Somewhere around the world...

It is 10:35 in the morning, and in a luxurious suburban home in Denver, Colorado, are three women currently watching TV together, enjoying an NBC special about the mysterious island in the South Atlantic. The living room is spacious, with a 72 inch hanging flat screen tv on the wall. On the sofa are the ladies, a mother, adult daughter, and grandmother, all in a laid back, relaxed position.

"Shea, can you, flip the channel, this bullshit is boring." The elderly lady spoke in a terse, soft voice.

"Geez ma, can't you open your mind anymore?" Shea O'Rinn, a middle aged, baby faced redhead with wavy hair, rolled her brown eyes as she sat up and leaned forward to pick up the remote from a glass coffee table in front of them. On the left of Shea was her mother, Brighid Carey O'Rinn, a retired actress. To Shea's right was Amy O'Rinn, her daughter. On Amy's lap was her aging black cat, Dutchess, who she adopted during Middle School. Amy, another redhead, with messy shoulder length hair, smirked at the conversation between the two older women, not breaking her focus from the tv. Just as Shea was about to change the channel, the TV screen momentarily went blank.

"Whaaa..." Brighid began, before music began playing as an animated blue news graphic showed up onscreen, with a news acronym nobody had ever seen before.

"What the fucking hell is 'TPEIC'?" Shea complained. However, Amy reacted differently, as she suddenly recognized a symbol this "TPEIC" news was using. Dutchess, the cat, quicky jumped off onto the floor, startled.

"Wait, mom..." Amy began. Amy had a soft, deep voice. Before she could finish, the news intro finished, and cross-faded to show a man sitting at a desk, wearing a blue tuxedo and an outrageously shitty tie. The man also had this dark painting behind him, showing an artistic concept of what Amy immediately recognized to be the surface of Pluto. She also began to snicker at the man's tie.

"Holy shit Amy, he has your painting print!" Shea excitedly exclaimed, lightly hitting Amy's arm with the back of her hand. Amy couldn't help but grin knowing how right her mom was. In addition, Amy was already beginning to think this guy was incredibly hot, even though the average American woman would consider him a 4/10. This time, Brighid Carey sat up, beginning to take interest in what the fuck was going on. She had a hunch this would be good.

"Good morning, my fellow Earthlings..." The man began to speak. Amy grinned even more, as she also thought this was going to be good. "Or evening, depending on where you live. Anyways, as you all know by now, we all have a brand new island in the South Atlantic, and you're all deciding on names for it. That's cool. Fine by me. And so forth."

"Well, I was calling it Boring Ass Magic Island, but..." Brighid Carey chuckled as Shea lightly hit Brighid Carey's right arm like she did Amy's earlier.

The man on the TV continued, "However, it is mine, to be honest. And as your satellites will soon show, we have cities here. Yes, cities. Yes, here. I'm on it right now, and as you can see in the windows behind me, the magical fog you see that has been covering this island for the last two weeks is now clearing up." Right on (literal) cue, the dissipation of the magical freezing fog becomes visibly noticable in the windows on either side of the painting behind him.

"Hoooooly sheeeeeeiiiiit...." The three women simultaneously exclaimed.

"Now that's what I'm talking about, baby!" Amy smiled, nodding at her mom and grandma as they chuckled and shook their heads, knowing quite well Amy was seriously into the dark arts.

"In the meantime," the man continued. "We have about thirty thousand citizens. Citizens of what, you may ask?" The excitement begins to show in the man's voice, triggering Amy to feel similarly increasingly excited.

"This island, of course. This island, which shall henceforth and forever be known as Pluton Island, will now be under my command. Pluton Island is under my command from now on, because I..." The man almost hesitates, seemingly overwhelmed by the excitement, the fear, the drama-induced adrenaline. The naming of the mysterious island as Pluton Island sent serious chills up Amy's spine, giving her goosebumps all over.

"Oooohh..." Amy reacted, shuddering as she was completely enjoying it. Shea and Brighid Carey momentarily glanced at Amy with raised eyebrows, before returning to look back at the tv.

"Because I, Gene Empire, formerly of a small town in some offensively Republican small town in Minnesota, USA..." Gene could barely hold back grinning, as Amy began giggling at Gene's blatant trolling of right-wing Americans. Shea grinned and snickered as she shook her head while Brighid Carey simply cackled.

"I officially declare independence from the United States of America. From here on out, I, Gene Empire, am the King of the Plutonian Empire." Amy looked at the time on the lower left of the TV screen as Gene announced his declaration of independence live on every TV on every channel all over the globe. "10:36 AM MST" Amy shuddered as she got goosebumps again, knowing intuitively that King Gene chose this time for a symbolic reason.

Gene contimued, "Now that the Plutonian Empire is official, ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to clarify a few things. While I do have every intention of joining the Geneva Convention, I have no intention of joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty. I also have no intention of signing the all out nuclear ban enacted back in 2017. We already have nukes and will perform a deep sea test of one of them this weekend to prove our abilities." Amy jumped up and squealed in delight, making her mother smirk and her grandmother scowl, both knowing her odd attraction to nukes.

"And finally, we have three cities here, as I said earlier. Neuve Pluton is our capital. The other two are New Denver and Nuke Factories. And you can attack us all you want, but we already have something you don't. Magic." Amy squealed again upon Gene's revelation, much to her grandmother's chagrin.

"The same magic that created this island out of the South Atlantic Ridge. The same magic that will keep Pluton Island in a nice, sexy year round winter."

"Hoooooochie mama!" Amy joked. Like Gene, Amy utterly hated summertime and much preferred cold and snowy climes.

"That's enough! Please." Brighid Carey snapped. "I'm trying to pay attention here." Amy stopped, and dropped back onto the sofa, pouting. Shea gave Brighid a cold glance in response.

Gene continued, on the TV. "That same magic, everyone. Will almost certainly protect us from annihilation. I guarantee it." He said with an almost evil smirk.

"Peace out, sexy humans." Gene flashed the peace sign as the broadcast ended, cross fading to the news cgi before fading to black. The previous, interrupted program flickered back on for a few minutes before an NBC News Special Report came on, with the usual editorializing that came with it. The O'Rinn ladies in the meantime, chit chatted about what had just happened. At that point, Amy revealed she recognized the symbol the "TPEIC" news used. Apparently, it was an old symbol used for the planet Pluto in astrology. Looking similar to the Venus symbol, it had a cross and a circle. The Pluto symbol however, had a crescent, in between the cross and the circle. The crescent appeared to hold the circle in a bowl-like manner.

Amy noticed her family seemed slightly dismissive of her explanation, so she quietly got up and headed to her room.