Demonic Po*nstar System

Chapter 993: Furious Chairman

Across the Pacific it was still the evening before, and the top floor of the Association’s headquarters had exactly one office with its lights on.

Grace stood in front of the wall screen with her arms crossed, watching a parade ground in Tokyo lose its collective mind in high definition. The international feed’s banner sat in the corner of the frame. He’s here. Fighting with us.

She had been staring at the smaller line beneath it for a while now.

Kaiden Grey stands with Japan.

Behind her, the Chairman had abandoned the report in his lap around the time a foreign nation’s ruling council started running attack ads.

”Listen to him,” Grace said quietly. The feed was replaying the speech with subtitles. Your own people, your own classes, your own dead.

”Every audit we signed off on came back clean. Every compliance letter was answered the night it arrived. He did everything we ever asked of him, and more.”

”That’s right. He did.”

”And for it, the Bureau turned his front office into a warehouse. State sent six black sedans up his driveway. When two rounds of auditing found nothing, somebody scheduled an assessment of his dog.” Her voice had gone hard. ”They drove him to the other side of the planet, sir.”

The Chairman looked. On screen, Kaiden was grinning at a foreign army like it was his own housewarming.

”Tell me again what your routing file says,” he said.

”Three of the complaints that bought that investigation were sworn by fighters who signed with Radiant the same month.”

”Haaah... What a blunder,” the Chairman sighed.

Then he set the report on the floor beside his chair, a thing Grace had never once seen him do.

”What do we still owe them?” he asked.

”Owe them?”

”From the competition.”

Grace knew it by heart. ”The champion gear package.”

He watched the two guilds’ roar loop again, a nation advertising its love for the man his own country had answered with auditors.

”Then we settle what can be settled tonight,” he said. ”Tell them we’re ready to begin the crafting process at any moment.”

”Sir... I’m afraid this is too little, too late.”

The man exhaled wearily for the second time.

”I know. But at this point, I owe it to my country to do whatever I can. This mistake must be corrected, no matter the cost.”

”...Understood.” Grace pulled out her tablet and started drafting the order where she stood.

”State called this afternoon,” she added without looking up. ”They would like the Association to reinforce the administration’s message.”

”The administration’s message is six sedans. Tell them to screw themselves.”

”Gladly.”

The Chairman rose and buttoned his jacket. ”Get me the appropriations committee in the morning. Your inquiry carries my name from now on, and I will read them the routing myself, page by page. Even if the rest of the government isn’t willing to move, I am.”

On the screen, the two guilds’ roar looped once more. Neither of them turned it off.

”Disgusting...” the Chairman muttered under his breath, though his word wasn’t aimed at the man on the screen, but at his supposed allies in suits.

...

Back in Japan, the morning rush hour had stopped moving.

Commuters stood ten deep before a station concourse screen in Osaka, watching the joint feed from the parade ground, and the crowd had grown so still that the platform announcements sounded rude cutting through it.

Near the front, an office worker had been narrating his predictions to his colleague since the American climbed the platform. ”Here it comes. Thank you for having us, hold on a little longer, we are here to save you.” He mimed a little wave at an imaginary crowd. ”Then he plugs some sponsor to print cash out of Japan’s hardship.”

Then Kaiden said America had ended its outbreak with money, and Japan had ended its own with its people.

The office worker stopped narrating.

The subtitles caught up a moment behind the voice. Their own people, their own classes, their own dead.

”He’s talking about the Circle,” someone said behind him, as if the screen might correct itself. ”The American is praising the Circle...”

”Shh!”

When the speech reached the line about the hospital beds, an older station attendant in white gloves straightened where he stood and bowed to the man on the screen, low, and held it.

The office worker opened his streaming interface without a word, found the foreign channel he had spent three months calling overrated, and subscribed at the highest tier.

...

In a recovery ward north of Tokyo, twenty of the outbreak’s wounded had the feed on the ward’s one big screen.

They had braced for the broadcast like a procedure. The world’s most-watched guild had flown in to do their job, on their islands, and now their country would grovel to a foreigner in front of the whole planet while they watched it from beds.

Then the foreigner looked straight at the ranks they should have been standing in and said the fighters of this country had held their islands for ten years on their own, and that standing beside them was an honor.

Nobody in the ward moved for a while.

”...Did he just say that on the world feed?” a young spearman asked, his chest still wrapped in bandages. ”Did the whole planet hear that?”

”Yes...” the man in the next bed said.

In the doorway, a nurse pressed her clipboard flat against her chest and smiled from ear to ear.

...

By noon, clips of the speech carried subtitles in a dozen languages, and the counter on Eclipse’s channel climbed through the whole morning without once slowing down. It climbed in scripts the moderators needed a translator for.

In a Kyoto living room, a grandfather who had until this morning referred to the foreign streamer as ”that obnoxious gigolo” summoned his granddaughter and had her walk him through subscriptions. He took the highest tier and denied that anything had changed.

”The channel supports Japan,” he said with dignity.

The overseas campaign was not due to air until evening, and its line was already trending on every continent it hadn’t aired in. Under the most-viewed clip, the top English comment read, ”Our government audited this man.”

...

On the Circle’s campus, the convoy line was rolling at last, engines waking down the whole western edge of the yard.

In the lead car, Kaiden watched the campus wall slide past, and a familiar hunger woke up behind his grin. Nobody in the family had gained a level since the competition. Audits, ceremonies, and half a world of paperwork had kept the whole family standing still.

Forty-one gates were about to fix that.

”Finally,” Luna groaned from her window seat, cracking her knuckles one by one. ”If I have to sit through one more ceremony instead of a dungeon, I’m going feral.”

”You’ve been feral since birth,” Nyx smiled.

”Darling!! Can’t the cars go faster?!” Calypso had her axe across her lap, and her bouncing was shaking the whole seat.

The convoy rolled out under the overpasses, past crowds who had learned the route overnight, and headed for the first stain on Eclipse’s list.