The beam persisted for a heartbeat longer, a blinding column connecting the fortress to the planet, a display of power so absolute it was a statement to any who might think to challenge him again.

Then, with impossible control, it winked out of existence a mere meter above the planet's surface, the energy dissipated harmlessly into the air. It had delivered its payload of utter oblivion without so much as scratching the world beneath.

A profound silence enveloped Rex as he hovered like a solitary figure adrift in the wake of the devastation his anger had wrought.

The acrid scent of smoldering ruins filled the air, a stark testament to a power he had unleashed without restraint. With a cold, detached gaze, he observed the consequence of his fury, and a part of him felt as if he were watching his former self recede into the distance like a speck swallowed by the storm he had become.

The thought was an unwelcome intruder, a whisper of a man he could no longer afford to be. In response, his hand clenched, the metal of his glove groaning in protest as his fingers tightened into an unyielding fist.

"It is for the best," he murmured to the hollow wind; those words were a fragile justification meant for his own ears alone. His attention then drifted upward, toward the bruised sky.

There, the final act of the space battle was concluding in a silent, celestial ballet. Streaks of fire, the funeral pyres of pirate vessels, painted the atmosphere. Trapped and unable to flee, the pirate fleet had been nothing but target practice for the technologically superior Kaelzar armada.

His contemplation was interrupted by a shimmer in the air. "How is she?" Rex asked, not needing to turn as Cleo's form solidified before him.

"She is out of danger," Cleo reported, her voice calm and factual. "Her body adapted without complication to the synthetic blood and tissue. She will be fully recovered after two more days within the healing tank." Her luminous eyes studied the hard, cold set of Rex's features, reading the story written there in the unyielding lines.

"Good," he stated. "Dispatch the legion to the planet's surface. I want every last pirate hunted down. That trash will not litter my territory...."

"Leave a general-class unit in command to oversee the legion and support the local human forces in maintaining peace." He paused, his gaze turning inward before concluding, "As for us... we return to the Nexum Planet."

True to his word, the Kaelzar fleet remained in orbit around Nakor for three more days, a stabilizing presence that allowed the planet to breathe again and for Lilla to complete her healing. Only once the situation was secure did they depart, leaving a single legion behind, placed under Lilla's command to wield as she saw fit.

Once returned to the Nexum Planet, Rex immediately convened a meeting with the planetary champion. They spoke of the events on the void mothership, a conversation of careful politics and veiled truths. Of course, Rex said nothing of the two void gems that rested within his personal storage.

But some secrets are not so easily hidden. "Darling～, when did you come back?" The voice was a silken melody that materialized from the empty air. Yssera appeared without warning in the living room where Rex was attempting to find a moment's rest, promptly settling herself onto his lap with practiced ease.

Rex lifted a single eyebrow, reaching up to gently pinch the tip of her nose. "Shouldn't I be the one asking that? I was under the distinct impression your mother came to collect you."

"Heheh~ I just came back today," she trilled, her eyes sparkling with mischief. "Because I heard you have something I reaaallyy need~" She leaned in, her warm breath ghosting against the shell of his ear as she whispered.

"For example~ a void gem." The moment the words left her lips, the air in the room seemed to still. Rex did not move; his expression remained unreadable as he held her gaze for a long, silent minute.

"I wonder," he began, his voice deceptively soft, "how a playful and lazy kid like you came to know something that only Cleo and I are aware of?" He watched her intently, searching for any crack in the flawless, smiling mask she presented to the world. It remained perfectly, infuriatingly in place.

"Mmm~ darling," she purred, her eyes meeting his yet seeming to look at something just beyond his shoulder. "Even I have one or two secrets I won't tell you. Just as you have yours, right?"

He let out a long, slow breath, a sigh of surrender. "Ha... fine. I can give you one. Cleo will need the other, after all."

"Aww, I knew you were the one who loved me the most~!" Yssera exclaimed while wrapping her arms around his neck in a tight embrace. With a resigned shake of his head, Rex retrieved one of the dark, star-flecked crystals from his storage and placed it in her waiting hand.

"I will be gone for a few years! Don't miss me too much!" Yssera's voice was a final, playful chime in the quiet room. With a graceful leap, she vanished into a shimmering green spatial crack, a doorway woven by her mother's power to return her to the heart of the Swarm.

The rift sealed behind her with a soft sigh of displaced air, leaving Rex in a silence that felt suddenly profound. It was a solitude that lasted only a heartbeat, for as one chaotic presence departed, another swiftly arrived to take its place.

The air rippled once more, not with emerald energy, but with a crimson-tinged tear in reality. "Mmm? The insect girl just left?" Little Red stepped through the spatial rift, her feet meeting the floor without a sound. Her gaze swept the room like a predator ensuring the territory was clear.

Rex did not turn. He merely watched her from the corner of his eye, his movements deliberate as he took a slow drink of water from the crystal glass he had left on the table. The ice within it clinked softly, a tiny sound in the heavy quiet. "Virus, hm?" he said, his voice flat, devoid of warmth. "What is it that you want now?"

She drifted behind him like a phantom of unsettling grace. "Mm? Why do you call me Virus?" she cooed, her tone a mockery of hurt. "That wounds me, you know?" Her arms slipped around his neck from behind, a familiar yet foreign weight, and she rested her chin upon his shoulder, her presence an intimate invasion.

"You can keep calling me Little Red, you know?" she whispered into his ear, her breath like a ghost of heat against his skin. Her fingers began to trace idle, possessive circles on his chest.

"She and I are the same side of a coin. It's just that I'm the attractive and funnier one, and she's the reserved and boring one. But in the end, we are one being in two bodies."

Rex let out a deep, weary sigh, the sound filled with a frustration that had been simmering for too long. In one fluid, powerful motion, his hand shot up and clamped around her wrist.

He pivoted, using her own momentum to pull her from behind him and spin her onto the plush couch. In an instant, he was atop her, his body pinning hers; his face felt like a mask of cold authority as he loomed over her.

"I don't know what your intention is, or what you truly are," his voice sounded low and dangerous. "But what I do know is that you tried to do something before that I did not like. The real Little Red would never do something like that."

A sly, unrepentant smile touched her lips. As one of her hands rose to caress his cheek, he was faster, catching both her wrists and pressing them down into the couch cushions.

The resistance seemed only to delight her. "Mmm～ I like it when you're rough with me," she breathed, her smile widening. A flush of crimson bloomed across her cheeks, and her eyes glazed with a provocative, alluring charm.

Seeing her like this... the flushed skin, the parted lips, the body offering itself beneath his... and Rex, being a man of primal appetites and undeniable strength, felt a familiar, heated arousal stir within him.

The temptation was a tangible force, thick in the air between them. Yet, even a brute, as he sometimes saw himself in matters of sex, had his lines. To surrender to this, to take Little Red's form while another consciousness piloted it with mocking eyes, was a depth to which he would not sink.

With a grunt of effort that was more for his own resolve than any physical struggle, he pushed himself up and off her. He straightened his clothes as she looked at him.

Without another word, he strode from the room, leaving the entity known as Virus lying alone on the couch, her expression shifting from anticipation to one of profound and petulant disappointment.

For months, the Nexum Planet operated with a steady, humming rhythm. Rex buried himself in the ceaseless work of governance and expansion, his focus so absolute it felt like a force of nature.

The confrontations with Yssera and the entity wearing Little Red's face were locked away in a deep, unvisited chamber of his mind, their echoes fading with each passing cycle.

Yet, beneath the surface of this enforced calm, a profound current was gathering strength. It was a hum of anticipation that resonated not through the halls of power, but through the very core of his being.

The time had come. The whispers among the medical staff grew more urgent; the protective protocols around a certain, secluded wing of the villa tightened into an impenetrable shield.