January 13, 2020

7:15 AM CST (13:15 UTC)

The old world as King Gene Empire of the Plutonian Empire used to know it is now over. It is just after Noon for the Empire's rejected timezone. Gene was up all night. He experienced the full range of emotons, from complete despair, to euphoria at being able to kill a larger number of nukes than anticipated, sparing several regions when the Empire's three enlisted Dragon Wraiths were dispatched to find and kill as many nuclear birds as possible anywhere around the world.

One thing that had been on Gene's mind, obviously, was his family. Nucleina, who was on Belle Hades during the incident, knocked on Gene's office door.

"Come in." Gene rather un-enthusiastically spoke. Nucleina entered. She was holding a device, what seemed to be a smartphone.

"What's up?"

Nucleina simply approached Gene and handed him the device. It was displaying a received email...

Please tell our son that we are okay. But we grieve the loss of half of our daughters, who were not able to get out of the Twin Cities in time. Neither were several of our relatives across the country.

Gene was overcome with a hybrid of joy and despair. He had seven sisters. An uneven number, Gene wasn't sure if three of his sisters survived or four. Plus he knew which relatives his parents were referring to.

"I'm sorry." Nucleina whispered. Gene got up and they hugged as he weeped for the loss of half his family, but grateful tears of joy for the survival of the rest.

As the day wore on, social media was eerily quiet. As the Plutonian Empire was now the host of all of the major social media, thanks to the original hosts being vaporized, it was supported only by the magic spells in the Empire being used to keep as much of the internet the world over alive as possible. In places that still had power, people were still able to access the internet. By sundown, it had finally emerged that the apocalypse could have been much worse if it were not for the the valiant efforts of the Plutonian Empire, news which spread like wildfire.

The following several days, surviving governments around the world began initiating formal relations with the Plutonian Empire. With countless harvested vehicles, the government had no problem building up a more corporeal military, as well as building up the airliner fleets for the two government-owned airlines, RingJet and Plutonian.