“That’s perfect Phyll, thank you. Thank you for your trust,” I said.

“You realize what this will mean for me, I assume,” she asked, her posture slumped.

“I do,” I said. “Do you want your position back once I win the election?”

Phyllis shrugged. “Yes,” she said. “No. I don’t know. Things would have to change.”

“Agreed. That is, exactly, my plan here. I need to get my affiliate back so I can fix this mess,” I told her.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she snipped back.

“Why help me, if you don’t believe I’ll do what I say?” I asked, leaning forward and raising an eyebrow at her.

“Because you’re going to do it with or without me, and you’re better with me,” Phyllis said. “Simple as that.”

“Right, the fate of the multiverse resting on your shoulders has nothing to do with it,” I said, smiling from the corner of my mouth.

“It’s not a fight like you’re used to, you know,” Phyllis warned.

“I’ve been getting that sense, yes,” I carefully replied. “It’s more complex, less out in the open. Stuff like this, like what’s happening on Midnight is a bad shock to the system.”

“So was your arrival on Nu-Earth,” she said. “You have no idea what you started when you smashed that statue.”

“Oh, I have some,” I replied. “It wasn’t just to make me feel better, you know. After what I saw on your ship, I knew I had to get involved, and it had to happen fast.”

“BlueCleave is barely hanging together because of you. You, your damned words and everything you’ve done since you got back,” she hissed. “Did you know that pre-Church War video file uploads spiked among BlueCleave enlisted hobbs less than three days after I picked you up in Sleem?”

I shook my head. “I didn’t, but it doesn’t surprise me. That army has become something it was never meant to be. Something it doesn’t want to be. Do you think Rayna would smile at BlueCleave now?” I asked.

Phyllis sat back as if struck. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in . . . a long time.”

“Those days are all crystal clear in my head, Phyll,” I said. “I can see exactly where things have gone wrong. Help me, and we’ll fix it together.”

“Yeah-yeah, you already sold me. I’ll help. I’m just surprised you still want me to,” she replied.

“Of course I do. You’re family. Scary, lethal family,” I said with a smile. “Now help me clean up this cult so we can get you fired.”

“Fired? Ha! I’ll be lucky if Axle doesn’t try to have me killed again,” she said. When I stared at her in open shock, she added, “long story.”

“He hasn’t tried to kill me yet,” I said. “Seems to care a great deal about public perception in that regard.”

“He also doesn’t have the balls anymore. You stayed young, I aged backwards, and he’s overdue for a new hip,” she snarled. “His Knowle Leadership Council does most of the actual work these days, I hear.”

“Glad I’ll inherit them once I have your glowing endorsement,” I said. “But first things first. With your dragnet in the sky, it’s just a matter of time until we take down the cult here. Our HONI agents are closing in on at least two ships, they tell me. Either we’ll get 'em with the police-work, or you will once they try something.”

“Understood,” Phyllis said as she stood. “Are we done here?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Just one last thing. Where is Tower? Can you tell me why he no longer works for BuyMort?”

Phyllis sniffed and looked away. “He got fired,” she said, a small snarl on her lips. “BlueCleave couldn't effectively kill him without causing BuyMort to respond, so he was ‘exiled.’”

I raised an eyebrow. “Exiled?” I asked.

“That’s what the affiliate says. The reality is a little more grim. He went on a rampage on Nergal; Neolithic Earth’s Mars. We had to abandon the planet. It’s a giant game preserve now, with nothing of any note left on it but Tower himself,” she explained.

I shook my head. “Wow. Alright, I’ll add that to my list of messes to clean up. The entire planet was lost?” I asked.

She nodded. “Tower became unstable. He began attacking anyone and everyone, including all BuyMort facilities he was attached to. We lost several planets because of him, but the only planet he still exists on now is Nergal. The rest of him died off within a few days of the revolt. It interrupted BuyMort services for two days, causing mass devastation.”

“Why did he turn on you?” I asked.

Phyllis shrugged. “Nobody could ever really talk to him but you. Once you left, he slowly destabilized. A few years later, golems stopped taking orders and were purged from BlueCleave. Once the last of them was out of circulation, he just exploded. Tore fruition centers to bits, destroyed pods, everything. Most planets had massive BuyMort bug infestations to deal with in the aftermath, so we stopped caring about Tower himself. That’s why he was able to take Nergal from us.”

She stopped and shook her head. “It was different there. On other worlds, he just died. Those big vats in the fruition centers were full of dead, gray puddles by the time we managed to excavate them. But on Nergal his golems were everywhere. Coordinated attacks too. He knew exactly where to hit us and how. We’re lucky we got the planet as evacuated as we did.”

“How many did he kill?” I asked.

Phyllis snorted. “What, on Nergal? A few hundred million. Multiverse-wide the toll was in the tens of billions.”

I sat and thought about my old friend for a long quiet moment before remembering that Phyllis had wanted to leave. “Thanks, Phyll, that's all I need for now. I knew you were still in there somewhere.”

She raised the middle finger on her right hand at me and snorted a laugh. “Don’t start thinking you know me, shitbird.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it Phyll,” I said, a small smile on my lips. She walked across the lawn to her shuttle and boarded without looking back. I watched as it took off and floated upward toward the starfish shape hovering in the sky. Then I sighed and stood up.

There was work to do.

Early the next morning, the Cult of Eternal Darkness made its last stand. A single bulky silver ship covered in obvious weaponry and glowing with an intense shield launched toward the Foregone Conclusion while a dozen sleek bombers deployed on the other side of the planet.

Air traffic control gave us early warning, and only a single town on Midnight’s craggy surface suffered any damage in the attack. Three delves died when the clothing warehouse they worked in collapsed, but even there most of the associate’s employees made it out unharmed.

Phyllis’ fleet took care of the cult’s ships within minutes of their launch. They had tried to distract BlueCleave’s fleet by sacrificing their single battleship, while their fleet of small bombers caused as much damage as possible. This plan fell apart when Brisingida class demolition cruisers and sand star frigates descended from orbit and rapidly disassembled the cult’s small fleet.

They tried to fight, but each encounter was laughably one-sided. The bombers, capable of defending themselves with on-board laser weaponry, engaged the sand star frigates and lit up the morning sky with vibrant purple beams of weaponized light. Each frigate seemed to merely soak the incoming fire, but close inspection of recordings showed the power of their sandcasters in detail while they fired back. I watched the battle like the rest of the citizens of BuyMort, on my phone. Each time a sand star would engage a delf bomber, the delf bomber was shredded in the sky before detonating. Phyllis’ demolition cruisers took captives, disabling the bomber’s critical systems with carefully placed atomic breaker blasts, then carefully carried the ships to secure landing zones.

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Those on board the captured bombers all took their own lives in the face of capture, but the battleship was a different story. While it was operated by a skeleton crew, there were still seven delves on board, and every single one of them was captured for questioning.

The Foregone Conclusion used its potent gravity drive to first immobilize the battleship’s many weapons, then the ship itself, and finally the crew inside. They were each found the same way by BlueCleave boarding troops, with their jaws clenched, frozen and unable to activate their suicide pills.

It was a good reminder of the extreme power of the relic ships I had unleashed upon the multiverse. The fleet handed us the delves we needed to directly implicate Justin Lee’s adversary on the board. Later in the day he was arrested and paraded around in front of cameras. The wealthy delf didn’t even have a suicide pill installed, and when captured, he expressed genuine shock.

His arrest signaled the end of the cult on Midnight, and doom for the greater body of its remaining population. The investigation was on-going as I stood in front of cameras and bragged about the three day process that had cleaned up a public security threat and secured the suddenly front-of-mind ore the planet quietly produced.

We canonized the cult, particularly our quick defeat of it, in the press. I made public appearances on Midnight all of the next day, speaking to crowds of delves and the audience back home on Nu-Earth alike. We publicly mourned the dead and privately bought off their families with memorial plaques in the House of None’s primary financial building, once rebuilt after the attack. Our priorities looked right to the multiverse at large, and my campaign reaped the benefits of positive public perception.

While my poll numbers jumped back up above the levels they were at before the cult had attacked, the people of Midnight celebrated their newfound safety. All the while everyone forgot that it had all been my return that caused the cult to become violent in the first place. Axle’s media teams tried to remind the multiverse of that fact, but the majority of the public just didn’t see it that way.

Or they didn’t care.

My personal mortie account spun up once Justin Lee paid me the bounties his affiliate owed. I had access to a cool trillion morties, which made me rich on Nu-Earth but still poor on Midnight. The wealthy society celebrated its victory over the last vestiges of the cult and held me up as their celebrity savior. The perception was clear, I had arrived during a time of conflict and helped the House of None once more.

The legend of the Windowpuncher returned to the forefront of BuyMort culture, driven by my action against the cult and my political campaign. No time was wasted canonizing my victory over the cult; my campaign immediately began running ads bragging about it. Making claims about my leadership ability, financial savvy, and unwavering ethical commitment to the people of BuyMort, my campaign ran wild with the victory.

I dumped my trillion morties into the campaign’s affiliate, funding the new wave of ads that inundated Nu-Earth with my face and deeds. We prepared Nu-Earth for my homecoming, planning events and parties the world over. Everyone likes to back a winner, and my campaign was hard-focused on projecting the strength I had shown on Midnight. This was buttressed by a scandalous new endorsement; Phyllis, admiral of BlueCleave naval forces and leader of the fleet sent to Midnight, said a few quiet words and endorsed my candidacy over that of Axle’s.

The for-profit media descended on us like seabirds on a fishing vessel. I said my goodbyes to Midnight and boarded a shuttle home, to Nu-Earth. My poll numbers skyrocketed, and my campaign began releasing video records of BlueCleave hobbs coming forward to endorse me for CEO. I returned to Nu-Earth a hero, to fanfare and even a parade in Australia, where the spacecraft industry had been saved from a nasty price spike in their ore costs. The for-profit media descended on us like seabirds on a fishing vessel. I said my goodbyes to Midnight and boarded a shuttle home, to Nu-Earth. My poll numbers skyrocketed, and my campaign began releasing video records of BlueCleave hobbs coming forward to endorse me for CEO.

It was strange and incredible. Everywhere I went, the venues were lined with waving crowds, and to my surprise, a number of them held plushies that were clearly based on me. The first time I saw them, I stared a bit too long, and found myself propelled into ad space even as one of them leaped up from his holder’s hands, his little fists punching the air.

The travel through ad space was intense, threads of intertwined rainbow corkscrewing around like strands of DNA as they led me to my destination. I landed on the outskirts of a battle between a giant stag beetle and myself, with an older-style mechanized Phyllis cackling from the porch of her trailer. I stared as snippets of all of my battles played out in front of my eyes, one after another. Over top of the footage boomed a heroic voice that reminded me of the He-Man cartoon I’d watched as a child.

“The Windowpuncher. Tyson Dawes. Warrior. Hero. CEO. First he saved his people. Then his world. Then the multiverse. Whether it be Dearth, Sleem, or the Church itself, Tyson Dawes has given us his all. Now that he’s returned it’s time we gave back!”

I startled, brows furrowed. Who was actually behind all this? A starship loomed overhead, its hull a dark mass against a lightning-streaked sky, and from within fell hundreds of my plushies, a flash of electrical energy lighting them up majestically as they dove face-first, their arms stretched out like an army of supermen. “Justice for everyone!” one of them screamed triumphantly, and the others followed as I wondered just how my legend had evolved over the centuries.

Enemy fire shot through the air and the plushies diverted course, striking out at various enemy fighters. “To the infinite!” yelled one, punching a space fighter into non-existence. “To hell with ya,” yelled another, slapping the craft into the ground. “Got milk?!” scream-asked another as he sent his foe to its doom.

I started to shake my head, chuckling, when one of them landed right at my feet. Standing a foot tall, seeming to flex his cushioned muscles, he stared straight into my eyes, daring me to make my move. “Hold tight, hero!” he told me. “I’ve got your back. No evil is safe from the Windowpuncher!”

Around me, the plushies went to town on variations of everything I’d ever fought, the sounds of battle mixed with the tang of scorched metal and fresh-cut earth. It was kind of amazing; they’d made it feel real, or close enough to it to spark trauma memories I had repressed.

With a loud thunderclap, the scene faded and I found myself in a store, all of the plush Windowpunchers standing at attention and giving me a salute.

“The Windowpuncher plushie,” continued the voice from earlier. “Made of the finest synthetic fibers in the multiverse, durable enough for the toughest battles yet soft enough for bedtime. Each one comes pre-programmed with dozens of catchphrases, fighting stances, and a heroic heart just like Tyson Dawes. Available now, only through Heroic Enterprises Affiliated.”

I watched as the plushies broke out of their formation and started performing tiny punches in the air. They shouted lines I’d never dreamed of, each one more outlandish than the last.

“Protect the multiverse!” one called, landing a kick with surprising ferocity.

“Punching evil into dust!” another declared, throwing a jab at an imaginary foe.

Around me, shelves were filled with plushies doing various combat poses. I’d been in a lot of bizarre places in my life, but never one in which hundreds of plush mini-mes were swarming around me to show off their best battle poses. I couldn’t help myself, I reached down and picked up one that had been booting me in the foot, bringing him up to my face for a closer look. The features were amazingly cute yet very much me.

“Don’t just watch the legend,” plushie me said in the narrator’s voice. “Bring home the Windowpuncher plushie and carry the spirit of justice wherever you go.”

Buying one was just too easy. As soon as the thought to buy one came to mind, a brief text advertisement popped up and everything froze.

Get the buddy of two lifetimes with Tyson Dawes, The Windowpuncher. 54,000 morties, 5 stars.

I paid the morties, fading out of ad space and stopping mid parade to get my own from the bleeping pod that portaled beside me, and holding it up high as the pod flashed away, to the thunderous cheers of Nu-Earth crowds. It was amazing, despite being so incredibly inaccurate, and I couldn’t help but wonder how many others were out there, clutching plushie-mes and hoping for a better future. “You can do it . . . Windowpuncher-style,” my Tyson told me, and I nodded, ready to do just that.

My return to Nu-Earth included an immediate breakup with Shoshanna. It wasn’t unexpected, and ended up being rather painless. She was kind about it, met me at the spaceport and sat down with me in a private car to tell me that she felt it was important to separate Save the Cubes from my candidacy now that military action had become part of it. I listened to what she said, agreed with her on every point, and hugged her goodbye without protest.

She would be safer, having distanced herself. I returned to my campaign while she went back to Save the Cubes. The breakup barely generated a blip in the media coverage. Tabloids ran it, people gasped in shock, and then everyone forgot about it. Even me.

Shoshanna and I were incompatible, something I should have known before getting involved with her. She rejected violence and I embraced it. Once I realized that core difference between us, she was nothing more than a friend and business partner to me.

I was expecting Axle’s campaign to lash out upon my return to Nu-Earth, especially the more my poll numbers surged. With only three weeks left in the race, I was closing the gap between us. He denounced Phyllis when she endorsed me, removed her from her position of authority, and publicly admitted there was a morale problem within BlueCleave. There was nothing else he could do once hobb endorsements started to sprinkle out, but I knew he had something up his sleeve.

So I was not surprised when his campaign announced that the gobbs of Storage were erecting shrines centered around my plushies. Axle’s Knowle Leadership faction declared the shrines evidence of my desire to bring gobbs out of Storage. They also showed the world video of a goblin captive that knew me by name.

A three second clip showed Nozzle sitting in a cage and politely asking for me in English.