As the ship that Tempest and I were on approached a new system. The alarms started blaring and the ship's AI announced.
"Meteor swarm approaching T minus five, four, three, two, one," The AI continued even more monotonously. "Hull breach sector two. An intruder has boarded in sector two all personal avoid sector two."
As I listened I realized that sector two was the living quarters where me and Tempest were staying. Turning on my heels I started rushing back to where I left Tempst only to run into someone I didn't recognize.
"Hello, there who are you?" I asked of the tall platinum blond in an armored maid outfit.
The strange maid looked at me and then kept going. I figured that she was the intruder, as to my knowledge only one person has a highly trained group of armored maids, Tempest. The battle maid seemed to be searching each room one by one looking for something or someone confirming that she was one of Tempest's.
"If you are looking for Tempest I can help lead you to her," I said.
The battle maid turned around and introduced herself. "Hello there madam, you said you could help me find my mistress Tempest."
"Well yes, she is my wife after all. Come on then follow me." I lead the battle maid to Tempest's room and said. "Tempest is currently asleep in such a way that awaking from it causes long-lasting damage if you have a way off this ship that doesn't include riding meteors that would be for the best."
Opening the door I saw something unexpected Tempest in human form. I thought that she would be in her fox form for quite a while longer. However, it looks like she is almost done ascending. The battle maid saw her target, Tempest, sleeping on the bed and decided to take a set of four cubes off of her bracelet. She set them around the bed and said.
"Tempest has been found. Still missing Kitsuna."
I looked at her and said, "I am Kitsuna." Before turning into a fox and jumping up on the bed and laying down on Tempest's stomach.
The battle maid saw this and nodded before activating the cubes. The cubes froze Tempest and me while also making so nothing outside the cube shaped barrier could affect the inside. The outside of the cube shrunk down and the maid picked it up before leaving the room to be greeted by small contingent of cataphracts. The heavily armed and armored group was nervous to confront the battle maid as at this point she had torn her way through the rest of the ship before seemingly kidnapping someone known for fighting people trying to help them.
With a calm detached expression the maid turned around and stated "All objectives complete, returning to base."
This put the group of cataphracts on edge as most people who have Tempest and Kitsuna as an objective are either down right terrifying in the power they wield over the galaxy or just suicidally stupid. Either option was not great in the eyes of these troops. While they where deciding what to do the maid just walked past them seemly following a predesigned path which if you knew the layout of imperium cruisers wasn't hard as they where all the same.
Having reached the hangar the maid took one of the two ships designed for long distance space travel. The imperium always keeps a couple of long distance ships on hand incase they need them. Once the flight controllers for the imperium realized that the intruder was making off with one of their spare ships they started to close the hangar doors, however before the hangar doors could even start to move the ship was long gone disappearing into the inky void of space.
Meanwhile inside the cube nothing much was happening as it was a stasis barrier as well so for the duration of their travel. Outside was a different matter as Tempest's luck had once again struck the space ship she was traveling aboard.
The vastness of space is not to be underestimated and neither is the overwhelming danger as the maid piloted the ship onwards a group of pirates took notice of the lone imperial ship. The group of embolden pirates decided that one unarmed imperial ship was a very easy and lucrative target.
The pirates followed the ship till it was well outside of a gravity well of a planet or star. With a surprising amount of speed they moved to intercept the ship Tempest was on. The maid noticed the pursuing pirates when they hailed her on open comms asking for her peaceful surrender and for her to turn over all passengers and cargo. The maid thought this was terrible idea that did not line up with her goals so she just closed the comms channel and started evasive maneuvers, otherwise known as driving so fast and erratically that they could lead shots and homing round couldn't follow the angle of movement. Eventually after a long and drawn out pursuit the pirates had managed to force the ship down into a planetary atmosphere.
While inside the atmosphere the space ship had began deteriorating because it was built to handle a vacuum and that was it. Eventually the game of cat mouse came to end as the ship carrying Tempest could no longer maintain even the barest semblance of flight. Before the pirates could capture and by extension Tempest the maid made the decision to crash the ship into the side of a mount at high speed. Shortly before doing so the maid triggered her emergency transponder.
With their prey deep in the side of a mountain and scatter for miles around it the pirates left because they determined that all cargo was definitly worthless now and any passengers where a red stain on the ground.
And so time passed inside of the stasis cube Tempest and Kitsuna could not feel the passage of time nor could Tempest ascension progress. With that the stasis cube was lost to the annuals of time for decades.