Outside, maybe fifteen miles out by Marceline's reckoning (but then she never was very good at distance, Finn always liked to say and joking about the time she put him through a slingshot and ended up in a zombie-monster's eye), this part of the world was a blasted wasteland still struggling to recover from mutagenic warfare of ancient days, but right here, the world was reborn.

Sitting on top of the far branches of a tree taller and thicker than the bones of a giant mutant, greater even than buildings she remembered in the days before Simon froze her to save her from the mutagenic toxins, Marceline could see out for a great and vast distance, farther out then what a bird could see flying high above. She squinted, just barely able to see the suggestion of a depressing bit of brown far out there (where everything was dust and dirt, broken ground and blood stains)-

She leaned back into healthy wood, strong and supportive like the arms of a friend. Here, though, things were good and growing. Greens and blues and reds everywhere, grass sprouting far below as towering gentle robots walked on behalf their ancient mission of restoring the world and nodding gentlemanly up at Marceline. The robots took care not to disturb even a single blade of grass, and as Marceline sat up there in the tree, surrounded by a sea of natural colors where a massive forest of trees grew up like a harbinger of good times to come, she smiled fangily.

Here, things grew without fear of negative mutation, though benign mutations shaped them into interesting new forms. Marceline smiled as a fruit sprouted wings and flew a bit through the branches of a tree curling up in spirals, a wooden fractal-form, and exploded in a cluster of seeds bouncing into the ground. Several small squirrels wearing suits scurried by, suddenly zipped up into the air with telekinesis and flying away.

Above even these trees, there were machines, great and massive and thrumming with lightning; the ground under them vibrated, and Bonnibel had once told Marceline and Finn that they were restoring the world, stripping out the radiation and infusing the ground with mutagenic nutrients that would speed the growth of new pants and amplify the bio-psychic potential of animals to mutate them back into more benign forms.

Bonnibel could just go on about the power of SCIENCE saving the world and healing the pain of ancient days and bringing sugary love to everyone for great justice, and it was good enough for putting Finn and herself to sleep, but looking down at all this beauty and bounty, Marceline smiled again and thought that maybe Bonnibel had a point.

Marceline had been frozen for a long time before she broke out into this scary new world and found Finn, her precious tiny boy, and she remembered when the world had been ripping itself apart in war and death. It had been way worse than all of this, and she remembered when only two months ago this exact part of the world have been just as filthy and broken as anywhere else. But Bonnibel was fixing it-

In some weird way, Marceline just knew Finn wanted to be a part of that. Saving the word and being a Good Person (with capital letters absolutely required). Marceline, less interested in fighting The Good Fight or however Finn put it and more interested in keeping him and herself alive, felt uneasy thinking about that.

"Look, Marcy!" Finn squealed. The warm weight on her front bulged and shifted around and Marceline tucked the strap of her overalls up as Finn, so tiny and no bigger than her finger, rolled around in the front pocket on her overalls. "Look at that, lookit!"

"Look at what, mang- hey, stop moving around!" Marceline tried to say more. Finn rolled around and around, hopping up to get a better view and peeking out of her pocket. It was too deep for him, and he had to hoist himself up for bits and seconds, and kept falling down. He braced himself against her chest, and she giggled, he just made her so ticklish. Marceline giggled. "The stuff are you looking at?"

"I don't know!" Finn said cheerfully. "All the things!" He gi

ggled too, bonking himself against her just to make her laugh. He got his wish and Marceline snickered, putting a hand to her mouth but that couldn't stifle the giggles one little bit. "Bonnie is, she's amazing! She did cool things!" Finn waved at one of the robots. It was wearing a cap and had a bunch of bristly wires poking under its big glowing eye. Marceline remembered that Bonnie had called this one Mr. Starchy for some reason, and waved disinterestedly at it. Mr. Starchy tipped his cap, squealed 'Morning!' and went on his way. "She has robots! That is awesome!"

"Pfftt," Marceline said. "We got robots. We fought robots! We blew up an army once! Hee, that was awesome."

"You mean when you threw a rock at one and it tipped over, and the ones around it tipped over, and they fell into a big glowing thing that exploded and then they all exploded?"

"That counts as beating them up!" Marceline crossed her arms, the little point where her arms met coming under Finn and nudging him up so he could see and make him stop bouncing there because that was starting to hurt a little.

"Hee, hee." Finn peeked out, standing on his tippy-toes and a little pressure on Marceline's arms (and she already knew how precious a life was even so young, how easily it could fall away or be lost, and Finn was so small and precious, so good and happy, the best thing that had ever happened to her and she wouldn't let anything happen to him, anything at all or she would just make the world burn) and squeaked out some more, his little cutie body wiggling back and forth.

They sat there a while, looking out into the world.

Marceline sat uneasily. Maybe, just maybe, Finn liked saving the world more than just being with her. Being her friend, being her very best friend in the history of all the things, and he could just up and go, do his own thing, and that was so scary, just leave and go with someone else. She shivered.

Bonnibel was all kinds of things Marceline knew she couldn't ever be, and she was just so much more like Finn in all the good and important ways (for one thing, she was a little bit smaller than Marceline and Marceline figured that was close enough to being a tiny like Finn). She bit her lip, and it felt a little good how her fangs tickled.

She felt more scared than anything ever, more than Simon going crazy and disappearing, more than when her mom never woke up, when her dad disappeared and never came back; those things were done, there was nothing she could do about them ever, but Finn was hers, he was supposed to belong with her or to her (she still wasn't sure which it and it hurt how little control she really had over a boy so tiny she could squash or swallow if she wasn't careful). She had to take care of him, she just had to.

Marceline didn't know if she wanted anyone else taking care of Finn, even someone she honestly liked as much as Bonnibel (at least when she wasn't being, like, a total butt-head). She really hoped like crazy that Finn didn't like Bonnie more than her. Sometimes she just wanted to cry thinking about it, worse than the time Finn was gonna leave her because she laughed at his dream of being a big hero. And Bonnie had even told him that he couldn't really get big like Marcy or Bonnie or even that nice Susan girl who wanted him to live with her and the other mutant humans even though they were bigger than normal and he was way smaller than normal, there was just something weird about his body that wouldn't mutate normally, and Finn just insisted that his hair was full of dreams and his hair was awesome so he didn't care about what was possible or not.

"Hmph," Marceline said, sitting back and feeling confused and angry but mostly she felt tired from doing stuff all day and hanging out with Finn and Bonnie. When the three of them got together, that was really cool. Even when Bonnie was a total butt-head.

Finn squirmed around and peered up at Marceline. "What's the matter, Marcy?"

Marceline made a 'pfftt' noise. "Nothin', Finny."

Finn screwed his face up. "Nuh uh. Something's like chewing at your thinker-mash, Marcy."

"Is not!"

"Is too! I can see it! Oh wait, no I can't. But I can totes smell it!" He threw himself against her and started sniffling, crawling out of her pocket. "Yup, them's the spooky Marcy smells! …Smells like trees! Hee hee! Marcy smells like trees!"

Despite herself, Marceline giggled. "I do not, mini-dork!"

Finn giggled again. "You totes do, Marcy-barcy!"

"Finn in a pin!"

"Marceline in a wrestlin'!"

"That doesn't even rhyme!"

"Pfft, it totes does!"

"Nuh uh!" Marceline put a hand into her pocket. Finn scrambled away from her searching fingers, but her thumb pinned him against the wall of her pocket so hard he wheezed. She giggled again, smirking, and dragged him into her palm. She squeezed him, tucking him up in her fingers, and it was a nice squeeze. Finn told her all the time it was like a big hug from all of her and since she couldn't hug him without, like, popping him out like a grape or something shooty, hand-hugs were good enough and it felt so nice when he cuddled into her hand, and he didn't do that this time but he wiggled and whined ("Let me go, Marcy! I'll call you Mar-Mar if you don't!") and that was good enough for her to cackle good and scary, just like Daddy had taught her before he wandered off somewhere she didn't know. Sometimes she liked pretending that he was hanging out with Simon. That made her feel good when she felt bad.

Marceline giggled again, and put Finn up right in front of her face. He went very still and quiet, and then she kissed him on the head, his head vanished between her lips (and didn't he just feel right and good there) and she let him go with a pop, and he giggled some more. Sometimes Marceline thought that she should feel weird about kissing about but Finn didn't count, it was Finn and he was… her mind went blank. She didn't know how kissing Finn would be different from kissing things, like maybe kissing a rock or food or Bonnibel or a big poofy had with tasty dust on it, but Finn was different and anyway he tasted good so she liked kissing him and if anyone said anything about it she'd punch them right in their big stupid face. Unless it was Finn. His face was small and totally cute, so she'd just push him over and hold him down until he whined about it.

These thoughts were nice and she didn't think much about it for a long time, and she and Finn just sat back and looked at things, watching the sun go down (and Marceline loved just sitting there while the sunlight got a little less awesome and it got dark, she read about things that hated sunlight and she just couldn't get why they would even bother living, she couldn't imagine living without the sun) and still the big happy machines did whatever it was they did.

Little by little, making the world a better place. A place that was super-good to live in.

Marceline thought that maybe super-good wouldn't be as bad as Daddy always said it would.

Marceline didn't know how much longer they stayed out there watching the sun go down and just being happy because everything was so pretty, but it was long enough to see the stars come out and a hint of a crescent-shaped light high in the sky.

Marceline remembered, that was the moon. It was hard to see, and even weirder than the lights in the sky. She hadn't seen those since she was little, before the smog had turned parts of the sky opaque a lot of the time, but Bonnibel's machines cleaned the sky too, and here it was enough for her to see the stars. The sky looked different too, it didn't have the greenish tinge it used to, and that made Marceline a little sad because that was such a pretty color.

Day gone and night in full swing; Finn yawning and shifting around in her pocket meant it was time to sleep, so even though Marceline would have liked staying out a little bit longer and just looking at things, she had to go to sleep now because Finn needed to sleep and got grumpy when he had to stay up. Sometimes she resented him more than a little, it was a restraint on her doing the things she wanted to, but she wasn't feeling like that right now. And she was feeling sleepy too, so it worked out okay.

She could have let him go to bed on his own, but she was scared to let him sleep out of her sight. She needed to keep him with her all the time, at all the times. Terrible things could happen to him, on his own, and he could get lost or she could step on him without seeing him or she could be chewing on some straw without knowing he was in there-

Marceline shuddered as she walked into the big metal underground chamber where Bonnibel apparently slept and was tutored by the ancient machine-people; no, Finn could not be away from her. Best for him to stay with her, in her pocket or something, at least so she could grab him and run away with him in something happened or he was being stupid and needed her to actually act like she really was more than ten times his size.

Her bare feet made faint noises on the metal grating, and Finn peeked out of her pocket to see the clicking little cleaner-drones trundling past on wheels (looking like metal trilobites but even cuter, and Marceline had to look into a book to see what those were) snuffling up the dust and going past. Beneath the grating there were machines, big and quiet and glowing with something like green lightning, humming brighter as Marceline passed them. She looked down at them curiously, wondering why it did that.

"It's a Spiral Power collector," A bright voice said from directly behind her, and poked her in the back of the head.

Marceline shrieked and whirled around, growling and snarling. Bonnibel stood impassively, smiling just a little bit at the corner of her mouth and it was almost a smirk. "Hi, Bonnie!" Finn said excitedly.

"H-hi, Finny," Bonnie said, peering down and smiling properly at Finn (My Finn! Marceline thought sullenly) and patted him on the head. Finn made a little purring noise, Bonnibel's fingers squishing into his head like gelatin. Marceline made a grumpy face but didn't say anything.

Bonnibel looked at Marceline, smiling now with a little 'I totally got one over on you!' look. Marceline huffed and conceded the point. Bonnibel giggled at whatever weird thing was moving through her head; a little shorter than Marceline and wearing a cleanly pressed set of purple coveralls, when Bonnibel moved there was a faint shimmer in the light moving through her gel-like flesh. Bonnibel was pink all over, like candy or some science-y chemicals, almost like liquid made solid or a person made from ooze, all smooth corners and bits of tendrils extending here and there, no lines or joints anywhere. It was weird, but you got used to it, and when you got used to the fact that Bonnibel looked a lot like a human but not exactly, she ended up cute as Finn (and that was like SUPER-CUTE).

Standing in the light like this, Bonnibel was even translucent or see-through in places. Light broke through it, refracting and shining like a free-standing prism, and she shone like what Marceline figured angels looked like when they weren't all crazy-looking or totally badbutt (Finn would whine if she so much as even thought 'badass' and she had no idea how he knew), and Marceline knew that Bonnibel was totally doing it on purpose. Bonnibel shook her head, the redder and thicker clumps of gooey hair on her head slapping around a bit. "I got light in my eyes again," She said, walking around and gesturing at the walls. The lights dimmed. Finn waved his hand too, but nothing happened to the walls, they probably only responded to Bonnibel. Finn pouted cutely. Marceline giggled and poked him in the face.

Bonnibel walked on a more solid part of the ground, big metal plates lined with a plush fluffy stuff. Marceline thought that if there was a lot more of it, it'd make a nice bed. Or a trampoline, that sounded fun. She hadn't seen a trampoline in ages. "Everything is fueled by Spiral Power," Bonnibel said suddenly. "The green energy in my lovely sparkly shiny and TOTALLY SPIFFING AWESOME machines!" She giggled. "Shiny machines. Hee, hee!"

"Uh huh," Marceline said flatly. Bonnibel was hopping up and down now; sometimes Bonnibel had legs and sometime she had a thick mass that just moved around and shifted like she was a blob-girl, but today she had legs. Marceline didn't really care why Bonnibel got bored with legs sometimes.

"Yep!" Bonnibel said, totally oblivious to Marceline's lack of interest. "It's like, made of SAPIENCE and junk. It's what makes people evolve and become people! Also it's the best power source in the history of… um, I'm not sure, but that's because I don't know all about history yet. But it does a bunch of crazy things so I'm using it to power my machines, and I think I can use it to make GIANT ROBOTS and HUGE GUNS THAT BLOW UP PROBABILITY and GENERATE GIANT MONSTER ELEMENTALS TO ISOLATE AND PEEL ONIONS!" She smiled, staring up into empty space. One of her hair-chunks poked her in the ear. "Tee hee, I tickled myself."

"Mathematical, Bonnie!" Finn said. He applauded. Both he and Bonnibel giggled.

Marceline rolled her eyes. She suspected that she just had really weird taste in friends.

"Me and Finn wanna go to bed," Marceline said.

"Aww," Finn and Bonnibel whined. "But you guys are hardly ever here! You're just gonna go off and do fun stuff out there," Bonnibel pouted. "Being all nomads and junk. Sucks."

"Aw, we'll be back in a while, Bonnie," Marceline said. "We'll bring you, like, presents and stuff. Like another zombie dinosaur head!"

"Ooh!" Bonnibel said, clapping and hopping eagerly.

"But I don't wanna go to bed," Finn whined. "I wanna, uh, watch TV! And wrestle! And play… um…in the bathtub. And listen to Bonnie talk about SCIENCE even though I don't understand… it. And… play those neat… games with dice and… uh, what's the thing, talking? Yeah, that, she has those. And-" He paused. He blinked, and yawned mightily. He yawned again after that, blinking sleepy tears.

Marceline poked him in the head. Bonnibel did the same thing, and her finger spread over his hair and swallowed up the top of his head with a noise like a big fat smooch. (The first time Bonnibel had hand-hugged him, Finn had gotten sucked up right into Bonnibel. It was really awkward and Bonnibel hadn't stopped apologizing for like days and Finn was blushy like crazy but he said he felt like super-clean.) "Sleepy-head," Bonnibel teased.

"Hmph!" Finn pouted. "All you giant girls picking on me!"

"We're not giant, you're just small."

"You look like giants to me," Finn said, blushing a little.

"You're awesome at talking to girls," Bonnibel said. She smiled and walked away to a small table. She picked up a rock and looked at it for a moment before she opened her mouth wide (jaws unhinging, kind of) and just tossed the rock into herself. It bounced into the back of her internal membranes, going around inside her like a crazy ping-pong ball before it slowed down and got all fizzy. Bonnibel's insides bubbled around it as the rock gently melted into a goop that was soon absorbed. Bonnibel grew slightly taller, her body substance thickening a bit. "Hmm, doesn't taste as good as Finn said," Bonnibel, who would eat absolutely anything, said. "Sorry, Finn!"

"Mostly I just like chewing on rocks and trees and stuff," Finn said.

"And that's why your teeth are gonna be weird looking," Marceline said. "So is our sleeping places okay?"

Bonnibel huffed. "I dunno why you guys wanna sleep in a… a barn. I got big nice comfy beds right here!"

Marceline scowled. "You gotta sleep in a barn when you're a nomad! It's like, a rule!"

"Is not!"

"I saw it in a movie once," Marceline said, like this settled everything.

"Movies don't count!"

"What about that one movie with the giant robots who fight other robots and there's this one guy who never shuts up and no one cares because you're just watching for the robots?"

Bonnibel pouted. "That doesn't count either!"

Finn yawned again.

"Okay, okay," Bonnibel said. "The thing is set up, you guys can sleep there-"

"Yaaay," Marceline said flatly.

"But one more thing." Bonnibel hesitated. "Can I… hold Finn good night?"

Marceline winced, thinking of the rock getting sucked up and digested. She was about to think of the very best way to say no, and Finn said, "Sure!" He giggled and blushed. Marceline scowled, but delicately picked Finn up and held him in her hands, cupping them.

So small, so delicate, a precious little weight in her hands. She got scared sometimes, how small he was.

Bonnibel eagerly held her hands forward. Marceline paused a moment more, scared to put her Finn into the hands of someone else, but if she couldn't trust Bonnibel she couldn't trust anyone.

Neatly, Finn tipped into Bonnibel's hands as Marceline growled to her, "Be careful." Finn giggled as he bounced on the surface gel of Bonnibel's hands, and Bonnibel murmured happily at his solidness. Marceline's fingers brushed Bonnibel's, the little claw-tips on her own gray-blue fingers making brief dents on Bonnibel's fingers. Both girls squirmed a little and blushed without knowing why (and Bonnibel's cheeks turned several shades brighter, red flooding in there), and Marceline thought that Bonnibel looked like she was made of goo but it felt just like flesh and so warm. Finn bounced up and down on Bonnibel's hands. He said, "It's like a trampoline!" and bounced good, feet sinking slightly into the skin, threatening to go right through-

Bonnibel cupped him, holding him still. Her small and eager fingers kept him steady and he squirmed a little, blushing really hard. Bonnibel gave him a brief, soft squeeze, and delicately lifted him up. Finn went still and silent, goggling up at Bonnibel, and she smiled down at him. Her head bent a bit, and then she lowered her mouth to his head, her lips puckering gently and closing of her face. They pressed against his cheek (and most of his face too) and Marceline could hear the faintest little sound of a kiss. "Nighty-night," Bonnibel half-sang softly. "Goodnight kisses mean no nightmares."

Finn tilted his head up and bumped his head against her lip, too shy to dare consider kissing her back. "Nighty-night, Bonnie."

Bonnibel glided back over to Marceline, and passed him back into her waiting hands. Marceline's fingers went jealously over Finn's body, seizing him and taking him back into the safety of her personal dominion, and he was still warm from Bonnibel. She gave him a brief hand-hug.

Bonnibel's hand was on Marceline's wrist. It was warm and gooey at the same time, like a hot water bath you just wanted to sink into for hours. "I worry about you two a lot," she said quietly.

"Pfftt. You worry too much," Marceline said.

Bonnibel didn't say anything for a moment, and then abruptly she hugged Marceline and by extension Finn. "You two are my best friends in the world," She said, looking like she might cry. "Please come back soon!"

"Geez, what… Bonnibel!" Marceline put her arms around the smaller girl, squeezing into her. "Don't cry. We'll come back soon." Bonnibel was trembling now, like a pool right next to something stomping hard. "I promise."

"…You sure."

"Most defs."

Bonnibel sniffed. "Okay," she said quietly. She stepped back for a second, hesitated, and kissed Marceline on the cheek too. "Good night kisses keep bad dreams away," Bonnibel said solemnly.

Marceline was still pondering the warmth on her cheek as she walked up the staircase up to the surface, and Bonnibel was waving at them with a little smile on her face.

Finn quietly confided in Marceline that he had no zonking idea why Bonnibel had a barn in the middle of her SCIENCE Paradise (and somehow Bonnibel knew when they didn't pronounce science with all caps and she would just WHINE about it), but it was pretty convenient for them.

It reminded Marceline a little bit of the past, like when she and Simon had wandered for a time before the bombs had fallen and Simon had frozen her to save her though it was probably a really dumb idea in retrospect; they'd slept in barns all the time when they left the cities, and Marceline still had happy fuzzy and warm thoughts about those times. Sleeping with Finn in a barn only seemed natural and right.

Sometimes she thought about finding Simon and then another barn, and they could sleep there like a family. That sounded nice. Also, they should have a trampoline. Because trampolines were awesome.

The barn looked pretty much like any other barn she remembered; a few stories tall, with a big hayloft at the top and painted a pretty shade of red with stripes of white here and there… though because it was Bonnibel they were talking about, it also had old traffic signs pasted all over for some reason, little wind-chimes placed here and there, and the very roof was painted to say 'I CAN SEE YOU' so it would scare away aliens.

Marceline blamed Bonnibel's crazy on having a brain made of goo, which was also her entire body.

It had a nice electric light inside it, not too bright, and her footsteps made a neat echoing noise. You had to have things specially oiled to make an creak like that, Marceline had been told by her daddy a long time ago. Marceline breathed in the smell of it… and then started choking because of the sawdust. "Who does woodwork in a barn?!" She said, glaring at a little worktable near the door where Bonnibel had apparently been sawing up wood.

"You mean like that time you made me a house in that cave?" Finn said.

"That totally doesn't count!"

The barn felt big and opening, though, like a big pair of arms wanting to hug her to sleep. She giggled at the thought, mood swinging back to the positive axis. Spying a ladder case, Marceline went up it, her long arms and legs moving so quick they were practically a blur, and the ladder rocked up a little before she jumped off the top of it as it fell backward. She landed into the hayloft, the hay cushioning her landing, and the ladder fell on the ground with a big whump. Marceline winced.

Finn poked his head out. "What was that?"

"Nothing!" Marceline said quickly. "Uh. Might be hard getting down tomorrow, though…"

"Oh, okay." Finn yawned.

The hay was piled up so thick that it was as high as her shoulders. Marceline giggled some more, pleasantly sleepy and a happy fog in her head, ploughing through it. She moved her way to a big pair of beds Bonnibel had put just for them, and she knocked them right over and jumped happily into the biggest pile of hay.

It was surprisingly soft, and not itchy at all. She had totally thought it would be super-itchy at the least. Marceline giggled again, snuffling her way into it and rolling on her back, the thick hay propping her up. Hay was all around her, covering her; hay above and below and to her sides, packed loosely together like a bed and blanket and pillow all at the same time.

The electric light went off and Marceline yawned, mouthful of sharp teeth like knives in her jaw. Finn always told her that her teeth were super-pretty and awesome and sometimes he crawled into her mouth to touch them and she told him that was weird but it was hard not blushing thinking about it, because he trusted her so much he would still go into her mouth just to be silly…

Marceline yawned, overriding Finn's tiny yawn. She settled back into the hay, breathing steadily and starting to sleep.

"Marcy?" Finn mumbled.

"Yeah, Finn?"

"…Sing me a little something? Please?"

Marceline yawned again. "Alrighty." She breathed in, and her throat started tickling as a warm hum buzzed through the hay. It was musical and beautiful, and Finn wiggled a bit with the rise and fall of the notes.

Her hand fell over Finn's whole body, snugly holding him, and Marceline sang him to sleep, and not long after he drifted into sleep so did Marceline, content and happy and cuddly.

She dreamed that Finn was regular-sized and she only had to look a little bit down to see his eyes, and that they giggled and laughed and hugged and danced, and it was the nicest dream ever, and Marceline later wondered if maybe Bonnibel had magic happy-kisses.