Post by jenson on Jun 12, 2016 8:53:01 GMT -6
The fantasical, magical, tropical and altogether fun island of Kem was the most happening place to be. That would be what somebody in the 70s would say anyway. Happening is such a 70s word don't you think? Maybe today is more like 'awesome' or 'hip' would suite today's vocabulary better. What? They're even obsolete as well? OK, lets just say that it is described as the term most used to say when something is great in the vernacular of the current generation. Maybe in a few years it'll be something like 'spingles'. So kids would say “Hey! Just look at this 'spingles' ecat”
Anyway, I feel like I've gone off point a little. This is about a man on an island. A man described by many as a roughly 6'6 male of the species human. Which I'm sure like 95% of the people reading this are, so you can immediately relate to his plight.
The man is named Andre Jenson in the common tongue. In the not so common tongue it can be anything, even spitballs, but Andre Jenson is what we're calling him and that's that. He was sitting on his chair behind his desk spinning a d20 dice like a spinning top while having a conversation with a woman, another human. Her name was Amy. The conversation went roughly like this.
“Amy, has the delegation from the imperial Dwarven state of Orgmar arrived yet?” Asked AJ, clearly bored out of his mind already.
“Not yet, my Lord,” Was the response from Amy, looking rather splendid in a medieval dress coloured in a nice shade of light green that brought out her eyes. She was busy going through a few important looking reports. As the designated Lady of Kem it was incumbent on her to ensure the place ran smoothly and no issues arose from AJ simply doing things that he does. The report she was looking at was the financial accounts of Kem. They were in profit again, the monthly dividend they got from AJ's wildly successful businesses he was on the board of and his salary from wrestling meant that his accounts were always easy to figure out. His interest alone could pay for the salary of 30 executive chefs and a boatswain if he needed one.
AJ himself made it easy as well. He didn't always spend a fortune on everything, not like a standard rich boy. He only spent a lot of money on the odd extravagant thing every now and then when he felt he needed to. Such as building a sea life centre, or buying Best Buy. His latest “extravagance” which wasn't really too bad was a custom made TV shaped like a D20 that cost something like $15,000 dollars and he was using it for his wrestling shows. More specifically, the shows where he was interviewing people called 'Random encounters.'
This is where he met Teddy Sol, his erstwhile tag team partner who was the subject of discussion with the Orgmar delegation. He and the actions of one of AJ's companies who had inadvertently offended most of the Dwarven kingdom of Orgmar thanks to their latest Marketing and PR nightmare where they were super racist toward Dwarves and made an MMO that saw them in less than a flattering light. Then, to follow that, they were somewhat annoyed with Teddy Sol after an incident involving a llama that we are not allowed to mention again. Teddy was a nice guy so the Dwarves were clearly too sensitive at the moment but it was better to leave him out of it so AJ can smooth things over with the king alone. Until he was here though, all he could do was wait.
While he was waiting, AJ decided that he'd check his email. Nothing helped pass the boredom more than making sure your inbox is empty, that's for sure. He opened his email client and found rather an abundance of emails – more so than he usually received. At least 30,000 in his inbox from the past two days alone. AJ sighed and assumed he'd been spammed by some troll porn company or something again.
“Amy, have you seen these emails?” He asked wearily. “I thought that the tech guys had the spam under control? I mean we own at least 3 of the anti spam companies, at least one of them you'd have thought worked?”
Amy looked up from her papers for a moment and on to her screen.
“Oh Gods,” she whispered. “They aren't spam mails AJ. Something's wrong.”
“What do you mean something's wrong?” AJ flustered. “How can we have this many mails come in the past 18 hours?”
Amy had stopped looking at her papers now and was opening some of the emails, seemingly at random.
“Well, this is from a reporter, wanting to know exactly what we were thinking when we decided to make a mockery of Dwarven lives. This next one is from a Dwarf over in Denver who is issuing forth a decree to remove his clan from the confederation.” She clicked through a few more, all of which were along the same lines, Dwarven kind and media outlets basically coming down on AJ like a tonne of bricks. “They are speculating that the King is coming today to denounce you and this whole organisation.”
“So?” AJ shrugged, somewhat confused by the whole ordeal.
“So,” began Amy, “This is bad. If the King of the Dwarves denounces the King of the realm, then we could be in a civil war situation. The Dwarves and the elves have this alliance, the halfkin and giants would also side with them. If it went into a full revolt then I'm sure we'd also lose the gnomes and Goblins as well.” Amy was panicking now, in her mind a full civil war was on the verge of happening, everyone in the LARP community would be at each other's throats for years and more, AJ's reputation would be in tatters among this community and generally the whole world would be messed up, even more so than it is now.
“How are the Dwarves so popular anyway?” Asked AJ, bemused. “I assumed if things went down we'd at least have half of those races as allys? What about the humans, or the Dragons, or even the lake people? Surely they'd come down on our side?”
Amy shook her head. “No,” she said, despondantly. “Ever since Peter Dinklage became the poster boy for Dwarves worldwide on Game of Thrones, they are adored by everyone now.”
“It's not even the same kind of Dwarf though!”
Amy simply shrugged. “I know, people are people, what can you do about it? Point is, you go to war with the Dwarves, you go to war with pretty much everyone now. We have to do whatever we can to smooth all this over.”
“Like what?”
“This is why you're King of the LARP – you figure it out.”
AJ sighed at this, then got back to looking at his emails. Without any sort of warning or ceremony his iPhone started to buzz. Like they do, they don't tend to give you any warning – they just go off. AJ looked at the device, then back to Amy.
“He's here.” He stated, matter of factly. “Let's hope my charisma is strong today. This might need a miracle.”
The Dwarven King was a teenager. Simply put. I could go into massive detail on how to describe teenagers for you, but we've all been there (if you are yet to be a teenager, I am sorry for your plight. The next few years will suck for you.) Needless to say, this pimply, spotty irksome brute of a kid is just how you expect a teenager to be, especially when he's sporting the worlds worst whispy dwarven beard.
Now how, must you ask, is a teenager a King of the most powerful Dwarven faction in the land? Simple really, nepotistm. This kid is the successor to his father “Bronzeiron the jawbreaker” who retired recently after a spot of bother with his back. “Twocool the xxxmaster” as he fashioned himself was therefore the King after Bronziron made it so. He basically made a decree on his last day of being King that did away with the electoral process they usually had and said “my son is now the King, anyone who has any issues with this can now bugger off to join the Pisspot clan in Europe.” After that, everyone just accepted this urchin as their king. His sneer of contempt is almost as powerful as his massive body odour coming from his 16 year old frame. Bathing wasn't something this kid did very well, basically.
AJ had to contend with him though, knowing that this kid held the key to peace in the LARP community, and having more than a suspicion that the whole reason the Dwarves were going mental in the first place was because of him. He had no evidence of this, of course – but he's best to keep his eye on him anyway, just in case.
Twocool sauntered into the room, robes flowing with as much as a regal air of importance as someone who isn't yet old enough to drink alcohol can muster. “Are you Jenson?” He sneered, looking at AJ, who stared back at him with as much contempt as he could muster. Amy coughed, signalling that AJ really needed this guy to be his friend right about now.
“I am, welcome to my Kingdom, may your stay be pleasant and...” He was cut off by a hand to his face. Twocool looked at Amy.
“Oh how delightful are you?” He asked, rather creepily. You know, like Anakin in Clone wars creepy. It made Amy's skin crawl, completely the appropriate response, the opposite of how Padme reacted. However, she kept her loathing in check and continued the niceties.
“I too welcome you my Lord, I am glad you come to us at this time, it's a rather delicate situation.”
“Delicate? Pfft, I'd say.” Came the rather snobbish reply, in a whiney high pitched voice. “My subjects are baying for blood. You guys screwed up, yet again. As I always expect you to. Now I am here to try and clean up your mess.” He pointed at AJ. “You. Why on earth would you allow my subjects to be mocked at every turn at your own event? Why then would you also allow a degenerate like this Sol fellow to then taunt them afterwards?”
“Taunt them? What did he do?” Asked AJ, rather bemused.
“What did he do?” The King spat, “His mere presence with that, thing was ample enough!”
The thing in question was the llama that Teddy Sol had liberated from the petting zoo on that very day. It had, as it turned out, decided to spit at everyone and everything in the vicinity when Teddy met with the Dwarves and got a ride home. This wouldn't have been an issue if it hadn't gone and tried to bite the King's own brother, a 14 year old by the name of Scott. Who frankly, should be shot.
“Oh the llama?” AJ replied, knowing the story. He knew that the llama was being viciously mocked by Scott and teased with food before being thrown away. He knew that Scott was scaring the poor creature like a thug and knew that he had it coming. However this wasn't Scott he was dealing with now, it was the King, and, well, he knew that he had to be nice to him right now to stop any sort of civil war from happening.
“Yes, the llama. Scott almost was bitten by that, he would have needed stitches if his reactions weren't like a cat.”
“We can all be glad that they are then,” replied AJ. “Otherwise we'd be in a major situation, rather than something than can be sorted quite quickly.
“Hmm, yes. I am not so certain.” Came the reply, still rather off-handish. “You see, my father liked you, he thought you were a good King of the realm, he thought that your wealth, patronage and high visibility in the world of wrestling was good for our cause. I'm not so convinced. You see, being high profile means you beget enemies. Begetting enemies brings us all into issues. How am I to know that you won't bring any of your wrestling feuds to our shores? How do we keep the Dwarven Kingdom safe from people like David Sanchez for example?”
“It hasn't been an issue before, I don't foresee any issues now. If they try to cause trouble with all of us, I deal with it. It's just how it goes when you're the king.”
“Quite, quite. And how are we supposed to believe that? How do we trust that you have the best interests for all of us? Can you guarantee this?”
“I, like every man, have my word as honour. I am bound to the realm as it's leader and I am bound to do everything in it's power to ensure we thrive. My word is enough. I do my best for everyone, and always will.”
“My advisors tell me to denounce you, you know.” Twocool looks at his fingers while he says this, obviously looking for bits of dirt or whatever the upper class do when they do this and want to look like they know what they're talking about, casually. “I don't want to do that. I have another proposition for you instead.”
AJ simply looks back at Twocool and waits for him to continue.
“I'm willing to leave you be, not have a war, as I know a denouncing would start a ripple effect. I shall however, want things in return.” He now looks at AJ, satisfied about his fingers. “I would like the Vikings to declare their allegiance to me and for the Dwarves to control all LARP related efforts in the midwest region.”
“Unacceptable.” AJ blurted out before the King could even finish. “Out of the question. I wrestle in the midwest, the Vikings in the area are nothing but peaceful as well, they don't want your brand of LARP there.”
“I should remind you, King. I am ready to go to war with you. I want those Vikings, I want those states to be under my control and if you don't agree diplomatically, I will have to use other methods and war if necessary. So are you going to give me what I want?”
“I think not. We can negotiate on any points, but the mid western states of the Earth realm are under my protection. It is a promise I made to a dying man, and this is something I will keep.”
“This will mean consequences,” sneered the boy, leering at AJ from across the room.
AJ simply shrugged. “Then consequences there shall be. Nothing will happen to those places on my watch.”
With that, the King turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. AJ looked at Amy why whistled softly.
“That went well,” he said.
The following day:
“Sir.” Amy said, rather urgently. “You need to see this.”
She ran over to him with tablet in hand. AJ was busy at this point looking up his next opponent in the UCI, David Sanchez.
“What is it Amy?” He asked, rather impatiently. “Can't you see I'm working on the Macebook for David Sanchez? What can possibly be more important than him right now?”
“It's about him my Lord,” she continued. “Take a look at this.”
She quickly put the iPad down on his desk in front of him. It was the Chicago newspaper website running an article on LARPing being banned in Chicago. AJ read the article then tapped the video accompanying it – it was a press conference from the Mayor of Chicago, David Sanchez. AJ listened in rapt attention for a few moments and when the video stopped, all was silent for a minute.
“Have you spoken to Eric about this?” He asked Amy.
Eric was the leader of the Viking contingent in Chicago. He was a nice guy, always on time, polite to all he meets. A family man with two kids and a nice job as a marketing executive and the person least likely to ever steal a bike from a child or even ask one of his men to do so. It was a small contingent over in Chicago, less than 20 guys and women, so Eric would know what's happened already.
“I have. He asked questions as soon as this nonsense came out and during the incident the Mayor is claiming happened, they were all practising axe throwing in the park, everyone was accounted for.”
“Do you think that Twocool is behind this?” AJ asked, scratching his chin.
“No, he wouldn't speak to people outside of the realm, and speaking to a mayor of a city would be something a 16 year old could never do. Maybe he helped facilitate it with the kid or stoke the flames on Twitter, but I don't think it was his idea.”
“Then if that's the case, the Mayor is doing it alone or has pressure from elsewhere. What could be his motivation? I'll consult the macebook.”
There was a silence engulfing the room for a while, only ended by the turning of pages and furious scribbling from AJ has he checked the book and made notes. After an hour or so, AJ stood up and groaned. Rubbing his temples.
“I had him down on his sheet as a beguiler. Someone who can use misdirection and cunning to fuel his own needs. Maybe this is something of his design from that trait.”
“How so? How can someone do this? If this is not entirely true, what would motivate someone to go and harm a whole group of people for no obvious gain?” Asked Amy.
“The gain is subtle, but rather cunning.” Posed AJ. “You see, if he divides the community and makes the idea of what we do so toxic and illegal, he takes away all of our support, all of our friends and takes away the joy that people have in doing what they like to do. I am sorry to say that the people of Chicago are suffering because of the fact that I am well known.”
AJ stares out of the window, looking upon the grounds of his estate – covered in cloud and rain.
“Maybe Twocool was right, maybe the fact that I am here and doing this as well as wrestling is detrimental to the LARP community as a whole. Maybe I should give in to his demands after all.”
“Will it give us back Chicago?”
“I doubt it, I don't even know if the mayor knows what's happening here to be honest with you. What I will do though is get answers from him.”
“Answers, my Lord?”
“Answers, Amy, answers. The mayor of Chicago has lain down his mark here, he has said to us what we do is unacceptable and that it should be illegal. He's falsified information to ensure that the public are against us. That, my Lady, is the definition of war.” He haunches over on his desk, both fists on the wooden surface as if he's trying to grind them through the mahogany.
“I don't know him, of this I'm certain. This is a random act of aggression that can not be tolerated. I am going to war Amy, but not with Twocool and the dwarves. I'm going to war with this mayor. I'm going to find out why he is trying to destroy our name, I'm going to find out why he's lying to the people, I'm going to find out if he's in league with Twocool and if he is, I'm going to take them both out. If he isn't, then I'm going to take him out doubly. There isn't a single person on this planet that threatens my friends, especially when they are under my protection. This guy is the same.”
“He's a mayor though, you can't just beat a mayor. They have too much power.”
“My Lady, I am not going to discuss this in a matter of law with him. I'm done with politicking at the moment, this is simply going to be a fight. I can't beat Twocool with my fists, he's only 16, but I can take this guy down. Yes he's a dangerous, cunning, sly and conniving creature but when the dust settles on the plain and the battle is over, mayors are not usually the ones left standing there. They are the ones left at home, making sure their town pays their taxes. Mayor David Sanchez is really nothing but a tax collector for the realm of America. Once I hit him with a D20, he'll soon realise what LARP is all about. He'll realise that we stand for justice and will not lay down without a fight and soon change his mind. Once we've quenched that fire. We'll then move on to Twocool, I've a feeling after Sunday I'll be itching for another fight of my own.”
Anyway, I feel like I've gone off point a little. This is about a man on an island. A man described by many as a roughly 6'6 male of the species human. Which I'm sure like 95% of the people reading this are, so you can immediately relate to his plight.
The man is named Andre Jenson in the common tongue. In the not so common tongue it can be anything, even spitballs, but Andre Jenson is what we're calling him and that's that. He was sitting on his chair behind his desk spinning a d20 dice like a spinning top while having a conversation with a woman, another human. Her name was Amy. The conversation went roughly like this.
“Amy, has the delegation from the imperial Dwarven state of Orgmar arrived yet?” Asked AJ, clearly bored out of his mind already.
“Not yet, my Lord,” Was the response from Amy, looking rather splendid in a medieval dress coloured in a nice shade of light green that brought out her eyes. She was busy going through a few important looking reports. As the designated Lady of Kem it was incumbent on her to ensure the place ran smoothly and no issues arose from AJ simply doing things that he does. The report she was looking at was the financial accounts of Kem. They were in profit again, the monthly dividend they got from AJ's wildly successful businesses he was on the board of and his salary from wrestling meant that his accounts were always easy to figure out. His interest alone could pay for the salary of 30 executive chefs and a boatswain if he needed one.
AJ himself made it easy as well. He didn't always spend a fortune on everything, not like a standard rich boy. He only spent a lot of money on the odd extravagant thing every now and then when he felt he needed to. Such as building a sea life centre, or buying Best Buy. His latest “extravagance” which wasn't really too bad was a custom made TV shaped like a D20 that cost something like $15,000 dollars and he was using it for his wrestling shows. More specifically, the shows where he was interviewing people called 'Random encounters.'
This is where he met Teddy Sol, his erstwhile tag team partner who was the subject of discussion with the Orgmar delegation. He and the actions of one of AJ's companies who had inadvertently offended most of the Dwarven kingdom of Orgmar thanks to their latest Marketing and PR nightmare where they were super racist toward Dwarves and made an MMO that saw them in less than a flattering light. Then, to follow that, they were somewhat annoyed with Teddy Sol after an incident involving a llama that we are not allowed to mention again. Teddy was a nice guy so the Dwarves were clearly too sensitive at the moment but it was better to leave him out of it so AJ can smooth things over with the king alone. Until he was here though, all he could do was wait.
While he was waiting, AJ decided that he'd check his email. Nothing helped pass the boredom more than making sure your inbox is empty, that's for sure. He opened his email client and found rather an abundance of emails – more so than he usually received. At least 30,000 in his inbox from the past two days alone. AJ sighed and assumed he'd been spammed by some troll porn company or something again.
“Amy, have you seen these emails?” He asked wearily. “I thought that the tech guys had the spam under control? I mean we own at least 3 of the anti spam companies, at least one of them you'd have thought worked?”
Amy looked up from her papers for a moment and on to her screen.
“Oh Gods,” she whispered. “They aren't spam mails AJ. Something's wrong.”
“What do you mean something's wrong?” AJ flustered. “How can we have this many mails come in the past 18 hours?”
Amy had stopped looking at her papers now and was opening some of the emails, seemingly at random.
“Well, this is from a reporter, wanting to know exactly what we were thinking when we decided to make a mockery of Dwarven lives. This next one is from a Dwarf over in Denver who is issuing forth a decree to remove his clan from the confederation.” She clicked through a few more, all of which were along the same lines, Dwarven kind and media outlets basically coming down on AJ like a tonne of bricks. “They are speculating that the King is coming today to denounce you and this whole organisation.”
“So?” AJ shrugged, somewhat confused by the whole ordeal.
“So,” began Amy, “This is bad. If the King of the Dwarves denounces the King of the realm, then we could be in a civil war situation. The Dwarves and the elves have this alliance, the halfkin and giants would also side with them. If it went into a full revolt then I'm sure we'd also lose the gnomes and Goblins as well.” Amy was panicking now, in her mind a full civil war was on the verge of happening, everyone in the LARP community would be at each other's throats for years and more, AJ's reputation would be in tatters among this community and generally the whole world would be messed up, even more so than it is now.
“How are the Dwarves so popular anyway?” Asked AJ, bemused. “I assumed if things went down we'd at least have half of those races as allys? What about the humans, or the Dragons, or even the lake people? Surely they'd come down on our side?”
Amy shook her head. “No,” she said, despondantly. “Ever since Peter Dinklage became the poster boy for Dwarves worldwide on Game of Thrones, they are adored by everyone now.”
“It's not even the same kind of Dwarf though!”
Amy simply shrugged. “I know, people are people, what can you do about it? Point is, you go to war with the Dwarves, you go to war with pretty much everyone now. We have to do whatever we can to smooth all this over.”
“Like what?”
“This is why you're King of the LARP – you figure it out.”
AJ sighed at this, then got back to looking at his emails. Without any sort of warning or ceremony his iPhone started to buzz. Like they do, they don't tend to give you any warning – they just go off. AJ looked at the device, then back to Amy.
“He's here.” He stated, matter of factly. “Let's hope my charisma is strong today. This might need a miracle.”
The Dwarven King was a teenager. Simply put. I could go into massive detail on how to describe teenagers for you, but we've all been there (if you are yet to be a teenager, I am sorry for your plight. The next few years will suck for you.) Needless to say, this pimply, spotty irksome brute of a kid is just how you expect a teenager to be, especially when he's sporting the worlds worst whispy dwarven beard.
Now how, must you ask, is a teenager a King of the most powerful Dwarven faction in the land? Simple really, nepotistm. This kid is the successor to his father “Bronzeiron the jawbreaker” who retired recently after a spot of bother with his back. “Twocool the xxxmaster” as he fashioned himself was therefore the King after Bronziron made it so. He basically made a decree on his last day of being King that did away with the electoral process they usually had and said “my son is now the King, anyone who has any issues with this can now bugger off to join the Pisspot clan in Europe.” After that, everyone just accepted this urchin as their king. His sneer of contempt is almost as powerful as his massive body odour coming from his 16 year old frame. Bathing wasn't something this kid did very well, basically.
AJ had to contend with him though, knowing that this kid held the key to peace in the LARP community, and having more than a suspicion that the whole reason the Dwarves were going mental in the first place was because of him. He had no evidence of this, of course – but he's best to keep his eye on him anyway, just in case.
Twocool sauntered into the room, robes flowing with as much as a regal air of importance as someone who isn't yet old enough to drink alcohol can muster. “Are you Jenson?” He sneered, looking at AJ, who stared back at him with as much contempt as he could muster. Amy coughed, signalling that AJ really needed this guy to be his friend right about now.
“I am, welcome to my Kingdom, may your stay be pleasant and...” He was cut off by a hand to his face. Twocool looked at Amy.
“Oh how delightful are you?” He asked, rather creepily. You know, like Anakin in Clone wars creepy. It made Amy's skin crawl, completely the appropriate response, the opposite of how Padme reacted. However, she kept her loathing in check and continued the niceties.
“I too welcome you my Lord, I am glad you come to us at this time, it's a rather delicate situation.”
“Delicate? Pfft, I'd say.” Came the rather snobbish reply, in a whiney high pitched voice. “My subjects are baying for blood. You guys screwed up, yet again. As I always expect you to. Now I am here to try and clean up your mess.” He pointed at AJ. “You. Why on earth would you allow my subjects to be mocked at every turn at your own event? Why then would you also allow a degenerate like this Sol fellow to then taunt them afterwards?”
“Taunt them? What did he do?” Asked AJ, rather bemused.
“What did he do?” The King spat, “His mere presence with that, thing was ample enough!”
The thing in question was the llama that Teddy Sol had liberated from the petting zoo on that very day. It had, as it turned out, decided to spit at everyone and everything in the vicinity when Teddy met with the Dwarves and got a ride home. This wouldn't have been an issue if it hadn't gone and tried to bite the King's own brother, a 14 year old by the name of Scott. Who frankly, should be shot.
“Oh the llama?” AJ replied, knowing the story. He knew that the llama was being viciously mocked by Scott and teased with food before being thrown away. He knew that Scott was scaring the poor creature like a thug and knew that he had it coming. However this wasn't Scott he was dealing with now, it was the King, and, well, he knew that he had to be nice to him right now to stop any sort of civil war from happening.
“Yes, the llama. Scott almost was bitten by that, he would have needed stitches if his reactions weren't like a cat.”
“We can all be glad that they are then,” replied AJ. “Otherwise we'd be in a major situation, rather than something than can be sorted quite quickly.
“Hmm, yes. I am not so certain.” Came the reply, still rather off-handish. “You see, my father liked you, he thought you were a good King of the realm, he thought that your wealth, patronage and high visibility in the world of wrestling was good for our cause. I'm not so convinced. You see, being high profile means you beget enemies. Begetting enemies brings us all into issues. How am I to know that you won't bring any of your wrestling feuds to our shores? How do we keep the Dwarven Kingdom safe from people like David Sanchez for example?”
“It hasn't been an issue before, I don't foresee any issues now. If they try to cause trouble with all of us, I deal with it. It's just how it goes when you're the king.”
“Quite, quite. And how are we supposed to believe that? How do we trust that you have the best interests for all of us? Can you guarantee this?”
“I, like every man, have my word as honour. I am bound to the realm as it's leader and I am bound to do everything in it's power to ensure we thrive. My word is enough. I do my best for everyone, and always will.”
“My advisors tell me to denounce you, you know.” Twocool looks at his fingers while he says this, obviously looking for bits of dirt or whatever the upper class do when they do this and want to look like they know what they're talking about, casually. “I don't want to do that. I have another proposition for you instead.”
AJ simply looks back at Twocool and waits for him to continue.
“I'm willing to leave you be, not have a war, as I know a denouncing would start a ripple effect. I shall however, want things in return.” He now looks at AJ, satisfied about his fingers. “I would like the Vikings to declare their allegiance to me and for the Dwarves to control all LARP related efforts in the midwest region.”
“Unacceptable.” AJ blurted out before the King could even finish. “Out of the question. I wrestle in the midwest, the Vikings in the area are nothing but peaceful as well, they don't want your brand of LARP there.”
“I should remind you, King. I am ready to go to war with you. I want those Vikings, I want those states to be under my control and if you don't agree diplomatically, I will have to use other methods and war if necessary. So are you going to give me what I want?”
“I think not. We can negotiate on any points, but the mid western states of the Earth realm are under my protection. It is a promise I made to a dying man, and this is something I will keep.”
“This will mean consequences,” sneered the boy, leering at AJ from across the room.
AJ simply shrugged. “Then consequences there shall be. Nothing will happen to those places on my watch.”
With that, the King turned on his heel and stormed out of the room. AJ looked at Amy why whistled softly.
“That went well,” he said.
The following day:
“Sir.” Amy said, rather urgently. “You need to see this.”
She ran over to him with tablet in hand. AJ was busy at this point looking up his next opponent in the UCI, David Sanchez.
“What is it Amy?” He asked, rather impatiently. “Can't you see I'm working on the Macebook for David Sanchez? What can possibly be more important than him right now?”
“It's about him my Lord,” she continued. “Take a look at this.”
She quickly put the iPad down on his desk in front of him. It was the Chicago newspaper website running an article on LARPing being banned in Chicago. AJ read the article then tapped the video accompanying it – it was a press conference from the Mayor of Chicago, David Sanchez. AJ listened in rapt attention for a few moments and when the video stopped, all was silent for a minute.
“Have you spoken to Eric about this?” He asked Amy.
Eric was the leader of the Viking contingent in Chicago. He was a nice guy, always on time, polite to all he meets. A family man with two kids and a nice job as a marketing executive and the person least likely to ever steal a bike from a child or even ask one of his men to do so. It was a small contingent over in Chicago, less than 20 guys and women, so Eric would know what's happened already.
“I have. He asked questions as soon as this nonsense came out and during the incident the Mayor is claiming happened, they were all practising axe throwing in the park, everyone was accounted for.”
“Do you think that Twocool is behind this?” AJ asked, scratching his chin.
“No, he wouldn't speak to people outside of the realm, and speaking to a mayor of a city would be something a 16 year old could never do. Maybe he helped facilitate it with the kid or stoke the flames on Twitter, but I don't think it was his idea.”
“Then if that's the case, the Mayor is doing it alone or has pressure from elsewhere. What could be his motivation? I'll consult the macebook.”
There was a silence engulfing the room for a while, only ended by the turning of pages and furious scribbling from AJ has he checked the book and made notes. After an hour or so, AJ stood up and groaned. Rubbing his temples.
“I had him down on his sheet as a beguiler. Someone who can use misdirection and cunning to fuel his own needs. Maybe this is something of his design from that trait.”
“How so? How can someone do this? If this is not entirely true, what would motivate someone to go and harm a whole group of people for no obvious gain?” Asked Amy.
“The gain is subtle, but rather cunning.” Posed AJ. “You see, if he divides the community and makes the idea of what we do so toxic and illegal, he takes away all of our support, all of our friends and takes away the joy that people have in doing what they like to do. I am sorry to say that the people of Chicago are suffering because of the fact that I am well known.”
AJ stares out of the window, looking upon the grounds of his estate – covered in cloud and rain.
“Maybe Twocool was right, maybe the fact that I am here and doing this as well as wrestling is detrimental to the LARP community as a whole. Maybe I should give in to his demands after all.”
“Will it give us back Chicago?”
“I doubt it, I don't even know if the mayor knows what's happening here to be honest with you. What I will do though is get answers from him.”
“Answers, my Lord?”
“Answers, Amy, answers. The mayor of Chicago has lain down his mark here, he has said to us what we do is unacceptable and that it should be illegal. He's falsified information to ensure that the public are against us. That, my Lady, is the definition of war.” He haunches over on his desk, both fists on the wooden surface as if he's trying to grind them through the mahogany.
“I don't know him, of this I'm certain. This is a random act of aggression that can not be tolerated. I am going to war Amy, but not with Twocool and the dwarves. I'm going to war with this mayor. I'm going to find out why he is trying to destroy our name, I'm going to find out why he's lying to the people, I'm going to find out if he's in league with Twocool and if he is, I'm going to take them both out. If he isn't, then I'm going to take him out doubly. There isn't a single person on this planet that threatens my friends, especially when they are under my protection. This guy is the same.”
“He's a mayor though, you can't just beat a mayor. They have too much power.”
“My Lady, I am not going to discuss this in a matter of law with him. I'm done with politicking at the moment, this is simply going to be a fight. I can't beat Twocool with my fists, he's only 16, but I can take this guy down. Yes he's a dangerous, cunning, sly and conniving creature but when the dust settles on the plain and the battle is over, mayors are not usually the ones left standing there. They are the ones left at home, making sure their town pays their taxes. Mayor David Sanchez is really nothing but a tax collector for the realm of America. Once I hit him with a D20, he'll soon realise what LARP is all about. He'll realise that we stand for justice and will not lay down without a fight and soon change his mind. Once we've quenched that fire. We'll then move on to Twocool, I've a feeling after Sunday I'll be itching for another fight of my own.”
