Tag Swagger was not looking his finest. His suit was dirtied and disheveled, his hair a tossed mess, and his face had a small but noticeable cut along his dirty cheek. If the situation were less of a case of urgency, he would have waited for his hair and make-up crew arrive to the scene to pamper him up, but as the case stood he did not have the time for it. Beside, this sloppy and chaotic look that so greatly contrasted from his fine pristine persona would only help make the story more convincing, it made him seem more like a surviving victim of the event than one of the orchestrators.

He stood before the camera, no trademark grin, staring into the lens of Keith’s recording camera with the backdrop of the fallen building behind him that had collapsed just moments ago. He was cued by Keith to start the broadcast, and began his performance.

“Thank you Jerry,” he said, referring to the anchor who introduced his breaking news story. “I am here live on the scene of Destiny City’s latest tragedy in these dark times. What could have been just a standard city hall meeting turned to terror, leaving dozens injured and worse, the current death unknown as bodies are pulled from the fallen rubble. The mysterious terrorist group of Destiny City attacked once more, their motivations behind the attack unknown.”

He paused, feigning a heartbroken emotion as he swallowed hard, looked away from the camera as if struggling with his rehearsed words, and continued on.

“I was there, live on the scene, filming the city council meeting,” he started his ‘tragic’ testimonial. “When the terrorists arrived they quickly began attack the council and attendees of the meeting. Citizens of the city fell to the floor, dead or unconscious as the terrorists took over. I was surrounded by my loyal crew, filming the disaster; the footage can be seen tonight in my segment on the eleven-o-clock broadcast.”

A little shameless plugging never hurt anyone. Besides, there was nothing about this report that wasn’t shameless.

“We watched in horror as the terrorists attacked, not caring about who they hurt and killed in their senseless attacks,” he recalled. “More terrorists arrived to the scene not long after, and things only escalated to a worse situation. More civilians were endangered, and the terrorists even began fighting with each other – reasons currently unknown. The situation escalated to greatly, and I managed to just barely evacuate with my crew before the building tumbled down.”

He had been practicing this moment for quite some time, and managed to fake a single tear in the report. He wiped it away with his hand, ‘choked up’ by the ‘tragedy.’

“I’m sorry,” he ‘apologized’. “We’ll be continuing our coverage of this disaster as information continues to reveal itself. This is Tag Swagger, signing off, wishing you all to stay safe.”

The record light signal on the camera faded and he was off-air.

His smile returned to his face as he proudly marched out of the camera’s lens and towards the studio’s van, his work for the day complete.