Just as with the first evacuation, Haruto used Unit I to intimidate the emissaries off the module. They were down to just a few dozen students now, but that suited their needs just fine. With everything in place, L-elf started a broadcast to give an announcement not just to the students but to the rest of the world. Haruto stood by his side.

They agreed on this step as a means to reach their final goal. And so on the WIRED, everyone was watching their screens.

"We have moved on from the idea of a module as part of a larger state", L-elf started. "As of seven pm, local time, Module 77 will have seceded from JIOR."

"It is not our intention to create a new nation", Haruto said. "But instead, our module will will float in space as a vessel on its own in a sea of immunity."

Yamada blew out a long whistle as he watched the announcement. "So we're gonna be a bunch of space pirates? That's badass."

"It's more complex than that", Inuzuka said, watching alongside him. But either way, they would be independent from both JIOR and from Dorssia. Neither side could claim that the other was moving in on their territory. And they'd be able to make their own decisions without an overseeing governing body. And Inuzuka had no doubt that L-elf had predicted just how the other nations would react.

But that was for their head strategist to figure out. Right now, the other pilots had a job to do which was to separate their module from the rest of the Dyson sphere. The work itself wasn't all that glamorous, but it was the sort of thing that would get put in the history books one day - how a bunch of students took matters into their own hands and created a place for themselves to be free.

When they were off the sphere and floating away, the students began to celebrate their newfound freedom (for the second time, the first being their initial victory against the Dorssians when there were no adults around).

At the moment, they weren't floating aimlessly though. The plan for now was to get to the moon, which was truly neutral territory. But something had begun to happen in the interim. It was something that neither Haruto nor L-elf noticed until it had already taken hold of the students.

"You lot! Stop messing around so much!", Haruto scolded the underclassmen who had been tasked with washing the valvraves. But currently they were in the middle of a hose fight.

"You got it dad!", one of them saluted.

"...Dad?"

Haruto ended up asking Inuzuka about it and he simply grinned before taking out his phone. "You should really be paying more attention to your social media presence", he said. "Since you and L-elf took over, people have been thinking of you as parents."

Inuzuka opened his phone up to a feed that had a whole bunch of memes created by Sakimori students and being shared with people off the module as well. There was a picture that had Haruto and L-elf eating on far ends of a lunch table with the caption 'when mom and dad are fighting'. Haruto remembered that day. He and L-elf had been in a disagreement about something.

There was another that showed Haruto feeding L-elf one of Shouko's creations, a shrimp cracker smeared with cream cheese. This caption read 'hope to have what they have when I've been married for 20 years'.

Haruto couldn't help but blush as he scrolled through more and more of them. Half were simply taken out of context, but the other half showed him and L-elf being really close. Haruto figured they were at a point where they could call each other friends now, but he had never really considered being more than that. L-elf was in love with Lieselotte.

And Haruto still had feelings for Shouko. Didn't he?