Scene 1 — "Overnight"
00:02 — GLOBAL NEWS TICKER
⚠️ Multiple simultaneous government outages reported across several 3rd-world nations.
⚠️ Airports closed. Banking systems offline. Emergency lines down.
⚠️ UN requesting verification. No confirmed casualty numbers available.
The anchors tried to keep their faces neutral.
They failed anyway.
Because "outage" didn't explain why whole ministries stopped answering at once, why airfields shut down like someone had pulled a master switch, why emergency numbers rang into nothing.
Because even the word coincidence sounded stupid when it happened everywhere.
00:19 — SATELLITE WEATHER CHANNEL (REPLAYED CLIP)
The map showed normal cloud cover.
Then it didn't.
Patches of black appeared—clean squares where data should've been. Not storm. Not interference. Not even noise.
Just dead space.
The host laughed once, nervous, as if laughter could turn it into a glitch.
"Probably a server issue."
The clip never aired again.
00:44 — SOCIAL MEDIA FLOOD (COMPILATION)
Shaky phone videos. Fifteen seconds. Ten seconds. Five.
A street full of people running with no visible threat.
A checkpoint with soldiers aiming at nothing… then backing away.
A child crying and pointing down an alley, the camera refusing to follow.
Every post—different language, different accent, different country—used the same phrase:
Small green people.
Then the posts stopped.
Not deleted.
Stopped.
Accounts went inactive mid-thread. Lives cut off mid-sentence. Entire hashtags froze like someone unplugged the feed.
The world didn't watch the footage end.
The world watched the people end.
01:11 — FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT AUDIO (LEAKED)
Breathing. Wind. Footsteps crunching gravel.
"We're outside the capital. There were shots an hour ago. Now it's…"
A long pause.
"…quiet."
Someone in the background whispered something you couldn't quite catch—half a word, half a warning.
Then the audio corrupted.
Not static. Not signal loss.
More like the file refused to play past a certain second, like the recording had hit a wall and decided it wasn't allowed to exist beyond it.
01:37 — NGO FIELD REPORT (AUTO-GENERATED SUMMARY)
STATUS: UNVERIFIED
• Villages evacuated without visible cause
• Livestock found penned, not slaughtered
• Roads blocked with "makeshift barricades" built from professional materials
• No bodies confirmed
• No survivors willing to speak on record
The report ended with an error line that got screenshotted a thousand times before the screenshots started vanishing too:
INSUFFICIENT HUMAN TESTIMONY TO CONFIRM EVENT.
02:05 — DEFENSE INTEL BRIEF (PRIVATE, PARTIALLY LEAKED)
A map of the world.
Red dots bloomed across coastal regions, river routes, and border towns.
Then the dots connected.
Not like chaos.
Like planning.
Like supply lines traced by a patient hand.
A note appeared beside the map, stamped and restamped like someone needed it to feel official:
Not terrorism. Not rebellion. Not cult behavior.
Pattern suggests: occupation without announcement.
02:49 — LIVE PRESS CONFERENCE (ONE MINUTE, THEN CUT)
A minister stood behind a podium with a prepared statement and hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
He read. He blinked too fast. He smiled when no one laughed.
Then he looked up—too early—like someone walked into the room that wasn't scheduled.
He swallowed.
"We are experiencing… localized unrest. There are reports of—"
He paused. His eyes unfocused.
"—green…"
The stream cut.
Ten minutes later the official account posted:
TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. NO FURTHER COMMENT AT THIS TIME.
03:14 — THE PART THAT MADE IT WORSE
Foreign aid teams arrived to "verify."
They filmed the same street shown in the first shaky clips.
But now it was clean.
Not recovered.
Clean.
Barricades dismantled neatly. No shell casings. No scorch marks. Even the trash was gone like the city itself had been combed.
A dog barked at a sewer grate.
The sewer grate was welded shut with fresh metal.
The team leader knelt, put a tool to it, and tried to force it open.
The tool snapped like cheap plastic.
They stepped back.
No one laughed.
04:00 — MORNING HEADLINES
UNABLE TO CONFIRM.
NO VERIFIED FOOTAGE.
RUMORS OF "GREEN SMALL PEOPLE" SPREAD.
GOVERNMENTS DENY. INTERNET OUTAGES CONTINUE.
MULTIPLE NATIONS REQUEST EMERGENCY ASSISTANCE.
And the world realized the scariest part wasn't the clips.
It wasn't the dots on the map.
It was the new rule settling into everyone's bones:
You can't fight what you can't even prove happened.
Scene 2 — Congressional Halls (Baldur POV)
The chamber smelled like old wood, old money, and fresh fear.
Cameras hung in the corners like insects waiting for blood. Staffers whispered behind tablets they pretended weren't shaking. Security stood too straight, hands hovering near weapons they knew wouldn't matter.
Omar sat where he always sat—posture perfect, expression practiced—like if he looked calm enough the world would obey him.
He met my eyes and tried to make it a contest.
I didn't give him that.
"Consider this the end of our alimony to you," I said, voice level, each word placed like a weight. "Not because I want power."
I let my aura breathe—one heartbeat of pressure.
The air tightened. Microphones whined. A few people flinched in ways they couldn't explain.
Then I reeled it back in until the room remembered how to inhale.
"Because you keep proving you can't hold it."
Silence fell—thick, organized silence—long enough for the cameras to catch the travelers stationed under the balcony shifting back, hands hovering near weapons out of habit.
I glanced at them, not with hatred.
With diagnosis.
"I won't call you sinful," I continued, quieter now. "Not the ordinary ones. Not the scared ones. Most of you are just… products of an era that refuses to hand over responsibility until it's forced."
My eyes returned to Omar.
"But traitors are different."
He opened his mouth.
I didn't raise my voice.
Didn't need to.
"Compromising response time," I said, and the words hit harder because they weren't shouted. "Slowing verification. Cutting the legs out from under internal security while pretending it's oversight. That isn't politics."
I leaned forward slightly, just enough to make him feel like the distance between us was shrinking.
"That's murder with paperwork."
The room went still in a way that felt almost religious—everyone listening, nobody brave enough to speak.
"Friday," I repeated, like I was reciting a law that existed long before any of them took office. "Either you pass what's needed for tech conversion and astral-resistant infrastructure… or you don't."
A thin smile tried to appear on Omar's face.
It died before it finished forming.
"And if you don't," I went on, "then you don't get to stand in front of cameras and pretend you were betrayed. You were warned."
I straightened and turned my body half away from the podium, the way an executioner turns when the rope is already tied.
"Me and Oceanus will be leading the effort to stem the bleed in Latin America and any other region still salvageable," I said. "Third-world nations are collapsing overnight because communication dies first under astral interference."
I let that land. Let them picture it—phones dead, ministries silent, borders turning into blindfolds.
"If you want to keep your chairs while the world burns," I added, "that's your choice."
One step back.
Then I looked over my shoulder at the chamber—at the ones hiding behind rank tags and legal language like it was armor.
"And understand this," I said, almost conversational. "If Crystal or Athena decides you're in the way…"
My gaze sharpened.
"…that becomes a tactical problem."
I paused, letting the phrase settle into the room like frost.
"And tactical problems get solved."
I started to leave.
Crystal took my place at the podium without rushing—like she'd been standing there the whole time, just waiting for the room to remember what fear felt like.
Her eyes swept the chamber once.
"No more speeches," she said. "No more optics games."
A small pause. A softer voice that somehow cut deeper.
"Friday isn't a threat."
She looked directly at Omar, then let her gaze drift across everyone trying to pretend they weren't implicated.
"It's mercy."
I walked out while the cameras stayed on her—because everyone in that room knew the truth even if they'd never admit it on record:
I was the loud one.
She was the one who actually followed through.
Scene 3 — The Society War-Room (Artemis POV)
The war-room never went quiet anymore.
If the screens weren't talking, the people were. If the people weren't talking, alarms were. If the alarms weren't screaming, that meant something worse—something cut the feed.
A dozen voices overlapped as I stepped in, and the air hit me like heat.
"Mexico is requesting aid as well, Ms. Artemis."
"Ghana needs medical supplies as soon as possible—they've managed to beat back the goblins while regrouping with surrounding nations. They've slowed the battle line to a still, but more are coming out."
"Orcs are being sighted in the eastern hemisphere. The Zodiacs are handling it but they aren't as well staffed as us. Wukong is requesting more bodies until he can go beat up his underlings."
Each report sounded like a different crisis.
They were all the same crisis wearing different masks.
Baldur's statement—Friday isn't optional—had cracked the dam. Now every nation that still had signal was either begging for help or begging for extraction before their governments went silent too.
We couldn't save everyone.
We didn't have the luxury of pretending otherwise.
"Everyone pause for half a second," I snapped, clapping my hands once.
The room obeyed on reflex—the kind of reflex built from years of me refusing to let panic become policy.
I pointed without hesitation, carving the chaos into roles.
"Jim, Yang, and Bullet are in charge of response teams."
Three heads nodded. No questions. They already knew the cost of asking for a second time.
"Jewels and Gary are in charge of logistics."
A tablet slid across a table. Routes rerouted. Air corridors recalculated. Someone quietly swore when a friendly runway turned red and stayed red.
"Tony will handle coordination with the Dark Guilds."
That one earned a few looks—uneasy, sharp, judgmental.
I didn't care.
If the world was burning, you didn't refuse water because the bucket had stains.
"Go," I said.
The silence shattered into motion.
Maps updated. Names got attached to teams. Orders became reality faster than most governments could even agree on a headline.
Behind the moving pieces, the ugly truth remained:
We'd had to sacrifice certain places to keep stronger groups from overextending. A-to-C rank threats were manageable for us on paper—manageable in the way a wildfire is "manageable" if you're allowed to choose which towns burn.
But for smaller nations?
For places whose entire communication spine could be cut overnight?
"Manageable" was a fantasy.
I stared at a screen showing coastal dots connecting into lines.
Supply lines.
Occupation lines.
Not raids. Not panic. Not cult madness.
A slow, methodical hand reshaping the world while everyone argued about proof.
I didn't let my voice shake.
"Keep the evacuations clean," I said. "If a feed dies, assume it wasn't an accident. If a city goes quiet, assume it wasn't peace."
Someone started to speak—started to ask me what we did when the requests outnumbered the bodies.
I didn't let them finish the question.
Because the answer was already written across every map we had:
We chose.
We moved.
And we prayed the places we couldn't reach didn't become the next dead square on the satellite.
Outside the war-room, the world begged for confirmation.
Inside, we stopped waiting for it.
Because you couldn't fight what you couldn't prove—
but you could still lose to it.
And losing didn't require belief.