Chapter 180: Legalities Protocol

Eventually, the countermeasure meeting did end on a natural note as not many up and downs happened.

The competition was just preparing to attack and they were just on standby with the defense.

Anyways, neither the effectiveness of the enemy claims nor the solidness of Creed's counterclaims mattered.

They would win this one and Creed would have to pay this fine or whatnot.

Creed would win this one but there is still a separate process for all the defamation and damages to be accounted for.

Legal matters are truly cumbersome to go through and Creed Comics had to go through a lot.

Sure, there would still be a back and forth of words under a judging council but the resolution from that wouldn't matter much in the bigger picture.

The greater goal of the synchronized attack is not to win, after all. It was to stall, drain Creed's reserves, and accrue enough momentum to damage Creeds overall reputation.

If they managed to completely destroy Creed Comics from the legal decisions or by virtue of their numerous but long-drawn resource burners, then their win would be cemented without a doubt.

They'll probably pick the pieces from there and smile happily at the Creed creator's loss.

In any case, everything was just in the preliminary stages and the annoying publicity propagandas are among the first waves to scout out the effectiveness of these legal-based confrontations.

------

With most of the legal team and other countermeasure correspondents being busy with their respective roles, it was mostly just up to the old and young Creeds to manage it as they can.

Of course, old Creed's current attention is on the young Creed whose anger is still clearly emanating.

It made one wonder at the fact that the boy's expression is cold and calm now but his inward intent could still be conveyed.

"Are you still angry at potentially being exposed, Alex?" Sullivan could only ask but with a weird smile.

"There's that and some more things I just realized now." Alexander divulged. "Why are you smiling though, grandpa? The company is under attack and the strategy seems to be quite effective and foolproof. We need to be serious now."

"Being bogged down by those meddlesome things would be something that would only let the enemy's strategy win out some more." Sullivan appeased with some soul-catering chicken soup and some circulated sayings. "You should just relax and find some positives that come from it. After all, some stuff has some silver linings."

"The problem is I can't seem to find any." Alexander was baffled at his grandpa's laxness. "Are you sure there are? Being thrust out of my shadowly, low-key, comfortable little boss zone is a problem for me. Imagine going to school with a lot of comic crazy kids."

"My only solution for that is to make Milla so popular and she'll be some sort of lightning rod that draws all of their childish thunder." Little Milica is probably the only one he could draw out for school matters. Kind of like how Kuroko has to make fake Kuroko stand out, so he'll be comfortable in the shadows again.

Of course, Alexander's escapist calculations didn't stop there as he had other plans. "The worst-case scenario is that I'll go to that secret organization you know about super-genius weaponizing and have them make me incognito again. I'm not sure if they can weaponize a comic maker like me though."

"Haha! There's no need to go that far." Sullivan could only laugh at his grandson during moments like this. Although Alex is calm and collected, that is only when his plans are in order. When they go in disarray or is introduced to something that he isn't too familiar with, his calm grandson exposes how cute and vulnerable of a kid he should be.

The secret organization prank, his jitters during his comic book debut, the 3-film BttF filming, the secret parent trouble during his birthday that little Milla "secretly" told him about, the Watchmen adulthood issue, and now... there was this multi-pronged legal attack.

Although the boy had the legal team prepare for legal contingencies, taking on a justice system and being assaulted by negative news articles these past few weeks would take a toll on anyone... much more so on a little kid like Alex.

Old Sullivan should worry some more about the boy's state but he could still rib the boy about it to lighten his tenseness. "Even though you can't find some positives, your old grandpa can. These are the moments that make you seem much human after all."

"There is also the fact that my humble brag move would finally be much more effective." Old Creed's positive was much more on this matter. If Alex's secret would be out in the public, then his art of humble-bragging would be perfected and much more effective. "I don't even have to force you into any conversation. By then, they'll just see my smug smile and they'll vomit blood from envy."

Alexander flinched at that. Clearly, his grandfather's priority in this crisis was on the humble bragging section of the possibilities spectrum.

The old man's positive vendetta seems more likely on the non-robotizing of him and his grandpa proudness privilege.

Alexander simply skipped tackling those factors further. "Your weirdness aside, grandpa... your point about the 'legal leeching' is quite important... albeit a bit far-off in some parts."

"So..." Old Sullivan didn't see no problem with that. "It's just a leechy metaphor for the double edginess of the money-burning justice system after all."

"So... if your leech metaphor holds true, then our enemy leeches gained their sucking tools by finding faults in our published comic titles." Alexander explained. "Wouldn't that mean that my planned title expansions would be compromised? My 12 long-running issue plans for this year would have to be stopped while I'm only more than halfway there. After all, new titles mean a new target that they could shamelessly put some infringement claims on."

It was an outright disturbance to his plans and Alexander was not liking anything about it. "There is even a possibility that the legal proceedings would have to put the current release schedules to be on hiatus. It is clearly all negative from there."

Sullivan could also see the other problem now but he still had the positivity vibe around him. "It's not too bad. 7 long-running titles are already good given the situation. Besides, don't you have a response protocol when it comes to legal matters? Bizarre and Flawed Heroes is good and all but don't you have many protocols that can deal with this kind of societal and market scenario?"

Alexander's calculative glint became clear from that and he can't help but give props to his grandfather. "You're right grandpa. I have the Legalities protocol just for this occasion."

Trouble did knock on their door and the troubling rain did pour on. However, that didn't mean that the knocker and the rain didn't have opportunities.

Alexander simply had to slot his comic-making team to sift through the making of a legal-themed comic book.

While Mr. Legalities and his team would work on defending them in the court of justice, the Creed Comics team would just attack the comic market with a comic book that closely fictionalizes Mr. Legalities himself.

It's a Legalities protocol on both sides and Alexander was just looking forward to it.