There were a lot of things about the Land of Ooo that Simon Petrikov, PhD, wished to learn.
The place was very nearly some kind of bunked-up fever dream. There was an entire kingdom that was made out of slime, of all things - a semi-liquid material of variable (and occasionally gross) composition. There was a kingdom made of fire, where all the denizens were living flames, all on their own, with no apparent source of energy. There was a kingdom of candy, lead by an apparently amoral but brilliant scientifically-inclined princess.
That was a mystery in and of itself - the entire world had separated into four primal elements, which...well, he supposed it was not out of the question, but what was in question was why those elements were ice, fire, candy, and slime.
It was absolutely ludicrous, so to speak.
On a more terrifying note, blurry, broken satellite photos had also revealed a massive chunk of the Earth was missing. Gone. Destroyed or broken off of the planet.
Of most important interest, however, was this new aspect of reality called magic that, while clearly lacking scientific value, could have been the piece of the puzzle he was missing.
Unfortunately, he was not a magic man.
However, he'd heard tales of one - a legendary prince who had created an entire kingdom out of ice. Some whispered that he was dangerously unhinged, while others taunted and poked fun at his apparent ineptitude.
Sitting upon the prince's couch, Simon found his first impression to be firmly mixed.
Between the four of them - himself, the Ice Prince, Marceline (who was a vampire of all things), and one Princess Bubblegum, it seemed that the prince was doing most of the talking. He certainly had a lot to say, Simon had no doubt, though his attention span was incredibly limited.
"Oh, but yes, I will go get the mop, of course," the prince said, having said the phrase in as many words several times in the last ten minutes; the tea on the floor appeared to be frosting over by this point. "But I'll be back!"
And finally, he was gone.
Simon released a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding in. He couldn't just dash all the tales of the prince's actions from his mind, however harmless he appeared.
"He really is...a lot," the princess said.
"A bit of a generous statement, I think," Simon replied.
"Just lonely," Marceline mumbled, arms crossed. "He's just..." She sighed.
"I doubt he's very old." The two women in the room turned their gazes upon him, and he pushed onwards. "Though his facial features seem distorted by some amount of ice magic, I can see some trademark details that put him somewhere in his teenage years - certainly not a day past twenty. And, that aside, he seems...poorly matured."
A silence hung in the air for some length of time. Whether they were mulling over this revelation or considering how to politely inform him that they were already aware, he did not know.
"I'm back!" the prince announced, mop in hand as he cleaned up the spilled tea - which took a solid minute as the prince picked up the conversation once more, going on about the benefits of mountain springs and ice furniture.
Simon glanced at the vampire while the prince prattled on. She was putting up a much more convincing effort to seem interested in the conversation than either he or Bubblegum were.
'Perhaps,' he thought sadly, 'That's all he really is. Lonely.'
