Fyodor's trip to the United States had been a whirlwind success and he was going back to Ukraine to continue leading the REJOIN campaign as a bona fide global celebrity. His visit to the US wasn't well received by all though. In the days following his appearance on In The Crosshairs the main talking point on the show had been David Huntsman and those like him who didn't care about the economic pain that people were experiencing so long as they continued to see their wealth increase. Thanks to Fyodor's stunt at The Growth and Opportunities Conference, David was now enemy #1 of the left and the insurgent populist right, whose political leader was Jim Balmer whose campaign David had put more money into than any other donor. David wasn't happy about all of this, in fact he was furious, believing that he was being taken advantage of to raise Fyodor's profile for the purpose of assisting the REJOIN campaign which David frankly didn't give a damn about. Yes there was an opportunity to make a killing on energy futures in the event of war, but David didn't need political manipulation to make a killing, he always made a killing no matter what the conditions were that he was operating in.

David was uncomfortable with the addition of Fyodor to the team, fearing that Fyodor could use the supernatural powers of persuasion that he had obtained from the snake to alter their course. The Raven picked up on David's discomfort and decided to exclude him from a trip that it had planned to Chris's ranch in upstate New York where he was keeping the yet to be awakened bull. The Raven made the trip with Chris and Fyodor. With the lion now out of the picture, the bull was the last remaining Guardian to be awakened with the black egg, the Raven having visited the pig and awakened it while David was in Moscow. On the drive up to his ranch Chris was filled in by the Raven on its plan for world domination and Chris enthusiastically agreed to do whatever he was asked to do in furtherance of the goal. Chris also got to meet the snake, and having experienced the power of the bull and what it had done for him he understood why Fyodor had been able to so easily win him over during their interview.

To avoid it being noticed by anybody, Chris kept the bull hidden away in a barn on his property. The bull was white with yellow eyes and had a large horn protruding from between its eyes in addition to the two regular horns on top of its head. When they arrived at his property they went straight to the barn to perform the awakening. Like Fyodor had been when he first saw it, Chris was humbled by the sight of the Raven removing the black egg from John Lafferty's chest. It was perhaps not accurate to continue calling it the black egg as it was now mostly red, a sign of its imminent hatching. The Raven believed that the absorption of the bull's primal force would be enough for the egg to hatch, if not it would have to seek out and awaken the dragon, which, given the way things had gone the last time, it was not looking forward to. Upon seeing the egg, the bull walked over to it and touched its nose to it, bringing about its awakening. There was no time for them to fill the bull in on the situation. The Raven's suspicion was correct, absorbing the bull's primal force was enough to satisfy the egg. It turned fully red and began to crack, with deep black light emanating from the cracks. The Raven took the egg outside and placed it on the ground and warned Chris and Fyodor to keep their distance. The egg continued to crack and release more black light. The more the egg cracked the more the ground beneath them shook, while the black light that was leaking out of the egg enveloped their surroundings so that eventually all that they could see was each other and the egg within what felt like a limitless black expanse. Chris and Fyodor could feel the evil of what was being set free and it terrified them. The Raven looked on with eyes filled with rapture. It had only gotten to see this a handful of times before, so for the Raven this was a special moment that needed to be savored to the fullest. The egg stopped cracking and started to shine; the Raven warned Fyodor and Chris to look away or they would be blinded. The egg lit up in a white hot glow that sucked up all of the black light that had covered the land and the sky like ink.

"You can open your eyes now," the Raven said to Chris and Fyodor.

Standing where the egg had been was a giant creature that, upon seeing it, rendered Chris and Fyodor motionless and speechless.

The ground was smoking beneath the creature's hoofs, which were at the base of thick, muscular legs. Its hind legs were shorter than its forelegs, which allowed the creature to stand up vertically. Shaggy purple hair covered its body, and it had a silver mane and tail. On top of its horse-like head was a large curved horn that looked like it had been crudely carved from bone, and when it breathed, green plumes of fire were expelled from its nostrils.

"Behold gentlemen: The Behemoth," the Raven said.

Chris and Fyodor were still paralyzed from being overwhelmed by the evil of the creature. John Lafferty, looking on from the recesses of his consciousness, believed that he was looking at the manifestation of the apocalypse, which, the Raven informed him, he was. The Behemoth didn't move or say anything. It stood perfectly still looking at nothing, breathing green plumes of fire from its nostrils, which made it more terrifying in the eyes of Chris and Fyodor, who dared not move or say anything out of fear that were they to do the wrong thing or say the wrong thing their lives would be forfeit. Only the Raven moved. It walked over to the Behemoth and pressed itself against its leg and rubbed it affectionately with its hands. The Behemoth was so huge that John's head reached only as high as its knee, and the Behemoth's leg was too thick for the Raven to get John's arms all the way around.

"You're finally here," the Raven said to the Behemoth.

The Raven's love for the Behemoth was clear from the physical affection that it was displaying toward the beast, physical affection that betrayed an unmistakable forlornness as well.

"Go," the Raven stepped back from the Behemoth and said to it.

The beast turned away from the Raven and ran off, leaving giant footsteps of charred earth in its wake before it leapt so far and so high that it disappeared into the sky as if it were flying. With the Behemoth now gone, the snake and the bull went over to talk to the Raven.

"It's amazing that you were able to hatch the Behemoth with only the primal force of five Guardians," the snake said to the Raven.

"It's actually not amazing when you consider how much anger, fear, pain and despair there is in this world, and now that the Behemoth is free you're going to see all of that getting a lot worse, and the worse it gets the closer we get to getting what we want."

"Where's the rat?" The snake asked.

"The rat's not going to be involved very much from now on, we need to behave strategically from here on in, that's not the rat's strong suit, it just wants to create chaos, and that's not what we need right now."

"What's next?" The bull asked.

"I want Fyodor to go to Moscow and start working from there, since we can't get Sonya and the lion to help us we need to get the current Russian President to do our bidding; as for Chris, he must just keep doing what he's been doing, as things stand the road between Jim Balmer and The White House is looking like a very smooth one."

The Raven extended its wings and got ready to take off.

"Where are you going?" The snake asked.

"To find the owl, hopefully I can find it before it causes a whole lot of trouble for me like it always does."

The Raven took flight and disappeared out of sight as quickly as the Behemoth had when it took off. Everything that the Raven had ever wanted was right within its grasp, the only thing left for it to do was make sure that its enemies that had thwarted it so many times in the past didn't do so this time around.