out through his asshole,” Eliana growled.
Hailey nodded grimly. “Know it’s a tad insensitive with all the people that died, but I have to say that I wanted to do the professional cowgirl tomorrow.”
“You’ll get the chance,” John promised. “We’ll co back to this event in calr tis.”
“I’m hopin’ for it.”
“The enemies of our Master must be obliterated,” Aclysia spoke for the maids.
“This interruption is most unwelco,” Gno spoke her mind.
“Then let us make him dust,” tra stated.
“His story forgotten, his consequences a warning to all,” Nightingale weaved in her pledge.
“What do you want us to do?” Nathalia asked, scratching the back of his head.
“For once, I cannot plan in detail.” The Gar looked to Scarlett, who threw a map of the Protected Space onto the nearby flatscreen. “Most of this place is dominated by forest. There are various the parks. Judging by Lorelei’s vision, we will have six total opponents. Hypercrush as we knew him would be a small challenge at worst, but the Court Dust likely has a similar effect on him as value had on Jevaine.”
Eliana and Nathalia nodded. The two of them had faced off against the golden Ironborn in the final fight against Arkeidos and his forces. By raw destructive power clashing, that had been the biggest battle in the whole event.
“Such power rarely cos without consequences,” Lorelei said. “A price must be paid.”
“Court Dust lasts three to four days,” John spoke agreeingly. “If this estimation still applies to him, our battle plan is fundantally altered if he fights us towards the end of that duration. In that case, we will delay. In all other cases, my orders are simple and concise…” he took a dark pause, “…tear this beast to shreds.”
His greatest allies nodded.
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