The rain fell in sheets on the desolate dock, painting everything in shades of gray. Dimitri Orlov and General Zhang Wei stood facing each other, their teams poised like scorpions ready to strike.
"You speak of subtlety and control," Orlov growled, his voice cutting through the downpour. "But your subtlety has left us empty-handed while the Americans have taken everything."
Zhang's composure was like polished steel. "There are more ways to win a war than through brute force, Orlov. You see a child as a weapon. I see a key to understanding the universe."
"A key?" Orlov barked a harsh laugh. "You sound like Tanaka. Look where that thinking got him. Look where it got Varos. He was at least honest about what he was a weapon pointed at a target. You pretend you're a philosopher while your hands are just as bloody as mine."
The words hung between them, a truth too sharp to ignore. For a moment, the mask of the unflappable general slipped, and Zhang's eyes revealed the fury beneath. The conflict was no longer about missions or assets it was about the very nature of power itself.
Elyra found him at the edge of the void he had created. Azar stood like a statue at the precipice, his back to her, but she knew he was aware of her presence.
"You came back," she said, her voice flat and drained.
He turned slowly. The celestial patterns on his skin seemed faded. "I saw your broadcast. You were... strong."
"Strong?" Her composure shattered. "You call this strength? You disappeared when we needed you most! You left Naira to be taken, you let Sato die, and then you did this!" She gestured wildly at the perfect black hemisphere where a neighborhood had once been. "Do you think your cosmic pain gives you the right to destroy us? We're not variables in your equations, Azar! We're people! Flawed, scared, stupid people, and you were supposed to be better than us!"
Her words struck him with physical force. He had no equations to counter this human truth, no logic to defend against her raw pain.
"I miscalculated," he whispered, the words foreign and inadequate.
"Miscalculated?" She laughed bitterly. "You killed them, Azar. All of them. Because you were sad?"
He looked at her and saw not a fascinating specimen but a person he had broken. He saw the trust he had betrayed, the lives he had erased not with purpose but with petulant power. The weight of it all collapsed upon him an error in existence that he could not compute.
Then it happened.
A single, luminous drop welled in the corner of his star-filled eye. It shimmered with captured starlight, a perfect sphere of grief that traced a slow path down his pale cheek. It was the first tear ever shed by a star, falling heavy with the weight of extinguished suns onto the scorched earth.
Deep in the American facility, the transformation was complete. Naira, suspended in her cryo-tube, had become a power source. Thick cables snaked from her small form into a monstrous weapon that hummed with stolen cosmic energy. Sarah Mitchell watched as the order was given.
Across the world, screens showed the familiar image of Pluto. The weapon fired a lance of distorted reality that crossed the solar system in moments. The dwarf planet didn't explode it simply vanished, replaced by brief quantum static that dissolved into nothingness.
The message was clear and brutal. America had harnessed cosmic power and would demonstrate it without mercy. Elyra saw the broadcast and collapsed to her knees. Orlov and Zhang stood frozen, their conflict momentarily forgotten in the face of this horrifying display.
Tanaka's quarters were empty. Only a flickering hologram of his daughter remained, along with an overturned chair. The truth had not just broken him it had erased him completely.
From the edge of the abyss in Tokyo, a sound emerged that was neither human nor earthly. It was the scream of collapsing stars, the fury of violated reality. Azar's form began to blaze with the light of a vengeful god. The First Tear had been shed now came the Final Wrath. He launched into the atmosphere, a comet of pure retribution aimed directly at the nation that had dared to violate the child he had failed to protect.