"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down." - Ray Bradbury

Commander Ian Kabra, as his English name proclaimed him, was not happy.

He was raised on Earth, meant to become its ruler once his mother and father passed the crown onto he and his sister. He was raised in England, traveled around the continents, and learned all of the languages just so the humans wouldn't complain about him being their ruler like they complained about his mother. He made them like him, did charity work and helped the poor, but it seems to have been all for naught.

Some dumbass scientist in the Halo Region of the "Milky Way" (as the humans called it, Ian thought it was awfully silly) had managed to invent and perfect a machine that defied death. A regeneration machine. Ian had read that it took a week in the chamber to turn from near death to young adult, but that wouldn't stop his mother.

His mother would use and abuse that machine to stay in power, she would make sure no one else would get their hands on it and she would make sure her reign continued until the end of fucking time.

Honestly, with a galactic empress like Isabel, only an idiot would make a machine like that. Hell, Ian was her goddamn son and he hated her. Planned a coup when he was fifteen that never met fruition (it would've worked though, believe you me). Now Isabel would get to oppress forever, just what she loved most.

Ian would be stuck a prince for the rest of his fucking life, not exactly the fate he planned himself to have. Ian was meant to rule, was born to rule. It was literally in his blood, being from the royal family of Nahash. He was raised with conquest games, his father taught him how to get his subjects to like him. He whole life was built on the notion that he would someday rule - even his wife was picked out for him because of their compatibility as rulers! He was the perfect emperor, if it weren't for the fact that he would evidently never be one.

He sort of felt like going into the pond, where Cécile usually was, and just sulk. She wouldn't give him attention, he wasn't an attention whore like his sister, he just liked being around her. For an arranged marriage, they did get along quite well.

Well, whenever Cécile wasn't throwing various breakable objects at him.

He walked down the halls of his mansion, his jacket fluttering behind him like a cape. If his servants couldn't tell he was angry, they needed to be fired.

He thrust open the doors to Cécile's pond, causing them to hit the walls with a loud bang.

Cécile's human handmaiden, her best friend, looked up from her position. Elizabeth Cooper was not a special human - she'd lost most of her family in a war long ago, all she had left was her brother (who also served Ian's family). She was simply born, that was her most amazing accomplishment before she became a servant to the Kabra family. Ian was out with Cécile when they saw her and his fiancée demanded Ian take the shivering girl into his home. Honestly, if he wasn't betrothed to Cécile...

Elizabeth came over to Ian, her bare feet slapping against the marble flooring. She held out to him a platter of food, trinkets of Cécile's home world. Ian declined it - Atargatian delicacies didn't agree with him. Anything that lived or grew in some kind of ocean or sea or body of liquid didn't agree with him, really. Not even the plants from the small mercury ocean on his planet - infamously expensive and mouth watering cuisine that was reserved only for visiting royalty - made him want to throw the contents of his stomach up.

She asked him what was the matter, and he told her that she may stay but she must close the doors. He trusted Elizabeth, she and her brother were both kind people.

Ian walked over to the pond, the little body of water that his fiancée called home. Honestly, he wasn't certain how reproduction would work between them - being from different species, even if they were from the same solar system, did not guarantee that they would be able to produce children together. Ian used to tell himself that if Vikratali I could, then he could too. He didn't want to think of what would happen if they couldn't create an heir.

(Of course, Vikratali I had children with a Clousarian, the supposed Origin Race. Rumor had it they could reproduce with any species, but Ian wouldn't let that get to him. He and Cécile needed to find someway to carry on the line.)

Cécile surfaced, bringing a mouthful of water with her. She took careful aim and shot Ian's midsection with a small stream.

He sighed. "Very funny." He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it off, throwing it on the ground to dry in a crumpled mess. Cécile offered him a smile and slaped her tail on the water.

"What is the matter?" Cécile hadn't been living on Earth very long - Cécile wasn't even her real name, it was sort of a butchered translation of her name - so her accent was thick. It wasn't an accent so much as a way of speaking, her vocal chords were vastly different and she was used to her people's clicks and taps and gestures for communication. Earthen languages were new to her, but she got along fantastically well in communication with mathematics.

Ian sat in front of the girl, Elizabeth taking a place next to him. "Some idiot made a mechanical fountain of youth."

Cécile's forehead creased. "How is that bad?" She reached up and stroked his face. "You can be pretty forever."

Ian rolled his eyes. "It means Isabel can be young forever, too." Cécile sank back into her water, stopping just before her eyes went under.

"She'll rule forever," Elizabeth murmured. "Until someone kills her, she'll rule over us forever."

"Exactly."

Cécile sunk, blowing out little bubbles of air before swimming to the bottom. She tended to do that when she was upset. Ian assumed she wanted to be empress as much as he wanted to be emperor. That, or she was upset that she wasted so much time that she could've been spending with her mother.

Elizabeth let her legs dangle in the water, bringing her dress up so as to not get the hem wet. Ian sighed before lying down on his stomach, letting his hand trace patterns onto the water. Cécile continued to reflect at the bottom.

"She can hold her breath for 30 minutes now." Elizabeth murmured. "She's been practicing. Hasn't had much else to do."

True enough. Despite the planet being mostly water, it was hard for a sea creature like Cécile to get around. Most of the so-called intelligent life was on land, and it wasn't like Cécile could magically grow legs when her tail was dry or something idiotic like that.

Ian drug himself towards the edge of the pool and slipped in. He used the side of the pool to thrust himself down towards the sulky girl at the bottom.

He was used to swimming, loved to swim. He was built to swim, literally. He had webbing between his fingers, between his toes. He had gills that were used to convert the water in oxygen to breathable oxygen. They were weak, he didn't swim as often as his ancestors, and they would probably leave soon on the evolutionary chain (his cousin Ekrinian told him that his son Vrisini had been born without gills, though Ian had yet to see the child) but he had them and he could make use of them. Using the gills was as natural as breathing regularly, once you comfortable with being in the water.

He swam circles around Cécile, talking to her through the clicks of her homeworld.

She asked him, as she completely ignored his question, to bring her something to eat. Ian sighed to himself and kicked off the bottom and raced to the surface.

He swam over to Elizabeth to gather the plate of food, but Elizabeth was gone.

The plate of food she had been carrying was on the floor, bits of fish and water plants were strewn about the floor. The plate itself had a dent in it, as if it had been used as a shield.

He swam back down to Cécile and relayed the news.

He shook himself like a dog once he came out, cursing himself for not taking his pants off before diving in. At least his shirt was semidry, since he had taken that off. He walked towards the doors, which were cracked open. Someone had come in and taken Elizabeth. He turned around to tell Cécile to stay put, but the thrashing of the water told him someone had beaten him to it.

Ian Kabra turned around and was face-to-face with his mother.

Well, a hologram of his mother.

She didn't greet him, didn't smile at him, her face wasn't even warm. She was cold, calculating. It was the look she gave to the general from Gleise who stole 389 of her ships and destroyed the last 11.

"I heard you were planning a coup, son."

He could see through the hologram, suited men were trying to drag Cécile out of her water. She screamed, cursed at them, until they gagged her.

Ian ran towards her, but more of his mother's guards blocked the path.

"Let her go!" Ian screamed. "She has nothing to do with this!"

She frowned, then said in their native tongue. "Let's not speak that horrendous language, dear." Ian would have spat in her face if he could have. Not because he had any particular liking towards the English language, but just because she was ordering her guards to kidnap his fiancée and her best friend.

"Now," the hologram slowly walked a circle around Ian. "What's this coup about?"

"That was seven years ago, mother," he swallowed his pride, "when I was young and foolish and power hungry."

The hologram crackled as Isabel reached her hand out to touch Ian's shoulder. "Oh, but aren't you still? So upset about the youth machine." She offered a snakish smile. "That news was fake, dear. Meant to see how you would react."

If course she would have. He should have suspected it from the start. She'd probably placed microphones on him, cameras. She's probably heard him cursing around his study, breaking his mirror and ripping her picture off of his wall.

It had been a giant hissyfit, and she had probably seen and heard all of it.

She reached out and cupped his cheek, the hologram hissed again. "Now, son, if you want your little friends back, you're going to have to do me some favors."

He almost flared his nostrils, but he knew that would only serve to further anger his mother. "What do you want?"

Her lips seemed to touch her ears, giving off a terrifying grin that spelled trouble. "I want the Clousarian princess, Amalienne." Her grin turned into a look of exasperation. "She's next in line, and she's the only one with enough power to stop me."

"The Queen-"

"Is ill, I'm afraid." She gave a small smirk, showing a few of her sharp fangs. "She won't be leaving her bed... ever again."

Ian clenched his fists. His mother had poisoned the queen of the Origin Planet, the place where everything supposedly started. It was supposed to be a sacred place, a sacred people. They were the only people above Isabel in the galaxy, the only people she wasn't allowed to touch. And she'd gone an breached that, the most sacred law.

Isabel scoffed. "Oh, don't give me that look. We all know their origin story is a fake."

"The law said-"

"I am the law!" The hologram reached out to slap him. It didn't connect of course, but Ian flinched nevertheless. He even reached up to touch his cheek, though it didn't sting. "Do as I saw, boy, or you will never rule this galaxy."

Ian's mother and her guards left, taking Elizabeth and Cécile with them.

He stayed in the pond room for a while, thinking over what had just happened. He knew what was right, what he should do. But Cécile and Elizabeth were in danger, and they could die if he did the right thing.

All in all, there was only one thing Ian could do.