This is how I envision upcoming episode 'Marcy and Hunson' going down (not, like, scene for scene but thematically, I mean). So, I'm aiming to be as show-accurate as possible. I hope you enjoy my prediction for what may be the finale to Marceline's character arc.
(Intro and Title Card - 00:30 Seconds into Episode)
Adventure Time Presents:
Marcy and Hunson
A grease-splotched, cardboard tray sits abandoned upon a diner table - backdropped with the ruination of Human Society.
Within a cozy little abode, nestled inside an unmarked cave, Marceline Abadeer walked a small stack of dirty dishes into the sink, all the while humming to herself the melody to Finn's silly little 'Best Friends in the World' song.
Silly, dorky, cute, ...amazing.
Marceline swallowed, never dropping the contentment which beamed soft upon her face - a habit she'd recently grown accustomed to, along with walking. She wasn't sure when such a habit developed - either of them. Once upon a time, Marceline floated whenever she could, even sleeping - and the warm feeling inside wouldn't last for long.
And then, one day, six months after that whole Vamp fiasco, Marceline realized that she walked - all the way to the Candy Kingdom - so she may join Bonnie, Finn, and Jake at the princess's sparkling cider grotto for a day of R&R. Not that she needed it; Marceline's always been chill as heck, but the others were starved for it, even if they didn't realize it for themselves.
Maybe her time as a mortal made her used to walking - among other things, a small part of her brain chimed in as an afterthought, as the warmth in her breast blossomed on its own accord. Although Marceline wasn't quite sure of what that was, as she soaked the dishes in hot water.
Three polite knocks sounded then - booms which electrocuted her sensitive, batlike ears. Marceline, with little care, dried her hands on the front of her nightshirt - which hung halfway down her skinny, pale thighs - and approached the door.
Hey, anyone who'd know where she lived wouldn't care about her presentation.
Marceline threw the door open, her eyes widening slightly to find who stood before her - hands behind his back, eyes drawn shut. "Oh, hey Peppermint Butler. Whattup?" she asked, sounding out the "W."
In a low voice, Peps uttered, "The Princess wants to see you." Marceline's smile died, a slow, agonizing death.
An opportunity to hang with her best friend would typically elate, err, interest the Vampire Queen. Except, Bonnie wasn't here to give the offer, and the gravely way in which Peppermint spoke...
She swallowed, prepared to ask for elaboration before hearing Peps conclude with a simple, "It's an emergen-CEEEEAAAY!"
Marceline had never flown so fast - she didn't even blink before diving back into her home, and grabbed her sunhat, along with Peppermint Butler as she blasted overhead.
(0:55 Into Episode)
Bubblegum's Tower
Princess Bonnibel gazed down upon the display before her, hand beneath her chin. It wasn't a royal problem, for her crown was noticeably gone, and her dress traded for a white blouse and blue-jean shorts. It was another matter altogether, one she couldn't possibly solve with sheer brainpower this time.
"Hey, Princess! I'm back! Where do you want this guac?"
"Oh, Jake," Bonnie glanced up from the roundtable with a smile, "anywhere you-!" Her curly hair flounced as her head froze rigidly, beholding the massive, lumpy form of Jake the Dog before her. She didn't need to crane her neck, for Jake was at eye-level with her.
"You look... different," she declared.
He simply chuckled - an impish titter which Bonnie knew from years of friendship that he was up to something. Especially when, "Yeah," was all he'd said.
Bonnie puffed her cheeks out, biting the inside of them. "Okay, well, you can set the guac anywhere, really. Even on my bed. Just not here," she waved her hands above the collapsible table she paintstakingly spent minutes setting up and throwing a red tablecloth over it (Hey, those minutes were valuable!). And it wasn't that or the seven meticulously positioned chairs plaguing her thoughts, but rather the centerpiece of it all.
It looked like utter garbage, but Bonnie hoped the emotional gratification Marceline would gain (which Finn assured her beyond a reasonable doubt would happen) made up for their utter lack of baking skills.
Oh, it looked so bad, and dorky, and Marceline will surely criticize them, teasingly of course, but all jokes stemmed from a kernel of truth, after all. Perhaps Jake should have taken charge of it instead of her and...
"Hey," her head straightened, "where's Finn? I asked him to come with you! What's he doing?"
Jake's ridiculously large, mushy figure wriggled as he laughed, setting the guac on her royal bed. "That's a surprise too!"
Bonnie folded her arms, sitting her butt against the table and crossing one pink leg over the other. "Well, is he gonna get here within the next twenty-five minutes?" She held her hands intensely on either side of her face, narrowing her eyes. "I've precisely calculated the amount of time it will take Peps to bring her here one dozen times in succession, taken into account his walking speed and her's, and it's gonna be twenty-five minutes from now, and I don't, want him, to be late, for Marceline's first birthday party!"
Bonnibel inhaled raggedly, while Jake frowned sympathetically. "I think she'll be fine," he said, followed by a familiar, muffled, "Twenty five MINUTES!?" and bulges of flesh started pushing out from Jake's form.
Instantaneously Bonnibel turned on heel, facing him fully - her curly hair swaying. "Jake, was that...?"
"Hold up!" he interrupted. Jake clenched both hands, scrunched his face, and squeezed, where Finn the Human then slid out from what truly resembled his brother's back door.
Finn was red in the face and sweating, panting hoarsely with a thick lock of hair sticking out of his hat. "I'm not... sitting in there... for that long!" He sighed in relief, breathing deep - it couldn't have been fun being entombed in his brother's rubbery flesh.
"Jeez, Finn." Bonnie walked over, dropping to one knee to help him sit-up; Jake's face shifted south to join them, maintaining his misshapen form. "You could have fainted in there! What were you thinking?"
The human boy sat criss-cross, and moved to face the princess after tucking his hair away. "We wanted to surprise Marcy with that 'gift' we've been planning," he explained while doing so. "But we didn't have any gift wrap-"
"You didn't have any," Jake deflected in back.
"-so we're using Jake, and then I wanted to be a part of the unwrapping too."
Bonnie gave her hero a long, hard look, before dropping her head abruptly, snorting in laughter. "Alright," she said, meeting his eyes suddenly. "Alright, I'll cede to that, dudes. It's a cute idea," she concluded, roughly rubbing the top of Finn's hat as she stood. Jake stuck his tongue out, mushing his cheeks together in response to her compliment.
"So why are we here so early? HYUP!" Finn grunted as he threw his legs forward, flinging himself into a standing position. "Want us to help decorate?" Bonnie blushed discreetly, painfully aware of how "barren" her bedroom was of party decorations, save for the table in the center.
"Or round up the Candy People, make sure they're distracted?" Jake asked.
"No, actually," the princess's hands rubbed each other, as if under a faucet, "I was just wondering if we could hang for a few, chat it up. Been a while since it was just the three of us, you know?"
"Ayy, Retro-Crew!" Jake cried holding his fist out for Finn to meet it, "Yea-heah! Retro-Crew!" he echoed. Then the two of them turned to the princess, expectantly, fists still locked together.
Bonnie looked to her friends expectantly before realizing, and she held her's up with an, "Oh!" and a small giggle. "Retro-Crew!" She joined her fist with their's.
As their three-way bump parted, Finn opened his mouth to ask -
"Bonnibel!?"
Three heads snapped to the open balcony, where Marceline dropped a woozy Peppermint Butler unto the floor, alongside those two candlesticks she had for legs: orange-red flesh, melted away like so much tallow, the vampire hissed sharply the moment they hit the ground, and she collapsed to a trembling knee an instant before her pale skin amended itself neath the cover of her large sunhat.
"Woah, Marcy!" Finn cried, as he and his friends rushed to meet her in the threshold. Jake moved immediately to wrap his arms around her and carry her to the bed, where he set her into a sitting position.
Marceline's hair was splayed out in all directions, and she was wearing but a filthy nightshirt with "Bite Me" in bloody font upon it. Her legs were so exposed! Finn lowered his head, trying to see her gasping face - it's not like flying exhausted her, which meant... "Are you alright?"
She nodded raggedly, not meeting his face. "Yeah," she breathed, tilting her shadowed face upwards, eyes drawn. "Yeah, that... just kinda hurt a little-lot. 'm fine. Are you alright?" Only when she asked this, did Marceline finally look up to meet her friends eyes - her own were wide, and pleading; scared, clearly, though nothing else about her spoke of it.
This whole time, Bonnibel stood behind Finn, hands atop her mouth until then. "What? What gave you that impression?" Then her neck stiffened, realizing what, or who, would result in such a reaction. "Peps!" she decried, turning to where her butler had been - now empty. Her eyes swept across the room, where - "Peppermint Butler!" her voice cracked like a whip, and the little mint froze in a sneaking pose, several feet away from the door. "Why did you imply we were in danger?"
"How did she know that?" Jake whispered, to which Finn replied, "She's crazy smart, dude," and Marceline between them added, "Jake, why do you look like that?"
Peppermint Butler stood straight and dutifully to his advancing princess. "I'm sorry, milady, but that girl just misunderstood me!"
"Oh, you little-!" Jake and Finn put their hands gently upon Marcy's legs and arms, keeping her to the bed. "You made it seem like the world was ending!"
He stomped forward, finger thrust at her, past the knelt, surprised princess's shoulder. "It's your fault for interpreting it that way, demon!"
"Then consider your presentation next time, you dumb suit!"
"Alright, alright!" Bonnibel spoke loudest of them all, making a calming gesture with both her hands. Peppermint Butler fumed while Marceline just settled into her seat on the princess's bed, albeit with a smoldering glare.
Bubblegum addressed the butler with hands on both hips. "Peps, good work getting Marceline here," she remarked with a thumbs up. And with a smile and an open hand, she offered, "Now why don't you take the rest of the day off? It's a free day in the Candy Kingdom."
Back with Marceline and the boys, with arms hugging her stomach she asked, "So... if you guys aren't in trouble, then why're we here?"
"Woah Mama," Jake puled away, mock surprised, "now that's too big a question for a day like this."
Marceline gave him a hard look before turning to Finn, who stood at her side with a hand still on her arm. "Finn, what's going on?"
The human boy's grin bore teeth. "I'm so glad you asked-"
"I'm so glad you asked, Marcy!" cooed Bonnibel, striding over, alone, clapping both hands together. Finn had puffed his cheeks out in annoyance, until an arm wrapped around his shoulders and pulled him into the princess, where he smiled warmly. "You could thank Finn for this," she said, "it was originally his idea - from that night you and I spent together? Having a supes' deep one-on-one?"
Marceline hummed, mind racing back to her most recent outing with the princess...
The two of them lied side by side, watching the stars go by from the top of the Candy Kingdom's iconic tree.
"It's Finn's birthday soon," Bonnie remarked, hands behind her head.
Marceline's rubbed the length of her stomach as she turned to face her friend. "Dang, again?" she laughed softly. "Man, time flies."
"Yeah..." Bonnibel sounded a little sad.
Noticing this, Marceline thought fast before coolly returning her eyes to the night sky. "Lucky kid. I don't even know when my birthday is."
"Dang."
"W-Wait, I didn't forget Finn's birthday, did I?" Marceline asked, tossing her sunhat to the bed. She was looking to her three friends, confused at their exchanging of smiles and anxious eyes; clearly, she wasn't supposed to be here, at least not yet. Only now was she just noticing the long table with... something, in the center. It had no form, it was a mass, really - slathered messily in red frosting, decked with plump strawberries. "Guys, what is this? Some kinda party?"
Bonnie stepped forward - beautiful in her natural, unburdened appearance - her hands wringing together. "Well, Marceline, we..." Her smile didn't drop as she trailed off, looking to Finn, and then Jake, whose face bowed in a mock-nod of approval. "We just wanted to say-"
All together, "Happy Birthday Marceline!" with Jake's form parting to reveal something he held inside of him - huge and metallic with... BMO on top! "Creation Day greetings, Marceline!" cheered the little robot, who was retrieved by Jake's elongated arms.
Marceline's hands went to her lips, cupping them, still hearing those words in her ears. Even as her friends joined her at her side, to behold the gift crafted by the three of them: metal vines, no, branches - like a tree - feeding into one another in a wavy pattern. But instead of leaves, this tree bore photographs: too many to count, but not one of them forgotten where it really counted.
For Marceline's eyes absorbed them all, one at a time, one flash of a memory dancing to the next - smiling faces she did not recall through sight but something warm in her chest. The faces of herself, her friends, a few at their numerous jam sessions, during the Vamp affair, when she and Finn went dungeon crawling, when the brothers took her to a concert, the day they parted for their island adventure upon the beach, another relaxation day, a beach day; when they slept over at the kingdom, at the Tree Fort, her own place; the Battle of the Bands - all of them, even with LSP and Simon and Phoebe, they were all making silly faces in one - there were plenty more with her surrogate father, and her other friends, and... and...
"There's so many," were the first words Marceline said, in a hitched whisper she didn't realize.
In a gentle voice beside her, Bonnie remarked, "Five-hundred. Sorry we couldn't fit more in, but we chose the best ones." In that moment, her eyes fell upon one and Marceline followed her gaze, to an expert snapshot by BMO from the time they all went camping, after Marceline drank raw red from the flesh of a slain beast that had attacked them - a sick dare brought about by Jake, and resulted in the embarrassing photograph of Marceline retching into the campfire, Finn and Jake laughing in the back, Lumpy and Bonnie shrieking in revulsion.
She laughed wetly.
Marceline's eyes continued to flit across the... her... gift, hands stuck to her lips. She only partially heard Bonnie say, "I'm sorry if this is really underwhelming, this wasn't how it was supposed to go down. I was hoping you'd get here after LSP and Ice King arrived." Marceline turned, to where Bonnie stood by the table. "And the cake, this stupid cake! I-It's so dinky, and you deserve better-"
"I love it." Bonnibel squeaked to a stop - and Finn and Jake finally turned their expectant eyes on the princess.
Marceline spoke in a quick, damp whisper, and said once more, fingers parting to reveal a broad, wobbly smile: "I love it so much. Thanks, you guys!" The Vampire swooped forward to scoop them all into a big, floating hug. The four friends laughed as they were squeezed together, and they were dropped gently as soon as it began.
Bonnie still had a sad smile on. "I wish it was more impressive though."
"Shut up, PB!" Marceline laughed. "This is way more than my dad ever did for me, so don't beat yourself up about it!" She floated past behind the princess, lighter than air, and a smile to match - and missing the hard, contemplative look Princess Bubblegum had upon her face.
"Besides, since when have your plans ever gone right?" Marceline cackled as Bonnie lashed her hand out. "Have fun on the ground, normie!" She blew a serpentine raspberry, only for it to get caught between her lips as Jake's arm lassoed tight around her, and roughly, playfully, forced the vampire to the ground.
"I got the birthday girl, Princess!" he called.
"Exceptional work, my knight! Keep the interloper down!"
(Pan out to the wall as Marceline and her friends laugh, which slowly fades to black)
End of Act I: Episode Time - 3:50
I know I said I'm trying to be as show-accurate as possible, but I can't do Adventure Time's humor - it's too perfect. I'm better at character stuff, so pretend this is one of "those" episodes I suppose, haha.
Anyways, let me know what's up (if ya feel like it)!