“So that was the first security footage from the physical realm that came up.” Misty’s voice interrupted. “What did you want to see next?”
“Pull up the one where Madame President over here meets my brother for the first time.” Through the VR goggles, I could see Angel strolling on the treadmill strapped in and excited by the whole ordeal.
“Alright! Found it!” said Misty. “Ooo! Can’t wait to see this!”
“Right?” Angel smirked. “I do wonder how well you fare with my brother, Brittany.”
With that, the view in my goggles shifted to a bar scene. The bar looked like what you would find in a rural outpost. It had the bare essentials: a bar, taps, some old tables and chairs, a pool table in much need of repair, and a small stage for karaoke. The room was small, but for some reason, this night, this tiny, local bar was crowded.
I slipped through the humanity, squeezing between a large burly man leaning over the pool table and a slim guy with his chair pushed out far in deep concentration as he examined his poker hand. Cigarette smoke, strong perfume, and other human scents flew about the room. Eventually, I reached the bar and climbed up to sit at an open bar stool.
“Ah, and what can I get ya tonight?” the drained and overwhelmed bartender eventually asked. I waited for more than five minutes before he could circle back to me, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I pulled the hood of my hoodie closer to my face. I tried my best to not be recognizable. Wore contacts with a different eye color. Changed up my makeup style to reshape my face. Dressed in clothing that sent the message, “I’m just coming in from work and tired. Don’t mess with me.” I also kept sunglasses on my face although it was nighttime. Let them think I’m high for once.
“I’ll take a peach schnapps with cranberry juice. No ice.” The bartender nodded and began to make the cocktail. In a few moments, he came back with a perfect mixture of schnaps and cranberry juice paired with a Maraschino cherry. I sipped a little bit and looked around. Just another night, in a very regular life. None of the worries of work or keeping people happy. Just—
Out of nowhere, my head hit the bar. I fell to the ground, seeing double. Was the drink that strong? I felt something wet drip from my head. Did my drink spill everywhere? I slowly touched the right side of my head to wipe away what I thought was my drink and brought my hand down. Blood? What?
The next moment was a blur as someone slammed their fist in my face again. And again. And again. All I could make out was that though this person was small, they could pack a punch and wore a black ski mask. She punched the sunglasses into my nose. They fell off. I could feel more blood gushing from out of it. The world was going dark. I couldn’t defend myself at all. Just as I thought, “This is it. I’m dead,” the burly guy who was playing pool a second ago walked over and said, “Hey, are ya gonna stop this fight? Or are ya just gonna keep getting punched in the face?” I could barely make him out or get any words out. “Did you hear me???” He continued to yell at me in a thick Long Island accent. “I said did you want some help?”
“H-help…” and all went dark.
When I came to, a whole crowd of people were around me, whispering.
“She looks a lot like the President…”
“Is she the President?”
“If she is, why is she here? In street clothes?”
“Where’s her security?”
“ALRIGHT!” Yelled the burly man from before. “All of you…BACK. THE. FRICK. UP!” He stood over me with his arms crossed. “Except for you,” he pointed at a woman who just so happened to have a first aid kit with her who was tending to my bloody nose. “Keep helping her.”
His face was silhouetted by the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling above, but from what I could make out he had on dusty, very grungy jeans with paint and oil stains, worn steel toe boots, a just as dusty tshirt, and was that a… yellow hard hat on his head?
He whistled. “That little lady did a number on you. Man…” Now that he mentioned it… yeah… my head did throb…a lot. “Wait…” I was still very dazed from all of it. “It was a lady?”
The burly man pulled over one of the worn wooden chairs from a table nearby and sat backward on it. He pulled a red lollipop from his mouth. “Oh yeah she was. Wasn’t any bigger than you. Screaming some jibberish like, ‘Long Live FIST!’ or something like that. Whatever. I threw her out. Don’t care much for politics. Just wanna build stuff, play pool, and fight sometimes. Ya know?”
The nurse applied some ointment to the gash in my temple. “God!” I seethed. My head felt like it was on fire now. After applying some gauze and a wrap around my head, she placed ice on top of the bandage. The ice didn’t feel like it was helping at all. “Like… what the heck?!? I was completely at her mercy,” I complained.
“Yep. You 100% would have died if you didn’t ask for my help. All these people here are total jerks. None of them wanted to help you but instead wanted to record it for social media later. I threatened to beat all of them up if they didn’t delete it all in front of me.”
“Excuse me. What?” I was taken aback. “You inspected everyone’s phone?”
“Yep. Every single one of them. Except the security footage of the bar. I know they need it for legal reasons. You’re in an area where the police are so few and far between, calling them would just be a hastle and in a weird sense, I think not having them here helps your situation. Right? So yeah. I’d SMASH EVERYONE’S PHONE HERE if I could,” he directed his voice toward the gathered crowd so he could be heard. This was such a strange turn of events… and such a strange guy.
“W-well, thanks, I guess. I don’t know if you could tell, but I was just trying to have a chill night as a normal human for once.”
“Oh yeah… we all could tell. Couldn’t we guys?” The other people grumbled in agreement. “Word gets out that the President was here off-duty and you’ll have to answer to me. Got it??? Now as you were. Get outta here!” The burly guy gave the small crowd a fiery look. Like mice, they scattered in different directions. As the previous activities resumed, he popped his lollipop in his mouth and continued the conversation. “You’re weak.”
Point blank. No finesse. Nothing. “Wow. You’re straight to the point,” I mumbled. The woman who was stitching me back up put the finishing touches on her first aid care. “Make sure to keep ice on this for 20 minutes every hour until the swelling goes down. You may also want some ibuprofen to help alleviate the pain…” The burly hat man snorted as if to challenge me on how weak I was.
“Ibuprofen is for wusses…” I really didn’t know what to think of this guy. But honestly, I couldn’t think. He continued his thought, “She doesn’t need ibuprofen. She needs to learn how to block. Or at least dodge. She deserved every punch, because, like I said, she’s weak.” The nurse gave him an incredulous look.
He turned to me, “So you got punched in the face. Boohoo. What did you do to the girl? You didn’t even hear her behind you, did you? She was there, staring at you the whole time! You didn’t even feel her eyes on the back of your neck? Did you know how to anticipate her? She— wait, are you crying? Why are you crying?”
I was crying. Dang it! I tried to hide the tears but I couldn’t hide it. “I dunno…” A sob sat at the bottom of my throat. “Like, I can’t help it. I cry. All the time. Especially when I’m confused and people are yelling at me and oh my God, what is the public going to think? And—”
“Here.” He pulled his chair close to where I was sitting under the bar, pulled out another lollipop from his pocket, and handed it to me. It was…peach? In a quieter tone, he said, “Shut up and listen.” I unwrapped it and immediately got quiet. “Now whether you like it or not, you somehow got elected as President. As weak as you are. If you can’t already tell, this bar is full of people who want to pull you down just like that stupid girl I threw out. Lots of them are part of this FIST group or whatever. They targeted you, followed you here, and found an opportunity when you’re most weak because (hello?) where’s your secret service? Whatever. Anyway, you can’t be showing weakness to these people. You give them an inch, they take a mile. Got it?”
I nodded and continued to silently savor the lollipop. “You gotta get stronger. K? Or else I’m out of a job. I saved your butt tonight for free. But next time, it won’t be so free.”
“Wait? You’ll be out of a job?”
“Yeah. If you can’t tell, I’m a contractor. Me and my crew are under an exclusive contract with all of your cities to keep building whatever you need me to build. I love building things so much, I build with my crew. I don’t sit in some cushy office somewhere and do admin stuff and all that gross stuff. Ughh… No! I make my employees do all that stuff. But like…if I could just be building all day, I would. So that’s what I do. Thing is, if you’re out of office, who’s to say that the next President would honor my contract. In many countries, exclusive, indefinite, all-year contracts are hard to come by. And honestly, I can’t imagine NOT having a job. So I don’t care what people think. My politics is that I like having a job. I like keeping my guys employed too. So I’m keeping you in office for as long as I can.”
I sat back and wiped my eyes. As strange as this guy was, I guess I could understand his logic. Still a construction worker as a Presidential advisor? “I would like to stay in office but my popularity has plummeted ever since this push for me to be more pro-FIST. My indecisiveness has made a lot of people lose faith in me.”
“I would lose faith too! No one likes a wishy-washy President. Be pro-something and then let the cards fall where they fall.” He sighed. “Look, I don’t just do construction. I have other hobbies too. My favorite one is fighting. I own a bunch of gyms throughout the country to train fighters for local MMA, boxing, and wrestling matches. Get them prepped for the pros, you know. You should stop by. If you wanna go traipsing about the nation undercover without your secret service, you gotta know how to defend yourself at least.” He turned around to face the bar and grabbed a napkin. He asked the waiter for a pen and scribbled his number on the napkin. It was barely legible.
“Thanks,” I hesitantly took the napkin. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”
“Oh my government name is very Jewish and hard to pronounce, but my people call me ‘V’.”
“Oh…why ‘V’?”
“Easy. Because—”
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Just Brittany 