John was only somewhat surprised when the final challenge did not bring him to the usual hall. Instead, he was brought to the conference room that he, Wendy and Vita first had their discussion about this entire tournament in. It was just like he last had seen it, simple and clean. A large screen, a circular boardroom table, several chairs that shared the purple colour of their cushions with the carpet. The only change were the cameras. Whatever they wanted to do here today would be televised.

Calmly marching towards the right-hand side of the table, John drew back a chair and sat down without being offered. The intent of the action was twofold. He wanted to show that he was feeling friendly enough with the Floridians that he didn’t need to be formal and that he was also done just playing along. After today, Florida would be part of Fusion and that made him their leader. By the federal nature of things, he was still a visitor, but he was no longer a guest, so to speak.

Rave took the seat next to him, but only because Sylph suddenly manifested in his lap and decided to sit there. “I want cuddles!” she simply declared.

“This is serious business though,” John warned her, even as he delivered and combed through her long hair with his fingers. Despite its wild appearance, the pale green streaks parted for him with ease. The feeling was as if he held his fingers into a strong gust, with the addition of something soft and smooth caressing his skin. “You have to be quiet when people want to speak, yes?”

“Serious business is so boring,” the thunderstorm elemental cheerfully complained, her legs swaying under the table. “But fiiiiine, I will be a good girl – as long as you give me lots and lotsa cuddles!”

“Can do that,” John promised and wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her against his chest.

“And we have fun later!”

“Define fun for me,” he requested.

“Your pick! We can game or we can have the wild sex or the loving sex or the gaming sex or we can sexually game, I just want you to be with me. Can we do that? Can we?” She sounded almost pleading at that point.

“Of course,” John told her with a smile. In light of her tone, he decided to give her a little more than that. “We should have a date once we’re back in the Hudson Barrier, just you and me.”

“Really? Yay!” Sylph would have bounced were she not sitting in his lap at the moment. Instead she just excitedly wobbled in his embrace. Her cute, round butt squished against him and her skin sent little lightning bolts into him. Rather than numbness or pain, a pleasant warmth spread from those places. Elementals were weird in these ways.

Among his elementals, Sylph was the least human in behaviour. That wasn’t to say that she was inhuman, only that she was a level of carefree more usually associated with children. At the same time, her body and other behaviour left no doubt that she did not belong in the category of growing people. It was one of the reasons why John more often felt her to be closer to a fairy than anything else, even (or especially) after meeting actual ones. Thankfully, she did lack their disconnect to human logic. Sylph was something in between, whimsical like fairies but able to stay reasonable. Most of the time.

“Really,” he promised and gently bit her pointy ear. “I know these serious affairs bore you, my beloved gale, so I think we can use some time being free.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Sylph continued to excitedly move between his arms. When Rave leaned over and scratched her under her chin, she gave her best impression of a cat. It wasn’t really good.

John looked up and across the table, where the people of the jury patiently waited. Vita, Jeff and Wendy, the usual three sitting in the usual order. “One might ask themselves if the Gamer is now done with his preamble,” Jeff spoke into a microphone. He was the only one in the room with one and John had to wonder if it wasn’t just a prop. “He got distracted, and now all of us are distracted, how distracting! I don’t think he is taking this seriously, but you folks at home can form your own opinion about that.”

“It’s hard to take this seriously if you bring a chicken to the meeting,” John pointed out just as, gawking and clucking, Fred stepped across the table. She pecked up, one by one, seeds that had been scattered across the table for her. The brown-feathered guild leader raised her head and focused on John for a few moments. The Gamer Observed back.

“Is she just a chicken?” Rave whispered towards him.

“Apparently,” John returned. “A chicken so important she got a character sheet.”

“That is hilarious.”

“She would be delicious!” Wendy declared and jumped when Vita slammed her hand on the table and got up with a grim expression on her face. “Fine, we’re not frying Fred… but we totally should…”

“I will feed you to Cheshire!” Vita threatened, exactly like she did last time they had this conversation. Having now had the pleasure of knowing that mythical cat himself, John realized just how much of a threat that was. That maw, that endless, magic dissolving maw, like the deepest point of the Abyss itself.

John closed his eyes and took a slow breath in an effort to distract himself from the sudden headache. After concentrating on something else for a few seconds, it was completely gone. ‘Without nosebleed,’ he thought, thankful for the little things. “Since you’re as chatty as always, Jeff,” the Gamer continued on with the program, “why don’t you fill me on what this last test is about?” He leaned back, waiting for the answer. At the same time, he wondered if Moira was following this from somewhere nearby or if she and Lorelei really had left already. They weren’t in the room, that much was for sure.

“Foooor suuuuureeeee,” Jeff stretched out his words for dramatic effect, only serving to annoy the Gamer. “As you have doubtlessly already figured out, the past tests and the entire layout of the tournament was a way for us to make our own image of your character. Well, for these two to make themselves an image of your character, I’m just here for the vacation coupons.” He gestured towards the ladies to either side of him.

Despite surrounding him, neither Wendy nor Vita expressed any real interest in the man. For obvious reasons, as John would say. There doubtlessly were some women who preferred expressive and energetic men like Jeff, to put his attributes in somewhat positive terms, but in general, John had him beat as a member of the same gender. He was more attractive, more powerful, more wealthy, more charismatic, more intelligent and a master of sexcraft.

Knowing all this, even after a year of it, he still didn’t grow tired of any amount of attention thrown his way by attractive females.

“You know, my public record isn’t exactly short,” John had to bring up. “You could have just gone through that.”

“We did.” Wendy crossed her arm. “What, you think we’re just going to trust the media and your own propaganda machine?”

“First, I don’t have a propaganda machine, I have state media. WHICH…” he had to shout the word to overpower the redhaired sass goddess, who was already opening her mouth, “…you COULD say is a propaganda machine. I get it, it’s naturally inclined to report positively on what I do, because it is an extension of my government and all that, alright, fair enough, I just would like it if you kept the propaganda word in your pocket until my state media does some serious fact bending. Otherwise, when it happens, that word will have lost basically all meaning and it will be hard to criticize people with it.”

“Duly noted,” Vita said with her ever-empty smile.

“Second, if you have access to both, just look at the middle point between the adversarial media and the friendly media. The truth should be found somewhere there, usually.”

“Ain’t nobody got time for that,” Wendy declared.

“But ya do have time to host a week long tournament, challenge, thingy?” Rave asked with a sarcastically raised eyebrow.

“Do I have time to get extremely amused and fucked by one of the biggest stallions the world currently knows? Yeah, duh.” The fast-food goddess rolled her eyes. “Seriously, why wouldn’t we do all of this to get a better picture of you? We don’t have to rely on third party information as much, we get to do some funny negotiations and we know you have to accept because we got one of your beloved girls.”

“Who sought you out for training, which you provided,” John added, with a glance towards the camera. “Are you trying to cause a giant misunderstanding here or why are you wording everything so poorly?”

“I might be trying to create some headlines, because I need to get my entertainment somehow,” Wendy answered with a shrug and a smirk. “Can’t blame a girl.”

“Look, rather than feeding the sensationalist media, if you’re feeling bored, just tell me.” The Gamer pulled at his collar. The fact that the uppermost two buttons were open meant that he showed a fair bit of smooth, muscular chest. “I will make sure you’re satisfied for at least a day. We can start right here, on this table. Right now.”

“Teeeemptiiiiiinnnnnng,” Wendy stretched out her words and gulped. “Hamena, hamena… No, well, a day is… not overblowing it, I still felt those ten minutes in my legs the next morning… uhm, Vita, back up, I need to change the topic to something I can sass him on!”

“Better idea, let’s continue with the reason for this meeting,” Vita stated and looked to Jeff. “Do your work, announcer person.”

“I have a name.”

“I know, but I don’t care,” Vita told him and slowly rose out of her chair, only to start prowling back and forth behind Jeff, skirting his field of view. It was making the hype-man visibly uncomfortable, for more reasons than just being ‘stalked’ in such a fashion. It was surprisingly refreshing to see the pariah bother someone else with her alien presence. “Can you continue?” she asked.

“Y-yeah, sure,” Jeff declared, if only to please the dark-haired blank. “So, here’s the deal, the final test will be that both Vita and Wendy will go through all of the previous tests and rate your behaviour during them from a scale from zero to five. That will be added up for a maximum of ten points for each round and a maximum of seventy points, sixty from the six previous challenges and another ten for general behaviour. You take an estimate on how many points you are going to get. If you guess correctly, you win your last bet.”

“Is that so?” John hummed and grinned. His mind had quickly suggested a way to stroke his pride a bit and also troll back those two women who had cost him a lot of nerves the past week. “I bet that I will reach the full seventy points,” he declared. “Fusion’s demand is that, instead of a national holiday being introduced in honour of cute animals, there will be an extended four-day weekend dedicated to cute animals – every year.”

“Audible gasp!” Sylph said what everyone in the room did.

In his office in New York, Jack suddenly had an end put to his blowjob. The Technomancer in charge of working on his dick had decided to put a sudden stop to things to give him an immediate and lengthy lecture about the amount of productivity loss associated with an entire Federation not working for two extra days every year and that petting kittens was not a sustainable source of revenue.

The last bet was, even if the unofficial head of economics was currently berating otherwise, quite inconsequential. John was happy to use it to put his opposition in a bit of a situation. Of all the things that he had deciphered about the moody and borderline insane behaviour of the people of Florida, there was one thing that they had in common with the rest of humanity. They loved their days off.

John had just offered them an extra two to three (depending on how Saturdays were handled) days off every year and all they needed to do was to compliment him at every corner for this entire trial or, at least, swallow any bad words they had. Was it a respectable move? Not particularly. John was of the outspoken stance that he needed to be confronted with dissent, because he knew he was the type of person that could drift off into being too certain about his own solutions. However, because it was fun to tease the sassy Wendy and he still held a bit of a grudge towards Vita for her early behaviour, he made an exception to this rule. For his ego and his amusement.

Was it a smart move? Again, Scarlett was still busy chastising him for it, so that was questionable. It would land him some favour with most of the population though, so he tried to explain to her the balance between good economics and pleasing the public. Being a quite ruthless businesswoman, she had none of it. In general, however, John was convinced that the slight loss of productivity every year was an alright sacrifice to make the people of Fusion more content with his reign. Little insanities like this by the ruler were charming.

Was it necessary to analyse this so much? ‘Probably not,’ John answered his own question, ‘but my mind goes there anyway.’

“The, uhm, the bet is set!” Jeff declared and the screen flickered to life. “The final condition is written down and so the final test can begin…”