Chapter 15: Gold in the Streets

The streets of Sumarian were a busy place, even at night, with hundreds of pedestrians moving about from shop to shop at all times. Easiest thing in the world to blend in amongst the crowd, even staying out all night wouldn't draw suspicion. It was a pretty great place to try to sell imperium. Basil felt as if he might just have lucked into prime real estate for his illicit deeds, in fact, with a constant stream of potential customers and easy cover for his presence.

Wearing a wool cap on his head and a large brown jacket to combat the cold, Basil was sitting back on a green bench right in between a public clothes-washing business and a massage parlor. His eyes lazily followed street cars ripping across concrete in front of him, occasionally tilting up to look at hovering, flying shuttles zipping about in the air.

"Hey there."

Basil whipped his head to the left, looking up at a short, skinny man with darkly-tanned skin and black hair. Looking a little uncomfortable, hands in his pockets, glancing around, bouncing up and down on his heels, he gave off the aura of someone highly uncomfortable.

"Can I help you?" Basil asked, stretching his arms out along the top edge of the backrest to the bench.

"Nice, uh...nice jacket," he replied uneasily. "Pretty night, huh?"

Basil rolled his eyes. "I guess."

"Uh, hey, so...one of my friends, I was a couple blocks north hanging out with him, getting some lumber for a little project in my backyard, and he said that...that he was here washing some clothes earlier tonight, and he said that you were the man. Like...you know, the man!" He rubbed his hands together in front of him. "I was...I was wondering if you're still the man."

Basil blinked a few times, shifting around on the bench. "Am I the man?"

"Yeah, that's what I wanna know, are you still the man? I-if you're not, that's totally cool, I appreciate that, but...if you are still the man, maybe we could do business."

"What exactly are you asking for?" Basil asked sternly. "Nothing's happening until you ask me, exactly, what you want."

"Um…" the man twisted his head left and right, nervously eyeing the dozens of people milling about the sidewalk. "C-can you…" He stepped over to the right side of the bench, turning his body around and squatting down to sit.

"Whoa, whoa, no, stand up!" Basil said, putting his right leg out on the bench. "You don't sit down, nuh-uh."

"Okay, I…" he twisted back around, bending down a bit towards Basil. "Can I buy some imperium from you?" he asked in a hushed voice. "I heard you've got the good stuff. I've got six hundred creds, and I've had some unexpected expenses this month, could really do with saving a little on energy."

Slowly, Basil got to his feet. "Let's see it."

The prospective customer reached into the pockets of his jacket, frantically feeling about, before his left hand whipped out a folded-up collection of paper bills. "Uh, y-yeah." He fanned out the currency. "Four hundreds, I got...three fifties here, two twenties and a ten."

"Alley behind the massage parlor, five secundas," Basil said quickly before walking off, down the sidewalk, towards the west. The man quickly pocketed the money, then took off in the opposite direction, the two new acquaintances disappearing into crowds.

"

Basil reached out, taking the collection of ten assorted money bills out of the man's hand, quickly looking them over before pocketing them. "Just for future reference, when you're buying unregulated imperium, skip the wordplay. You just ask for it. If you can't come out and say what you want, we can't do business."

"I-I just thought—"

"It's for my own protection," Basil explained. "You try to use all these...innuendos and implications, you sound like an undercover law enforcer trying to get me arrested. You ask directly, it's a load off my mind." He reached out with his left hand, pinching a tiny paper envelope between his fingers. The man snatched it, delicately prying the edge open and peering down into it. "Four-tenths of a carat."

"Trust me man, I'm no booter," he said, pulling a small metallic, rod-shaped instrument out of his pocket and sticking it down into the envelope.

"Well, undercover lawmen can't directly ask someone to perform an illegal activity and then make arrests based off that activity," Basil explained. "And also, don't tell me your life story." He shook his head quickly. "Trust me, you're not that interesting, I don't care."

"S-sorry." The man pocketed the reader, then closed up the envelope. "T-thank you, man. I'm happy."

"Alright, bounce," Basil instructed. He turned down the alley and quickly stalked off.

"

Basil extended his right hand out, holding the mouth of a white paper bag in his grip. Cyril took the simple container, unrolling the top and looking down inside it.

"Very, very nice," he applauded. "You work fast."

"Got a good piece of territory," Basil replied. "Lot of potential repeat customers, maybe."

"Wouldn't exactly count on it," Cyril said. "This imperium, it lasts. The average person buying this stuff is going to get a lot of mileage out of it."

"Well, a lot of them are telling their friends too," Basil reasoned. "I think I'll be selling a lot faster as time goes by."

Cyril reached his hand down into the sack, pulling out a wad of loose currency bills.

"Just be careful." Cyril went over to a square machine in the corner of the small, darkened room, straightening the pile of money out the best he could.

"Careful is my middle name," Basil insisted. "I don't ever keep the product on me. Me and Xander, we've got a system, we watch each other's backs."

Cyril fed the large collection of bills into a thin opening on the side of the device, resting all the money in a trough-like little space. Immediately, it buzzed to life, and began whisking the bills inside, one by one. A little screen on the side of the machine began to rapidly display a series of numbers, counting up.

"Any problems?" Cyril asked.

"Nothing, Captain," Basil answered. "People seem perfectly happy to mind their own business, occasional law enforcer walks by and ignores me. Downright easy. So, uh, am I the first one to report back with cheddar?"

"Third." Cyril watched the little red digits tick upward rapidly, going up past ten thousand and continuing. "A couple people got real lucky, made a fat bulk sale."

A handful of beats later, the machine stopped whirring, the little readout on the side displaying a final reading of '22,000'.

"Twenty-two large?" Cyril marveled. "You, uh...gouging a little bit there, Basil, buddy?"

Basil shrugged. "Hey, if I can squeeze out an extra five or ten creds here and there, who am I to turn that opportunity down? Crazy gangster gotta make a living."

"Alright!" Cyril tapped a couple of buttons on a numerical pad next to the screen, and a handful of bills began to spit out of the machine on the opposite side. "That's two large back to you, try to keep it a little low-key."

After a moment, Cyril grabbed the stack of money and reached it out towards Basil, who quickly snatched it.

"Three floors up, room number four," Cyril said. "Pick up another batch of carats, come find me when you've sold that one." He reached his closed fist out towards Basil, who quickly reached his own fist out and tapped their knuckles together.

"

Cyril slowly braked his speeder bike to a halt, coming to a stop over the moss-covered dirt that weaved between the massive oak trees. A few dolichos outside of Pinkton, the imposing forest provided good cover for activities that needed to be kept secret.

With a glance up at the foliage high above his head, he jumped off the side of the hovering bike, giving the handle a twist to shut it off. He went around behind the bike, boots crunching into the dirt and moss below, reaching up to grab a large leather sack, the end held tightly shut by a series of straps clipped in place. Tossing it over his shoulder, he trudged off deeper into the woods, marching maybe twenty or so paces before arriving at a hollowed out tree stump that rose up to his chest.

He looked down inside the natural little structure, finding large collection of branches and leaves. Reaching down and prying a couple of the branches up, he tossed the bag down into the stump.

"

Prying a couple of the branches up, Jason reached down and grabbed one of the straps on the leather bag hiding within the stump. Heaving it out, he threw a quick look around the forest surrounding him before working to undo the straps that kept the sack closed. Fingers working quickly, he soon had enough slack in the straps to pry the opening up a tad. Just enough to peek down inside and see a large collection of money bundles.

Re-sealing the sack, Jason jogged back over to his bike, holding the bag in his right hand.

"

Jason dropped the sack to the floor in front of Nephrite, the brown-haired general glancing down at it briefly before returning his gaze back to Jason. The red-haired lieutenant of Nephrite's spy network was one of the very few allowed to know, much less visit, one of his safehouses. A simple, underground trio of chambers, formerly a storage room for farm animal feed, it had been reconfigured and secured to serve its new purpose as a potential hiding spot and equipment storage for Nephrite and his men.

"Two point two eight million," Jason said. "You can count it, it's all there."

"I'm sure it is," Nephrite replied, putting his left elbow up on the armrest of his cushioned chair. "That would mean they've gone through the whole libra, so make sure they get more."

"Absolutely," Jason agreed. "Our supply chain is working great so far."

"We could work on our efficiency, maybe, I just don't know how yet. This time between pickups and dropoffs, it's dead time for the dealers, if we could speed things up a bit on getting them new product we'd sell faster." He shrugged. "Leave it to smarter minds than me." He nodded over at Jason. "Stash it."

Jason lifted the bag up onto his shoulder and toted it over into the right corner of the room, kneeling down and reaching down to pry up some of the floorboards. He lifted up a small collection of wooden planks, revealing a small hole underneath the floor, one leather bag already resting in the hiding spot.

"Very nice," Jason said, tossing the sack into the hole, letting it rest atop the first, then began replacing the planks.

"

"It is truly an honor to be meeting you here today." A middle-aged woman wearing a white blouse and orange skirt bowed low. Her pale skin was contrasted with her dark blue hair, falling just past her shoulders. "And even being considered for this position is truly the honor of a lifetime."

In Endymion's bedroom, the Prince and Princess were seated next to each other on a loveseat, a plush, well-cushioned chair just big enough for two people. The woman stood before them, holding her hands together in front of her waist.

"And it's wonderful to meet you, Kristen," Serenity said, gesturing towards a chair that was right next to the middle-aged woman. "Take a seat."

Kristen obliged, Endymion holding a sheet of paper up in his hands.

"Alright, Kristen, I have your previous work experience here, it...it looks pretty good," Endymion said. "Now, you'll be working with Serenity more than me, so I'll let her handle most of this, but I just want to ask. Says here that you served as a midwife for Lady Aurelia of Uranus, that's...the wife of Marcus, the retired champion handball midfielder?"

"Yes," she answered. "Helped her through childbirth and assisted in taking care of the child for two years after he was born."

"That's quite a feather in the cap," Endymion mused.

"But I must say, I've never been placed in charge of helping raise royalty before," she continued. "This will be my greatest honor yet, if I'm hired."

A loud popping sound caused Kristen to jump up a bit, twisting her head around to look out to the doors to the balcony.

"D-don't mind that," Endymion said quickly. "They're installing an elevator out on the balcony, straight down to the garage."

"Did you like it on Mercury? It said that you've spent the last eight years on Mercury," Serenity spoke up.

"Yes, no shortage of wealthy families looking for an experienced midwife on Mercury," Kristen explained. "Served ten different families in those eight years, most of them were happy to dismiss me a cycle or two after the birth."

"Well, I'm looking for assistance beyond the birth of the child," Serenity said. Endymion wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "For a few years, probably. As long as you're willing to stay on. Money's no problem, and you get to live here."

"I'll stay on as long as you'll have me," Kristen said. "If you want, I'll care for your child until he's a senior citizen." She gave small smile. "Or she. You don't know yet?"

"No, not yet," Serenity replied. "You've got plenty of experience with both boys and girls, I saw that, so that's good."

"If you end up having twins, I've got plenty of experience in that regard as well. I've served women who have given birth to quadruplets before, more than happy to help raise multiple children at once. When I was in my twenties, I worked in a daycare with as many as twenty kids at once."

Serenity reached over, snatching the paper from her husband and quickly scanning it. "Now, understand, I am going to raise my own child. I have no intention of spending my life in meetings, or going out every night to party. Once this baby is born, that's my priority in life for the next eighteen years, minimum. I'm not looking for someone to raise my child for me, I just...I need help."

Kristen emphatically nodded. "Not a problem, Your Highness. I've been doing this long enough to know the difference between being a midwife and being a surrogate mother."

"Now, given that this is a future King or Queen, there is going to be more than one midwife," Serenity continued. "Maybe five, six. You have experience working with a team?"

"Well, I've worked with a partner before, just one, so…"

Endymion began to zone out of the conversation, blinking and politely smiling forward, in the general direction of the prospective midwife. The voices around him were being blocked out by a dull buzzing in his ears, allowing him to focus on the thoughts flowing through his mind.

Yes, hiring a good midwife obviously mattered, he knew that much. Making sure that Serenity had access to the best help when raising their child was important to him. And yet, right now, he just couldn't push the anticipation out of his head.

Truth be told, no matter what happened, they were guaranteed to get the best midwives in the galaxy. The only variable was how long it would take, how many interviews they would have to go through. One way or another, Serenity would have the best.

Endymion couldn't help but wonder about things that actually involved some risk and possibility of failure. His thoughts kept fluttering to the men and women he commanded, out on the streets of Earth, selling miniscule little portions of imperium for money. Would they be able to actually sell it? Would the chain of supply function as intended? Would things move fast enough to be worth their time? How many would get arrested? He was merely a handful of minutas away from his first update, his first indication of the viability of this business.

What he would learn later that day could inform everything about the future of the Earth Kingdom, the effectiveness of his eventual reign as King, and the short-term future of the Moon. How could he possibly concern himself with whether this particular woman would be brought on as a midwife, when the alternative was another similar woman being brought on instead?

He thought about the bookstore that Zoisite was putting the finishing touches on the purchase of. The out-of-date spaceship, sitting in a junkyard in the less fortunate part of town, ready to start pumping out super pure imperium fit for consumption by all manners of technology across the galaxy. There was just so much going on, so much to think about, he—

"Hey!"

Endymion ripped back into the present so suddenly, it almost hurt his head. He looked over at Serenity, who was giving him a rather frustrated look, face hardened.

"I'm sorry?" Endymion quickly burped out.

"Um, Kristen was asking how close her room would be to ours, if we were to bring her on," Serenity said, clearly annoyed. "You know. So she can know how long it would take for her to get from her room to ours."

"O-oh." He cleared his throat. "We can arrange for you to have a room right down the hall. There to here in less than a secunda, twenty beats maybe. How fast is your running speed?"

Kristen gave a confused look, blinking over at the Crown Prince of Earth.

"T-that's a joke!" Endymion exclaimed. "It's fine, it's okay. It's...it's a joke."

"Ah," Kristen said, giving a quick nod and curt smile.

"

"Do you not want to be here for the interviews?" Serenity asked. "I mean, I get it, you might not find it that interesting, it's more about me than you, so if you don't—"

"No, no, it definitely involves me!" Endymion protested, putting his hand out towards his wife. "Of course I care! I find it very interesting! These interviews, these people, they're going to be part of raising my first child! That's very interesting."

"I'm not mad, I just...if you trust me to make these decisions by myself, then I can just interview them on my own." Serenity sat down on the edge of the bed. "Look, it's just...kind of embarrassing." She rolled her eyes. "I'm the one who's supposed to space out! I'm the daydreamer! You're the one who stays grounded and thinks about everything."

"It won't happen again," Endymion assured her, pursing his lips. "I promise, I just...I got distracted. I was thinking about some stuff going on with Neptune. Some of our trade agreements, I've been reviewing them recently."

Serenity nodded. "Okay, if you say so. I really liked her, and I don't think she was that optimistic when she saw you space out like that. I felt kind of bad for her."

Endymion swung his arms around awkwardly. "Sorry. I promise I care. It's my child too. If you like her, we'll definitely bring her on."

"If you're sure. But really, are you okay?" she asked, tilting her head awkwardly at him. "It's so not like you to...zone out like that."

"I'm fine," he insisted. "Uh, I'm gonna...going to go work out with Nephrite." He pointed over at the door to the bedroom awkwardly. "We'll schedule more interviews this afternoon, we'll want at least five total. So, we should take a look at at least twenty, make the picks from there."

Serenity gave a pleasant smile, then fell back against the bed with a little poomph. "And let's get at least one or two of them hired quick, I'm getting to the stage where I could use some specialized help."

Endymion gave a quick nod, returning her smile, and then quickly scurried off to the door.

"Oh, one more thing!"

Endymion froze, hand halfway to the doorknob, looking over at his wife. "Hmm?"

"Have you seen my anklet?" she asked. She pointed down at her ankle. "It's missing, I took it off to take a bath and it was gone when I got back."

"Um...this is the one that Mars gave you?" Endymion asked.

"Well, the pearl on it," Serenity explained. "I don't want to ask her for another one, so...any chance you moved it?"

Endymion shook his head. "No, sorry, not me. I'll keep an eye out for it."

With that, he grabbed the doorknob and twisted it, stepping out of his bedroom out into the outside hallway.

"

Nephrite's thumb pressed into a large button on a black remote, causing a dull little thunk to sound off from the door to his chambers.

"Alright, we're secure," Nephrite said, setting the remote down on the side table by his bed.

"You know, we really need to remodel this part of the palace, get you guys some real rooms." Endymion glanced about at the tight, claustrophobically close walls on either side of him. "These little broom closets are no way to show gratitude to my generals."

"Waste of space. And time," Nephrite said simply.

"I agree," Kunzite followed up. "If it was up to me, my room would be a large coffin to sleep in and nothing else."

"Okay, okay, I'm dying to know, so let's cut right to it," Endymion said, squaring his body up towards Nephrite. "Let's hear it."

Nephrite cleared his throat, glancing down at the floor. "O-okay, Your Highness. First, let me just say that...obviously, this is our first live test. Things are going to be slow at first."

"Obviously," Endymion agreed.

"I think that, once we get a feel for which areas are good, which ones are bad, what the best, most efficient procedure is, things like that, our selling speed will probably...triple. Give us a cycle to get a feel for things, maybe even more." Nephrite grimaced a bit.

"Come on, just give me some numbers," the Crown Prince urged.

Nephrite bit the inside of his cheek. "W-well...officially. As in, confirmed, turned in, guaranteed, locked in...we've sold and collected on three libras."

Endymion flinched back a bit, eyes going wide.

"Three?" Kunzite repeated. "As in...thirty-six uncias? Of imperium, sold?"

"O-officially," Nephrite clarified. "The actual number is probably closer to...seven, eight. But only three of my sergeants have pitched in their money, the others are still selling theirs off."

"Seven libras in three days?" Endymion croaked out.

"There are...six point eighty-four million creds under the floorboards in one of my safehouses. My understanding is that, over the next two days, that number should grow to around sixteen million. A few of the distribution nets seem to have landed in, shall we say, infertile lands? So, they're taking awhile to move the product. We'll have to decide what we want to do there, we don't want to give up on a particular area too quickly, but we'll obviously make some decisions about which places aren't worth the time." He shifted his weight from his left foot to his right foot. "I think that...give us ten more days, we'll have moved everything you've given us."

Endymion reached his right hand up, pointing his index finger at Nephrite's face. "You're going to move...twenty-three libras of imperium in...thirteen days?"

"Estimated," Nephrite emphasized. "And again, I fully expect things to accelerate as time goes by, once this network really gets humming, again, stuff should move three times as fast, if not more!"

"Buddy!" Endymion closed the small gap between him and his general, clapping him on the shoulder. "You're the man! I...buddy, I knew it would move, but...right from the start, it's pumping like that?! Man, why were we ever dealing with that crazy orange-haired bitch?!"

Nephrite's body relaxed, shoulders drooping slightly.

"I mean, you were...you were actually worried?" Endymion asked. "You seemed a little nervous, what were you afraid of? "

"I just didn't know what your expectations were," Nephrite said. "I thought that you were expecting that we had already sold everything you gave us, Your Highness."

"N-no, definitely not!" Endymion wrapped his arms around Nephrite's torso, pulling the general into a one-sided hug, as Nephrite simply remained stiff as Endymion yanked him in. "Nephrite, this is awesome! I was coming in here ready to hear anything, I…" he broke away from the hug gradually, slowly looking over at Kunzite behind him. "I...shit, we need more product."

"I was thinking that," Kunzite agreed.

"Oh, um, also. No arrests. As far as I know, anyway," Nephrite tossed out. "So far, pretty clean. This might just work."

"Okay, okay, okay," Endymion said frantically. "Kunzite." He emphatically pointed over at his senior general. "Remember what we talked about? Getting eight setups capable of running simultaneously on The Qesem?"

"I'll start procuring equipment right away, Your Highness," Kunzite quickly replied to the implied order.

"Equipment and supplies," Endymion said. "As much as you can get together. We're going to have to seriously boost our production."

"I'll get right on that," Kunzite agreed. "But I will need a few days, obtaining all of that equipment will be suspicious unless I travel from town to town to do it."

"As fast as you can though," Endymion urged. "I never thought we'd be selling this fast already, if I had any idea that this might happen, I would have been on this days ago." He turned back to Nephrite. "Your boys keep selling. There might be a little bit of downtime, but we'll be getting more product to you as soon as we can."

"Understood, Your Majesty," Nephrite answered.

"

"The third arrest took place in Banktown. A good samaritan reported a suspicious individual hanging around close to a school, a couple of law enforcers kept an eye on him, and managed to catch him in the act of selling."

A blue little light slowly sprung to life at a northwestern point on the eastern continent of the large map of the Earth being projected onto the back wall of the conference room. The long wooden table in the middle of the room was packed to near-capacity, nine of the twelve council members seated around it. A man wearing a fancy dress tunic was standing up at the head of the table, by the large map.

"Oh, shit," Kasios murmured under his breath, frowning up at the map, which now had three little blue lights, each of them spread out across the finely-detailed representation of the Earth. Two were on the eastern continent, with a third on the southern part of the west continent.

"You thinking he's back in business?" Naxos asked, turning to his right to look at Kasios in the neighboring seat.

"What else is there to think?" Kasios grunted. "And that's not even the worst part of it, this jagoff's gone regional!"

"Well, that's speculation," Galen tried to ease from the top right seat of the table. "Some of the stuff that popped up could be left over from a batch that was synthesized from before."

"That's a long, rickety bridge you're asking me to cross," Kasios argued. He pointed up towards the map. "None of those points are anywhere close to any of the places this imperium was popping up before, it's asking way too much to even consider that." The High King sighed. "It lines up, our...Tuxedo Mask went dark for awhile, and now he's back with a much bigger distribution network. And, presumably, a lot more product."

"I'm inclined to agree," Naxos followed up, turning back to look down the table. "Anything to say about the three arrested individuals, Captain Marcellus?"

Marcellus grimaced. "Not much. And I doubt that will change. They are nobodies, as far as we can tell, no past record. All three were carrying ninety-nine percent pure product. And two of them were caught with less than a carat on their persons, so...Class E, we will be lucky if we can hold them for twenty days. I doubt they will be saying anything."

"What about the third one?" Kasios asked, leaning forward.

"Well, we managed to follow him to where he was hiding his stash, so we had a little better luck there. Unfortunately, it was just eleven carats, so we are still stuck with a Class D charge." The captain shrugged. "I can not imagine he will roll over for—"

"Hey, Captain, I feel like I'm listening to an old Priestess Lady from Mars, how about some contractions?" Kasios snapped. "You know what a contraction is? You know how to use them?"

The room quickly made the High King the focus of attention, his outburst breaking the formal tone of the meeting immediately.

"Your...Your Highness, it is not—"

"Contractions were invented to save time, make it easier for everyone, make conversation flow better, why would anyone want anyone to not use them?!" Kasios continued. "Does anybody in this room have a problem with Captain Marcellus using contractions?! I know I don't!"

An extended silence, everyone staring at the High King, whose face had gone slightly red.

"Your Highness, he's just trying to follow etiquette." Galen swallowed down a lump in his throat.

"I...I know, I know!" Kasios said, shaking his head. "But honestly, it's more distracting than anything else, so...you have my permission! Contract away!"

"Yes, Your Highness," Marcellus answered. "I apologize."

"It's fine, it's fine, I...no, I'm sorry." Kasios gave his head a violent shake. "I'm not mad at you, I'm sorry, I'm just...I wanted to get this prick before he expanded! Now he's...looks like he's selling everywhere on Earth." He sighed. "Please, continue your debriefing, go ahead."

"U-uh...um…alright." Marcellus tugged at the collar of his tunic. "In any case, it's very rare for an imperium dealer to roll over unless you can threaten them with a Class C or higher. So, other than tiny quantities of highly pure imperium and a pocket full of creds, I'm afraid we're not likely to get very much out of these dealers."

"Alright," Kasios said firmly. "Well, eventually, we'll snatch someone with more than a sextula, and then maybe we can learn something about this guy."

"Well, can we really count on that?" Orion asked, leaning in a bit towards the table to look down over at Kasios. "This product, it's really a game-changer. No need for a street dealer to carry more than a tiny bit."

"We only need a tiny bit," Kasios objected. "Twenty-four carats, how hard can it be? We need to find one jerkoff with twenty-four carats, I passed a bladder stone two years ago that weighed more than that!"

"I sincerely hope not," Galen muttered, wincing a little.

"Let's...let's send word out to law enforcement agencies on Earth. All of them, tell them to ramp up street patrols and crack down on imperium dealers. Bump up the reward for information leading to arrests. We'll keep shaking every branch, eventually a big player will fall out. Soon as we catch one, we load up the cannons for a full five year sentence." Kasios tapped his fingertips along the table surface. "Maybe more, if we can pin other charges onto him. Every dirty trick in the book. He'll cough up."

"I don't know, Your Highness," Naxos countered, again slowly turning his body towards the High King. "Who knows if these dealers even know anything that can help us? They could have no idea who the supplier or the chemist is, even small smuggling operations use blind drops and pickups."

"Okay, well, I'm not really seeing another option," Kasios said coolly. "Come on, this clown just started selling again in the last...what, few days? Not even a cycle, let's...let's just keep making arrests until we find something worth knowing, stick to the plan before we panic. Let's remember how this guy dresses in public, how smart can he really be? He'll mess up eventually."

"Uh...if I may, Your Majesty...for you in particular, there are other options," Jorja interjected from directly across Kasios at the table.

Kasios gave a little scowl, quickly erasing it from his face as soon as it had popped up. "Well, we can maybe discuss those options when it's appropriate to do so. For now, we stick to Plan A. We make arrests, we interrogate, and we eventually track them down." He lightly pounded his right hand on the table surface. "Nobody wanted this prick to go regional less than I did, believe me, I fought like hell to nip him in the bud. But it's what we got now. Ultimately, nothing changes. We are still going to take him down. It's just gotten a little harder now."

"

Princess Venus pushed her right index finger forward along the surface of the flat screen in her left hand, causing the projected image to shoot forward and show up on a giant screen on the wall. A few columns of black text on a white background.

"I think our boy is back in business," Venus mused, putting her curled finger below her lip, eyeballs zipping back and forth along the giant screen before her.

"My Princess, don't get your hopes up before you have confirmation." An attractive blonde woman walked up next to Venus's seat, crouching down a bit so she was on approximately the same level as the member of the Venus royal family. "It's highly likely that Tuxedo Mask has already retired, for one of many possible reasons. His mere existence was intruding on the territory of many other long-running smuggling operations. Not hard at all to imagine they knocked him off."

"No, no no," Venus protested, shaking her head. "He was working with a previously established smuggling operation, a big one. The timing, it's too much to be a coincidence. A cycle after this guy shows up, a major player in imperium smuggling gets raided and killed? No, he's still out there, and he's gone hot again. Look at this, Isis."

Isis craned her head up at the screen. "Information that leads to the arrest of a black market imperium dealer, smuggler, or manufacturer will be rewarded by a monetary amount ranging from five thousand creds to twenty-five thousand creds."

"That's five times what it was before," Venus explained. "Five times, just...out of nowhere. Why would they do that, unless there was a particular entity they were desperate to take down now? And, read the second column, start at the top."

Isis did as she was told. "Information leading to the arrest of the person currently known as Tuxedo Mask will be met with a one million cred reward." She glanced down at her Princess. "That's five times what it was before?"

"Ten times," Venus corrected. "I think this guy showed up again, and the agency is dying to get him before he burns through more of his product. They have no idea how much he has access to, and they want it. This announcement was sent out everywhere on Earth, so maybe he's started dealing all over the place. Which must mean, he has enough product for my purposes."

"It...it lines up," Isis admitted. "So, what's the next play? How are we going to figure out who this guy is before the agency does? And how are we going to work with him?"

Venus held silent for a moment, and then looked over her left shoulder. "Aphrodite!"

A second pretty blonde, this one with curly hair that was just short of her shoulders, looked up from across the round room. The Genetrix was playing host to two of Princess Venus's trusted lieutenants on this particular day.

"Yes, Your Highness?" Aphrodite quickly ran over, abandoning a cube-shaped device on the floor behind her.

"Our first step is finding a way to make ourselves valuable to Tuxedo Mask. A reason for him to want to cut us into his operation." Venus looked back and forth between her two lieutenants. "Isis, Aphrodite, consider this the top priority. Tell the other three Angels as well, we need everyone working on this."

She held a tiny little holo-projector up in her hand, a blue-tinged image of a bald, wrinkled, male head being projected up into the air, just above her open palm. "Solomon of Venus." She looked back up at her lieutenants. "You know of him?"

"Yes, he's...on the agency high council. Pushing sixty Earth-years old, I think?" Aphrodite stared down at the holographic head.

"Presumably, about ready to retire as it is." Venus rolled her eyes. "He's certainly pocketed more than enough money from his so-called charitable work in regulating imperium. And there are no shortage of pre-teen boys in the galaxy that just demand his attention."

"Never proven," Isis remarked, drawing a caustic little glare from the Princess.

"And yet, most certainly the case," Venus countered.

"N-not disputing that point, Your Majesty," Isis quickly said, bowing her head down slightly. "Solomon is as dirty as they come, I think we all know that. What does he have to do with any of this?"

"We need everyone on this. Not just the Angels, but every one of our sleeper agents. Anyone and everyone who can assist, in any capacity. I need dirt on Solomon."

"Dirt?" Aphrodite repeated. "You mean to say...evidence of his illegal activities?"

"Yes, dirt," Venus assured her. "He's certainly got his fingers in every reprehensible action you can engage in across this fine galaxy, so despite his best efforts, I'm sure there's proof out there. Dig it all up. We're going to need a lot of dirt. A mountain of it. Enough to bury this shithead. I know it might take some time, and I'm willing to allow as much as we need, but we're obviously in a race against however fast Tuxedo Mask is burning through his imperium supply. Of course, this only works if we have so much dirt on Solomon that he's got no choice but to listen to what I have to say, so that's the priority."

"I will get everyone right on that," Isis said, standing up straight before the Princess of Venus.

"There is gold in the streets of every single town, city, and village on Venus," the Princess waxed poetically, tapping the tiny holo-projector with her thumb, making the image of Solomon change to one of a man wearing a top hat and mask. "Gold, just sitting right on the surface, waiting for someone to come scoop it up." She gazed down at the cartoonish hologram in her palm, staring down the mysterious masked face. "I suspect that our buddy here will be eager to get himself a bite of it, if only we can make it available to him."