Unmasking the leader didn’t help John in many ways. A face he didn’t know, an unknown name, Level 56, mercenary, no reason why he and his allies attacked John, but one very vital information. He and all his allies were part of the Little Maryland. Meaning that there was some sort of track they could follow with the name given.

There was every reason to track them as well. Two people had died in the initial barrage of spells. Lives snuffed out at a moment’s notice. Simply because they had stood too close to John. The rest, Undine managed to stitch back together as if nothing ever happened. In typical Abyss manner, none of them were shellshocked, leaving all the more room for outrage.

While John completely understood that, anger was really the last thing he wanted right now. Boiling emotions could so easily lead to retaliation and everyone was ready to point fingers at the obvious culprit. Whether Abraham even had anything to do with this or not wouldn’t matter once the first street clash happened and the whole thing spiralled out of control.

“We are going live!” he heard a reporter say and immediately stomped over, ripping the camera from the second person’s hands. “What are you doing?! The people need to know you were attacked!”

“Yes, they do,” John agreed while making sure that both the camera was turned off and that nobody else had any device out enabling them to get the scoop. “But not through spur of the moment, sensational and emotional press.” One person clearly disagreed, trying to leave the barrier but finding themself locked by the Gamer’s supremacy. “Here is what will happen,” he dictated, fishing the phone out of his pocket. “I am going to contact Imerella, who will come here with the authorities and we will deal with this like a civilized bunch of people would.”

“The authorities are on Abraham’s side, he is paying them!” one of the reporters shouted. Another blew air out of his nose and stated something to the effect that this might as well have been staged. A shouting match began but was ended rather suddenly by a small earthquake.

People were attempting to keep their balance as Gnome raised her foot a second time. “Be quiet!” the soil elemental demanded, only slowly lowering her posture when she was given what she wanted. Inhaling and then exhaling visibly and audibly, she kept her ashamed blushing to a minimum. “I-I know we are all a bit worked up right now, so please listen to John and… and let things be done the proper way. We know nothing for sure. Okay?” She looked around, a pleading look in her hazel eyes. “…Please?” she added more quietly, slowly beginning to pout. “Maybe?” She was shrinking together under the baffled attention.

It was pretty hard to put together the image of the elemental that could nonchalantly shake the entire barrier, even if it was only fifty metres across, and the Asian brunette that was now making her frame as small as possible.

Backup arrived a moment later when a person behind John suddenly made a pained noise. “Naughty boy, wanted to film us having fun?” the overly sexual voice of Siena rung out, presenting a phone dangling between her fingers. The sound of crunching glass reverberated between her claws, every swing from left to right carving tiny shards out of the display.

The guy was holding his bleeding hand. No permanent damage had been done, but he was still trying to stumble away from the nightmare elemental that had appeared behind him. He tripped over his own feet while turning. Immediately, Siena crawled on top of him with sultry motions. A spider ready to strike.

She bowed down. “And that after John said he is not into that? Mhm, daring… I don’t like it,” whispering that sweetly into his ear, barely loud enough to let everyone hear, her fangs snapping closed with a throaty giggle, she caused very afraid sexual tension. “Who else wants to try to take the reigns in this little get together?” her yellow eyes travelled from one reporter to another, growing ever more intense in their colour as her form shifted into the colour of shadow, her hair rising like a candleflame. “Or maybe you want to give me an excuse to play? I will give you something to keep you awake at night.”

“I-I’ll go along with your plan!” someone rather suddenly blurted out and disagreement was soon had. John didn’t really like this, but if he had wanted to stop it, he could have. Sometimes, fear was an acceptable thing to use, especially if he didn’t want to have to debate for an hour about avoiding a civil war.

‘Thank you,’ he mentally sent Siena before having to play the benevolent guy. “Get off the poor man!” he said out loud and then let Undine heal his hand. John even used Create to repair the display of his phone before handing it back. Such miniscule damage came with a timer of less than twenty seconds.

Having expected this, the nightmare elemental only whispered back, ‘My pleasure.’ Seemingly, she had no problem playing the bad cop, even if it was a tad dishonest. With the crowd pacified, John went ahead and made the call.

___________________________________________________________________________

About an hour later, Imerella appeared at the airport. They brought some special bags that existed for the sole purpose of moving corpses out of barriers unseen. John had Gnome keep them under the earth during the waiting time so the gathered reporters didn’t have to look at them for the entire wait time. They were removed from the scene with as much dignity as the situation allowed.

“Can you arrange for me to receive their families addresses?” the Gamer asked the short general when that dirty affair had been taken care of and the officers, partly from Imerella’s force but mostly some kind of police department, began questioning people as to what happened. “In case they need support.”

“I can, but if you do, do it anonymously,” Imerella told him, having a steady eye on the assailants, who had also been restricted by Gnome by being buried up to their shoulders. Most of them were still knocked out. “After this, I don’t want the people left behind to be politicized.”

Having that pointed out to him, John nodded, “Okay, I’ll make it a quiet effort.”

“So, what happened here?” Imerella asked; it was fitting that she was the one to question him.

“There was a spontaneous interview here; apparently somebody in my campaign organization accidentally leaked part of my schedule or something like that, didn’t get too digging into that yet,” John couldn’t suppress a bit of anger about not having gotten that private interview with the blonde catgirl now. It was a macabre thing to concentrate on, after two people had recently died. Forcing himself to move his thoughts elsewhere, he continued. “My flight was delayed, so I figured I had the time. We talked and then I felt fire,” being an Elementalist, John could feel the elements surrounding him even if he couldn’t directly manipulate them, “Aclysia reacted and pulled both me and…” he raked his brain for the name of the catgirl and found it after a second, “…Memprisa, the host of the talk show I was on recently, to the floor. We identified the attackers, they were wearing masks and black clothes,” he gestured at the former piled up not far from where he stood, “Aclysia and most of my elementals began fighting, under orders to not kill anybody. Undine prioritized creating a protective bubble around the journalists. The two dead we have must have been hit mortally in the first barrage. We defeated the assailants and then healed everyone still hurt.”

Imerella nodded several times throughout those statements, indicating that she was listening. By the end, she sighed, “Now I am torn… for evidence gathering purposes, it would have been easier if you had left them wounded.” Stopping to look at the prisoners, she continued a moment later, “But I guess evidence won’t really be a problem.”

“You have two corpses to show if anybody cries conspiracy,” John spewed out as if he had taken a gulp of the vilest venom. “That will properly politicize them.”

Imerella raised her arms defensively. “Let’s be calm,” she said in a cheerful tone that didn’t fit the situation but was needed to keep this day from getting any worse. “Did you call anyone before me?” He had told her all of this on the phone before, but she wanted a slower recalling. Also, and John understood this, she had to check if his story had changed in a meaningful way in the past hour. For all she knew, he could have been a liar after all.

“No, neither did they,” John gestured towards the reporters and told Imerella how he had prevented news from getting out. “No news left this place. I don’t trust Chemilia or Terkal to take this calmly, and even if I did, you are the declared neutral force. I did call my girlfriend afterwards, though.” Honesty was important and he wasn’t going to apologize for letting his loves know why he wasn’t returning in time.

“Hopefully, they may still have streamed the audio,” the short general hummed and brushed past that last bit. Either she understood that John was smart enough to tell Rave to not spread this info or that Rave was not going to do it on her own or she knew that she was unable to stop the Gamer from doing it anyway. “We’ll have to look into that and hope no word gets out before we’re ready.”

This was where John could have pointed out to her that he was sure that nothing like that was happening, since he had put Scarlett on exactly that task. That would have meant to reveal he had the means to be sure of it though, and he didn’t trust the generals so far just yet. “Really fortunate for us that nobody was livestreaming from the start. Seems to be the common medium in the Abyss.”

“Standard practice for group interviews,” Imerella informed him with a similarly relieved smile. “Either they all livestream or none of them do. Some sort of honour code between the paparazzi. Guess even people worse than thieves have those.” John felt like he could at least giggle at that while the freckled brunette rubbed her forehead.

“Well, by protocol, you’ll have to come with me to the police station and regurgitate this whole thing a third time,” she apologetically informed him about the circumstances.

“That’s fine, I didn’t plan to leave without this being addressed anyway.”

___________________________________________________________________________

They made the announcement about the happenings towards the evening, with John present at it. He had a little speech after Imerella, asking everybody who was in his faction, which was essentially the anti-Abraham faction rather than the pro-John faction, making it extra response happy, to stay put and not to point fingers. The investigation was ongoing and there was no reason to make any assumptions.

Shortly after, Abraham came out in full-force and wholly condemned the thing. He even drove out to meet John in person so they could appear friendly on camera together. Tensions remained high but didn’t boil over. More importantly, the Gamer felt at least more certain that Abraham wasn’t behind the attack than he was of the opposite.

If the current president had wanted to goad John’s side into starting the civil war there, he had just needed to phrase and act a bit differently. All accusations against him would have been deniable and he could have made himself look like the defender to his foreign allies. Instead, he was letting the investigation run as per procedure. As far as John was aware, anyway.

A day later, that certainty looked a bit different. Imerella sought him out in his house early in the morning. He offered her some tea. “I won’t be here long enough that I get to drink it.” A serious look on her face, she sat down. “Look, the leader of the group that assaulted you – he is a higher up in the government guard.”

John narrowed his eyes, “I assume you don’t know if he acted on his own yet?”

“If we didn’t, I wouldn’t have come here,” Imerella shook her head. “No, he has let us know multiple times he did it because Abraham told him to.” There were some audible sounds from the kitchen as Aclysia let the dirty dishes feel her emotions by cleaning them more aggressively than porcelain appreciated. “And I wouldn’t have told you that if we hadn’t noticed this morning that a message was circulating through the internet from the guy.”

“So, you are telling me before I find out for damage control?” John asked, impressed that they stumbled over that before Scarlett did. Either she wasn’t the strongest Technomancer in America and the world after all or they had gotten immensely lucky.

“More or less, because I have to insist that you leave the country.” Seeing his expression darken, Imerella added, still insistently talking, “For now.” He tapped the handle of his chair. “We can’t suppress that thing reliably, we don’t even know who has it already or where it comes from.” The shortstacked general let him know. “People will find out and take it as evidence.”

“And if they do and I am gone, that might keep them from revolting, because they know I am not around to help them?” John understood the logic. “…I was planning to leave for the weekend; I guess this is just a delay, then.” With this whole thing going on, his schedule was in shambles anyway.

“Yes,” Imerella was clearly relieved that he seemed cooperating. “For all we know, it could have been the guy’s plan to just ignite the tensions. I am not ruling out that he is saying the truth, but I don’t want to risk it. So please… Go home, John.”