Chapter 1
Today was no different from any other day for the Flightly Prince. Under the watchful eye of the Typical Butler, he was squandering the fortune inherited from his parents—alternating between high-society galas and black-market planets.
The Prince adored the deliberate lack of glitz and glamour in the latter. They were utterly foul places, crawled over by the most ordinary creatures whose microchips were limited to a mere couple of hundred UC. Aside from the general atmosphere of decay, the Prince loved buying up all sorts of junk for his private museum—a place no one ever visited but himself.
“Butler, my dear man, what do you think of this? Look at the chipped edges on this... this...” Suddenly, the Prince cut himself off to greet an old acquaintance. “Ah, the Dashing Smuggler! I had a feeling this was your shop!”
“May a Fillorian Candople bless you, Flightly Prince,” bowed the already short Smuggler, twitching his enormous, fluffy antennae. “You are my absolute favorite customer! What has caught your eye this time?”
The Butler glared darkly at the Smuggler. He knew that today, the Prince would once again blow the entire budget of some two-million-citizen Iorank on useless trinkets. The Prince was just about to ask around about a strange artifact—likely salvaged from the other side of the Galaxy—when something truly extraordinary distracted him.
The Flightly Prince instantly dropped the fragile handicraft. He would now have to pay for it, of course, but he couldn’t care less. Floating past the foul-smelling stalls of stifling brews was an incomparable, Beautiful Woman.
At the sheer sight of her, the Prince’s wings nearly rolled into tight little tubes. Luckily, the attentive Butler quickly held them in place, along with the antennae on his royal head. Otherwise, straightening them out later would be a long, agonizing ordeal—a chore the Typical Butler had absolutely no desire to deal with. He was already buried under enough daily hassles as it was.
“Who... Who is that, Dashing Smuggler?” the Prince gasped, his eyes glued to the Woman.
“Her?” The Smuggler scratched the back of his head. “Who knows. Every kind of scum and riffraff loiters on this Asteroid.”
Under the Butler’s heavy stare, he quickly corrected himself:
“Present company excluded, Your Highness.”
And just like that, the Flightly Prince lost all peace of mind—simply because he hadn’t dared to approach the Beautiful Woman on the trading Asteroid.
Upon returning to Hashnim, the planet he thoughtlessly ruled by birthright, he paced across his entire palace. He brooded over his newfound feelings and how desperately he wanted to be with this creature. Fortunately, the Prince had just enough sense to realize he needed to learn more about her first.
“Butler, my beloved Butler!” the Prince cried, throwing himself into the arms of his loyal servant. “You have no idea what a heavy thought weighs upon my mind!”
“Don’t tell me you have finally considered the fate of your people?” The Butler perked up, holding back his vibrating antennae. “The left side of the planet is starving, Prince! And on the lower continent, the butterflies are waiting for a five-hour workday to be established instead of a ten-hour one. They are dying at their stations!”
“How dreadful, Butler. I’ve heard a marvelous beverage from planet Daariloon cures all ailments. Drinks for everyone, on the treasury’s dime!”
“But Prince, you aren’t list—”
“I am suffering so much, Butler! Remember that incredible lady I saw on the Asteroid? I want to be with her!”
“Prince, you don’t even know who she is,” the Butler noted, adjusting his attire after the tight embrace.
“Then... Then we must find out! Dearest Butler, help me! Otherwise, I shall pupate again!”
“But you can’t possibly...” The Butler started to argue that pupating a second time was biologically impossible for their species, but he quickly decided it wasn’t worth the breath. “Sigh. Fine, I will help you. Just sign these decrees.”
As usual, the Flightly Prince didn’t bother reading anything put in front of him. With a careless flick of his wrist, he signed his name across a month’s worth of backed-up parchments.
Meanwhile, the Typical Butler set out to handle the Prince’s latest whim. He posted an ad on the InterGalacticWeb, searching for anyone capable of tracking a target based on a highly unreliable description. Without looking, the Butler summoned the very first person who responded to an offer with such an indecently low payout.
The Mediocre Sleuth arrived fifteen moments late, nearly driving the Prince out of his mind. He looked highly suspicious—either he drank too much Daariloon sumzi, or it was a severe case of professional burnout.
To the Prince’s surprise, the Sleuth had already located the lady using the vague clues provided by the Butler. And though the Butler had secretly hoped the request would remain unanswered, the Sleuth confidently announced he had found where the love of the Prince’s life resided.
“In the orbit of the Grey Planet.”
“Is it seriously called that?” the Butler doubted.
“Well, yeah. The Grey Planet. Pretty ordinary place, you know. But your Beautiful Woman has her own space station. Consequently, she’s quite wealthy.”
The Butler raised an eyebrow, marveling at the Sleuth’s deductive leaps, while the Flightly Prince exhaled dreamily.
“Oh, what could possibly be wealthier than the palette of emotions that paints new colors inside me every time I think of her...!”
“Also,” the Sleuth added, “she’s human. From the human race. You know, the two-legged, two-handed kind. No tentacles, wings, or antennae. Looks nothing like you.”
“Well, that changes everything!” the Butler declared, shaking his head. “It will never work, Prince. Alas, these humans are physically incompatible with other species.”
The Sleuth nodded thoughtfully. “Hmm, the Butler might have a point. I haven’t seen her associate with anyone besides humans.”
“Furthermore, humans are notorious racists,” the Butler stated, hoping to squash the matter quickly. “That is to say, they despise other races, cheat in business, and are extremely hostile to any requests. Perhaps it is because we and they have absolutely nothing in common.”
“Oh, my dear Butler, you are so typical...!” the inspired Prince sang out. “Do you truly think love can be stopped by that? Cities and countries, nations and civilizations, planets and stations have fallen before it...” he listed dramatically.
“Since you are so well-versed in history, surely you also know that, in the end, it was never worth it?” the Butler asked, his hope of bringing the naive Prince to his senses rapidly fading.
But the Flightly Prince remained blind and deaf to the arguments of his devoted servant. Instead, he sent the Mediocre Sleuth back out to gather more intelligence on the lady of his heart.
Meanwhile, the Prince tried to figure out how to please the Beautiful Woman, so that the moment she saw him, she would inevitably realize it was destiny. For several days and nights—by the local time of a dwarf planet that rotated on its axis every ten human hours—the Prince neither ate nor slept, plotting how to win her over.
“I’ve got it, Butler!” The Prince slapped his scaled knee and instantly regretted it. “I am ready to endure the pain! If I look nothing like a human, then I must fix it! This is now a matter of the utmost urgency!”
Dozing in his armchair, the Butler cracked open his sleepy eyes. “Yes, but... Are you aware that human males look somewhat... different?”
The Prince’s fiercely determined expression left him without a glimmer of hope.
“Everything will turn out perfectly if I am fully compatible with her, will it not?” the Prince declared.
