The hatching of the Behemoth was felt by the Goose and all of the Guardians, all of whom could feel the instant they sensed its appearance in the world that the red egg had birthed a creature that was one of the most evil and powerful creatures to ever hatch from the red egg. The Goose in particular was shaken by the appearance of the Behemoth. It hadn't imagined that the Raven would be able to hatch it so fast or that it would emerge with so much power. The oracle felt its emergence as well, and she was furious. She materialized in Robert's living room within moments of the beast's emergence, before the Goose could inform Robert and the others about what was going on.
"Well, what are you going to do now?" She asked the Goose sarcastically.
"Obviously this necessitates a change in approach," the Goose answered sheepishly.
"You think!"
"There's no need to yell."
"No need to yell?! That thing is out there now, and you haven't managed to find and awaken any more Guardians besides the Goat and the Wolf!"
"We have to wait for when the time is right."
"There is no time for that any more, you need to hatch that egg now!"
"It's not that simple! We can only find the owl and the rooster if they want to be found, and nothing has happened to give us any clues about where to find them."
"We know where the Leviathan is."
"I was hoping to wait until it had calmed down a bit before we made that journey."
"Like I said, there's no time for that anymore. With the Behemoth now free things are going to start picking up, I just hope you're ready for that."
It didn't take long for the ramping up of events that the oracle predicted to start unfolding. Four days after the emergence of the Behemoth, Jim Balmer announced to the crowd at a campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina that he had brought a special guest along with him. The special guest was Chris Dixon, who emerged on stage, shared a warm embrace with Jim Balmer, and proceeded to give one of his trademark fiery speeches. After his speech, Jim Balmer walked over to the lectern and announced to the crowd that as of that morning Chris Dixon had joined the campaign as a senior adviser, a role that he would continue to perform in the White House if they prevailed in the election. The crowd cheered as loudly for this announcement as they had for Chris when he came out on stage after being introduced as the special guest. Following Chris's addition to the campaign team as a senior adviser, the tone of Jim Balmer's campaign underwent a dramatic transformation, becoming increasingly provocative and bellicose. Jim spent less time talking about restoring faith and values to the country and more time talking about the need to defend against the enemies of America that were attempting to destroy it from within with their open border, anti-business, pro-abortion and pro-homosexuality policies. The leader of this anti-America movement who, if elected, was going to turn the United States into an unrecognizable third world country by stripping away everything that made it the greatest country in the world, was Tom Groff, the presumptive Democrat nominee. Jim Balmer attacked Tom Groff relentlessly for wanting to flood the country with illegal immigrants, endanger America's energy security, make America less safe and stick it to farmers. Jim's supporters were really enjoying the new direction that the campaign had taken and his rallies, which were always raucous, were now, to those who didn't count themselves among Jim Balmer's supporters, downright scary. A new routine had become popular at his rallies, where Jim Balmer would ask the audience what they should do about certain people and the audience would respond in unison "SHOOT THEM!":
"What should we do with all of the Antifa thugs who want to take our country away?"
"SHOOT THEM!"
"What should we do with all of the welfare ticks who want to tax our hardworking citizens to death so they can keep laying around doing nothing?"
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"SHOOT THEM!"
"What should we do with the pussy vegan tree huggers that want to take our cars away and put our ranchers and farmers out of business?"
"SHOOT THEM!"
"What should we do with the illegal immigrants that are flooding across our border and want to replace us?"
"SHOOT THEM!"
Contributing to the higher levels of energy around Jim Balmer's campaign was Chris Dixon spending every episode of his show boosting Jim Balmer by repeating his talking points on his show and using his show as a communications channel through which he communicated new talking points for Jim to try out on the campaign. Chris was immune to the criticism that he received for being not just overtly political but overtly supportive of a candidate who had named him as one of his senior advisers. Chris addressed his critics by slamming them as cosmopolitan elites who didn't understand what it meant to be willing to do whatever you had to do to fight for your country. He was similarly unmoved by the criticism he received when the minutemen, armed militia guarding the southern border, shot and killed seven migrants, including two children, while they were crossing the Rio Grande. Chris's response to this was that it was fake news, that the elitist mainstream media had doctored the images and was running a fake story as part of a coordinated attack on him and Jim Balmer from the deep state. There was pressure on FOX to take Chris off the air for at least a little while but Chris's popularity among their viewers made that impossible. The vitriol from Jim Balmer and Chris Dixon kept being pumped out at a prolific rate, and the instances of their supporters going too far and acting on what they were hearing kept increasing, all without Jim or Chris accepting responsibility and acknowledging the need to tone down their rhetoric.
Meanwhile, over in Russia, a highly publicized meeting took place in the Kremlin between Russian President Vladimir Kolschonski and Fyodor Milichenko just days after Fyodor had returned from his trip to the United States. Fyodor was meeting with the President in his capacity as the unofficial leader of the REJOIN campaign to discuss what the nature of Russia and Ukraine's relationship would be in the event of REJOIN being successful. The meeting was held behind closed doors and lasted for over two hours. When the meeting was over the two men emerged from the room in which they'd had their conversation and held a joint press conference. They were asked a variety of questions by the reporters regarding any action that Russia was taking to influence the outcome of the referendum, whether Fyodor was working on behalf of the Russians, what level of autonomy Ukraine could expect to have if the referendum went REJOIN's way, and whether, no matter what the outcome of the referendum was, both sides would commit to ensuring that nothing would be done to provoke violence. The majority of the questions were responded to with perfectly banal and diplomatic answers, but on the question of violence in the aftermath of the referendum Fyodor gave an answer that gave serious cause for concern.
"There will be no violence if it is a fair election, but if it is not a fair election then I cannot guarantee you that people aren't going to react with violence."
"What do you mean by fair?" One of the reporters asked.
"That there are no irregularities in the campaign or in the voting."
"What kind of irregularities?"
"Interference from the media, interference from groups that are against us succeeding, fake votes, people not counting votes properly, votes being thrown out, that sort of thing."
"Are you saying that if you lose this election you won't accept the outcome?"
"I'm saying that the outcome had better not have been manipulated."
"Why are you all of a sudden talking about the vote being manipulated?"
"Because I am traveling and campaigning all over Ukraine and with the levels of energy and support that I am seeing for our campaign I can safely say that there is no way that we lose this election without either election interference and/or voter fraud having played a significant role."
"President Kolschonski, what do you make of Dr. Milichenko's comments?"
"If there is cheating, there will be consequences," the president answered inscrutably.
"What kind of consequences?"
"Consequences," he answered, even more inscrutably.
President Kolschonski and Fyodor shared a warm smile and a handshake and walked off the stage together. Fyodor had accomplished two important goals on his trip to Moscow: he had managed to infiltrate the highest levels of power in Russia and ingratiate himself with the people there, and he had made the issues of election interference and voter fraud major talking points among the public. Jim Balmer started talking increasingly about election interference and voter fraud during his rallies and so did Chris Dixon on his show, both of them warning that the enemies of America were cunning and were not above stooping to any low to thwart their campaign to save America. Their warning to their supporters was followed by a warning to their enemies, that their cunning would not prevail, that the second amendment existed to be used as a counter measure against just such threats to freedom.