Stratas of Fusion 1 – The Top of Politics

Emrik considered himself a patient man.

Patience was a virtue that he had to cultivate. For all of his political savviness, he was all too aware of his shortcomings as a person. Primarily, this came in the shape of personal relations and power. He knew he was good at building networks of aligned interests, but he seldomly made friends. He preferred not to talk much about things that did not matter. Most people loved to chat.

This was also the trait that had allowed him to remain by the side of more powerful men throughout his life. Before he had made it to the top of Fusion’s elective hierarchy, he had managed to get a position of high influence among the Lake Alliance. When Lakamun had fallen, that had put him on the actual board of leaders and then at the top among them. He was a capable grey man, he knew that. A person with just enough **** of character to lead and too little to truly offend anybody. That was why he was in charge of many positions, because he was a compromise.

Emrik encouraged people to see him that way. It opened doors.

Sometimes, however, he wished people understood that being willing to negotiate did not make him a doormat.

“What were they thinking…?” he mumbled to himself, staring at the report in his hands.

The door to his office opened without a sound. Emrik felt it all the same. His Innate Ability, which he had simply dubbed Sensitivity, allowed him to make note of the subtlest changes in the world around him. It was another boon to his political career. Reading people with his level of aptitude made it reliably possible to give people what they wanted and to stay on their good side by not dwelling on issues they did not want addressed.

It also made it impossible to sneak up on him, as she very well knew. “After all these years, not tired of trying?” he asked and raised his head, a smile on his lips.

“Never,” responded his wife and stepped closer with a fresh thermos of tea.

Marcella was the most gorgeous woman in the world. Everyone he knew would have disagreed with that, but that was all fine with Emrik. If they wanted to judge her by the fact that she had a little more weight than preferable and that her facial features were not as perfect as those of many Abyssals, then they could do that. Neither he nor his wife had to prove her beauty to anyone.

She grabbed the second mug on his table, always ready for the moment she decided to join him. The scent of black tea tickled his nose. The aroma alone made him more awake.

Emrik’s smile grew a little wider. Only she could make his stern face change into this joyful of an expression. Somehow, she managed it even when he was in a terrible mood.

“What has you down, dear?” she asked softly. “Same issue as the last few days?”

“Same issue as the last few days,” Emrik confirmed with a deep sigh. He leaned back in his leather-wrapped chair and turned his head. He had modified the office he was afforded as Speaker of Commons with the architectural elements often found in the Lake Alliance. Flowing shapes were preferred, curves that emulated the waves of the Great Lakes and the ripples beneath the Niagara Falls. In the same vein, blue and translucent materials were common and even water itself was often used.

In true buildings of the Lake Alliance, a central source of water could be traced from its origins down the layers of the structure all the way down to the soil. Emrik always had a fondness for that. Alas, his current overlord preferred Roman columns and marble, so all he could do within his office was a simple wall that gathered water in a basin and then pumped it back up, to endlessly cycle up and down.

Still, the sound of streaming water helped him think.

“You remember when Lakamun had his tantrums?” he asked.

“One of your rhetorical questions,” she answered, gentle as ever. “It is hard to forget when a demigod melts a cliffside because he was told no.”

“Indeed… the first time I witnessed it was well over 20 years ago… I was simply a part of his retinue… then Melvak said something wrong and never came home… It was cheaper to make a new Protected Space. Everything was covered with pyroclastic overflow.”

“I remember you coming back home, covered in soot.” Marcella shuddered and sipped on her tea. “Why do you bring these dreadful memories back up?”

“Because this Hypercrush is twice his power and ten times as unhinged,” Emrik answered. He worked desperately to prevent his jaw from clenching. ‘The man that could protect you is half a continent away…’ he thought to himself. He hated not being able to protect his wife himself. Gaia knew he would try, but he was painfully aware of his limitations. If Hypercrush attempted to storm the capital at this time, there would be nothing he could do.

Did John Newman really need to take his entire harem with him to that glorified sex party?

Marcella’s expression was free from worry. “It will work out for us,” she assured him. “You will make it so.”

“I will try my best,” he promised.

He let out a long sigh and looked at the report again. He wanted to liken the politicians that had made it so the criminal was released to children. He kept the thought in his head. Children were a sad topic between him and Marcella. They had tried and with luck they might be blessed with one still. Emrik did not dare hope for more. If it did not happen, then it did not. They had seen the necessary specialists, mundane and Abyssal, and they could not help.

Emrik was going to outlive his wife, courtesy of his stronger magic. Another thought he did not dare dwell on. He considered that he would go shortly after she did. A broken heart would do that trick.

“Your best is exceptional,” his wife said with a joking undertone. It was something she always said and it made him smile again for a moment. It did not stay.

They drank their tea in relative quiet, chatted about this and that, and then she left again to leave him to his work. Marcella was a simple woman. She did not care much for politics and did not understand most of the power dynamics at play. Emrik did not care to drag her into that world either.

Once she was out of the office, Emrik rubbed his closed eyes in an attempt to get the caffeine to work faster.

‘Retiring feels quite attractive,’ he thought and let out a deep sigh. ‘I would want for nothing… I have enough money saved up for the rest of two lives… I have enough favours for 10…’ He sighed again, blinking away the little motes of imagined light that danced in his eyes once his fingers had retreated. ‘…But someone else would just get it wrong.’

The phone on his table rang. He grabbed it. It was large by current day standards, for no other reason than the fact that Emrik found it easier to keep between head and shoulder.

“What?” he asked. There was no need to introduce himself. He always answered the phone himself. The provided secretary was there to fill out forms for him. Anyone who called this number and did not know who they were calling deserved to be barked at.

“Are you aware of the Hypercrush situation?” The man on the other side of the line did not introduce himself either. He did not need to. The tired voice barely rose above a loud whisper, even agitated as Theron sounded. The interrupter mage had been one of the strongest members of the Lake Alliance. Now, he served in the House of Exceptionals as a representative of the Heart of the Lakes Guild. The position suited him. He needed to vote every now and again and tell Emrik what was going on.

By the nature of the government, the House of Exceptionals was the more ‘in the know’ of the two houses of state. People in the House of Commons were numerous and had local areas to appeal to, usually stretching their influence and keeping it closer to the ground level. Such people were good at learning local things. When it came to federal news, the House of Exceptionals, with its members appointed for life or until withdrawal, learned much more. It was a smaller, tighter, more lodged group, which allowed the members to network.

“I am currently reading the report on it,” Emrik responded, eyes lazily gliding over the summary for the third time. He wished he was as quick at reading documents as he was reading people. All he knew the report said was that they still were not sure how his powers worked and that the psych evaluation had him under ‘enigmatic, potentially psychopathic’. “There is a new development?”

“We lost him.”

Emrik stopped for a few seconds. “What do you mean ‘we lost him’?” he asked very slowly. “How do you lose a 2-metre-tall **** fiend?” He felt the agitation in his veins and let out the air in his lungs. “A stupid question. Forget I asked it.”

“To still give you the report,” Theron said, “apparently Nightfall had tabs on him. After being discharged, he looked like a mess. He had apparently lost basically all his muscle mass. He then wobbled up to the nearest corner shop, opened the first beer he found, and immediately surged to full size again. They immediately called the special forces, but by then it was too late. Hypercrush had drunk the entirety of the liquor aisle, then walked out. The police were ordered only to observe.”

“Good,” Emrik commented. “No use in slinging mud against a cliffside.”

“Exactly…” Theron suppressed a yawn, which was something he never otherwise bothered to do. “…They continued to track him until he stopped in the middle of the street and shouted, ‘The sweet super cocaine, it sings to me!’ clapped his hands and disappeared.”

“…Concerning.” Emrik considered for several seconds. Then, he asked, “Anything else?”

“Not right now. I’m heading to the Red Light District to make sure he doesn’t plunder everything in it.”

“Wise,” Emrik agreed, then hung up.

He pinched the bridge of his nose. A question occurred to him: how had Hypercrush gotten out so fast? The motion had gone along at the regular pace, so that was not the part he was truly surprised by. He was supposed to have been locked away in some new device the enigma engineer and the dimension breaker had created.

‘Sometimes that need to let everyone know he’s principled bites us all,’ Emrik thought. The only way he saw Hypercrush getting released was if John had shared the method to extract him. Of course that was the proper thing to do in terms of the political procedure, but could he have at least waited until a few of his monstrously strong women were back to save the rest of them from the potential aftermath?

Emrik stopped for a moment.

‘That line of thinking gets me nowhere,’ he told himself. ‘We rely on him for protection… but that doesn’t mean there is nothing I can do…’

Emrik opened the drawer that he kept his folder of favours in. It was a thick binder, sorted alphabetically, with a file on everyone he could conceivably call on. None were as individually powerful as Hypercrush himself, but he had a selection of potentials that, together, could hopefully overpower the Latebloomer.

‘We’re all in the hands of these calamities,’ Emrik thought, resigned.

To be the Speaker of Commons was an odd feeling. On one hand, he was arguably the most powerful man in the nation, politically speaking. Although there were orders from above on what should be on the table of discussions during a meeting of the legislative, it was ultimately he who decided on what was on it. That gave him immense influence and on top of that he controlled the strongest economical bloc within the Federation.

Yet, despite all of that soft power, he knew he ultimately was just a cog in it all. He was rich, he had influence, he could call upon forces the average person could barely imagine, he could even give the president shit, but all of that amounted to very little in a situation like this. He had no power over the military, no personal might, and few who he had favours with were willing to die for them.

To sit at the top of the totem pole was to know how limited he really was.

‘John should have left someone here,’ Emrik thought again, ‘but we are a member of the Divided Gates. We must be able to face such an incident eventually. Otherwise, he will never retire.’

And was that not Emrik’s ultimate goal? To push the nation to a point where John did not need to rule it. Emrik, for all his reservations regarding the Gamer and his Federation, believed it when John said he ultimately did not want to be a dictator or a king or whatever else. There were mixed feelings to these statements whenever they spoke about this, uncertainties that Emrik could sympathize with. It could not have been easy to raise all of this from the muck. Attachment was only natural.

Still, Emrik needed John Newman to retire. A retired superbeing, invested in the safety of the country but not its day to day running, was preferable. Otherwise, it was only a matter of time until someone annoyed the Gamer just a tad too much and he snapped. Then, once he realized how easy it was for him to get what he wanted using ****, it would not stop.

Emrik had seen it before. He had tasted it in the air whenever Lakamun was around. He had heard it in the back of Abraham’s voice. He had gathered it from his few meetings with Bearings. Men of power always turn to **** eventually, and when men like John Newman did it, everyone with a brain would bow their head and obey.

‘So, it’s paramount we push that moment as far back as possible,’ Emrik thought, noting down several numbers. ‘I can walk the tightrope between keeping him accountable and appeased… I’ll keep walking it all the way until the end.’

It was the only right thing to do.