“I guess next on the agenda would be figuring out what scheduling we need to do,” Callum pulled up his calendar. “Since Chorus will be handling the most of the propaganda, I’ll assume they’re handling the timing and distribution as well, so that leaves us with any live events.”
“The biggest roadblock for any successful campaign is funding. So I hope I’m not overstepping, but what exactly is our budget for this?” his next question was a crucial one.
Drim held up his tablet once more. 『Unlimited』
“Okay, but when you say unlimited…”
Drim changed the screen over to the Fiends For Hire’s main financial account and showed the ever growing stream of profit.
“Uhh, yeah, I’d call that unlimited,” Callum was baffled and then made a poor attempt at a joke. “Well if winning the election doesn’t work out, you could always just buy it haha… Seriously, though, that will save us a lot of trouble. It means we don’t need to organize any fundraisers. They’re definitely the worst part of campaigning.”
“Also, that will help with charity events as well. It’s fairly standard for election candidates to attend them and make a generous donation. But if you made a sizable donation that completely dwarfs those who attend, then you’ll receive a lot more attention and praise than if you made the effort to go in the first place. Especially if you time it right to display the donation at the best moment in the event’s broadcast, but I’m sure Chorus could work that out.”
“Then there’s public speaking engagements. Obviously, I’ll handle the brunt of those. We’ll likely reject most of them, but doing a few could be very beneficial. The same goes with photo ops. For Drim, it will be entirely different to most. Handshakes and baby-kisses won’t work at all for him. People want to see him on the job, saving someone, killing monsters, doing genuine good, but ideally they’ll be natural occurrences.”
“And all that leaves then is debates since we already know you’ll only be doing one interview. Obviously we’ll be ignoring the debate request from Porcerer Putt. There’s a good chance that he’ll hold it on his own anyways, but that will just further drain his funds and eliminate him that much quicker. This means there won’t be any up through the primary for us.”
“Once we reach the secondary election, though, we’ll have to at least participate in a few. Certainly not every single one, but I plan to attend the first and last debates of the secondary cycle as your stand-in. There will undoubtedly be a lot more, probably approaching the double digits, but those will be the key debates where our presence is crucial.”
“Gort Hower likely won’t attend most of the debates either, but he’ll certainly be at those two, and possibly a few more. Nairen Dschuen and Trycen Hasper, however, will assuredly participate in every single one to try and drum up as much support as possible. Since they’re smaller names to the rest of the world, they’ll be going for a ‘presence’ approach, meaning they want to be on screen as much as possible, and to try and get as many articles written about them as they can.”
“But it won’t do them too much good, and if everything goes as planned, Drim and Rep. Hower will be the two candidates in the final election. For the last cycle, we’ll reach out to their campaign manager and suggest a single one-on-one debate. And I’m sorry to say this, but it will have to be you, Drim, who faces him in that.”
“Now… Phon informed me of what happened to you, so that I wouldn’t be surprised when you didn’t talk during this meeting. It’s a terrible tragedy, truly, and I’m deeply sorry that it happened to you. But from my understanding, it can be recovered, correct?”
“I don’t want to put too much pressure on you, but I genuinely believe that you being able to speak again will be necessary to win this election. If not, our opposition will jump on it and never let it die, defaming you as weak and incapable, saying that if you can’t even make a speech, how are you supposed to be able to run the world?”
“And I understand and think it was a well-done move why you displayed your broken voice at the previous debate. It expressed clearly that you had suffered during your time in prison, that you had made sacrifices but were striving to come back strong. And that’s what they need to see: you strong again.”
“I certainly don’t mind bearing the brunt of the burden in the meantime, until you’re back to your full potential. Let me handle all the talking, I’ll be your mouthpiece, but know that this won’t work with my voice alone. You’re truly the one that people want to hear, and when they finally do, it will be an amazing moment that reassures everyone backing you.”
“And it doesn’t have to be immediate. We have almost the entire year until that last debate, and I doubt you’ll be questioned on it much in the meantime since you have a renowned reputation of being ‘silent’ after all. That said, I do believe your recovery should be a top priority. It’s better to be prepared in case anything unexpected happens.”
“Hmm, maybe Andi could help him as a teacher?” Victori suggested. “Or perhaps Mallea has experience with something like this. If not, I’m sure she could acquire the skills to do so.”
“Let me do it!” Jaid jumped into the conversation after having sat silently all this time. “It’s my fault that this happened to him in the first place, so I should be the one to help him fix it. And I may not be able to help much elsewhere with this political endeavor, but this is something I can do.”
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“While I don’t have experience in speech therapy specifically, training and commitments are something I’m well-versed in. And I’ll make sure that he sticks to a proper regiment until he has his voice back. That is, if you’ll allow me,” the knight glanced over to Drim who simply nodded and smiled.
“Well, that’s settled,” Callum was happy and excited to move forward. “Now there’s still a lot more to discuss…”
The meeting went on for a few more hours, mostly discussing their platforms and key points to highlight in the future—also to make sure that they were all on the same stances politically. As expected, Drim and Callum’s views aligned almost perfectly.
Most of the talking was done between the VP candidate and the campaign manager, however. And as the meeting drudged on, it became clear at Drim and Jaid’s attention spans for such things were starting to wane. So the group decided to call things there for lunch, and ultimately decided to wrap it up for the day since a lot had been already accomplished. They’d continue their correspondence throughout the rest of the day over text as any further burning questions arose.
But there was one pressing issue that Drim still had to attend to, so he headed up to Phon’s room. He’d felt her presence up there ever since she suddenly teleported away, and she never left. When he opened the door, he found his sister pacing around and muttering to herself what sounded like random unconnected nonsense.
There was also something boiling on the stove, what looked like an attempt to calm herself down. But given the amount of splatter around from lack of attention, it didn’t seem to be working.
“It’s him, Drim!” Phon spat when she saw her brother. “Cosdamnit, it’s him! The mawhging Horage Rep, Gort Hower. He’s the one behind it!”
『Behind what?』 Drim held up his tablet, feeling the need to ask for clarification.
“Everything!” his sister almost screamed at him, not for any of his failings, but for her own. “Not only does he have connections with every group we’re fighting, but he’s the one responsible for bankrolling and directing them behind the scenes! Humanity and the Red Eyes Gang? All him!”
“And yes, before you ask, of course I checked him out before. He was one of the very first CP officials I investigated after acquiring Phontext. But his profile is so damned long! He’s got his hands in everything. It would literally take me at least a month to read through all of it.”
“Normally I do a skim through to find anything dubious, or have Phontext do a more detailed search of their information, but turns out there’s a damned reason I couldn’t find any of it. That’s because it’s so long on its own that my mawhging Curse had to make an entirely separate file just on his crimes, misdeeds, and nefarious intentions.”
“There’s hardly a crime that this guy hasn’t committed, at least ones that can be done behind the scenes. He practically makes our mother look like a saint. It doesn’t go just as far as things like money laundering and extortion—which are countless by the way—he’s been the one steering the ship for the entire criminal underworld.”
“He has connections that go as far back as Pimitrad, manipulating the scientists that experimented on Mallea and The Warden. But when that failed, he found other sources, including the lab that captured Ten, and he had a proxy as the head of the Power Station! And Cosdamnit, he’s the one who had Krayat steal our Gizmicros!”
“Implanting them in the world’s soldiers was his idea too. In fact, all of Bastion can be traced back to this scum! He’s the one who led the funding on the bounty, convinced the armies to attack, and he absolutely knew what he was doing. From what I can tell, he completely expected us to defend it, knowing that the armies would be slaughtered. He purposefully wanted them weakened so that the Central Peace would have even more power!”
“And while we were locked away in prison, he staged the coup in the CP after Kalter attacked their headquarters. The bastard didn’t participate of course, it was just to rile things up and have a few nuisances disposed of while furthering discourse.”
“It’s all a ploy! Everything was to move the world in the direction he wanted, all so that this election could happen! Back when the CP was first founded, he was the one who added the addendum about electing a President of Rathe. It wasn’t him specifically who mentioned it. Instead, he mentioned the idea to another Rep knowing damn well that they’d steal it as their own.”
“And that’s what his entire career has been like: manipulating others to do his bidding so that he could never be found culpable. In fact, only a single other person that I can find knows about any of this, and that’s his assistant. Don’t get me started on that weaselsucker. He’s just as bad, and it seems his specialty is being forgettable, almost no one ever remembers his name.”
“Mothermawhger and I’ve forgotten it now too. Hold on, it’s uhh…. Gandr! His name is Gandr, we should write that down. The point is, it’s all proxies. He’s done everything perfectly, to the point that it can never be traced back to him. If I didn’t have to dig even deeper because of this election, he’d have gone to his grave with all these secrets.”
“So what should we do?! Should we kill him right now?! This could be all over today. It would be so easy. He’s just sitting in his office at the CP right now. Just a quick teleport and it’d be done. Hell, could even bring his body back and leave no evidence.”
Drim picked up his tablet to answer but didn’t get the chance.
“No, you’re right, you’re right. It would just bite us in the ass. If he were to die or disappear suddenly, we’d surely be blamed even if there was no evidence.”
“And you heard how Callum talked about him. Every politician idolizes him, and all of his constituents believe he could do no wrong. Even if we were to come forward with this now, no one would believe us. They’d think we were just stirring zjik to make him look bad as your competition.”
“So the plan is what it’s always been then: gather every ounce of evidence we can. And when it’s overwhelmingly irrefutable and can’t be overlooked, we’ll make sure the entire world knows at just the right time. He’ll be the biggest obstacle we’ve had to overcome, but we can do this. Thanks for helping me work through it.”
Drim then only had one thing to say. 『Yes. We’ll stop him. And we’ll win.』
But just then as if to purposefully overshadow his motivational message, a surprising notification popped up on his screen. The man waved his sister over to read it too.
“Huh, what’s this…? An email from Tusmon… Well well, this should be interesting.”