Chapter 62: King of Kings
"He can never know," Kunzite said slowly, staring directly at Queen Serenity's face. "And, obviously, the fewer people who know, the better. I'm only telling you because you need to understand why the circumstances with Kasios are no longer a concern. But His Majesty can never know about any of this."
Serenity sighed, turning around and looking out the massive windows of the royal bedroom, out towards the night sky. "There'll be no living with him for cycles after this is over. Forcing him to give in to his father."
"I know, I know," Kunzite acknowledged. "But it'll be over. And it'll pass. We'll have to be careful for a few cycles, understanding that he'll be easy to set off, but we'll never have to think about any of this again. And that's all that matters."
"You really think he'll go for it?" Serenity asked. "After everything that's happened between him and his father, I don't know if I can believe it."
"He...I'll convince him that he has to. He's spending a few days as a glorified prisoner up there, that has to change his perspective," Kunzite said.
She shook her head. "Hard for me to believe it. The abject hatred he has for Kasios right now, I don't think he'll be willing to give in to him at all. This might make him dig in harder, actually."
"We'll know in a few days," Kunzite mumbled, sounding a little less convinced. "I can count on you to play your part?"
She nodded. "Of course."
Kunzite noticed how dour and emotionless the Queen was, face flat and expression unreadable. It was incredible how fast she had lost the vibrant bubbliness of just a few years ago, as if decades worth of aging had hit her an order of magnitude faster than it should have. It was hardly the biggest casualty of Endymion's illegal activities of recent times, but standing so close to it really showcased the depths of how she had been affected.
"As soon as this process starts, Kasios will be forced to resign from the council. I don't anticipate that he'll ever be willing to forgive and forget, so there won't be anymore family dinners at the palace, but he'll no longer be able to investigate Endymion's past." Kunzite nodded. "Plus, Endymion will never be able to return to the imperium black market without the product. It's the best possible conclusion to this whole saga."
"Or it's how those two actually kill each other," she said ruefully.
"That's not going to happen," Kunzite insisted. "You heard him say it before, there's still a line he won't cross. It's his father."
"Oh, I'm sure. Those lines have meant so much," Serenity said dryly.
"Just...be prepared," Kunzite said, choosing to not give any further guarantees of Kasios's safety, as he himself wasn't entirely confident in them anymore. "The most important thing is, no matter the cost, we can make sure this is over forever. That's worth whatever the cost."
Serenity nodded curtly, again turning around to look out the massive window. "Huh."
"What?"
"Just...hard to imagine him up there, getting interrogated by agency officers," she mused. "I wonder what that looks like."
"
Forget about tension thick enough to cut with a knife. The air inbetween High King Endymion and the two uniformed agency interrogators practically had visible amounts of it.
It was an unprecedented circumstance in multiple ways. You would never have expected an agency interrogator to ever be the one on their heels, nervous and uncomfortable. There was something about having the most powerful and well-funded organization in the galaxy backing you up that just made you feel invincible and gave you confidence, even when confronting the rich and well-connected of the black market imperium world. But the High King of Earth was orders of magnitude beyond. A half-dozen agency interrogators had flat out turned down the task, and these two needed some convincing to go for it.
Alexis and Alejandro. They had cracked countless imperium dealers over the years, individually and as a duo. But now, it was they who seemed to be on the verge of cracking, as they nervously sized up their opponent.
"Okay," Alexis said. "Um, obviously, we want to keep this...respectful and organized, so we're going to try to keep these sessions relatively short."
Endymion just continued to give his iciest stare directly at Alexis, lips held tightly shut together, doing a highly effective job of conveying his complete lack of interest in frivolous conversation.
"I understand that...this is an irregular thing. I don't think any of us are terribly comfortable with this. So...if you need to stop for a bit, or need to take a break, don't hesitate to ask," he continued, looking down at a printed script in front of him. "We have a few days to get through all of this, there's no need to cram everything through at once."
Alejandro slowly reached forward towards his glass of water, cautiously grabbing it as if any sudden, rapid motion might provoke the irritated High King into jumping across the table and attacking him.
"We'll schedule a break in about four minutas," Alexis said. "But by all means, if you feel the need to stop, just say so."
"Your Highness," Endymion grumbled through barely-moving lips.
"E-Excuse me?" Alexis asked, straightening up his posture on finally drawing a reply.
"Your Highness. I'll be addressed as such," Endymion said coldly. "I think I've earned that."
"R-Right, Your Highness," Alexis said. "Okay, so…" he started shifting the stacks of papers in front of him around. "Um, we'll start with The Grand Central Bookstore. That was a chain of stores that you held the controlling interest in a couple years ago, correct?"
Endymion slowly inched himself back in his seat, pulling away from the interrogators a bit, placing his hands on his thighs as he leaned back heavily on the back of his chair.
"Um, Your Highness, we do need an answer to that," Alejandro said after several beats.
"Yes," he said tersely.
"Alright," Alexis said, clearing his throat. "So, we're going to review the terms of your acquisition of the chain, written out here."
"
"We're all going to die, aren't we?"
It wasn't often that the monitoring room for an interrogation was packed to capacity. For most grilling sessions, there would just be one or two. A high-profile capture or something that had a chance to lead to a major breakthrough could pull in five or six. But today, twenty-five people were jam-packed in the plain, rectangular room, all eyes on the massive window-pane that offered a viewing portal into the neighboring chamber, which appeared to be a mirror from the opposite side. Endymion on one side of a steel table, Alejandro and Alexis on the other. It was such a bizarre sight, everyone wanted to see it, live and in person.
"Look at him," another of the observers said. "He looks ready to rip someone's throat out."
"Don't anyone dare be intimidated," Kasios said tersely, standing right up next to the window, body practically coiled up with how close his arms were to his torso, right hand up in front of his face, crumbling some scrap of paper he was holding over and over again. "We are the Galactic Imperium Agency, we are intimidated by nothing."
Jorja could not help but make a sound that sounded at least somewhat like a scoff. "It's easy to say that, Kasios, it...sounds impressive, but you have to admit. This is very dangerous territory we've gone into."
"Not for us," Kasios insisted, tone challenging and biting. "That's the whole point of our existence."
"So, Grand Central Bookstore," the audio feed from the other room projected from speakers by the window. One of the interrogators slid a piece of paper towards Endymion. "Does this look familiar?"
Endymion spent such a small amount of time looking at what he had been offered that it may as well have been no time at all. "No."
"A-ah, well, it's a...standard Z90 form that all businesses have to file every cycle. This is from the bookstore that was...formerly yours. Although, c-clearly, you weren't in charge of day-to-day operations, so it's perfectly understandable that you wouldn't be familiar with this form. Or any other forms like it."
"And yet, you had to ask," Endymion seethed.
"Are we really going to put him through all this?" Enyo asked incredulously. "Pulling him in at all is one thing, but...it's like we're purposefully trying to irritate him."
"It's the same process we would put anyone who was suspected of imperium smuggling involvement through," Kasios snapped. "And all of you know that, we've all seen this play out a thousand times. It doesn't matter who it is, it matters what he's done. That's what the rule of law is, isn't it?"
Kasios's sharp speech patterns were enough to make it clear that any attempt to point out the obvious thin ice the agency was treading on right now was not welcome, and in a room full of people who had things to say, nobody was saying anything.
"It's the greatest invention humankind ever came up with, you know?" Kasios added. "The rule of law. No matter who you are, your actions have consequences. Without that, what's the point of any of it?"
"
"Your Highness, do you recall any explanation for this discrepancy? Can you think of anything that might have caused it?" Alejandro asked.
"No," Endymion deadpanned, the biting ire in his tone finally fading just a shade after a few minutas of being walked through an endless parade of questions, each one sounding similar to the last. If someone was only familiar with the High King from this interaction, they would have assumed that his vocabulary consisted of about ten words, for how little he had to say in reply to anything.
"Is he really just going to say no to everything?" Naxos asked, among the group still watching from the neighboring room. "Just...three days of saying no, over and over?"
"Of course not," Enyo said sardonically. "He's got so many other responses to choose from. 'I don't know', 'I don't recall', 'not to my knowledge'..."
The observation room had thinned out once it became clear that there was nothing to see except an irritated royal saying the same few words over and over. Seven had stuck around to continue, in the unlikely hope that there might be some sort of breakthrough. But the two interrogators were completely unwilling to even attempt to apply pressure on him, content to allow him his single-sentence answers.
"Why would he say anything else?" Jorja pointed out. "He's smart enough to know what the score is, he doesn't have to say anything."
Kasios gave a guttural grunt that was somewhere between a scoff and a groan, turning away from the giant window and storming towards the door to his right. Every head in the room that didn't belong to him turned to watch him depart, roughly man-handling the door and slamming it behind him.
"W-Was that me?" Jorja asked, nervously running her right hand through her hair.
"It was everything," Naxos assured her. "It's his son in there, and...I mean, this whole thing was because of his investigation. Think about what this is doing to him, you know?"
Jorja grimaced and nodded, then took her own leave of the rectangular room, following in the tracks of the former High King. Being far more gentle with the door, she found Kasios leaning up against the wall in the hallway right outside, thumb and forefinger of his right hand up on his forehead.
"Sorry," she said quickly, leaning back on the door behind her. "Um, I guess this whole situation is so strange, I don't really know how to treat it."
"It's not you," Kasios grumbled. "I just...sitting in there, listening to him, it wears on you. Listening to him...lie, knowing he can get away with it, it makes me sick. It has nothing to do with you, Jorja."
"So you think he did it?" Jorja asked. "I, uh, I mean, I guess that's sort of a silly thing to ask. You, uh, you brought him in."
Kasios grunted, turning to look down the hall. "I think...I think that...there exists sufficient evidence to indicate that he did something. And I think that he's in there, right now, being dishonest. I'll leave it at that."
Jorja scowled. "I can't even imagine what it's like for you, I'm...I'm sorry. I really am." She cleared her throat. "But, uh...I mean, if he did—"
"I know," Kasios said tersely. "You don't have to tell me, believe me. I know exactly what happens if we pin so much as a shred of imperium smuggling on him."
"...uh, r-right," Jorja stammered.
"I meant what I said in there," Kasios said, trying very hard to soften his voice, aware that he probably sounded like he was upset with his fellow council member. "The rule of law doesn't work unless it applies to everyone. And besides, if I really let an imperium smuggler operate for years in my own house, then...maybe I don't deserve to be here anyway."
Jorja knew enough to realize saying anything else was only going to aggravate Kasios further, so the two just stood in silence in the hallway, heads bowed.
"
Endymion reclined back deeply on the light blue, double-sized bed, head propped up on the pillows, a thin book open in his hands right in front of his face. The same scowl that was on his face during his entire interrogation session was still there, a smouldering frown that conveyed a threatening level of anger, a fury that even this massive space station specifically designed to be impregnable and inescapable seemed barely able to hold.
Outside of the occasional snide and sarcastic remark, Endymion had stuck to the script. Every question he was asked was met with some version of 'no', 'I don't know', or 'I do not recall', outside of the most obvious of truths. It was one of the biggest wastes of time he could ever remember participating in, each secunda that ticked by in that room just making him more and more irate. Three minutas in, a break had been granted, more for the benefit of the interrogators who were still struggling to find the right tone than anything else, but Endymion knew that there were still a massive number of pointless inquiries to come.
So mind-numbing was this process, the High King's mind wandered elsewhere even as he was being grilled. And, given the humiliation of his present circumstances, the only place his mind could wander was trying to figure out how he had gotten here. How did his father, after years of not suspecting a thing, suddenly figure it all out just as he was extracting himself from the business? He had spent so much time trying to figure out what he was going to do about it, that he hadn't really dedicated a lot of focus to solving that particular mystery.
But now that he had nothing to do but think, there were really only a couple possibilities that made sense. And as he narrowed down on the possible answers, his already foul mood was only exacerbated.
His lodgings for his stay were as high-class and amenable as he had been promised, a large room with expensive furnishings that could never have been mistaken for a prison cell, no matter how Endymion might have described it once he was out of here. About the worst you could say was that it had clearly been thrown together in the last couple of days, as there had never been a need for accommodations like this before. But even that was nowhere near enough to quell the High King's rage.
His eyes darted over to his right at the sound of his room's door sliding open, just barely managing to zip back into the recess on the wall before Kasios stormed inside. Endymion intentionally tried to return his focus to the book in his hands, purposefully ignoring his father, as if his presence was beneath his attention.
"You think you're smart, huh?" Kasios snarled. "Think it's cute, what you're doing in there?!"
Endymion flipped to the next page in his book, despite the fact that he wasn't actually reading it, just to look as casual and unaffected as possible.
"This isn't gonna work, you know," Kasios continued. "We already know what you've done, in case you can't tell. Plain as day. You made it easy for us, all you're doing is making this worse for yourself by acting like you don't know."
"I don't have anything to say to you," Endymion grunted. "They don't have words in any language to describe how disappointed I am in you anyway."
"Oh, disappointed?!" Kasios repeated. "You want to go there?! You did all this, and for what, exactly?! What did you need so badly, that you thought it was a good idea to do the one thing you knew I couldn't forgive?!"
"You should stop and listen to yourself," Endymion said, sounding calm, which only escalated Kasios's anger. "Think about how unstable you sound right now."
"Oh, you—" Kasios slapped the book out of Endymion's hands, sending it flying across the room and over into the wall, tumbling around as it did so.
Endymion turned to watch it clatter to the floor, then slowly twisted towards his father towering over him.
"Feel better now?" he asked. "Did that make you feel better? How about you quit while you're ahead then, and just leave?"
"This is for your own goddamn good, you're just going to make things worse with all this 'I don't know' crap! You realize that, don't you?!" Kasios continued to rant and rave. "I'm sure you feel smart and clever, acting like this all just goes away if you keep quiet, but the bell doesn't get unrung!"
"I'm doing exactly what the agency asked me to do," Endymion replied simply, tone curt. "It's good enough for the agency, it doesn't particularly matter if it's good enough for you."
Unable to contain himself any longer, Kasios bent down over his son, giving a violent two-handed shove right into his chest, a largely toothless expression of his ire that served no real purpose other than getting Endymion to quickly scramble to his feet.
"Ah-this how you treat all your prisoners?!" Endymion snarled, vaulting up and quickly backing away from his father, fighting very hard to not take any action that might actually get him in trouble. Even a retaliatory strike might get him in hot water, and he didn't need to rock the boat anymore than it was already being rocked.
"Kasios!"
The former High King spun around violently, unsurprised to see Grandmaster Orion standing in the threshold of the doorway, a look of revulsion and shock on his face at the scene before him. Kasios knew better than to consider trying to escalate things further in front of the Grandmaster, and slowly put his arms back down to his sides.
"Uh, I...what are you doing?!" Orion snapped, two uniformed sentries standing at attention right behind him. "G-get over here!"
Kasios sighed. "Right," he said, sounding resigned, and even managing to calm himself down at a record pace. Slowly, careful to demur himself properly in front of his superior, he marched away from his son and out of the room without a glance back.
As soon as Kasios had cleared the doorway, Orion slammed his hand on the panel to the right of it to zip the door closed. "You really want to make this even riskier than it already is?!"
Kasios grunted. "I, uh...I didn't think you'd be able to get over here so quickly," he admitted sheepishly.
"Kasios, you think this is funny?!" Orion snapped, getting angry to an unhealthy degree for a man of his age. "I...this is already asking for trouble, and you know that! Gods, I know you're aware of how dangerous it is, bringing him in like this! You want to give him more things to resent us over?!"
"Ummm…Grandmaster, I, I'm sorry, you're right," Kasios quickly conceded. "I...I don't know what came over me there, I just...I guess listening to him in that interrogation room for so long, it just gets to you." He pinched the bridge of his nose. "I'm just...it makes me angry."
"Kasios, you're not the only one who gets angry when a suspect plays coy, believe me," Orion said, fractionally calming down. "But we don't harass the suspects in their cells and...physically assault them!"
"I...I slapped away his book and gave him a little shove, he's my son, it's not—"
"Okay, okay," Orion said, waving his hands back and forth in front of him. "Kasios, I understand, there are special circumstances happening here with you and him, I get it. I understand it. But I can't have it, not right now! I can't have this situation being any more dangerous than it already is! So...okay, clearly, you're not able to fully control yourself around Endymion right now, so, just go home until he's gone."
Kasios sighed, leaning back slightly. "G-Grandmaster, come on, he won't even remember what just happened by the time he leaves, I know I was out of line, but we don't have to—"
"It's not a punishment, I'm...I'm not even mad. Well, I am mad, but...no, that's not it. You're not in trouble, I completely understand that this particular suspect has you compromised. But I have to make sure that things are kept as safe as possible right now. And, clearly, that means you being kept away from this right now. You're not being punished, but you can't be here right now."
Kasios grimaced, slowly putting his hands up on his hips to passive-aggressively display his displeasure, staring down Grandmaster Orion. But after a few beats, when it became clear that he wasn't going to recant his proclamation, the former High King nodded.
"You're...you're right," he acknowledged. "No, it's, it's smart. I shouldn't be close to this, it's...it's getting to me in unhealthy ways."
"I'm sorry, but...you don't need to be involved at this point," Orion reminded him. "And you'll be contacted as soon as he leaves and can come back."
"Alright then," Kasios said, careful to not appear disrespectful as he stepped around Orion and started heading down the hall. "I'll be out of here in a minuta, just let me grab some things from my office."
"
Clipboard in hand, Kunzite quickly scrawled a couple of elegant whirls of writing on a piece of paper.
"You're not to get further than ten thousand dolichos from The Savery," the agency sentry instructed Kunzite in a flat, direct voice. "If you do, it will be treated as an escape attempt. You are to begin return to The Savery within three minutas and High King Endymion must be returned to our custody within four minutas. Failure to meet these deadlines will be treated as an escape attempt."
"He'll be back before then," Kunzite assured him, handing the clipboard back to the sentry.
He looked over his shoulder, towards a large steel door in the wall with a thick pane of glass in the middle of it. He gave a wave of his right hand towards that window, where Endymion's face could be seen, flanked by two men wearing identical uniforms. The door slid upwards with a slight rumble.
Kunzite used the few beats where Endymion's vision of him was blocked off to take a deep, steadying breath, his final chance to prepare himself for the incredibly difficult gambit he was about to attempt to pull off. He could think of a thousand different ways where this could go badly, and only a few where it could go well. Even if it ended up ultimately working, there was almost no chance that this particular meeting was going to go smoothly. But it was still the only path forward.
Endymion marched out into the large stretch of dock, clearly eager to put some distance between the agency guards who were monitoring his every move, although doing so did not improve his mood. Kunzite nodded towards him. "Your Majesty," he said quickly, his attempt at formality not even getting him to break his stride in the slightest.
Endymion had no verbal reply to the hail from his general, storming in silence over towards the parked Falconeri, just a few dozen strides away. Kunzite fell into pace right beside him, easily detecting his anger and desire to leave this place as soon as possible.
Without a word, the two young men made their way over to Kunzite's docked ship, boarding the still-open ramp into the ship's interior. The moment Kunzite slapped his palm on the ramp's release button just inside the ship, drawing it up and sealing the cabin, he turned to Endymion.
"Are they treating you appropriately?" he asked. Endymion turned to look at him, but said nothing, just staring at him blankly. "I-I mean, of course they are, they'd be foolish to not."
Endymion didn't even nod to affirm Kunzite's assumption, just giving him that dead-eyed glare that seemed to indicate that the High King found Kunzite's presence just as unwelcome as he did the assorted agency employees he had been dealing with for the past day. Quickly chalking it up to a general irritation at the world right now, Kunzite scurried up to the front of the ship and leapt into the cockpit's main seat.
In a handful of secundas, the ship was powered up and lifting up out of the port bay, Kunzite rapidly punching in the required communications with the traffic control office on The Savery to be granted permission to leave. Zooming past a collection of other parked starships, the state-of-the-art A-class ship broke out into space, putting The Savery behind it.
"We'll be about eight thousand dolichos away from The Savery before we begin discussing anything, and I'm already in the process of scanning for any surveillance or recording devices that may have been planted on our ship. They won't be able to hear anything that we're about to say, we have complete confidentiality," Kunzite said, glancing over his shoulder towards his charge as he engaged a few automatic controls. "Anything you say to me will stay between us."
Surprising, Endymion still had nothing to say even after that guarantee of privacy. Kunzite was almost wondering if something was wrong with him, and quickly locked the starship into a pseudo-orbit around The Savery before jumping back up and striding back into the main cabin.
Endymion had taken a seat at the center of the room, on the southern side of a small rectangular table, still looking blank and neutral.
"Okay. Your Majesty, I believe I have a solution that will guarantee this never happens again," Kunzite began, figuring that there was no point in doing anything other than getting to business. "You won't even need to see the inside of the room they're keeping you in again if we do this, they'll agree to it instantly. I'll walk you through it, but it should be very simple."
Kunzite swung into the seat opposite Endymion at the small table, pausing for a moment in anticipation of some acknowledgement from his charge. But the High King just continued to stare him down.
"Um, so, we're going to go back to The Savery, and you'll announce that you'd like to change your plea. You admit guilt, and then we tell them the story. This story. It'll line up with the scraps of evidence they have, it's a timeline they'll believe. A few years ago, before you were crowned High King, you were approached by a group. You never got to meet the leadership of this group, they sent proxies to interact with you. But whoever this leadership was, they had discovered a massive supply of extremely pure imperium, and wanted to distribute it. They wanted someone connected, someone with political power. And they needed seed money. So they approached you, offering you a cut of the eventual profits if you funded their initial forays into the black market and provided some inside information to help their efforts via your position in the Earth Royal House. You were young, and the returns on your investment were going to be massive, so you...we'll say foolishly, agreed to it. And that's all it was."
Endymion was still ever unimpressed. Which was to be expected, but Kunzite was beginning to find his silence and lack of emotion unnerving. Swallowing hard, he quickly segued into the next phase of his plan.
"All the things that happened with Mimete, Cronus, the prison killings, you had no involvement in any of that. All you did was give them money and information, and then collect after they began operating. The actual business side was completely outside of your control or knowledge. Yes, you knowingly committed a serious crime, but no violence of any kind. You're not a vicious monster, you're not a killer, you just made a lapse in judgement out of a desire for money." Kunzite tugged at his collar a little bit. "However, the group that contacted you has...broken up. You don't know exactly what happened, you were kept in the dark about that sort of thing, you didn't want to know. As near as you can tell, however, the leadership of the group is all dead. Some sort of power struggle, maybe a rival group attempted to seize control of the imperium, you're not completely sure. You're not even sure if everyone is dead, maybe they just went into hiding. But, the important point is, you ended up coming out of it as the 'last man standing' of sorts. That is to say, you got your hands on the raw supply, and you're the only person in the galaxy who knows where it is. It's enough hyper-pure imperium to run the galaxy for a hundred years minimum. And as long as the agency is willing to forget everything that you've done, you can hand it over. They file no charges, pursue no penalties, act as if they looked into you and found nothing. They tell the galaxy that you're innocent, this was just a misunderstanding. And, as part of the deal, they can never again charge or question you concerning the 'Tuxedo Mask' case. The only person who knows that it's a lie is your father, and he'll be forced to retire from the high council immediately after your confession. Every single person working for the agency at that point won't even consider so much as a peek into your connection with the 'Tuxedo Mask' case. And then, it's over, just like that."
Kunzite waited, expecting Endymion to have something to say now, at the very least. He slowly leaned back in his chair, signalling he was done. Of course, he was fully prepared for the High King to protest the idea, and perhaps even get upset at the suggestion of admitting guilt, or giving up the raw supply of imperium. But to be met with stony silence and a piercing stare, it was enough to make Kunzite wonder if he had somehow insulted Endymion.
"Your Highness, um...that's all there is to it, that's all I have. Do you...do you have anything you'd like to say? Are you okay with all this?" Kunzite asked, internally wincing, sensing the High King's displeasure.
"You've got all the answers, don't you?" Endymion finally spoke, nearly causing Kunzite to jump out of his chair at the suddenness with which he broke his silence. He was embarrassed to be so nervous, and hoped it wasn't obvious. "It's almost like you wrote the questions too."
"I'm sorry, Your Highness?" Kunzite asked.
"It's pretty amazing how all that fits together. Everything you just said, it all just...lines up perfectly to get you exactly what you want," Endymion continued, still holding that impossibly cold stare on his most trusted general.
"U-uh, it's not...not about what I want, Your Majesty," Kunzite insisted. "It's—"
"No, it's most certainly what you want," Endymion interrupted. "You get me out of the black market imperium business forever, you get a supply of imperium worth quadrillions to the agency, you get my father his satisfaction of knowing he pinned something on me, and, of course, you get to remain the second most powerful person in the Earth Kingdom with me free and clear on the throne."
"That's...I don't know why you think some of those things are what I want," Kunzite mumbled lamely. "I'm indifferent to all of it except the last one, honestly."
"Are you really going to pretend that you haven't suggested many times over the last year that we should leave the imperium business?" Endymion snapped. "Did I just...imagine all of that? How many times have you advised me to leave the game? I can think of six off the top of my head, there were probably at least ten."
"That has nothing to do with what I want. My preference has no bearing on my advice. My suggestion was born out of concern for your safety, and believing it was wise to leave before you were caught," Kunzite said evenly, starting to sweat a bit beneath his uniform.
"I've had a lot of time to think, this last day," Endymion continued. "Time to myself, alone, inside that cell that they have the audacity to think passes for 'luxurious accommodations'. And I've been thinking about something. Maybe I should be grateful for all this, since it gave me the clarity of mind to put it together."
Kunzite glanced down at the table, blinking a couple times. "I...I'm not sure what you're talking about—"
"I've been trying to figure it out. I finally got a little bit of time to actually to wonder about how this happened in the first place. I ran the imperium operation for years right under my father's nose and he never even gave me a funny look, and then suddenly, he has my outfit and knows everything? How could that possibly happen? What's he even doing in my closet? And even if he did have a reason to peek in there, I always keep that outfit near the back of the room. He wouldn't just notice that if he casually glanced inside. I just kept thinking about that for the last day. It's been gnawing at me. There's no way I'd leave that thing out, because I'm always concerned that a maid might find it. It's a habit, you know? And there's no way I'd forget it, not after all these years. So, the only thing that makes sense, the ONLY explanation, is that he went in there looking for it."
Kunzite facial expression noticeably shifted down a barely-perceptible amount. A physical tell that would not have been noticed by a vast majority of the galactic population, but Endymion knew his general well enough to know that it took a significant emotional reaction to cause even this slight physical one.
"And how could that be? And why would he think to look in my closet? It doesn't make any sense, unless someone tipped him off. Someone told him that I was Tuxedo Mask, and that he could find the proof in my closet. Hell, they even told him when I'd be taking a bath, so he could have a window of time where he could search the closet without me knowing! And how many people could even do that? Short list!" He shrugged. "My wife and my generals. That's probably about it. Serenity wouldn't do it, she knows how bad it could be for her if I get caught. Nephrite can't even conceive of doing something like that. Jadeite, nah, I can't see it. Zoisite, I don't see why he'd do it, or at least why he'd do it now. But, someone who's been pestering me for over a year to get out of the business, someone who clearly didn't have the stomach for the black market. Now that makes sense. So, that's the only way. The only way Kasios could have found out, the only way he could have gotten his hands on that outfit, is if you told him. All of this, everything that's happened over the last cycle, all because you told him."
Kunzite swallowed hard, the lump on his neck visible. As an extremely-well trained general of Earth, Kunzite prided himself on being prepared for every possible situation, planning out scenarios and the optimal way to deal with them in his head well in advance. Whether it was a battle, a negotiation, or even a conversation, he was always ready. But this, he had to admit to himself, had caught him completely off-guard. And perhaps that was to his own short-sightedness, but somehow, he never imagined Endymion piecing it together quite like this, when his mind should have been on how to extract himself from this situation.
"That's all there is to it. That's all I have. Do you...do you have anything you'd like to say? Are you okay with all this?" Endymion asked, which allowed Kunzite to realize that there had been at least ten beats of silence since the High King had finished his diatribe.
And he still didn't know what to say.
"Um...we should...head back to The Savery, there's no point in us remaining out here, the sooner you can change your plea, the sooner we can put all this behind us," he mumbled, moving to slide out of his chair and get to his feet.
"Kunzite, you've betrayed your oath to me enough times in the last cycle," Endymion said, his even tone and measured voice holding a clear layer of venom just beneath the surface. "Don't add lying directly to my face to the list. And pretending as if you didn't hear me is no better."
Kunzite winced, then slumped back down in the chair. Admittedly, it was a rather pathetic attempt to deflect, but he was so unprepared he could think of nothing else.
"Only thing I can't figure out is why you'd do it like this. If you wanted the throne, wouldn't you just flat out turn me in and hope it fell in your lap when the dust cleared? So, if you wouldn't mind at least filling me in on that, save me the trouble of thinking about it tonight, I'd sure appreciate it. Seems like the least you could do." Endymion tapped his foot down on the floor beneath him. "I already know you did it. You can't make this any worse for yourself than it already is."
Kunzite sighed, meekly tapping his fingertips on the table surface in front of him. "I...I wanted to force you out of the business. Out of black market imperium, before you got in trouble. I knew you'd get caught eventually, and I...I didn't think I'd ever be able to convince you of that. It didn't work the way I wanted, I just...I wanted your father to suspect it might be you. I wanted him to consider the possibility, maybe get enough of a suspicion to conduct an investigation. Once that happened, you'd have to get out of the business for good. I'd clean everything up, your father wouldn't find anything, and...well, he'd let it go. It's far from the greatest plan I'd ever come up with. I admit that I was putting a lot on blind hope, but...I viewed it as the best possible way to ensure your safe extraction from the imperium game." He shook his head. "It was a mistake, obviously, you...came to that conclusion on your own. I acknowledge that I had the worst timing possible, and I acknowledge that I acted against your wishes, which is a betrayal of my oath to you—"
Endymion whipped his right arm up in the air, bringing it down in a fist on the table in front of him, ending Kunzite's explanation with a loud thud. The High King stood up so fast the chair he was sitting on slid backwards and fell over. "I KNEW someone like you wouldn't be able to accept following orders you didn't agree with!" he snarled.
Kunzite knew it wasn't the time or place, but he very much wanted to point out that he had done basically nothing but follow orders he didn't agree with for the last few years of his service to Endymion. Instead, he just glued his eyes to his charge and waited for the physical lashing out that seemed inevitable.
"It's not your decision to make, it was NEVER your decision to make!" Endymion rounded the table, glaring daggers at Kunzite. "Even Jadeite would never break his oath to me, I KNEW it'd always be you!"
"I did what I did in service to you," Kunzite said, hoping that he might be able to talk the High King down by sounding calm, as if he could trick Endymion into believing that what he did wasn't bad by just keeping his voice level. "What I did, while against your direct wishes, was designed to cause the best possible outcome for you, and—"
"Enough!" Endymion aggressively swiped his right arm towards Kunzite as he came up to him, looking more like an inebriated bar patron taking an alcohol-infused swing for how unsteady and unbalanced he looked. Kunzite's instincts were more than enough to simply stand up and catch the wild haymaker, then pull Endymion in towards his chest and wrap his massive muscular arms around him tightly. Immediately, the High King was rendered helpless, as his own moderately-impressive strength was child's play in comparison to Kunzite's.
"No, NO!" Endymion howled, struggling mightily in Kunzite's grip before starting to violently flail his legs around. Kunzite leaned back slightly to try to reduce Endymion's ability to use his legs to gain any leverage. "Let me GO! LET ME GO!"
All in all, it was an extremely embarrassing sight, the High King of Earth throwing a raging tantrum that his highest ranking general had to physically restrain. It was fortunate that no one else was present to see, and that there would be no evidence of it happening, for as badly as it would reflect on the Earth Royal House. Even through the seriousness of this situation, Kunzite recognized how sad it was that they had been reduced to this.
"Your Highness, PLEASE!" Kunzite pleaded. "Do what you will about my betrayal after we get back to the palace, but right now—"
"Oh, I will!" Endymion grunted. "Now, let me GO!" He jerked his body forward as powerfully as he could manage.
Kunzite exhaled powerfully. "Your Majesty, you are better than this, you need to calm yourself if we're going to get out of this!"
"Oh, you're not getting out of this!" Endymion snapped, nevertheless ceasing his struggling and relaxing his body slightly. Kunzite quickly released him, then took a couple of steps away from him, just in case he was just gearing up for a second run. Endymion put his hands on his knees for a second, huffing out a large breath, recovering from the worst of his sudden surge of rage. Slowly, he stood back up straight, then leveled an accusatory point right at Kunzite. "You're done, you hear me?! You're done!"
"So be it," Kunzite said, crossing his arms over his chest. "But what needs to happen now is that you get yourself together, so we can go back to the agency and end this forever."
"No, here's what happens next," Endymion retorted, practically hunched over, as if he was working hard to contain his anger and hatred from boiling over. "I'm going back to The Savery, and I'm not saying a goddamn thing! And then, when they have to let me go in two days, the first thing I'm doing is charging you with treason and stripping you of your rank! And then, I'm going to spend the rest of my life synthesizing and selling every last scrap of imperium we still have!"
Kunzite's face scrunched back like he had just swallowed a lemon. "Your Majesty, you can't...you're going to have eyes on you now, you'll be arrested in a cycle!"
"And believe me, my father is going to know that it was his pettiness that caused it! He's going to know that if it wasn't for his little stunt to try to embarrass me, his precious agency would have had everything they needed!" Endymion continued, completely ignoring Kunzite's entirely salient point. "That is what happens next! I'm going to get you out of my way, and I'm going to teach my father a lesson!"
Kunzite winced, well aware that this conversation was going nowhere, and was quite possibly dead in the water permanently. "Your Majesty. If you believe that what I have done warrants a treason charge, then I accept that. But for the moment, I still serve you, and it's my job to pursue the best possible outcome for you. So, you must realize that the only move to make is to put your bargaining chip in play and bury this forever, and you have to do it now, before more of the past gets uncovered!"
"I'm done listening to you!" Endymion shouted. "I get it now! It burns you, that I'm the High King and you're not! Deep down, you think you deserve it! You think you know better, and that justifies you acting of your own accord! Really, it's my own stupid fault, I've always known how highly you thought of yourself!"
"Believe what you will, Your Highness. And do what you will with me. But you put so much as a finger back into the black market imperium business, you will get caught, and nothing will be able to help you then," Kunzite said sternly. He turned, marching back up towards the cockpit of The Falconeri. "There's nothing else to say. I'm taking you back. You can make your decision before we get there."
"It's already been made," Endymion growled, practically looking feral, just barely controlling himself. "You just get back to Earth and enjoy your last few days as a free man. If you're lucky, you'll spend the rest of your life in a cell."
Kunzite wasn't exactly surprised that the High King was still consumed by anger enough to not be rational, so his stubborn and combative reply was predictable. He could only hope that a day or two of stewing back on board The Savery might change his perspective, but he knew there wasn't a thing he could do right now to affect him in the slightest. As he settled back into the pilot's seat and deactivated the autopilot's functions, he could feel his stomach bubbling with the stress of knowing that, no matter what happened the next few days, things were never going to be the same again in the Earth Palace.