January 15, 2020

Today was the big day. The Plutonian Empire was getting ready to broadcast a surprise introduction, marriage, and coronation of a new Queen. Naturally the bride and groom couldn't see each other until the big moment, so Karyssa spent the night at the nearby hotel. It was a relatively slow news day around the world, so the wedding would soon become the biggest headline of the day.

Gene was in his office with the groomsmen getting dressed when one of the groomsmen, Nucleoid, got a text from Nucleina.

"Sir," Nucleoid, actually Nucleina's hubby, began addressing Gene. "Don't leave the room yet when we finish. Something's come up." Gene let out an impatient sigh but heeded, as he and the rest of the guys finished dressing, helping each other out as needed. Gene was putting on a blue tuxedo, while the rest of the guys had traditional black tuxedos.

Meanwhile, Nucleina was frantically searching every place she could think of; the Capitol, the hotel, the surrounding neighborhood, even Gene's Hangout. She was looking for Lilly, one of the bridesmaids who was supposed to have shown up hours ago but never came. Anni, one of the other bridesmaids, was with Karyssa, in an office on the 2nd floor, helping each other put on their dresses. Karyssa was wearing a striped blue dress, with vertical stripes down the front and diagonal stripes going down and out from the back to either side of the front. Towards her feet, a white and blue floral pattern accentuated the bottom, starting just above the knees. The Bridesmaids had traditional black gowns. There was a knock on the door.

"Yes?" Karyssa answered, having just finished getting dressed.

"Its me, Nucleina again."

Karyssa discretely let Nucleina in, who closed and locked the door behind her, and sat down in the main office chair, exhausted from searching for hours.

"I can't find her anywhere." She stated, referring to Lilly, and resting her elbows on the desk and her forehead on her hands.

"Oh." Karyssa went. Nucleina looked up ahead. Karyssa was helping Anni and another Belle Hadean finish putting on their dresses. Nucleina was disappointed that none of the supernaturals except Anni were willing to be Karyssa's bridesmaids, since she wanted to keep the Belle Hadeans out of public view until First Contact, but the lack of choices caused by Karyssa's insistence resulted in Nucleina having to come up with alternative explanations for their appearance, which she still had none of.

Strangely, Karyssa was utterly unaffected by Lilly's disappearance. And the only one. The other two girls looked more naturally worried.

"Karyssa." Nucleina began. Karyssa ignored her.

"Karyssa." She repeated, speaking slower and more tersely. Still no response. Exasperated, Nucleina rested her forearms on the desk.

"Karyssa." This time Nucleina broke the pronunciations into single, short sentences. Karyssa finally looked at Nucleina upon finishing helping with the last tough bit on their dresses.

"Yes, dear?" She answered, almost too innocently. Nucleina was growing increasingly irritated, but kept trying to keep her cool.

"Any ideas where Lilly might be?"

"I dunno." Karyssa shrugged, much to Nucleina's annoyance. "Maybe she's hiding somewhere?"

"What dafuque do you mean 'maybe she's...'" Nucleina began, plainly irritated, but she stopped when she thought she noticed an ever so slight smirk on Karyssa's face. "Wait a mi..." Nucleina finally caught on, and immediately became beet red with **** anger, for she was fed up to the max with Karyssa's bullshit. The two bridesmaids noticed it, and stepped back, glaring at Karyssa.

"WHERE IS SHE?!?!?!" Nucleina screamed at the top of her lungs as she knocked everything off the desk. Karyssa was mildly startled, but was already quite entertained by Nucleina's temper, who got up and lunged at her. The other bridesmaids backed up even more. Nucleina grabbed Karyssa by the throat, pushing her back against the wall. Karyssa had to stop herself from giggling. She was enjoying this far too much, and her magic protecting herself was so strong Nucleina couldn't even establish a proper **** despite using all her strength to tighten her grip on the Queen-to-be's throat. She glared at Karyssa with murderous intent as she switched to using her other forearm to put pressure on Karyssa's neck while she pulled out a magic knife she got from the nearby magic shop last night on a hunch.

The growing smugness on Karyssa's face rapidly convinced Nucleina even the enchanted knife was already powerless on Karyssa. Nucleina pressed harder anyway even though she finally realized it was having no real effect on Karyssa.

"Listen. Bitch." Nucleina muttered, almost growling. "I don't fucking care if this knife breaks on you." Nucleina rested the tip of the knife on Karyssa's lip twice, again doing nothing to push anything out of the way due to her self-protective magic. "I am. Asking you. One. Last. Time."

"Where. Is. She?" The look on Nucleina's face was just getting angrier and angrier. Her brows were already getting sore from the intensity of her anger. A few moments pass quietly, and Nucleina was just about to stab Karyssa quite futilely, when she finally responded.

"Fine, milady." Karyssa was terse and to the point. She actually didn't want Nucleina's knife to break, since Karyssa felt Nucleina at least deserved to be able to defend herself from some hypothetical future aggressor.

Yellow-white light suddenly flooded the room as Karyssa brought Lilly back. A ring of pillars was forming in front of the desk. Within moments, Lilly appeared couple feet off the floor and slowly drifted down. As the light pillars faded away, everyone except Karyssa was in utter shock, gasping. Lilly was covered almost head to toe in blood; with scattered patches of blue skin and clothes showing through. Her posture was as if she had just gotten wet; leaning a little forward, arms outstretched going down. There were red entrails hanging off her all over her. She was already dressed in her bridesmaid dress, curiously enough, breathing heavily, clearly quite pissed, and glaring at her abductor upon noticing her.

Anni and the other bridesmaid rushed to Lilly's aid, although she was unhurt. Nucleina glared back at Karyssa, who now had the most devilish cheshire grin. If it was humanly possible, Nucleina would have had an even still angrier facial expression. And now a single tear began to streak down her cheek as she could barely avoid involuntarily baring her teeth in **** rage.

Nucleina finally pulled her forearm away from Karyssa, once again turning away from her. She played calm for a few moments, before acting on her impulses.

"Don't!" Lilly yelled as Nucleina barely begun swinging, stopping her in her tracks. Nucleina was now glaring at Lilly, who had finally seen Nucleina secretly adjust her grip on the magic knife in her hand. Nucleina had been planning to (again futilely) attack Karyssa.

"Like what Miss Mårtensson here told you the other day," Lilly barely nodded at Anni. "It's not worth it. Trust me, it's not worth it, hun." Lilly finished. She may be pissed and younger than her boss, but she had much better temper control. Nucleina gasped and began breathing heavily, trembling with rage.

"Let it out, Mrs. Prez." Lilly spoke a little bit more calmly, finally beginning to overpower the instinctive, animalistically reactive posture she was in. "Let it out. Please."

Nucleina was still breathing heavily, struggling to sort out her thoughts and feelings. Becoming a little bit weak and bending over, she let out a long, bloodcurling scream of pure, unbridled rage and sorrow, before descending into uncontrollable sobbing. Her tight grip on the enchanted knife fed her rage into the blade as she screamed bloody ****, and for a brief second, it was almost equal to Karyssa's magic in power before Karyssa's naturally self-strengthening powers made her too powerful for the blade again. Lilly shook off the other bridesmaids to come to her boss' side and hold her.

Anni shot Karyssa an "implied facepalm" look and crossed her arms, slowly shaking her head. Samantha, the other bridesmaid, also came to Nucleina's side. Needless to say, Anni walked over and strongly lectured Karyssa on the whole thing while Samantha and Lilly worked on calming Nucleina down.

Anni did manage to get some details out of Karyssa, once she got to questioning her. Turns out, Karyssa lured Lilly into her pocket dimension, which Karyssa designed to be Lovecraftian in nature. Naturally, with Anni being a supernatural, she automatically figured out who Lovecraft was and how and why his works in the horror genre earned him fame. Karyssa admitted she trapped Lilly in a building made of flesh, blood, teeth and tentacles for shits and giggles before coming back to this dimension by herself, leaving Lilly behind; mildly hoping to keep Lilly as her "plaything" to **** for eternity. Anni facepalmed while Lilly glared at Karyssa again and slowly shook her head, before paying attention to Nucleina again. It took another half an hour to calm the alien President, delaying the start of the ceremony.