Chapter 65: Nothing Beside Remains

A/N: Going to really try to finish this story before the end of 2022. It's already gone on much longer than I wanted for various reasons, but I'm aiming for a finish before the end of the year at the very least.

"

Endymion hurriedly flicked an entire row of switches on the far right side of the main console, being very deliberate with his fingers as he did so, as they were still shaking from the last couple minutas. Adrenaline was pumping through his body, the only reason why he didn't collapse into sleep right in his seat. But being constantly pulled between those two states, feeling as if he was being tugged into a slumber and then forcibly jolted out of it immediately, every few beats, was truly an awful state to be in. Were it not for The Bastion basically being able to fly itself, Endymion would almost certainly have crashed it.

The High King, although that title was currently very much in jeopardy, needed all of his restraint to keep himself from slapping his hands in frustration on the console, still in disbelief at how quickly his entire life had fallen apart. To even attempt to process the series of events that lead him here would require a mental balance that he was nowhere close to possessing at this moment. Of course, trying to figure a way out of this mess was only slightly less maddening, as it forced him to acknowledge the fact that he no longer had any allies or resources to lean on.

The good news was, he was safe for the moment. After breaching Earth's atmosphere and getting clear of the planet, he was fully confident that The Bastion would be able to outrun any agency vessel, and getting boxed in or surrounded in the open vastness of space was almost impossible. Good news was in short supply at the moment, and he was grateful for anything that didn't make him want to put a fist through the hull of his ship. But what good would that freedom do him, deprived of his status, his wealth, his allies, even his family?

Family. Right. He twisted his body around, suddenly aware of the screaming child behind him. He was so focused on trying to will his way out of trouble, that it was almost as if he was able to turn his ears off, tune himself out of the world around him. And then, he remembered, he was a father of a very distressed young girl. He stood up and left the cockpit, striding back into the primary chamber of his ship.

Chibiusa was laying on the floor, screaming her lungs out and crying up a storm, thrashing her arms and legs around in a clear tantrum. Endymion immediately felt a pang of guilt, leaving her unattended for several secundas, well aware it would have been trivial for her to hurt herself or get up to some sort of trouble. And, of course, the fact that she was so clearly upset and distraught, which made sense, given that her mother and father had just had a physical altercation right in front of her.

Suddenly remembering, Endymion looked down at his hand, the open gash and streaks of flowing blood a firm reminder of where Serenity had stabbed him. Somehow, he had completely forgotten about it, despite him presumably bleeding all over the place this whole time. He cast a quick look behind him, confirming that, yes, there was a definite trail of dripping blood behind him, and then he darted for the first aid kit on the wall behind him.

"I-I'll be there in one second, sweetie," he said, ripping the rectangular container open and snatching a roll of gauze from it. Hurriedly, he unrolled a long strip of it and wrapped it over his palm, covering the large wound and sopping up the blood. "It's okay, darling, everything's fine now." Somehow, he was able to get his voice down to soothing and gentle levels for the benefit of Chibiusa, a monumental task for him.

After quickly securing the binding around his palm, he went over to his daughter and scooped her up off the ground. But her tantrum had not abated in the slightest, even when her father lifted her up in the air and started gently rocking her. If anything, her distress was increased on Endymion grabbing her, and she was practically just screaming at the top of her lungs at this point.

"Uh…" he glanced around the ship's main chamber, suddenly quite aware of how unprepared he was to have Chibiusa on his own. "O-Okay, okay, you're…you're hungry, right?" He went over to the left-side wall, relieved that The Bastion had been stocked with some emergency supplies for a situation like this. "We'll get that taken care of! I can do that—"

Chibiusa started beating her tiny fist on his chest. Of course, nowhere near enough to actually hurt him, but enough to get him to suddenly stop in his tracks, hand reaching out for one of the cabinet drawers built into the side of the ship's main chamber.

"U-Uh…" Endymion stammered quietly, suddenly aware of how hard Chibiusa was fighting to break out of his arms, and how she hadn't spoken a coherent word since he had left the Earth Palace. At first, he had dismissed it as an extension of her tantrum and a product of general distress, but as he stood there, he could not deny the specific targeting, towards him. Slowly, Endymion bent down to the floor and set her down at his feet. As he watched her continue to burn herself out, with a fervor that was so unlike her, Endymion was forced to face a harsh reality.

Still crouched down over his daughter, he looked around the ship slowly, suddenly aware of how poorly planned out this all was, and realizing that he didn't even really have a long term plan in mind for taking her. The heightened emotions in his bedroom a couple minutas prior had choked off all rational thought in his brain, and the only thing he had been able to act on was the desire to preserve the one bit of family he still had left. But now, thousands of dolichos away from that…

"Okay," he whispered to himself, grimacing. Despite a desire to not let his frustrations boil over in front of her already distressed daughter, Endymion stood up and wheeled around in a single quick motion and punched the ship's hull, a bad idea given the injury he had already sustained to his hand. But right now, physical pain seemed trivial.

He slowly put his hands up towards his face, pressing both thumbs into the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes and trying to calm himself down. The gesture was laughably inadequate, given how bad things had become, but it was about all he could do.

"Okay," he muttered to himself yet again. Quickly coming to terms with his situation, he purposefully strode back to the cockpit. Leaning over the pilot's chair, he rapidly tapped the center console's main screen a few times, prompting The Bastion to come to a quick halt, then use lateral thrusters to start spinning back around, pointing to Earth.

"

"I don't know where he went, h-he…anywhere he'd go that I'd know about, he'd know to stay away f-from," Serenity said, her voice throaty and wobbly, tear tracks down both her cheeks. "I don't…I don't know."

"Miss, you need to think a little harder about this. It is vitally important that we catch Endymion now, every secunda that he's out there makes this exponentially harder for us."

Ever since Endymion's departure, the royal Earth bedroom had been a scene of pure chaos. A fleet of agency ships had immediately formed a perimeter around the palace, missing the fleeing High King by mere beats. Squads of highly trained agency soldiers entered the palace from every possible entrance, treating this with all the urgency and seriousness of a raid on a hostile imperium kingpin's home base, even though the royal guard was standing down and allowing the raid to happen. After getting to Queen Serenity, the hysterical royal had trouble communicating anything due to her extreme levels of distress. A couple agency negotiators were brought in and managed to talk her down a little bit, and Serenity quickly spilled it all.

High King Endymion was Tuxedo Mask. The raw imperium was found on the Moon. There was a cycles-long partnership with Cronus and his pharmaceutical company. The ship bomb that took out Cronus, the prison hits to protect his identity, the co-operation with Princess Venus, Princess Mercury, Seiya and his crew…and, oh yes, the money.

A galaxy-altering amount of money, more than sufficient for evidence of her wild claims. She had sent them to the retired dungeon in the Moon Palace, handing over the set of keys to permit access to the hidden fortune within. She told them about the countless safehouses littered across the planet, with more illicitly-gained money stashed away. She knew of a few, but Endymion's generals would know about the rest.

She had been placed in handcuffs after confessing all that. Nephrite, Zoisite, and Jadeite had been rounded up and brought to the master bedroom, handcuffed as well. Kunzite wasn't around, but he'd be found. The long list of corporations that had been used to gradually sneak the dirty money into the treasury were cataloged, the process of seizing them already underway. Every agency resource that could be tapped after the messy attack on board The Savery was put into service to begin making arrests.

It was over. The Tuxedo Mask Imperium Ring, after years of operation, multiple forms, and a streak of success that seemed improbable, was over. All that remained were the two primary participants, and whatever remained of the raw imperium, which Serenity claimed there was plenty of. Although her ability to be objective right now was rather questionable, given how hysterical she was.

"I…he took his ship, the…t-the…The Bastion, he's there, he h-has to be there!" she blubbered out.

The agency negotiator sighed. "That doesn't help us, you understand that?! Look, do you want your daughter back?! She's with him! You want your daughter back, you need to help us find your husband, it's that simple!" The agency negotiator was not, on the surface, an intimidating man, actually being rather small and thin. But he carried himself with a certain lethality that seemed to penetrate right through the mere physical, and was threatening in his own way. The fact that he felt perfectly comfortable speaking this way to someone who was, for the moment, still royalty, only added to his menace.

"The Bastion is the fastest ship in existence," another agency representative chimed in from behind Serenity. "The most untraceable Class B vessel that's ever been made. More maneuverable than all but the most advanced Class A ships. If he gets in the wind, we are not catching him. It's now, or never, Serenity."

"He's already in the wind," Nephrite grunted from across the room, sitting on the floor next to the bathing chamber's door, next to Jadeite and Zoisite. The trio was surrounded by a dozen agency guards, each bearing a large rifle. Jadeite had a bowl-shaped object on top of his head, glowing a faint pink, his eyes closed, kept in a state of forced partial slumber so his telekinetic powers could be suppressed.

"Shut up!" One of the guards standing by Nephrite's shoulder slammed the large Earth general's left shoulder with the butt of his rifle. Nephrite grunted, shifting slightly from the blow.

"I'm not happy about it," Nephrite grunted. "Believe me, I want you to catch him."

"Hey, you might want to think about coming up with something useful to say !" the agency negotiator snapped, pointing over towards Nephrite. "All of you are looking at a very, very long list of charges, helping us apprehend Endymion is going to go a long way towards you not spending the rest of your lives inside a cell."

"I-I-I know," Serenity said, slamming her little fists down on the table surface in front of her, handcuffs jangling about loudly on contact. "I know! And th-that's fine, that's fine, I just want my DAUGHTER BACK!"

A loud beeping came from a communicator on the negotiator's belt. He quickly ripped it off and lifted it up to his mouth, turning away from Serenity for a moment. "Yeah?"

"I'm looking right at it, and I still don't believe it."

"The money?" he asked.

"

"Oh, money isn't even the half of it."

Two dozen of the agency's finest had been sent to the secret dungeon hidden beneath the Moon Palace, given access to the hidden elevator. Despite Serenity's promises, there was a significant amount of doubt that her claims could possibly be true. It all sounded ridiculous, the idea of the High King of Earth stashing illicit money and assets in what effectively amounted to the basement of his secondary palace.

However, reality was sometimes stranger than fiction, and this was one of those times. The agency squad had unlocked and opened up the dozen massive steel doors, taking every possible precaution against potential traps or tricks, establishing as many contingency plans as they could on the fly. However, the contents of the dozen cells were as advertised. Cred bills, stacked to the ceiling, each and every chamber filled to capacity. Except for the ones near the back of the primary hub room. Those were just stuffed with gold, and precious jewels. Or so it seemed on initial inspection, at least. The agency's men could only see what was in front of them, of course, and the piles of riches were stacked so precariously there was a concern that even a slight disturbance might send the whole thing crashing down, burying any attempted inspectors. But there was no doubt it was an obscene amount of money.

"We've got gold, we've got diamonds, emeralds." Bracchus, the third-in-command of the expedition, held his communicator up towards his mouth, still ogling the pile of money in one of the cells. "I think I saw some pink diamonds too, you know how the ladies swoon over those."

"And in the amount that was implied?"

"Sure looks like it," Bracchus answered. "It'll take some time for us to be sure, we've gotta be delicate, but I think there's enough down here to start your own Kingdom if you wanted to." He slowly shook his head. "You know, I didn't believe it at first. Thought the Queen had lost her mind or something, but…I mean. What other reason would they have for hiding this much money?"

"

The lead negotiator sighed. "Get in touch with headquarters, w-whatever you need to start transporting everything down there, we need to move quickly. Get it to where Endymion can't touch it."

"I mean, I hear that, but…we're stretched really thin right now," he replied. "We're going to need to build some scaffolding to safely move this stuff, this'll be a project."

"I know, I know, but…start the process." He brought the communicator back down to his belt, turning back to Serenity, who hadn't moved from her seat. "Well, good news is you didn't lie about that."

"I-I'm not lying about any of it," Serenity said, voice still thick with emotion. She wiped at her cheeks frantically. "I'm not lying, I just…please! You have to get her back!"

The negotiator went up next to her, slowly crouching down so he was level with her. "Serenity. Your husband is in one of the fastest, hardest to detect spaceships ever built. Even if we could find him, which we won't, we'll never be able to catch him. The only way this works is if we know where he's going to be. You want your daughter back, you need to help us figure that out."

"There's nothing she can do."

The thirty or so people gathered in the room all turned towards the back corner, where Nephrite had again taken it upon himself to make himself heard, staring the head negotiator down with a flat look.

"Didn't we already make it clear we don't care to hear from you unless you're going to help?" he snarled back, the guard standing next to Nephrite again lifting up his rifle and aiming the stock towards the brunette Earth general.

"I am helping," Nephrite insisted, glaring up at the sentry, who momentarily held back from delivering his blow. "How many thousands of men, hundreds of vessels, are out there right now, searching for him? A waste, all of it. He's had more than enough time to make it out to the asteroid belt by now, if that's even the way he went."

"You think this is helping?" the negotiator interrupted. "This is your idea of helping?"

"You still don't get it," Nephrite said derisively. "This man you're chasing, he operated under your nose for close to a decade. All your money, your resources, your manpower, and one of the most public figures in galactic history was the one you were chasing the whole time. He pushed things as far as he could push them, almost as if he was testing you. And you didn't even come close to him. You're just…you're just people. Men. He's something beyond your comprehension."

"Alright, that's enough from you," the guard standing by Nephrite's shoulder snapped, face wrinkling in annoyance.

"The only way you get him, is if he wants you to get him," Nephrite continued, unfazed by how clearly unwelcome his input was. The guard lifted his rifle up again, and was only stopped from slamming it into Nephrite's shoulder by a demure ringing sound.

Instinctively, everyone in the room made a subtle twitching move towards their waists, recognizing the tone as being a common communicator hail. In the next instant, everyone made a quick sweep of the room, searching for the source of the tone. Quickly, it became evident that it was coming from the bedside table, over near the top left pillow. And everyone in the room, agency employee and Earth royal house member alike, knew the implication.

The negotiator immediately pointed his finger over towards the bedside table, snapping his fingers as he looked at Serenity. "That's yours?"

Serenity, quickly wiping some more tears away, nodded in the affirmative as the guard closest to the bed quickly went to scoop the device up. "Y-yeah, t-that's mine!"

"Be quick, tell me who it is," he ordered as the sentry dashed up to the desk that Serenity was seated at and set it down next to her. She immediately tapped a small blue button on the outer rim of the disc, getting a frequency number to pop up as a hologram right above it. A series of random numbers and letters. "Who?"

"I-It has to be him," Serenity answered immediately. "I don't recognize the f-frequency, but…only a few people in the galaxy know mine." She paled even further, an additional layer of dread dawning on her as she processed the fact that it could only be Endymion calling, and in a few moments she would be speaking to him.

"Perfect." He reached inside his coat pocket and withdrew a small plug connected to a wire. "Serenity, this is extremely important." He picked the ringing disc up and plugged the small device he had just produced into the side. "We're going to trace and record the call. You pretend we're not here, and you keep him talking as long as you can."

With a shiver that ran through her entire body as the young Queen steeled herself, Serenity nodded. At the same time, she looked nauseated, the immense pressure of this situation that had been thrust onto her with just a couple beats of notice weighing heavily on her. The agency negotiator plugged a black bulb into the other end of the wire.

"This might be the only chance you have to get your daughter back, make good use of it," he commanded, not at all helping with the pressure.

"

It was truly awful to even think about things like this. Even someone like Endymion knew that. But in a twisted way, it was something of a relief that the agency was currently undermanned and scrambling thanks to the prison riot. It meant they would leave openings and make mistakes they otherwise never would. With so many things happening at once, of course they couldn't keep every possible scenario in mind. It just wasn't reasonable to expect that the most wanted man in galactic history, having just escaped Earth by the skin of his teeth, would do anything other than try to put as much distance between himself and Earth as possible. Surely he wouldn't even consider stopping until he got to Jupiter. And he certainly wouldn't do something like, say, turn around and go back to Earth.

So, when Endymion had done just that, there was no planetwide blockade to maneuver through. He simply took a slightly wider path than the one he had taken to leave, swooping around the planet, entering the atmosphere from the opposite side and finding a spot to land near a forest on the eastern hemisphere. A sparsely populated area, with a few large land plots a dolicho or two to the south. There was a thick collection of trees in front of him, each massive trunk reaching up hundreds of paces into the sky, making it impossible to see more than a dozen or so paces into the thicket after landing.

Endymion stood just a couple paces away from the open entry ramp to The Bastion, the engine of which was idling, generating a barely detectable hum. Chibiusa, who had tired herself out and collapsed into a slumber following her tantrum, was tightly secured inside a white baby carrier, decorated on the sides to resemble a half-moon, which was laying at Endymion's feet. Anxiously, listening to the ringing tones in his ear from the fresh communicator he had grabbed from The Bastion's emergency supplies, Endymion kept glancing down at her.

He reached up to the bridge of his nose with his left hand, pinching it, trying to do something, anything, to quell the urge to vomit within his stomach, as he thought about what he was about to do. That things had gone so badly, that this was genuinely the best solution he could come with, was agonizing to consider. Part of him hoped the call wouldn't be answered, that perhaps Serenity had already been whisked away to The Savery and her communicator had either been left behind or taken as evidence.

That conflicted hope was quickly dashed. The call was connected, and he immediately recognized the voice.

"Endymion. Where is she?"

Endymion sighed, glancing behind him, looking down a wide dirt road, aware that it was possible, however unlikely, that someone could randomly appear and see him, which would certainly derail his plan.

"Endymion, where's Chibiusa?"

"Where are you?" Endymion asked. "Is the agency there with you?"

"

Serenity purposefully glanced up at the negotiator, hovering right by her shoulder, and twisted herself around slightly to scan over the dozens of agency soldiers behind her, as if to remind herself that, yes, the agency was present. Why Endymion felt the need to even ask was rather bizarre to her, but she had her orders and was not going to disobey them.

"N-No agency, I'm alone," Serenity stammered, trying to hide her full awareness that if Endymion had even five percent of his mental faculties working right now, he would know she was lying. Pinching away more tears from the bridge of her nose, she plowed on. "Endymion—"

"I told you what would happen," Endymion snarled, his malice and rage clear even through the communicator. "You think you can threaten to turn me in and just get away with it?! You think you can cross me without consequences?!"

Serenity bowed her head down. Behind her, three agency employees were hard at work, holding their own individual tablets, tapping through screens with practiced fingers, trying to push through the encryption and find the point of origin of Endymion's call.

"Just…you…I want my daughter back," Serenity said through gritted teeth, putting her hands up on top of her head, feeling utterly hopeless, knowing that Endymion surely knew he had a very limited window of time before he had to end the call, or had set up some sort of contingency so a trace wouldn't even work. "I—"

"For years, I've had to deal with your shit!" Endymion continued. "Practically every damn day, you, buzzing away in my ear, telling me I had to stop! You, my generals, all of you, you're all the same! Always lecturing me, always telling me I had to stop, no ambition, not a drop of it between all of you!"

Serenity, starting to break out into more sobs, was able to just barely make out a whispered phrase coming from the analysts behind her. "Inner system." She was too distraught to read anything into it, focused on Endymion berating her.

"I built the greatest imperium empire the galaxy has ever seen, I built it all from nothing, and what do I get from you?! Nagging, nagging, endless nagging! But I didn't think you were stupid enough to actually try this!"

"P-Please, just—" Serenity tried, face practically collapsed onto the desk now, tears flowing down her face.

"Weighing me down, holding me back, an anchor around my neck! Just like your pathetic, worthless Kingdom I bailed out! The Moon wasn't worth pocket change when I saved your ass, and when I try to change that, when I try to make you more than just some parasite on my back, I have to drag you kicking and screaming the whole way! Never a drop of gratitude! How many times did I tell you, if you didn't keep your mouth shut and obey me, you'd regret it?!"

Serenity eyes suddenly widened fractionally, and her face went taut as she listened. It was a good thing her head was bowed and she was leaning over, so that nobody could see her expression. It was as if her brain was running behind, not actually processing the specific things Endymion was saying until several beats after he said them. But now that she was actually getting a chance to catch up on his precise words, realization was starting to set in on her.

She gave a brief glance to her left, without moving her head, at the agency negotiator, but his attention was currently behind her, looking over at the trio of analysts. Stifling her sobs, she was able to make out a gently-hissed word from one of them.

"Earth."

And then, Endymion was back at it.

"You don't know a thing about what I've done to try to support you! What I've built, what I've done, you can't even comprehend it, you stupid bitch! All you had to do was keep quiet, and everything would have been fine! Gods, all the times I told you that I'd take Chibiusa if you didn't toe the line, did you think I was bluffing?!"

"Please, I'm sorry," Serenity said, picking her head back up and staring at the communicator. "You're right, I'm sorry, Endymion. Please, just bring her back, o-okay?!" The pieces fell into place for the young royal, and without rehearsal, she knew the part she had to play. "I'm sorry, I should have believed you, just…please, don't take my daughter away from me!"

"

Endymion was practically biting his left index finger off between sentences, some combination of an anxious tick and a desire to punish himself for what he was doing. Tears were flowing down his face, which he had long since given up trying to suppress.

"My…my father crossed me too," he snarled into his communicator, wiping his face on his sleeve so he could glance behind him again, re-asserting the fact that he was still alone. "My father crossed me, and look what happened to him. You consider yourself lucky you're not where he is right now, and think about that next time you think I'm not willing to follow through." He nervously chewed on his knuckle again, glancing at the timer on his communicator again before his vision became distorted by more tears. "You didn't have a thing to do with anything I've done, you have no right to judge any of it!"

"Endymion, just…please, come back home," Serenity said. Endymion squeezed the disc in his hand tightly as she said this, at the very least taking some scrap of solace in the fact that she understood him, and was seemingly going along with it. "Just come back home."

Slowly, the newly-deposed High King looked up towards the sky. He had done his best to plan everything out, but this was such an imprecise plan he had constructed, and he was well aware it was trivially easy for him to have miscalculated in a way that was about to get him caught. Every beat that he stood here meant he was cutting things all the closer, but the closer he cut it, the more real it would look.

"I'm not done," he growled into the disc.

"

"We've got him."

Serenity heard the whispered phrase from behind her, just a beat before she heard the loud crunching noise from the communicator, followed immediately by the dull tone indicating a dead connection. The moment it was clear that the line was closed, the room erupted into a frenzy.

"What the HELL is he doing on Earth?!" the lead negotiator cried, reaching for the communicator on his belt. "How is he on Earth?!"

"Eastern hemisphere, we've got his location within a half-dolicho," the taller of the three analysts said quickly. "We've already sent the results up the chain of command, they're mobilizing ships to form a blockade over there so he can't leave."

"God DAMMIT!" The negotiator yelled. "Why isn't this whole planet already blockaded?!" He lifted the communicator to his mouth, preparing to yell into it.

"Everyone already knows, sir, there's nothing further to say," the agency analyst said quickly. "We had our ships focused around the asteroid belt, it made all the sense in the world to believe he was headed there. Him coming back to Earth was never a reasonable thought, and we have limited resources."

The negotiator growled, but quickly put the communicator back on his belt. "This is our chance to get him, don't waste it!" he said to no one in particular.

Serenity just sat there meekly, keeping quiet, staring straight ahead, with the occasional glance down to her handcuffed hands. She kept making nervous little fists with her hands, the only movement she felt comfortable making right now.

"Hey."

She twisted her head over to her left, looking up at the agency negotiator, who was now staring down at her, looking just a little more calm, at least content with the knowledge that everything that could be done right now was being done.

"He, uh...he said all that?" he asked.

Serenity, fortunately, still looked convincingly distraught. She stared up at him blankly, still very cautious about potentially letting something slip. She gave the slightest of nods before averting her gaze. "Y-yeah. I…after Kasios, I just…I couldn't take it anymore."

"I see," he sighed, nodding, slowly slipping his hands into his pockets, looking down at his feet for a moment. Finally, he nodded, then looked over at a nearby agency soldier while pointing at Serenity. "Um, I…I think we can get those cuffs off, huh?"

A few paces later, a large, uniformed and armored man was leaning over Serenity, reaching towards her cuffed hands.

"We'll, uh…we'll do everything we can to get her back," the negotiator said, sounding now just a little bit timid. "We won't waste this opportunity."

"

Endymion was so hurried, he had forgotten to even terminate his call with Serenity before dropping the communicator to the grass beneath him. Not that it particularly mattered after he stomped it under his right foot, crunching it up into an asymmetrical shape and exposing the collection of wires within. Content to leave it there to be discovered, Endymion bent down over his sleeping daughter.

Again shoving away a deluge of tears on his face, he lightly kissed the tip of his right index and middle finger, then gently pressed those two fingers onto Chibiusa's forehead. She did not stir, a desired result for Endymion, and the moment he was sure that she remained asleep he sprinted forward, back into his ship.

Crossing the distance to the ship's cockpit in record time, Endymion violently threw himself into the pilot's chair and slammed his right thumb down on one of the primary large red buttons along the top of the control panel. The ship immediately went into a pre-programmed routine, lifting up off the ground and pointing up towards the sky. In a matter of beats, The Bastion was rocketing straight up, away from Earth, reaching near record-breaking speeds for a non-prototype vessel in Earth's atmosphere. Knowing there was nothing further he could do, Endymion simply gripped the armrests of his chair tightly, a grim look on his face, occasionally glancing at a rear camera viewport to his right to observe how quickly he was building distance away from where he had made his call to Serenity.

Every beat that ticked by made it more and more likely he had managed it. He kept waiting and waiting for the other shoe to drop. An alarm signaling a tractor beam, maybe weapon lock, even a radar blip indicating he had at least been seen and was now being followed. But, his ship broke the atmosphere, and there was still nothing except his own breathing and the soft hum of the ship's engine to be heard. Afraid to even take the half-beat he would need to see if there was a squadron of agency ships assembling right behind him, Endymion immediately engaged a jump, The Bastion quickly calculating a safe route before launching itself out towards the asteroid belt at speeds practically no other ships in the galaxy could dream of matching.

"

Serenity fought with everything she had to hold onto the fear, anger, and despair that she genuinely had a handful of secundas ago. She knew she would need it, one more time. And if she lost it, she was afraid it would be gone forever. She was no actress, no performer. The emotions that she had, she wore on her sleeve.

But it wasn't easy to pretend to be scared. After being released from her handcuffs, Serenity had gone to sit on the foot of her bed instead. To her relief, nobody moved to stop her, or ordered her to get back in the chair she had been placed in originally, emphasizing that she had regained some modicum of freedom and was no longer being perceived as a prisoner. Not having the agency negotiator breathing down her neck, questioning her, demanding information she did not have, also went a long way in calming her down. But more importantly, she already knew what the agency was going to find when they went to wherever Endymion had called from.

Not him, of course. Never him. She wasn't nearly delusional enough to believe that Endymion would have anything less than a perfect, foolproof plan to just barely evade capture, or have the Gods of luck concoct the exact scenario he needed to make it out against all odds. But they would find her daughter. Chibiusa would be there, safe and sound. Or, at least, that was the scenario that she convinced herself had to be true, just so she wouldn't lose her mind. But, for the moment at least, she believed it wholeheartedly. In a minuta or two, she'd have her daughter back, and Endymion would be barreling towards the outer planets, lacking the resources to ever get to her or hurt her again. And that was a very calming thought.

But, as of this moment, she wasn't supposed to know any of that. Therein lay the problem.

"If we got him, we would have heard about it by now," one of the agency soldiers muttered, pacing around by the bathing chamber door. "He got away."

"Of course he did," Nephrite muttered, still sitting on the floor in cuffs next to Jadeite and Zoisite.

"Haven't we told you to shut up?!" the soldier spat.

The room fell into an uncomfortable silence yet again, people milling about, shifting their weight from one foot to the other, pacing, trying to find something more than nothing to do. The head negotiator had left the room momentarily, leaving no one to drive any sort of conversation or discussion. Serenity had nothing but her thoughts, and those were nothing but wild assumptions and guesses on what might happen to her now.

Finally, the bedroom door swung open, and the agency negotiator entered. Immediately, he turned towards Serenity and advanced on her. Serenity was initially concerned that she was in trouble again.

"We got her," he said, sounding hurried and stressed, but not angry or threatening. "Chibiusa's okay, we have her."

Serenity heaved out a strangled exhale, burying her face into her hands, figuring it was the best way to sell extreme relief. "Oh Gods!" she choked out. "Oh, thank the Gods!"

"She's on her way," he continued. "We'll have her here in a couple minutas. They told me she's asleep, so she's not…distressed right now."

She nodded through her hands, feeling like her best move was to continue to hide her face.

"Um…Serenity, uh…once she's back, and…please understand what this is. What you've been through is awful, and believe me, we know that. But, when Chibiusa's back and safe, um, well, we're going to need your help."

"H-Help?" Serenity repeated. "I, uh…of course, but, E-Endymion's the one who—"

"We didn't get Endymion," he replied. "He got away."

Serenity did her best to act shocked, looking up and widening her eyes. "T-Then…how did—"

"He left her behind, got away in his ship," he explained. "Might be halfway to Jupiter by now." He shrugged. "Probably figured that having a toddler around while he's on the run doesn't make any sense. Maybe he decided that you got the point. Who knows?" He sighed, putting his hands on his hips. "Serenity, it's extremely important that we catch him. And we're not working with much at this point. I know you've been through a lot, but this isn't going to end until he's in our custody."

"I-I've t-told you everything I know," Serenity said softly, tapping her fingertips on her knees absent-mindedly.

"Right," the negotiator answered. "Be that as it may, Serenity…we have to catch him. So, the sooner we get you up on The Savery to help piece everything together, the sooner we can have an actual chance at this."

She nodded. "S-Sure. Of course. Anything I can do."

He smiled, although it was a tight and grim one. "Yeah."

"

Endymion stared straight forward, out the front viewport of The Bastion, as the Class B ship zipped through space just beyond the outer reaches of the asteroid belt. He was now far beyond having to be concerned about being caught, with so many millions of dolichos between him and where he had started running. At this point, it would take an astronomical fluke for him to get caught. He'd have to run into a ship with either the firepower or technology to actually detain him, and the odds of running into any ship out here in the deep reaches of space was tiny.

But now that he had gotten away, he was forced to think about his next move, which he was finding to be worse than being afraid of getting caught. He didn't even know where to begin, and there was no longer anyone he could turn to for suggestions or advice. Part of him wondered why he even was running, other than some reflexive desire to not let the agency get the last laugh on him. And then, he remembered Beryl, somewhere out there still, his father's blood on her hands. Then he'd think about how woefully unprepared he was to go against her, and…

No, it was better to just stare straight forward into the void of space, for now. No critical thinking, just quiet, peaceful staring into nothingness. Every now and then, he'd do a mental inventory of the things that he still had, what he could work with.

The emergency supplies of The Bastion, a few sackfuls of creds, a plasma pistol and rifle, a few crates of hyper-pure, refined imperium, the ship itself.

His freedom.

His mind.

It wasn't a particularly long list.

And before Endymion could frustrate himself by thinking about that fact, he'd go right back to staring out into space vacantly, wondering if perhaps it might produce a solution.