Chapter 06: The Allegory of the Cave

Dozens of generations ago, when it actually became technologically possible to mine minerals off of asteroids, it quickly became evident that control of the galaxy for the foreseeable future would be partially determined by who had access to the lucrative treasures within the asteroid belt. Mars and Jupiter argued valiantly that, as they were the two planets closest to the belt, it should belong to them, but ultimately failed to convince anyone else. Rather than fight a massive, multi-way war over control of the valuable region that would likely result in the long-term end of galactic diplomacy and trillions of deaths, the Kingdoms of the solar system begrudgingly decided to share.

Nowadays, mining shuttles bearing the flag of every planet in the galaxy could be found buzzing about from rock to rock, looking for precious commodities to grab. Even after hundreds and hundreds of years, there were still resources to find, and surprisingly there had been relatively little friction between Kingdoms over who had the rights to what. For the time being, there was enough to go around.

A massive circumstellar disc made up of countless assorted asteroids, forever orbiting the sun, ranging from small boulders that you could easily find in an Earth forest, to some big enough to be classified by scientists as a minor planet, the belt was truly fascinating. Although many of the space rocks within were worthless and uninteresting, if you searched long enough you could eventually find just about anything. Of course, for as valuable as it was, it was also quite dangerous, with so many haphazard pieces of space rock flying about, so if you wanted to pass through it without taking a large amount of risk, you either took the long way around, or you jumped through it.

Although A-class cruisers couldn't yet manage the jump, and most B-class ones couldn't either, the Notre-model had been marketed as a rare small transport that could do it. As it turned out, such capabilities weren't in high demand, and there wasn't much interest in the otherwise-unremarkable class of starship. However, for a particular Prince and his most loyal guardian, it was just perfect.

Coming out of its jump about ten million dolichos past the outer edges of the belt, still a good twenty or twenty-five million dolichos short of Jupiter's orbit, the salvaged ship was now just resting in a holding pattern, subject entirely to orbital forces. In the highly, highly unlikely event that someone came across it, it would seem abandoned. Why would a ship like this be in a location like that, after all?

"Alright," Kunzite muttered as he pulled a metal rod from a hole on the main driver's console of the ship, looking around the displays in front of him. "As long as nobody happens to see our jump residue and gets...unreasonably suspicious, I can't imagine being found here."

Endymion was studying the sheet of paper Kunzite had placed on one of the metal tables, squinting down at the finely curated writings of his general.

"And even in that case, before long, we'll have orbited so far away from our jump exit that they'll still be unlikely to find us," Kunzite added.

"Alright, let's get started," Endymion said, clapping his hands together as he set the formula instructions down.

"Wait. Before we start, how are you doing?" Kunzite asked, not yet moving from the front of the ship, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Um...good, fine, um...what do you mean?" Endymion asked.

"Your Highness, I need you to be open with me. You can't be open with anyone else, not on this matter," Kunzite insisted. "You have to—"

"Oh," Endymion interrupted. "That." With a dismissive glance at Kunzite, he shrugged. "Look, buddy, I don't know how many ways I can say it, we've had this discussion over and over, I'm fine."

"Endymion, I mean it," Kunzite said warningly. "You killed a man. Executed him when he was helpless. I know you, you are not the type to shrug that off, and if you're unwilling to work through it with me then it will get worse."

"I don't know what you want from me," Endymion insisted. "Look, I'm...I'm sorry, you're right, I should have let you do it, but...I mean, it was justice."

Kunzite walked up to him rapidly. "Yes, but that doesn't change the fact that—"

Endymion put his hand out towards his guardian. "Okay, Kunzite, I'm giving you an order, drop this," he said emphatically. "We had this conversation back in the moon mines, we've had it at least five times in the palace since we got back, and now we're having it again, and we're not getting anywhere with it. I'm perfectly fine, I...he had to go." He turned to look at the sacks in the corner. "Besides...who was he?"

Kunzite blinked over at his charge for a moment. "...a miner?"

"A miner, one of...one of millions upon millions of miners in this galaxy," Endymion continued. "Trillions of people in this solar system living a life of more value and note than him. Wife and kids...most men have those," he reasoned. "What's a man without a wife and children? What's notable about that?" He shook his head. "I sit here, trying to...secure the future of my Kingdom, twist the balance of power in the galaxy for centuries, and I should be...curling up into a ball and crying because I killed one miner?"

Kunzite slowly approached Endymion, eyes trained on him, boots clanking lightly on the metal floor.

"What I do here, these actions that I take, the decisions I make with regard to that Imperium vein...those are the things that matter." Endymion bit his lower lip. "Not...not depriving the galaxy of one middle-aged miner."

Kunzite sat down next to Endymion, eyes not dropping from conducting a very close examination of him. Endymion finally flinched a bit under the unceasing stare, twitching his head a bit towards his guardian before turning to look at him.

"L-look, Kunzite, do you not believe me?" Endymion asked, sounding slightly agitated. "Is that what this is, you just don't believe me?"

"Actually, Your Highness...I think I do believe you," Kunzite said after a brief moment, a look of confusion on his face.

"Okay, so, can we get started?" Endymion asked.

Kunzite nodded, shaking his slight haze of bewilderment off and turning his focus to his job. "Alright, go get the block of Grenyx, we need to turn it into a powder," he said, standing up and finally breaking his gaze with his charge. "I'll prepare the space."

"

Zoisite had his right hand up against his face, covering his mouth and nose, eyes flicking back and forth like a metronome between the document on the desk in front of him and Princess Mercury.

Despite Mercury's upbringing of tremendous wealth and luxury, Zoisite had to give her credit. She knew how to be very persuasive, using politeness and appealing to emotion all at the same time. Zoisite very much doubted Mercury ever had to beg for anything in her life, with everything she could ever want being a snap of her fingers away, but she seemed to have a gift for it. Her wide-eyed, semi-panicked, slightly-sad expression had a way of pulling on his heartstrings, almost enough to convince him to make an otherwise undesirable decision.

But then, no.

"It doesn't make any sense for us," Zoisite said reluctantly, dropping his right hand down to the desk and letting it rest there.

"I'm not saying it does," Mercury countered patiently, tapping her left index finger on the document before Zoisite. "But that doesn't mean it can't be accepted."

"Yes, it does," Zoisite replied, picking up a small pen from the desk and lifting it to his mouth. "Mercury, we're already allowing the Moon to keep possession of...of the Moon Chalice, the Holy Grail, the Crystal Carillon, all those things will remain within the Moon Palace, now and forever. Even though, were it not for this union, the Moon would probably be auctioning those things off to the highest bidder inside of five years."

Mercury nodded. "Yes, and the Earth, and by extension you, have been very, very generous in doing so. You could have demanded the Moon hand those things over, and you didn't. That was a very kind gesture." She tapped the document. "I'm merely asking you make another kind gesture."

Zoisite rubbed at his right temple. "Your Highness—"

"Mercury," the Princess interrupted. "Please, just...just Mercury. I insist."

"...Mercury, that vault...there's no historical significance to the items inside there," Zoisite said. "There's nothing holding them to the Moon specifically. There's no particular reason why they should be kept on the Moon."

"But there's no reason why they should be taken to Earth," Mercury said. "Please, they'll be perfectly safe and secure in the Moon Palace vaults, if you wish to inspect the security there I invite the Earth to do so as many times as they wish, the Queen will gladly allow that."

"I'm not concerned about security, I…" Zoisite faltered for a moment, trying to find some way to express his thoughts eloquently. "Mercury, we...the Earth, needs some trophies from this."

Mercury clapped her little hands together in front of her. "There! You say it, you just said it! What is that collection of jewelry but a trophy? Symbolic! Hardly significant in the grand scheme, not worth a dispute over! Just...let it stay where it is. The Moon will be a territory of Earth now, anyway, the difference is trivial!"

Zoisite sighed. "Mercury, King...King Kasios's generosity does have a ceiling." He dropped the pen back to the desk. "The Earth has already agreed to...revamp the entire education system of the Moon, take on massive infrastructure updates, improve tourism, the list goes on. Expensive, time-consuming, difficult tasks that the Earth takes on, with...frankly, limited return on investment." He leaned forward towards Mercury, sitting on the right side of the desk. "Now, King Kasios has agreed to take these things on, but he knows exactly what they are. Burdens." He pointed up toward the ceiling. "You and I both know that the Moon mines will never produce significant resources again, there's nothing left up there. He's not doing this as an investment."

Mercury nodded. "Yes, but—"

"P-Please, let me finish," Zoisite asked. "So, King Kasios needs…" he grimaced, glancing about Mercury's bedroom. "...He needs submission. He needs tokens of supplication. He needs the Moon to...to bend the knee. And something like the contents of that vault, that's how the Moon can show respect and gratitude to him. He needs enough of those things, so that, when this merger is over, he has enough evidence to point to that says 'The Moon has submitted itself to me. I saved the Moon, I bailed them out, and they handed over their riches and valuables and marked themselves as belonging to me'." Zoisite shrugged. "If we agree to this, then...then you get King Kasios starting to ask...why should I accept this merger?"

Mercury looked down somewhat sadly, thinking for a moment.

"I'm sorry," Zoisite said. "King Kasios is...well, he's human. He needs to get something out of this."

"Zoisite," Mercury began. "The Serenities could have gotten any one of their government bean counters to...to handle this merger. It would have been normal to do that, even, expected. But they got me, because they think of me the smartest individual in the solar system, and they believed that if anyone could secure a favorable union, it would be me. If anyone could squeeze out a little extra give in this arrangement, it'd be me. So, Princess Serenity, my good friend, has trusted me with this task, under the assumption that I'd be able to find these little concessions and edges that nobody else could. Trusting me with that." The Princess swallowed down hard. "If I go to her with...with a merger agreement that's...no different than what a generic official in the Royal Court of the Moon could have put together, then...I've betrayed her trust."

Zoisite nodded, mentally pulling himself between two strong points of force.

"And, well...simply put, Zoisite...you're too smart," Mercury conceded. "You know everything about the Earth, about the Moon, I haven't been able to get anything past you, and I doubt I'll be able to, you...you're aware of everything." Mercury grimaced. "So, I'm...I'm asking you. Just give me a few things, give me something to report back to the Serenities." She pressed her hands up to her chest. "Don't make me look like a fool. Please."

Zoisite sighed. "Mercury. I have my own superiors to report back to," he pointed out. "The King trusted me with this under the belief that I'd secure the best deal possible for the Earth, something...fair and sensible given the many concessions we've already made. I have to justify everything I do to him, and...well, knowingly deceiving the King of Earth isn't something I'm willing to do."

"B-but, you could," Mercury said. "You're certainly capable of disguising...minor concessions and little white lies within a merger as large and complex as this one, aren't you?" Mercury rapped her fingertips on the desk surface a few times. "This is going to be a massive, massive collection of documents when we're done, surely King Kasios won't be going over every inch of it. That's what you're for!"

Zoisite gave a little non-committing shrug. "Perhaps. But it wouldn't sit well with me."

"O-okay," Mercury continued. "Which master do you serve?"

Zoisite squinted, spinning his head over to meet Mercury's gaze. "Hm?"

"N-not...not for this particular task, not who asked you to negotiate this union, but...who is your master? Who have you devoted your life to obeying, protecting, following?" Mercury prodded, voice suddenly picking up in energy slightly.

"Prince Endymion," Zoisite replied matter-of-factly.

"Yes!" Mercury enthused. "And, ask yourself this, what does Prince Endymion value more? Does he care more about...if the Earth were to come into possession of some trinkets, or if the woman that he loves is...is happy, because the Kingdom that was her birthright got a little bit of a break when they practically had to beg for a bailout? If he were here, giving his opinion, what do you think he would want? He's the one you answer to, not King Kasios!"

Zoisite stared down at a spot on the desk for a few moments. "Okay, perhaps, but...how far does it run?" he asked. "You've already pressed me on...mining yield percentages and water imports, now this, what's next?"

"Okay, okay," Mercury said. "I...if you give me some wiggle room on this, just...just a few things that I can give to the Serenities with pride, some things to make them feel good about themselves…" she gestured over at Zoisite. "Then, I'll owe you. I will owe you."

Zoisite blinked over at Mercury for several seconds. "Owe me what?"

Ami shrugged. "I don't know, but...I'll owe you. Whatever that might mean one day, whatever it results in...I owe you." She leaned in close to Zoisite, ducking her head down slightly towards the desk surface. "Come on, look around you, look at our history, which I know you're familiar with, we pay our debts! You think I'm just going to...say something like that and then just forget it?"

Zoisite picked the pen back up and brought it up to his mouth, putting the tip in between his lips and nibbling on it.

"Zoisite. The Serenities need a break. Trust me, it's humiliating for them, agreeing to this. Regardless of the fact that she loves Endymion, this is a crushing blow to the Royal Family of the Moon to have to agree to this! She...she could use a little break."

Zoisite rolled his eyes, bringing the pen back down to the desk surface with a dull little clank. "Alright, I...the Moon keeps that vault."

Mercury beamed over at the general of Earth, bringing her right hand up and resting it on his left shoulder. Zoisite froze at the physical contact, glancing over at the Princess with a curious look. Not to be deterred, Mercury leaned in towards Zoisite's ear.

"Akila," she whispered.

Zoisite flinched upward, thinking about the single word for a moment, before continuing to give a confused look.

"Akila," Mercury repeated. "That's my given name. Akila." She nodded.

Zoisite was taken aback slightly. "That...Princess, a royal's given name isn't to be revealed to anyone outside the royal family until after death."

Mercury shrugged. "Well...I thought, you know...it was fair." She went slightly red. "It'll be our little secret, you know?"

Zoisite continued to stare blankly at Mercury. Given names for royals in every Kingdom outside of the Earth and the Moon were very private. To think that Princess Mercury would give hers up for so small an agreement...he did not think he could be surprised by anything that could happen in this room, but he found himself very surprised by that.

"Yes? Our secret?" Mercury reiterated.

"Y-yes," Zoisite stammered. "Our secret."

"Now, perhaps we could...re-consider the water import amount?" Mercury said hopefully. "It's just, it's such a precious commodity, so rare on the Moon, they really could use every bit you can spare."

Zoisite bit his cheek as Mercury continued, a faint sense of foreboding creeping into his mind.

Maybe she could get something past him after all.

"

Endymion stared through the large window, giving him a view to watch the large tray full of Imperium Crystals as they were bathed in powerful beams of concentrated ultraviolet rays, the final touch of a long and complex synthesization process.

The crystals looked much the same as they did when raw outside of the fact that they had been formed into perfectly symmetrical cubes, although his eyes were able to just barely make out faint imperfections and a barely noticeable drop in clarity. A slight milkiness could be found within the crystals now, an unavoidable side effect of refining the material.

"Endymion, what...what we just did, what we just went through, that's the process, that's really all it is, you can't possibly want to continue to do this," Kunzite said from across the room, carefully stacking up a collection of tin bowls after cleaning them. "You're one of the powerful, important people in the galaxy, you have access to practically everything in the known universe, you're about to become a husband and father, how could you possibly even want to spend another moment of your life on...processing raw Imperium?"

"I liked it," Endymion protested, looking over at his guardian. "Working with my hands, it was fun, it was interesting. I don't get to do that very often. It was nice."

"Your Highness, if you want to work with your hands, I could come up with any one of thousands of different hobbies you could pick up. All of which can be done in the palace, and all of which are legal!" Kunzite was starting to sound exasperated now. "Start a little personal garden, take up sculpting, make pottery, I...please, just let me bring Nephrite along next time! He's your guardian, same as me, he's honor-bound to serve you and I'm sure this secret will be safe with him."

"Maybe," Endymion said dismissively. "Soon, my child will be born, and I'll have much less time, until then...I'd like to continue."

Kunzite gave a little grumble. "I'm supposed to protect you, it...I don't feel like I've done a good job of that lately." He glanced about the ship interior. "The mines, now this...the people who trained me would not approve of the things I've exposed you to in the last cycle."

"Well, your first priority is to follow my orders, that's...that's above protecting me," Endymion reminded him. "That supersedes everything, and...well, I've been giving you a lot of orders lately that have been exposing me to these things. So, it's not on you."

Kunzite picked up a small tray full of a black powder. "I just...I never thought those two things would keep running in opposition to each other so much." He went over to the wall behind him, grabbing a steel handle and pulling it towards him. It opened up into a small chute, and he dumped the powder in. Closing the chute, he pushed a small red button to the immediate left of the handle and then pulled down a tiny lever to the immediate right of it. Right on the other side of the wall of the ship, a panel slid open, the powder being ejected out into space, dispersing about, never again to make a meaningful impact in the universe.

"Last chance, incidentally."

"I'm sorry?" Endymion turned to look at Kunzite as he finished cleaning up the tables.

"This is the last chance to back out," Kunzite expanded. "I can take everything we just refined, eject it out into space, head back to Earth, send this ship crashing into the sun or let it fly blindly into the asteroid belt, and we forget about this. Once we actually start selling the refined product, it may be difficult to...turn back."

Endymion gave a wan smile. "Noted."

The U.V. rays that were being pumped onto the refined Imperium suddenly shut off, the door into the chamber unlocking. Kunzite immediately went over behind the Prince, who was reaching up to grab the stainless steel handle of the oven.

"Don't touch the tray yet," Kunzite instructed as Endymion slowly opened the chamber up, a slight rush of air sucking into the oven as it was equalized with the rest of the ship interior. Throwing the hinged door open wide, Endymion stepped to the side as Kunzite reached a small handheld tool into the tray, a thin steel rod that he touched up against one of the cubes. A reader at the top of the tool began to display some numbers out to the general.

"Alright, it's refined," Kunzite mumbled. "And...let's see here…"

Endymion crowded up behind Kunzite, watching as the display lit up with numbers before coming to rest on one particular readout.

91.21%

"There we have it," Kunzite said. Sliding the reader into his chest pocket, he pulled out a pair of steel tweezers and used it to grab one of the shaped cubes of Imperium.

"That's...that's more than ten percent than the purest that's ever been made, isn't it?" Endymion asked slowly, watching Kunzite take the cube over to one of the tables, where a small, funnel-shaped object was waiting for him.

"Yes it is, and...assuming the correlation holds at these levels, then…"

Without finishing the thought, Kunzite took a scalpel from the table surface right next to the funnel. As he lowered it towards the cube, the sharp end began to glow a bright green. Using this tiny, precise tool, he scraped a very tiny corner off the Imperium, and then delicately lifted the scalpel up to the funnel mouth, scraping laying on the broad side of the knife.

He dropped the shaving into the funnel. After a moment, a small lightbulb on the side of the funnel began to output a strong and piercing light. Kunzite's attention went to a reader on the opposite side of the funnel, tapping his finger along a couple of buttons next to a screen.

"Then?" Endymion prompted after a moment.

Kunzite looked up. "It's holding. Imperium output is still parabolic past ninety percent purity."

Endymion felt like a cool little flood was being injected into his stomach at these words, significance of this hitting him hard, magnitude of what he had created not lost on him.

Kunzite held the cube back up in the tweezers. "So, this one cube, a single uncia...if the agency had their hands on it, they'd charge a hundred thousand creds for it. So black market, discount it to...eighty-two, maybe eighty-three thousand."

"That's directly to the customer?" Endymion asked, putting his thumb up near his mouth and nibbling on the tip of it.

"Right, we...we find a distributor who can handle a product like this, I'd say…thirty-five thousand creds per uncia, or four hundred thousand a libra."

"Four hundred thousand?" Endymion turned back to look at the open oven, at the tray loaded with refined Imperium cubes, brain greedily trying to do the math. "And we made...twelve libras worth?"

"We'll weigh it manually to be sure, but...yes, twelve libras was the target output."

Endymion bobbed his head up and down. "Alright. Okay then." He reached over and clapped Kunzite on his left shoulder with his right hand. "Um, forgive me for sounding out of touch, but...how much does the average Earth citizen make in a day's work?"

Kunzite couldn't help but give a little smile, in spite of the reservations that never stopped buzzing around in the back of his head, even as he forced himself to ignore them. "Less."

Endymion continued to nod, amused by Kunzite's rare display of dry wit, and then his face suddenly went blank. "The Qesem."

"I'm sorry, Your Highness?" Kunzite asked as Endymion removed his hand from his shoulder.

"I've got it." He pointed down at the floor beneath his feet. "The Qesem, that what we'll call it," he said. "This ship, that's what it'll be. The Qesem."

"Named for the cave, I presume?" Kunzite asked.

Endymion nodded. "Qesem Cave, believed to be the first place on Earth where human beings utilized fire as a tool, maybe...three hundred thousand years ago. The first real piece of technology that Earth humans gained access to, the...the first step that Terrans took on the way to becoming the masters of the universe."

"Appropriate, Your Highness." Kunzite went over to the tray and replaced the cube of Imperium.

"Suddenly, they could...they could provide heat in the coldest of temperatures, they could prepare food, boil water, even use it as a weapon of mass destruction. A whole world of opportunities was suddenly...opened up to our ancestors." He nodded, brow wrinkled in thought. "There was a day. A day, maybe four hundred thousand years ago, where...where Earth humans entered that cave as...weak, irrelevant, fragile little creatures, not any more or less likely to survive or become the dominant species...than any one of dozens of different predatory animals that roamed the world at the time." He chuckled. "And, on that day, when those humans left that cave...they came out as Lords of all around them." He snapped the fingers of his right hand. "Just like that, they were the masters of the planet."

Kunzite tapped his fingertips against the lip of the tray, testing the temperature, before he reached forward and pulled the entire container out.

"We'll never know what happened that day. Never know if whoever came up with it had...any grasp of the significance of what he had created, if he even had the mental faculties to understand it." He looked down at the cubes of Imperium Crystal in the tray as Kunzite set them down on a table surface. "But, I'll say this. Me, looking at what we've created here today...I think I grasp it."

"Now, when we get back, I'll start looking for a distributor with enough capital to buy what we have," Kunzite said. "I sincerely hope you're comfortable with me handling that side of things, I...really would prefer you not be involved in that."

Endymion nodded languidly.

"If you feel you absolutely must find ways to be part of this, then...we need to figure out the logistics of the money. Where we keep it, how we justify having it, we...we can't just start dumping millions of creds into our vaults and hope that nobody notices that the books don't balance."

"We'll come up with something," Endymion said casually.

Kunzite looked back over at the funnel-shaped reader on the table, the bulb on the side still glowing powerful. "You know, that...tiny little shred I put in there, just that little shaving. It'll power that light for tens of thousands of years. Maybe more, maybe...hundreds of thousands."

Endymion turned his head a bit to stare over at the burning light. "Well. The work we do here. It'll power the Kingdom of Earth for tens of thousands of years. So I suppose that's about right."

"

If you wanted an intellectual, you went to Mercury. A beauty, try Venus. A spiritual devotee with powers beyond scientific understanding, Mars. A big brawny brawler, head to Jupiter.

But if you wanted anything else, you'd go to Earth.

The last true melting pot in the galaxy, Earth had a bit of everything. You could find people of all shapes, sizes, creeds, beliefs, and backgrounds. Such diversity was often a boon and often a drawback, but above all else, it made the populace and the landscape of the planet stand out. So, while you could certainly find very rich and well-to-do areas all across the continents of Earth, you could find plenty of over-crowded, under-developed, dirty areas filled with the less fortunate and the less noble.

Latium was one such locale, a city a handful of leagues away from the capital city that mostly served as a place for the lower rung civilians to live, yet still live close enough to the capital to work there. Necessary, important, and yet inevitably problematic. If the capital city was a shining beacon on a hill, then Latium was certainly the valley beneath it. Ultimately, people just didn't quite treat their environment with as much respect when their wasn't as much money around.

Kunzite, for his part, felt quite silly, having traded in his Earth general uniform for a basic, generic tunic and overcoat, doing his very best to blend in with the working-class environment. Walking down a sparsely-populated street, this one particularly low-class and under-developed even by the standards of the rest of the city, he found himself digging deep into his training to not stand out.

He carried himself regally pretty much always, a natural side effect of spending your life among royalty. He tried hunching over, putting little imperfections in his gait, throwing in an occasional little nervous tic or twitch in his gestures. Whatever he could do to seem more common. All in all, he couldn't wait to be back in the palace.

To his right, a brick building, maybe seven stories tall, some sort of cheap housing complex. To his left, a four-lane street, concrete pocked and marked, clearly indicating that a lot of the vehicles used in this area used wheels still, another telling sign of the state of the populace.

A dozen paces ahead of him, in a small alley between two buildings, a man wearing dirty grey close and a fashionless hat was leaning up against the far wall, just barely visible from the street. Seemingly not headed anywhere, nothing better to do than to just stand in a brick alley, Kunzite suspected that he finally had his mark.

Slowing down slightly, the Earth general turned into the alley, taking a handful of steps down it, past the man, as if he was cutting through to the next street. And then, he stopped, standing there with his back to the man, before finally looking over his shoulder.

"What do you want?" the man asked, finally turning his head to look at Kunzite.

"You're carrying?" Kunzite asked, eyes trained on his hands, ready to turn violent at a moment's notice if necessary.

"I don't know what you're talking about, beat it," he grunted, turning away from him.

"Oh, stop it, why else would you be standing here?" Kunzite asked, turning his body around to face the man. "Unless you have a deep appreciation for the...subtlety of brick composition."

"I haven't seen you around here before," the man said slowly. "If I had, I feel like I'd remember. That's a problem for you."

"If you're implying what I think you're implying, then trust me, if that was the case, I would have already arrested you, because you've made it so damn obvious," Kunzite said harshly. "Seriously, at least have a book to read or something."

The man looked back to Kunzite.

"But anyway, it doesn't really matter, I'm not buying," Kunzite continued. "I'm selling."

"Well, I'm not buying."

Kunzite nodded. "I know. You couldn't afford what I have. But maybe the man you work for can. He's who I want."

Kunzite reached into the right-hand inside portion of his overcoat, getting the low-level Imperium dealer to jump away from the wall and shuffle a couple of panicked steps away, out into the sidewalk. But, when his hand emerged holding a tiny white paper envelope, he seemed to relax a bit.

"This might be the most important thing you ever do in your life, so do it right," Kunzite instructed. "I have something for whoever it is that you answer to."

"W...What makes you think they'd be interested?" he asked, still wary and trepidatious, glancing over his shoulder.

"Oh, everyone's going to be interested in this," Kunzite answered, holding the envelope between his index and middle finger and quickly closing the gap between the two of them. The man flinched back, frozen between the gut instinct to run away and the curiosity to stick around. "Easy, easy, if I wanted to hurt you it would have been very simple for me to do it when I first came into this alley."

Presenting the paper slip to him, the dealer took it, unfurling the edge and peering down inside at a couple of little flecks of clear crystal.

"W-what the hell is this supposed to be?" he asked, closing his left eye to get a more precise look with his right one.

"Well, I think if you apply context clues, you'll be able to figure it out," Kunzite said, trying to not sound mocking despite his lack of patience.

"Oh, no, no! No way, buddy, this…" he glanced around again, then turned back to Kunzite. "Buddy, I know Imperium, this ain't...come on, what is this, glass?" He gave a small laugh. "Come on, man, you're gonna try to hawk fake product, you gotta...not even close."

"Don't take my word for it," Kunzite said, turning around and walking a couple steps away. "Check it yourself."

He blinked dully a few times, eyes then flickering from left to right. "U-uh, okay, you...you go walk down there, go down to the other street, count to twenty and come back!"

Kunzite rolled his eyes. "Why? So I don't see you pulling out the third brick over on the sixth row of the building behind you?"

He tensed up, unable to keep from looking over at the brick that Kunzite spoke of, then looking back at him. Muttering to himself, he quickly went over to the wall and pulled that brick out, exposing a small recess behind the mortar that hid a small burlap bag and a long thin steel tool. He grabbed the tool, sticking the pointy end of it into the bag and looking at the display on the other end.

The two stood there in silence, waiting, several long beats. And then, the man's eyes widened.

"Yeah," Kunzite grunted.

"U-uh…" he yanked the tool out of the envelope. "You found a way to...to trick the reader, okay, okay!" He nodded. "My...uh, the person I work for, yeah, they'd totally be interested in that!"

"No trick," Kunzite countered. "That, my friend, is the future. And whoever it is that you work for has the opportunity to be the only person in the galaxy distributing it. It's all up to whether or not you're able to successfully deliver this offer, so, I'd say you have a very important job, don't you?"

He swallowed down hard, glancing up at Kunzite, even more intimidated now.

"You take that back to your boss, run whatever tests you'd like on it to verify that it is what I say it is. If he decides he wants more, then he can meet me in the alley behind the seafood market two streets over. You know it?"

"Y-yeah."

"This exact time, tomorrow, I will be there. Only at this exact time, tomorrow. That'll be the one opportunity your boss has to acquire a libra worth of this. Just make sure he brings money for it. Four hundred thousand. Thirty-five thousand per uncia, if you'd prefer to dip in slowly." He blinked down at the man. "Do I need to repeat any of that?"

The man blinked, looking rather dull. "W-what the hell is an uncia?"

Kunzite gave a judgemental little look. "An ounce. You know what an ounce is?"

Wordlessly, the man spun around on his heel and ran off, leaving the alley and sprinting down the sidewalk, roughly shoving the tiny envelope into his pocket as he did so.

Kunzite watched him sprint off for a moment, and then glanced over to his right. With an amused sigh, he bent down and picked the loose brick up off the ground and carefully slid it back into the wall, hiding the sack behind it.

"

"So, what kinda stuff does Kunzite have you doing?" Serenity asked.

Endymion felt a little tug at his gut at this question. Slowly, he turned around, looking over at his future wife, who was seated at the large dresser a few paces to the left of the bed. She twisted her head around to look at him.

"Is it, like...you two go out in the middle of the desert, take your shirts off, and start flipping giant rubber tires over?" she asked.

"I...what?" Endymion stammered, taken aback slightly by the rather absurd suggestion.

"That's kind of what I was picturing in my head," Serenity said, reaching up to scratch at her right odango. "Or, maybe, like...you go out into the woods, and you have to fight a wolf armed with only a knife?"

Endymion relaxed a bit. The things his love was spinning in her head sounded so comical to him, that he temporarily forgot that he was in the process of lying to her.

"No, no, nothing...nothing like that," Endymion said, shaking his head and grinning. "I...I would definitely lose to the wolf, and...flipping tires? I don't...even know what that means."

"Queen Jupiter did it when she was growing up!" Serenity enthused. "You just, you get a giant tire, like the kind that you'd see on an old tractor, you...put it on it's side, and then you just start flipping it!" She stood up and bent down, miming lifting up the end of a tire, then pretending to exert great effort to turn it over. "Like that!"

Endymion sat down at the foot of his bed. "No, I...Serenity, it's, uh...I don't want to get too far into it, but, it has to do with...my preparations to be King one day."

Well, it wasn't a total lie. Not that he felt much better about it.

"Haven't you basically been...preparing to be King your whole life?" Serenity asked, walking over to sit next to Endymion. "I mean, I known you pretty well for a few years now, seems like...everything is all about...learning, and understanding history, and how to execute proper protocol."

"It's...it's getting more serious now," Endymion muttered. "It's one thing to say...hey, barring an awful tragedy, this kid will become King of Earth one day, and then it's another thing to be a few cycles away from turning twenty. It's just, it's more imminent now. So, I'm just...anything, anything that can be done to help me prepare, I need to do it. For all I know, I take the throne tomorrow."

"Oh, I really hope not," Serenity said, snuggling up next to the Prince. "I want a few years to get to be married to a Prince, before I'm married to a King. It's...it feels different."

"Maybe," Endymion said tersely. "My father took the throne when he was twenty-one, and...all the work he does with the agency, his passion for regulating Imperium, I mean, not that I have any inside information on it, but...I wouldn't be amazed." He shrugged.

"Amazed by what?" Serenity asked.

"If he came up to me a couple cycles after we get married, maybe after you give birth, and says...hey, son, I want to devote all my time to cracking down on smugglers, I want to move to my beach house on Mercury, the throne is all yours...I'm not going to be shocked." He grimaced. "So, I...I feel it, you know? He's forty-two, royals step down in their mid-forties all the time, and his legacy as a ruler is already unimpeachable." He hesitated for a moment. "And...I don't know, I'm a little scared of that, maybe."

"Hey, where's this coming from?" Serenity asked, rubbing her little hands up and down his right arm. "You've trained your whole life for it, nothing to be scared of."

Endymion exhaled a little breath from his nose. "I don't know, it's just...there's a saying on Earth. I don't know who came up with it, but, it goes like this." He cleared his throat. "Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, weak men create hard times." He turned to Serenity. "Does that make sense to you?"

"Uh...well, it's...it goes in circles?" Serenity questioned, squinting with thought.

Endymion nodded. "And, everyone I've ever listened to in my life...everything I've ever read, heard, whatever. Everyone says that my father is a strong man." He gestured up towards the ceiling. "And, you'd be hard pressed to argue that, under his rule, the Kingdom of Earth has seen good times, be it...the wealth, the innovations, the co-operation, everything." He sighed. "So...what does that say about me? What does it...what does it say about what I'll create?"

"Oh, you can't think like that!" Serenity insisted. "You're...you're aware of it, right? You're talking about it right now, so, what, you're going to know all of this and just...let it happen?"

Endymion blinked a few times. "You know, my father, when he was growing up, his...teenage years, he only had one guardian. And he wasn't anything like mine, he was...basically just a bodyguard." He nodded slowly. "Wartime, too. When he was fifteen, sixteen, you had insurgencies in the eastern hemisphere, Mars was trying to force us into an agreement for our water, it...it wasn't easy. I can't even imagine anything like that."

"Well, then...maybe you're more prepared to be a King than even he was," she suggested. "You've got four amazing guardians guiding your every step, that's—"

"Might be part of the problem," Endymion interrupted. "We can't know until...until it's time for me to start making tough decisions, and…" he gave a frustrated frown.

Serenity, sensing his angst, wrapped her slim arm over his shoulders, giving him several beats of silence to think.

"I just, I never want to be weak."

"You're not weak, you won't be weak," Serenity encouraged.

"I can't be weak, not ever," Endymion continued. "Whatever it takes, I can't ever be weak. I don't want to ever...appear weak to my...my people, my guardians, to...to you, most of all."

Serenity looked up at Endymion, deep into his eyes. "Endy, I'll never view you as weak. You, Endy, are the reason why my Kingdom, my birthright, is going to survive past the end of the decade."

Endymion jerked his head back and forth ever so slightly, lips pursed. "I mean...my father—"

"—is not the reason why we're bringing our Kingdoms together. You are."

"I remember the one time that I thought my father was weak," Endymion said, his voice getting a little throaty and raspy. "I've...I've never said much about my mother, have I?"

Serenity pulled away from him a bit to look at him better, giving her head a shake. "I...I never felt comfortable bringing it up."

"It was...she was beautiful. Smart, too, really, very sharp...I think." A couple of sad little wrinkles set in to his face. "I don't remember very well, I was so young before it happened."

"W-what happened?" Serenity asked, leaning in a bit towards him. "I...I'm sorry, I genuinely don't know, I was never told details. Just that she...she passed when she was twenty-seven."

Endymion nodded. "A brain disease. Very nasty. Extreme dementia. Thankfully rare, but...quite incurable. When I was five, it started, and it was just...she'd forget things, say odd things at strange times, have these little muscle spasms...by the time I was six, she was lucky if she could string together three coherent words before devolving into gibberish. She started randomly attacking people around her, guards, servants...my father. Started hurting herself."

Serenity just sat in total silence, taking in every word that came from Endymion's mouth.

"I remember the last time I saw her," Endymion said in a low voice. "When I was six, my father called me, took me to this room next to his bedroom upstairs. He had taken the meditation chamber and turned it into…" he grimaced, blinking down hard. "A prison cell."

Serenity winced.

"Oh, it was very nice looking, flowers everywhere, sunlight pouring through the windows, all of that...but that's what it was. All locked up, guards everywhere, people watching her at all times, no sharp or heavy objects allowed...a prison cell." His nose wrinkled. "I remember thinking it smelled...awful. Suffocating, nauseating. Probably all the medicines they were trying. I couldn't believe someone lived in there." He blinked. "My dad took me up next to the bed, told me to...to say something to her. First time in cycles I had been able to see her."

Serenity delicately reached over to rub his shoulder.

"She was wearing this white, one-piece outfit, must have been a dozen straps keeping her bound down to the bed, very tight. Her arms crossed over her chest. They said that...if they let her arms free, she'd try to shove her hands down her throat and suffocate herself." He gingerly rubbed just above his upper lip. "When I got up on the edge of the bed, she turned and...she turned towards me. Just a little."

He reached up and grabbed at her hand on his shoulder, taking it in his.

"I...maybe she was trying to look at me, but that's not...not how I felt. She was turned towards me, but I don't feel like she was actually looking at me. When I looked into her eyes, there just wasn't anything there, just...just nothing. And she just laid there, vacantly looking towards me. And I'm positive that...even if she was looking at me." He gave a helpless little shrug. "Even if she did see me...she didn't recognize me."

Serenity nodded, blinking back some tears.

"I could have been a servant or a guard, here to pour more pills down her throat or inject relaxants into her veins. Could have been the maid, there to water the flowers. I don't think she could make that distinction. The difference between me and anyone else didn't mean anything to her anymore."

He reached over and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close.

"That was the one time I thought my father was weak," he said. "That day, the next few cycles after it...when I saw what was happening to my mother, I hated him so much." He continued to pull her close into his embrace. "Everyone told me growing up that...that my father was a great man. Powerful, maybe the most powerful in the galaxy. The sun rose and set by his command, the stars in the sky were put there by his whim, every way you can romanticize it. I believed it." He scowled a bit. "And then...all that power, all that wealth...and he couldn't help her. Couldn't save her mind, couldn't give her peace, couldn't comfort her. Couldn't do anything but keep her prisoner. I thought...why? Why isn't he fixing her? Making her better?" He gave a bitter little laugh. "It wasn't that he didn't want to, even at six, I knew that." He shook his head. "So, I figured, he couldn't. And I really, really believed for a while...that he was weak for it."

Serenity propped her chin up on his shoulder, looking up into his eyes with a pleading gaze, sensing the pain within him.

"It was...the worst pain you can imagine, thinking your father is weak. Thinking that your mother, the most important person in your life, is suffering and dying because your father is weak. Just, an awful anger and sadness that...consumes you. Eventually, I grew up a bit, and...well, I realized it wasn't that simple, that he did all he could, that if there was a way to save her he would have done it." He nodded. "But, for those few cycles, after she went...I didn't see him as being worth any more than anyone else in the galaxy."

He turned to look down at her, hanging off his shoulder.

"I...I don't want you to ever look at me the way I looked at my father then," he said. "Think of me as I thought of him then. So, when I become King...I have to be ready. Whatever happens, I have to be ready."

"And you will be," Serenity insisted softly. "You're going to be a fantastic King, love."