The Vampire, the Witch, and the Ice King (Part 1 of 2)

From all across the Land of Ooo, the Witch gathered her ingredients. But as she prepared her potion, she couldn't resist playing the video tape. She stopped stirring her cauldron, and pressed the play button on the machine, and a young man appeared on her screen. Or at least, that was what the Witch was expecting. Instead, she was greeted with an old, blue-skinned man with a wild, untamed beard. She waved her hand, and the video instantly rewound itself to the start.
"You may go, Gunter," she said, and the penguin next to her bowed its head and waddled out the door.
The penguin paused at the door, then turned back to the Witch. "Wenk?" he said, and the Witch merely nodded. "Wenk wenk wenk," he said, and slid down the hill, back to the Ice King's palace. It wouldn't be long before Finn and Jake knocked him around enough to make him return, and Gunter didn't want to be absent when he did. Not the squirt bottle again...
The man on the screen began to speak, and the Witch set down her tools to watch. "Hello. My name is Simon Petrikov. I am recording this tape so that people will know my story."
The Witch resumed brewing her potion as the thousand-year-old recording played itself out on her screen.

It was another cold day outside, despite being in the middle of summer. Simon Petrikov had long since given up on trying to understand how the crown worked - all he cared about now was getting it to stop working. Of course, Betty had her ideas, but they mostly involved one of them (usually her) being far away from the artifact. But Simon just couldn't let it go.
Nobody in the scientific community took him seriously anymore, that was obvious - not that his recent discoveries had made it easier for them to accept him, of course. The untranslatable "Enchiridion" was viewed as another silly attempt to fake his way into the public eye, and the crown was the next logical step.
Simon sighed, and wiped his glasses on his shirt. At this point, he wore them solely out of habit - the prescription made no difference, and he could see fine without them, anyway. He chalked it up to more of the crown's bizarre magic. He frowned at the obvious blue tint that was appearing all across his skin. Simon wiped some sweat off his forehead, and resumed poring through his dusty old books for any help at all.

Simon awoke abruptly, his sleep interrupted by a yelp from next to him. "What is it?" he asked, turning on a lamp next to his bed. He saw Betty in bed next to him, holding her own hand, as though it was hurt. There were tears running down her face. "What's the matter?" he said softly, but his voice was grating and unfriendly.
Betty was clearly sobbing now, and Simon realized that he must be freezing. "Simon, what happened to you?" she said, trying to calm herself. "What happened to the rational man I fell in love with?" But there was nothing Simon could say that he hadn't already said ten - no, twenty - times before.
"I still love you," he said, but he knew she wouldn't believe him. He reached out a hand and touched her arm, but she recoiled from his chilled touch.
Through her tears, she managed to mutter, "I'm sorry, Simon, but I can't." Without another word, she dressed, packed a bag, and left. Despite being mid-summer, it began to snow.

The following morning, three inches had piled up outside. Simon looked through his refrigerator for some breakfast, only to discover that he wasn't even the least bit hungry. He sat down at his desk. The voices in his head grew more and more distracting, but he did his best to focus on his work. It wasn't until he heard a child's laughter that he stopped - this was a new voice, and it sounded almost... pleasant. And it took him a moment to realize that it wasn't, in fact, in his head at all.
Simon walked to a window and pulled back a curtain. In the snow was a small, black-haired girl in an overall dress, making snow angels. But what drew Simon's attention was her skin - a pale, but noticeable, grey.
She seemed to hear him coming, and was brushing the snow off of her clothes when he stepped outside. "Hi!" she said, smiling. "My name's Marceline!"
"I'm Simon," he said, closing the door. It felt much nicer outside, in the cold, than it did in his house, and it worried him.
"I know! My daddy says you're a wizard!"
Simon shook his head and smiled. "Science isn't magic, Marceline. I study the world, and the things in it -"
But Marceline giggled. "No, not science, I mean REAL magic! Like the snow!" Simon stared at this girl, half in pity because she was clearly crazy for thinking he caused the snow, but half in self-examination, because... maybe she was right?
"Who's your father?" Simon asked, his raspy voice continuing to bother him.
"My daddy's a demon!" she said proudly, and Simon shook his head again. As if she sensed his disbelief, her face tilted back, and her lower jaw seemed to unhinge itself from her skull, causing her mouth to open to a degree that it should have had no business opening to. A monstrous-looking red tongue, with a split at the end, snaked out above her head, and Simon could see long, razor-sharp teeth inside her mouth. Marceline let out an otherworldly roar, and Simon fell back against the door of his house, horrified.
And as suddenly as it started, it stopped. "Me, too, see?" she said cheerfully, completely unaware that Simon was now cowering in fear. "My daddy is the King of the Nightosphere, so he knows a lot about magic and stuff, and you're a real powerful wizard, he says. Thanks to the crown."
Simon pulled the crown off his belt and showed it to the demon girl. "This crown?" he asked, the archaeologist in him beginning to focus again. "What do you know about this crown?"
"It's the crown of the Ice King," she said, "but I don't really know anything else." Simon's face fell, and Marceline seemed determined to cheer him up. "I'll ask my dad, though!" Part of him wasn't sure he was even having a conversation at all, the unlikeliness of what was going on, but he decided he would believe in it for now.
"Thank you very much," he said.
"I know! Let's be friends!" Marceline offered him a hand, which he shook. Then, she turned around and walked away, leaving Simon all alone in the ever-growing piles of snow.

The video hissed with static as it moved on to the next video entry. Simon was completely blue now, and his nose was growing longer and pointier. His beard had grown in and Simon was clearly making no effort to tame it. The Witch added more ingredients to her brew and continued stirring.
"It has been over a week since Betty, my princess, left me, and I can feel my grasp on reality sleeping away from me. I have made a new friend since then, though - a young demon girl named Marceline. It sounds crazy, I know, but she's there every time I go outside, and she's been very helpful in my research of this crown." There was a knock at the door, and it took the Witch a moment to realize it was her own door.
The door swung open, and a young boy and dog stood outside. The boy was holding a piece of paper in his hand, and was waving it around.
"Hi!" said the boy, excited. "Are you the Old Witch who needs a quest?"
"Oh yes! Come in!" said the Witch, waving an inviting hand - which also turned off the screen and flipped a picture frame over, face-down.
The boy and the dog - Finn and Jake, from what the Witch had heard - stepped inside, and their eyes widened at all of the trinkets and gizmos that she had lying around. They let out a long, "Oooh!"
"Yes, yes, let's talk about the quest, shall we, boys?" They sat down on the ground, and looked at the Witch in wide-eyed wonder. "I will, of course, reward you handsomely for your troubles - anything your hearts desire that I can give to you shall be yours for completing this quest for me." Finn and Jake grew more excited than ever at the prospect of a reward.
"Can I get a fire-proofing spell?" Finn blurted out.
"Finn, let her speak," said Jake, hushing the boy.
"Oh, yes, of course, for your time with the Flame Princess!" Finn's mouth opened slightly, and the Witch clapped her hands together. Several identical scrolls appeared before them in the air. "Roll one of these on your wrist, and you will be fire proof for an entire hour, one use per," she said, and Finn reached out to grab one, but t hey vanished. "AFTER you finish my quest!"
"Anything you need, ma'am!"
"I need you to get for me..." she paused for effect, and everyone leaned forwards, "some hair from the Ice King. As much as you can, please." They froze. A long time passed, during which, the Witch stirred the bubbling cauldron.
"You need WHAT?" asked Jake, making sure he heard correctly.
"Hair from the Ice King," the Witch repeated cheerfully. She waved her hands, and her guests vanished from her cottage, reappearing outside, some way away from the hill. The Witch picked up the picture frame, and smiled sadly at the picture it held. A single tear dropped from her eye, and she resumed the video.
"The crown," Simon continued, unaware of her interruption, "is an ancient relic belonging to the old Ice King, from millions of years ago. It can give the one it binds to an extremely long life, as well as control over ice and snow. But, I also seem to be losing what is left of my sanity."
There was another flicker of static, and Simon appeared again, his beard much longer now. "It's been two months since my last update," he said. His old voice was almost completely gone now, replaced by the horrible rasp of the Ice King. "I can't tell what's real anymore, and what's in my head. Almost nothing makes sense. I've tried to control these visions and whispers, but they're everywhere. Only my friend, only the demon girl Marceline, is clear to me, but I'm forgetting many things about myself. I'm forgetting who I used to be. All I have is a picture of my princess, and the knowledge of what I'm turning into. The crown owns me now, has me in its grasp. I may not be Simon for much longer." The Witch shed another tear over her picture.

Six months since Simon met the demon girl. That was how he measured the passage of time now. He brought his camera with him as he went outside that morning, and was greeted by the familiar, grey-skinned demoness. Despite the sub-zero temperature, she still wore her t-shirt and overalls dress, playing in the snow.
"Smile!" said Simon, and he took a photo of Marceline for his scrap book. "Want to have a snowball fight with me?" he said, grabbing a handful of snow. He threw the chunk at her, and missed - intentionally, but Marceline was surprisingly faster than he was expecting, and his throw was much farther off-target than he was aiming for.
Simon was about to throw another snowball, but instead got hit in the head by a newspaper from a passing paperboy.
Marceline brushed some of the snow off of Simon's doorstep, and the two of them sat down to read the daily paper. It became a ritual between them, a bonding experience, and a last-ditch effort to help fend off the memory loss of his life before the crown that came with his magic.
They turned to local news. Some no-name was running for office, a three-car accident across town, and a hot-dog eating contest were the highlights of the day, but before Simon could close the paper, Marceline pointed to one of the portraits from the accident.
"Hey Simon, isn't that... Isn't that Betty?"