I ignored the press, my protesters, and the handful of loyalist troops still protecting Axle’s tower. Instead of dealing with any of the unrest I’d help create, I took my friend home. With the chaos still raging around us, I summoned a pod and input the coordinates for the spire above Nozzle’s last location in Storage.

We stepped through its portal and the lush greenery of the spire greeted us with blessed quiet. The only sounds I could hear was the constant low groan of Storage moving against the violent atmosphere, and the small scratching noises of the giant leaf bugs that inhabited the spire. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a peaceful moment.

“You hurt?” Nozzle asked.

I smiled and looked down at my friend. “No. I just missed this.”

The gobb scowled. “Nobody misses Storage but gobbs,” he said.

“You’re not wrong, but I’m not exactly normal,” I told him.

“You got that right!” he laughed back. “What did you do to get me out? Your army back there won’t miss you?”

“It’s no army, my friend. That,” I said, blinking as I realized he wouldn’t understand. “That was a protest.”

Nozzle scowled in confusion.

“It’s when a great number of people who agree that something is wrong come out to express how they feel about it. It is an inherent threat of violence, but peaceful if done correctly,” I explained.

The gobb’s scowl remained. “Threat of violence? How you get that many to threaten but not fight?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “It’s something that happens in systems where violence is considered unacceptable by the people who live within the system.”

“Doesn’t sound like BuyMort to me,” Nozzle replied with a shrug. He started moving toward the ladders down, swatting away a complacent leaf bug in his path.

I followed with a soft smile. “You’re not wrong.”

“So,” he said, mounting the ladder with a glance at the abyss below. “That was Nu-Earth? Bright there.”

“What did they do to you?” I asked.

“Nothing,” he replied. “Broke rifle. That hurt feelings. But threw me in cage and stopped pods from taking me. I couldn’t go home,” he explained. The gobb was fast on the ladder, I let my suit drop me a little faster to keep up.

“How’d they do that?” I asked.

“Same way we do,” he answered immediately. “Captive call pod, stab with pointy stick and kill bug it summon with something stronger.”

“They used pointy sticks?” I asked, bewildered.

“Yes,” Nozzle answered. “Made of wood. Nicer than ours, but still just wooden stick.” He continued clambering down the ladder at a rapid pace. “Makes BuyMort think you not strong. Sends a weak bug, you kill bug, repeat as needed.”

I nodded slowly as my thoughts swarmed. The vein scorpion I had summoned with my old Mossberg had nearly killed me, causing me to reach out to BuyMort and provide it with the right combination of requests to land me with a starfish suit. I thought of the old militia sniper who had summoned a sea-cucumber style bug to flatten and devour him. His rifle had been high-caliber, I remember because Tollya had been pleased to add it to their own arsenal.

At every point that BuyMort had been damaged, it had sent a proportional response to protect its physical infrastructure. All the way up to the void spider that killed Jada, the responses from BuyMort had been tightly controlled. Based on rules.

The harder you hit BuyMort, the harder it hit you back. But, with careful application of force, and stronger backup nearby to respond, the bugs it sent were no threat at all. Axle’s team had kept my friend prisoner with sharp sticks. BuyMort probably sent them aggressive leaf bugs or something similar. Something easy to defend against with better weapons, once the simple pointy stick had done its work.

My head spun with thoughts. Ideas. Plans. All while my friend climbed down the length of the ladder to the lake at its bottom. When we arrived, he cupped his hands around his mouth and made a series of loud clicks with his tongue, first in one direction, then in the other.

From behind us, in the dark of the tunnel, a series of clicks returned. Then the foliage rustled as Babyeater charged toward us. The spider clambered around the lake and came in low to greet Nozzle, making a series of whining grunts as it pushed into the gobb’s hands.

“Good spider!” Nozzle said, stroking the space between the giant creature’s eyes. After a few strangely heartwarming moments of stroking and reassuring the spider, Nozzle moved around and mounted his saddle. “Let’s go!” he said.

I nodded, but the gobb didn’t move. Instead, I saw him swiping at the air in front of his face. Within seconds, a BuyMort pod arrived and projected a wide swath of rainbow light. Nozzle urged Babyeater forward, and the pair vanished into the portal. I shrugged and followed.

We emerged on another spire in Storage, this one frozen over. Ice dripped from and crawled across every surface, obscuring and twisting our view of the gas giant below. Babyeater tapped at the walls surrounding the central elevator until a sheet of ice broke free and plummeted into the depths. Then the spider squeezed itself through the doorway and attached a thread of silk to the top of the shaft. With a whoop, Nozzle and his spider descended into the darkness. I fell alongside them, laughing at the gobb’s expression of joy.

The shaft warmed as we descended, until the ice on the walls leaked, causing a mild rain shower to create walls of dripping cold across the doorways of each level we passed. At the bottom was another lush overgrowth of ferns, great mushrooms, and bamboo. It was there we found his tribe, hunkered down in their make-shift dwellings and hiding among the foliage.

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With a single shout, they all swarmed from their various dwellings and hiding places. The tribe circled us and jabbered all at once in their relief and joy that their ranger had returned. Babyeater hunkered down and Nozzle dismounted to join his people. I floated above them, watching as the gobbs interacted.

Nozzle looked up at me from inside the crowd of his people, and he scowled. “Come! We will share our food. They tell me there isn’t much, but we share!”

I shook my head. “Thank you, Nozzle. Thank you all, but I shouldn’t stay. It’s not safe for me to be here. More tall men will come to find you, and anything I do will leave them a trail to follow.”

A few gobbs nodded, but most just stared up at me with gleaming eyes. I swiped up BuyMort and ordered a pallet of fresh food from Terna’s affiliate, choosing the ‘portal in later’ option for an extra fee. The pod that arrived dropped off a fob to summon another pod, with the order. Until it was delivered, I accrued a rental fee that scrolled up against my fresh donations.

Midnight was expressing its gratitude in the days that followed my visit. My campaign received tens of trillions in donations, much of it ear-marked for my personal use. Justin Lee was still my primary donor, but millions of delves on the planet were also sending in mortie orders.

I tossed the fob to Nozzle, who nodded up at me once more, before pocketing the small object. “Don’t stay where you use that, it can be tracked.”

“Okay!” he yelled to his tribe. “Pack up, we’re moving. Long range move, leave nothing behind!”

The gobbs all ran to obey. Within minutes the camp was torn down and packed up, on the small creature’s backs and in their arms as they looked to Nozzle for their next move. He summoned another pod, which projected its rainbow light in a massive rectangle on the ground. The tribe all ran or walked into it at the same time, the action normal for them.

“Will we see you again, Tyson friend?” Nozzle asked.

“Maybe,” I replied. “If I win, I’ll have the power to make things safe for you here,” I told him.

He nodded, an impressed frown on his features. “Well then I hope you win!” he said, raising his arm. In it was a new rifle, an older bolt action from my own world. Already atop it sat an advanced scope, juxtaposing the archaic gun’s dull barrel with its own vibrant lights. His tribe wasted no time, their way of life normalized by reliance on their singular ranger. Then the spider moved through the light, and I was alone in the low tunnel.

The gobbs used the spires, and Storage’s free portals, to move around at will and cover immense amounts of territory. I checked against my own in-progress map, and discovered we were on a completely different part of the planet’s surface. He had led me tens of thousands of miles away from where I had been searching. With their new jumps taking them who knows how far away, I felt as though they would be safe even if my personal portal information was compromised.

I pulled up a portal home, paid for it from my growing account, and stepped through back to Nu-Earth, in front of the Prescott tower once more. In the half hour I had been gone, the protest had cleared out. Axle’s security forces still stood, or hovered, in the area, and my arrival caused a reaction. The floating starfish troopers still loyal to Axle hovered toward me and formed a bulwark keeping me from the building. I smiled at them and turned away, to fly over the city to my campaign’s offices.

While in flight, I checked my credit. It had been growing again while I politicked and policed.

My campaign affiliate rented out an entire building in the Prescott lower valley, near the space port. It was a small structure, only a few stories in height, but it was packed with campaign affiliate volunteers and security forces. Once I worked my way through the various security checkpoints, I entered the campaign office, where my crew was usually working on art projects, coordinating events, or talking to voters on their devices. When I arrived, however, the entire staff was silent.

In the campaign manager’s office, down at the end of the open floor, stood a tall Knowle flanked by power armored hobbs. My new campaign manager was speaking to the Knowle and smiling, so I walked into the office and interrupted.

“Hi,” I said, walking past the bulky hobbs and offering my hand to their boss. He was young, but had mechanical eyes that flashed the same way Axle’s did.

The Knowle bared his teeth in a ‘polite’ smile, mimicking the way humans smiled at one another as he clasped my hand in his larger paw. “Mr. Dawes, nice to meet you in person!” he said in accented English. “Ali Grumsch, campaign coordinator for Silken Sands.”

I nodded and shook his paw, then leaned against my campaign manager’s desk. “Please, continue,” I said, eyeing the hobbs. One of them gave me an almost imperceptible nod, so I returned the gesture. “Don’t let me interrupt.”

“Ah yes, Mr. Dawes,” said my employee from behind the desk. “We were just discussing the possibility of a debate.”

His name was Derek, and he had been the personal assistant to my last campaign manager, the one who had died in the bombing. Thanks to Derek’s meticulous record keeping, we were able to move forward with the campaign with only a minimal delay. He’d gotten things back on track quickly while I was on Midnight, and I rewarded his hard work with a raise and his boss’s former job.

“Sounds great! What’s my percentage?” I asked the Knowle across from us.

“Ten will go to each candidate, with the host keeping the jackal’s share. We’ve already worked up a contract with SNN to host, we just require your signature and the debate is good to go,” Ali said.

“Thirty-five,” I replied, crossing my arms.

His ears bent back, but with visible effort he kept them upright. “I’m sorry?” he asked, head cocked to the side.

“I’ll do your debate for thirty-five percent of the ad revenue,” I told him. “Or I’ll do it for free, if I can have a co-host of my choosing. Either way, up to you guys.”

The Knowle’s ears fully flattened, and he grimaced as though in pain. “I will pass along your conditions,” he said, before bowing at the waist and turning to leave. His bodyguards followed, clanking through my office on their way to the elevators.

My campaign manager looked as frustrated as the Knowle had. “Thirty-five percent?” he asked. “They’ll never go for that.”

“I know, that’s why I said it. It makes the co-host option much more appealing,” I replied. “Don’t worry, they’ll accept the co-host.”

“What do we do?” he asked after a moment of hesitation.

“Find me the perfect host,” I replied with a shrug. “Someone favorable to our positions, with enough of an audience of their own to affect the polls. Once I approve, get to work with them on questions for the debate.”

“You make it all sound so easy,” Derek said.

“Oh don’t worry. It will be,” I replied with a smile. “If you know the strings that control the system, you can do anything with no resistance.”

Derek frowned, then nodded and sat down at his desk. He started working on his computer and I left him to it. It really wouldn’t be all that much work for him. To start, he had to weed through the aggregate of our polling data and compare it with various media personalities. A data crunching affiliate we contracted with would handle most of that, all he had to do was order and pay for it. The biggest demographic match among both categories would determine our co-host. Then all he had to do was secure that co-host for the debate.

While my campaign did the busy work, I took the time to rest and prepare. That preparation process primarily revolved around thinking about Axle, and all the bad things he would say about me. The list was not exactly short.

I stayed in my hotel room, in rest and contemplation until Derek contacted me with our finalized details. Axle accepted my offer of thirty-five percent, to Derek’s glee. The morties would fund the campaign until the election, he told me. He congratulated me on the risky, but smart choice I had made with my absurdly high demand.

Derek was happy. I could only think of how Axle had seen my trap and avoided taking the bait. I wasn’t the only one who understood the strings that controlled BuyMort.