Chapter 3 – Black Moon Rising
In a dim and empty room, a young man sat on an elaborately carved, wooden throne. He was tall and thin, and his body's frame was draped in a jacket of the purest white. It was a formal-looking dress jacket, and he wore pants of the same colour to match it. In the center of his pristine jacket however, were two thick black lines that swirled together. Their appearance gave the impression that jungle vines were creeping across his chest, and that they would suddenly pull him up into the air at any given time. His shoes on his feet were so well polished that they reflected whatever limited light existed the room and sent out tiny rainbows of radiance. He could almost see himself in the shiny black leather if he ever felt the desire to look down at them.
The man had a bored expression on his face and one leg was casually crossed over the other, almost as if he were waiting for something or someone. A black and dark purple cape completed the ensemble and it was long enough to drape over the chair. This made the wooden throne look a little bit more comfortable. He was at ease in the poor light that filtered into the room from the high windows and illumination from other sources scattered around the large room. It didn't mind the dreary atmosphere and it was something that he had long gotten used to and suited him. Shadows stretched for miles, and the only splash of color other than his clothes came from the glass of red wine that he held, precariously balanced in his fingers. The wine glass hung loosely in his grip and more than once, it looked as if he would drop it at any time. The man was almost completely lost in thought, a prisoner of his own mind. The future as far as he knew it and the events that would proceed them would soon come to pass and that was what took up a lot of his thinking time as of late. He quietly raised his hand and sipped from his glass in an almost mechanical manner. He did not even bother to swirl the wine around in his glass or to sniff it with his nose for its sweet scent. The saccharine caliber and fragrance of the wine lost on him.
A soft shimmer appeared in the air, off to the left side of the man's regal-looking seat. He caught it casually out of the corner of his eye and leisurely turned his head in the general direction of the haze that had abruptly appeared. He watched with a single raised eyebrow as a tall and well-muscled man stepped out of the haze and immediately bowed his head in reverence to the seated individual. The man had a thick mane of bright red hair, and he wore an outfit that would have made him look at home on the streets of Agraba, the fictional home of the hero, Aladdin. The man on the throne had to chuckle. He did look like that particular character from the old children's fairy tales that his parents had read to him as a child. The red-haired man wore a brown, sleeveless vest with a pair of green harem pants. In short, the man looked like a traditional genie from a bottle, and it wouldn't be too far off because this man would do anything that the man on the throne wished or ordered of him. He allowed himself another chuckle at the irony of the circumstances.
The young man that had just appeared from the shimmering haze, had on brown boots that seemed to be just a shade darker than his vest, and the man on the throne couldn't help but think that they might have made the situation funnier if they had been curved up at the toe. The modern day Aladdin-like figure continued to bow his head in the direction of the throne and silently waited, missing the subtle look of amusement on the man dressed in white's face. g,. The man on the throne took one last sip of his wine before he spoke.
"Rubeus. Since you are here in my throne room without my personal invitation, I can only assume that you have something that you want to report to me. What is it this time?" The man in white held up his wine glass and stared at the contents of it as he spoke, not bothering to look directly at the man to whom he was addressing.
"Prince Diamond, you are correct as usual. I wanted to report to you that the centrifuge machine has been secured. Dr. Octavius has gotten it set up in the laboratory he is currently using, and just recently has informed me that it is fully operational. According to the doctor's report, we should be able to mass produce the first one hundred units in the next day or two. He also stated that the robotics that he has been dividing his time between, have been given the latest upgrades and improvements in their performance have been made and recorded. The droids are now fully battle ready."
Rubeus looked up at Prince Diamond with an excited expression on his face. The white-haired prince looked down at him with a look of uninterested distain. This poor sap actually thought that he would be praised for what he had just reported to me. He must not have gotten much praise or gratitude when he was a child. He was far too eager to please, and too proud of himself when he thought he had pleased someone with some beneficial news. Prince Diamond let those psychological observations linger around inside his head for a few more seconds as he continued to stare into the contents of his wine glass. He casually took another sip, swirled the red liquid around in his mouth and held it there on his tongue for a minute before he swallowed the semi-bitter fluid. The annoyed expression that the prince had on his face was one that hardly ever went away, but this time, it was mirroring what he was feeling at that moment.
"And what is the latest from Toomes? Are the ships ready for travel yet?" Prince Diamond made it look like he couldn't care less about anything that didn't directly revolve around him , but this particular information was important to him. Once again, he refused to make eye contact with Rubeus, much less even look in his general direction. No, Prince Diamond's attention remained focused on his wine glass, watching as the dim light shot through the liquid and painted bright red patterns onto his snowy white jacket and the pale white skin of the hand that held the glass. It truly was a gruesome sight, because it looked as if he were bleeding.
"Yes, my prince, the ships are ready. Right now they are still empty and a final check is being made as we speak in order to test all of their offensive abilities but they are ready to travel. All we need to do now is wait for Doctor Octavius to supply us with the droids to fill them up."
Prince Diamond lazily flicked his left hand in Rubeus' general direction, not taking his eyes from their current object of attention. Rubeus understood right away that he was being dismissed and not his audience with the prince had reached its end. The shimmering haze appeared in the surrounding air once more, and it swallowed up a disappointed-looking Rubeus a second later.
Prince Diamond waited until he was once again alone in the throne room before he allowed himself to change his expression into that of a small smile. He took another sip of his red wine, and thought about what would be happening in a short amount of time. His plans were soon going to be carried out and he would be the new ruler of this portion of the universe when the final bomb went off. As he silently thought about the future, memories of the past began to cloud his mind and the smile he currently wore turned back into a frown. His personal memories were truly horrific and he had done his best to never to think about things, especially from his past again. The one thing that bothered him the most however wasn't the memories of the Black Moon's creation and how its civilization had come to be but the fact that he couldn't control his mind enough to completely suppress them and not let them surface at inopportune moments like this.
As the historians would later tell it, Prince Diamond and the majority of the people from the Black Moon were descendants of various criminals and traitors to the planet Earth that had been banished long before and after Crystal Tokyo had turned into the peaceful sanctuary for the planet. Almost everyone on Black Moon hated Crystal Tokyo and the Crystal Kingdom with deep distain and often dreamed of the day when it would be overrun and destroyed by some yet unknown force. Prince Diamond and the rest of his generation had been born and grown up here on the Black Moon, while his parents, along with everyone else's that now served under him, had been born on Earth. His parents had told him and his younger brother how they had been captured and then quarantined to this cold and dark rock by the malevolent rulers, Neo-Queen Serenity, and her husband, King Endyimon.
Prince Diamond's free hand curled up into a tight fist in a fit of rage and he found himself clenching his hand so hard that it hurt. The more he thought about this dark corner of the universe that he had always known and was forced to live in, the more he hated Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endyimon with a fiery passion. He would personally show them and everyone else that served them, the folly of their mistakes. He had spent making years making big plans, and they were soon going to overthrow the supposed sweethearts of truth and love. He hadn't decided what exactly he wanted to do with them yet when he had them at his mercy but he could think of a few things that would put a smile on his face. His hatred for them and for Crystal Tokyo would never abate or lessen until every symbol of it was utterly destroyed. His parents had died a horrific and disgusting death and he threw the blame squarely in the direction of Neo-Queen Serenity and her romantic sap of a husband, King Endyimon.
Prince Diamond had to take a second out of his internal rampage to tear the king down in his mind a little more. The man was such an disillusioned fool. He fought for love and truth just like the others.
Ha, as if they were worth anything in the real world. The man had lost his nerve, that's what.
Prince Diamond took a deep breath to calm himself, along with a large swallow of his red wine as that last thought lingered with him a little longer. He didn't need to get sidetracked with the spineless king of Crystal Tokyo. Breaking his fixation, his mind drifted back to the memories of what had happened in the past. The strength of the memories and the emotions that they generated within him made it feel like they were swallowing him up and spitting him out back out into the era when the memories took place. He almost felt like he was having an out of body experience. Behind his eyes, he saw his parents again and a younger version of himself, standing apart from them. He knew this memory very well, and yet, it never seemed to make it any easier to watch.
Prince Diamond had just turned ten years old, and he could see his parents coming in to wish him a happy birthday. The ten year old version of him cringed away from them, and the present day version winced at his cruelty towards them. Not long after that incident, his parents became infected with an alien bacterium that had been living on Black Moon. It had never affected Prince Diamond or his younger brother, because they had born here, and it had already been in their mother's system when she was pregnant with them. This had caused their immune systems to become stronger and thus made Prince Diamond and the other children born on the Black Moon, immune to the effects of it.
It was a slow killing bacterium, and at first, his parents, along with everyone else that had been infected with it, didn't know that they were even sick. It had taken about six years to feel or even manifest any signs or symptoms. Then it started out mildly, until it ate away at the infected person from the inside out. At first his parents' strength began to wane then the muscle tone disappeared until there was only skin and bone left. This was a slow process, and it took three and a half years to accomplish that feat once it began to accelerate. At this stage, his parents looked like skeletons with skin stretched over bones that were too big for them and their hair had fallen out. His father had taken to wearing a toupee, and his mother had made herself a wig from her own hair that she had managed to salvage.
Prince Diamond had cried as the changes started to become more and more evident as he wanted desperately to help his mother and father. They felt the extreme pain of every movement once the bacteria had completely taken over. His father had described it once as feeling like his bones were made of glass and when he moved, it felt as if white hot lightning was shooting through his entire body. However, that hadn't even been the worst part. Six months before they died, their skin began to slough off of their frames, and it was that more than anything else, that had frightened the young Prince Diamond and made him flinch away from his parents on his birthday. No matter how badly the bacteria was making them hurt, his one little action of flinching away from his own parents, had devastated them completely, and hurt them more than anything else could. His mother had died later on that day. Not from the ultimate course of the bacteria, but he was convinced from a broken heart. His father had lasted another week or so afterwards before the bacteria finally killed him.
The present day Prince Diamond was jerked back out of his memories, and as he raised his hand to his face, he could see that his cheeks were wet. Tears? Had he been crying? That was beyond unacceptable. He dashed away the tears with the back of his hands in anger, and threw his wine glass away for good measure. It sailed through the air and shattered into a million tiny shards when it hit the far wall. Yes, it was a waste of fine wine, but he was still angry that his body had betrayed him like that.
Prince Diamond's parents had always raised him to hate and despise Crystal Tokyo for banishing their family to the last planet in the Milky Way galaxy, but the lesson had really hit home for him when his parents had died, and were being buried in the blacken dust of the barren wasteland that made up the majority of the planet. As he stood there, he watched the grave digger throw mound upon mound of dirt down on top of two tightly wrapped in plastic figures that were far below him in holes at least six feet deep. With every clod of earth that hit those shells that had once been his parents, he felt his resolve strengthen.
He was going to get revenge on Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endyimon, even if it killed him and half of the people on this god-forsaken planet. That was a vow he had made to himself then, and it was one that he was finally going to carry out soon. He didn't have as much time as he would have liked, because the long life spans that the people of Crystal Tokyo and by extension, all of the people of Earth enjoyed, didn't reach out to his little planet. He and his people would live a normal life span of about eighty years before surcoming to natural causes unless they met their fate in some other fashion. That was something that put him into a jealous rage if he thought about it for too long. He pushed that thought from his mind before he had a chance to dwell on it further. He wished now that he hadn't thrown his glass of wine against the wall. He needed a drink right now.
Prince Diamond let an evil grin spread across his face. Soon he would reclaim Earth for his people, and then his revenge for Neo-Queen Serenity and King Endyimon would be complete. He had already written down a few things that he would do to the ruling couple once he got his hands on them. There would certainly be torture, but he would bring them here, to Black Moon and let them be infected with the same alien bacteria that his parents had died from. Then they could watch as the person they loved most in the world shrank away and died in the horrible way that his parents had. After all, didn't they always say 'an eye for an eye'? Well, a death for a death seemed very reasonable to him in this situation. He would then marry their daughter, further cementing him as the true king of the new kingdom that he was going to create, and the peace and love that were now covering the planet would soon be replaced with corruption and hatred. He threw his head back and laughed in delight.
End of Chapter Three