“I – hate – the – press,” John growled as he finished reading the article that had been written overnight. Not the greatest thing to start a Sunday with. “These absolute assholes.” His outcries caused Rave to raise an eyebrow in confusion, and he turned to her to read out loud what pissed him off so much.

“John Newman, the president of Fusion, has admitted that the report put together by the Lake Alliance was truthful. ‘Zensie betrayed me, as I anticipated,’ he said in a talk show on Saturday, ‘The true thing about that report is that I wanted to antagonize him. I was just smarter, that’s it.’ These statements put the leader of the aggressively expanding guild in a damning light. It seems the only thing that the leader of Fusion was truthful about in his speech earlier were his pride problem and that people that try to do the right thing often trick themselves into actions are only self-serving in truth.”

He tossed his phone on the table. The entire article continued to present him and his past actions in a negative light, but that first bit was the one he had the biggest issue with. It was one thing to have a bad opinion of his actions and a whole different one to make up things or cherry pick the evidence. “These absolute… cunt-waffles! They edited out all the context I gave to the situation and clipped the quotes back with only the bad sounding bits remaining.” Taking a moment to let out an exasperated breathe, he added, “And then, just so every last moron out there got it, they attack my character. They aren’t reporting on the news, they are making the news.”

Rave picked up his phone and read it with a continuously more pissed expression. “Wanna go over there and smash their fucking building in?” she asked, putting the device back down once she was done.

Sighing heavily, trying to calm himself, John got up and walked up and down the room. “Yes, but that wouldn’t do any good. It would only prove their point.” He was used to getting bad press, there was always someone who disagreed, but there was a difference between people that just thought he was misguided, people that thought he had an awful character and people that were willing to tinker with quotes for a hit-piece.

He had to hand it to the Lake Alliance for creating that report in the first place. What he had perceived as a nonsensical attempt to tarnish his character had turned out to be a great angle of attack for the adversarial news organizations. John had wanted to keep public eyes off this thing, because reminding everyone that he was a bit of a schemer wasn’t a great way to run his public relations. People would voice doubts whether he was genuine or just a Machiavellian opportunist, riding the ‘human rights’ wave to assure himself compliance in the areas he conquered until there was nobody left to oppose him.

John picked up his laptop, opened up a text document and began typing away. At the same time, he had to ignore the quickly mounting alerts about mentions of him on social media. Just a glance at it was enough to know that nothing said there would improve his mood. “Aclysia!” his warning voice echoed out, as he heard the door towards the entrance area opening. “I just said we AREN’T burning their building down.”

“The head of the author surely would not be missed on his shoulders,” the weaponized maid hissed back. John didn’t need to turn to know she was gripping Eclys. “Most of it must be vacant anyway.”

Agreeing in a passive tone, the only thing that gave Beatrice’s bloodlust away was the content of her words. “Agreement. Addendum: I could get a spike to show it off with.”

“No, no and no,” John told them, typing, deleting and editing sentences in a hurry. “Beatrice, I trust you more to keep your cool, so you, on your own, are going to that channel and will insist that they release the full VOD to the public. Don’t threaten violence or anything like that but don’t leave until you either have a promise on paper or arranged a talk between me and whoever is highest up in that media company. Make as much as a ruckus as you need to not get ignored. I swear to everything, this is why I insist on recording my interviews…”

He had let himself be talked into not doing so because he wasn’t the only guest and the others weren’t as interested in being permanently available to the internet to see. The argument had seemed weak at that time already, but John had wanted to be understanding and caved. Now he basically had confirmation that it was just a bullshit excuse in the first place. His phone vibrated on the table, but he had no interest in getting up and dealing with that right now. The sender had her ways to be insistent, however.

Scarlett: Yo, I wake up wanting to cash in on that bet I won against your maid and suddenly there are like 17 hit pieces on you, what’s going on?

John clicked on the tab and opened a barebones looking chat program. It was an alpha version of Fusion’s internal communication software. As he had previously requested, Scarlett was working on it when she had nothing else to do. Since she was one hell of a busy person, and she had to make that thing as secure as possible to hold it up to her standards, progress on it was slow. Right now, it was safe enough to be used for limited exchanges via text, which was why only he, her and a few select others had access to it.

John replied in a flurry of finger movements.

John: 17?! There was just one half an hour ago!

Scarlett: Alright then, a concerted media smear campaign. I see you are already typing up a response.

Scarlett: I guess you don’t want to talk about how this wouldn’t be happening if you were just willing to break a few bones?

John: No.

John: Do we have any friends in the media that are writing up counter stories?

Scarlett: Let me scan, going to take a few minutes.

Minutes that John used to continue to formulate his side of the events. The awful thing about this whole affair was that he wasn’t willing to glorify himself like Zensie did, painting himself as basically innocent. Instead he tried to be as truthful as he could. Which would make him credible in the long run, but in the short-term would create a bunch of headaches.

‘My first real media scandal and it’s something this stupid and obviously fabricated,’ the Gamer thought. ‘Lying by omission, classy act, really.’

Scarlett: Alright, Airter and Twitter have some journalists who have already voiced outrage over this. Problem being they won’t be able to write proper response articles before tomorrow, most likely.

Scarlett: Kudos to them for releasing this on Sunday, most journalists and editors are trying to have a relaxed day.

John: Which means the pressure for a correction won’t be there until every last idiot who already dislikes me has read the thing. Great, can’t wait to hear the myth of ‘What about that time the Gamer forced someone to side with his enemies? How is that morally defensible?’ for months to come.

Scarlett: Forget the months, right now, it’s important that the Amacat leadership doesn’t take associating with you as a risk.

John took his hands off the keyboard for a moment to massage his forehead. ‘Right,’ he thought, having forgotten that those risk-averse businessmen would probably be influenced by this in some capacity if he didn’t solve this quickly. ‘Perhaps I should just write what makes me look the best…’ he thought, looking at the truthful summary of the events he had written so far. The admission that he did want Zensie to betray him and had acted extra dickish to that end would give those people some immediate fodder. If he just conveniently skipped that then…

Well, then he would be a hypocrite, contradicting the things he had said yesterday. It was so tempting to just lie about this, sail the smooth waters, have the guaranteed gains in the short run. Just not be principled and resolve all of this with a couple of white lies. Then continuously lie every time he was asked about it.

‘I can’t,’ John thought, feeling tired this early in the morning. He was just not willing to become yet another politician lying for their own gain. Typing a last few sentences into the document, he copied the entire thing over into the chat and sent it to Scarlett.

John: Make sure this gets distributed to the proper people.

Scarlett: You sure?

John: Yes.

Scarlett: Alright then.

John leaned back on the couch and stared at the ceiling. After a few seconds, Rave and Aclysia poked their heads into his field of view. “Ya need a cuddle?” Rave asked.

“I need a mountain of cuddles, an underwater blowjob in the jacuzzi and a stiff drink, at the same time,” he responded, although he, with his limited experience in alcohol, actually didn’t know what a stiff drink even was exactly. He just knew he needed it. “God, this is a headache. Not like I’ll get an apology either. They’ll just correct to something like ‘Although we weren’t truthful in our exact choice of words, the president of Fusion has admitted that the content was largely correct’. I can’t even sue them for it, because there is no damn court.”

“Unless Amacat joins Fusion,” Rave pointed out.

“…Unless Amacat joins Fusion,” John repeated, nodding. “Even then, setting up the courts will take an eternity and they will probably just move somewhere to Mexico or Quebec or whatever. Argh!” Throwing his hands into the air, he shouted, “This is so frustrating! If I was half the asshole they’re making me out to be, this wouldn’t even be a problem. They’d be dead and I’d be laughing!”

“Ya said no to the murdering thing,” Rave giggled and suddenly dropped on him. “But I can make ya laugh!” Before he knew what was happening, she had her hands on his stomach and assaulted him with wiggling fingers. While John wasn’t particularly affected on a physical level, he wasn’t really ticklish, it worked pretty well mentally.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” he exclaimed, laughing out loud, trying to get on top of her instead. All that that motion accomplished was that they fell off the couch and continued to wrestle on the floor. Before long, John managed to get a moment of superiority in and forced a kiss on her that she returned after just another second of playful struggle. “Stop being so beautiful, you wild thing,” he stated.

“Mhm,” she looked around mischievously, like a cat that momentarily pretended to no longer be interested in her prey. “No,” she then, unsurprisingly, returned and threw him off her with her physical superiority well in use. John flew until he landed on his back a metre back, immediately beset by his girlfriend again, who straddled his groin. Grabbing him by the collar in a sexy way, she pulled him into a kiss on her terms instead.

Before John knew it, Rave wasn’t the only one tending to him. Aclysia and the elementals all swarmed around him, vying for his attention. Lips and loving whispers surrounded him, distracting him from his plight, which seemed pretty distant by comparison. Most true of all rang the words of Undine.

“Remember that they’re just against you,” her song-like voice echoed out loud. “Irritation with them is appropriate. Lies are never pleasant. In the grand scheme, however, their slander does not matter. It will wash away with time and only leave them less credible. You can never please everybody. Aim your wrath at those that are truly a threat.”

“Right, right,” John nodded, hearing things he already knew but didn’t hurt to hear again every now and again. Now more level-headed, he still sighed at the prospect of the near future. “Alright, now we wait for Beatrice to come back.” He rose out of the pile of girls, not because he strictly wanted to, but because he still wanted all of that jacuzzi stuff.

Everyone followed him to the spa room, except for Aclysia, who went to work on the stiff drink part of it all. Gnome had a question though. “How much would it even help if they release the actual recording?”

“Honestly? Not that much,” John answered. “At least not in the immediate time frame. What it essentially does is that it allows people who actually care about the truth to check whether I was taken out of context or not. Too bad most people don’t care that much about checking on things. Not that I can hold that against them, I take a bunch of news from distributors myself and don’t check the source. There are only so many hours in a day. Point being, the people that believe me or the station will likely continue to believe me or the station for the duration of the actual outrage. All the recording will do is clear up things in conversations between friends and family over the years, should this ever be brought up again.”

Salamander rubbed his shoulders when he got into the tub. Being a fire spirit, she didn’t really want to get into the water. She could, it wasn’t like she was still the low-level elemental that could potentially be killed by putting her into a hot spring, her form was much more stable now, but it was still not her preferred environment. “It does force them to correct their own story though,” she tried to be a positive voice, which was rare for her, and John appreciated it.

“Don’t worry,” Siena aspirated into his ear with her overall sensual voice, as Undine slipped under the surface of the water and fulfilled the ‘underwater blowjob’ part of his relaxation program. “There are always little accidents that can happen to people too bothersome to deal with.”

“Again, no, not going there,” John kept firm on his stance.

Although he was certainly fantasizing about it.