Chapter One
It was a busy day in the Land of Ooo. Ooo was always pretty busy, but lately more so than usual, because it was almost time for the International Royal Council. Princess Bubblegum was extremely stressed as she was the hostess and had to plan everything out.
"Princess, why's it called the 'International' Royal Council?" Finn asked as he and Jake hung a giant banner over the arched doorway of the large dome-shaped building the conference was being held in.
"Because it isn't just royalty from Ooo attending," Bubblegum answered from where she was attempting to dust off the plethora of chairs and tables that had been unceremoniously shoved into a closet the last time this venue had been used. "Royalty from the Land of Aaa will be here as well," she added, wiping her hands off on her paint-splattered overalls.
"Land of Aaa?" Jake asked in confusion. He knew a lot of things, but he had never heard of a land called Aaa.
"Aaa is a continent just across the ocean from us," Bubblegum explained as she started to lug the chairs out into the center of the room. "It's pretty identical to here, actually, but they have lots of princes instead of princesses."
"Ah, finally!" Finn cheered, "Some dudes to hang out with!"
Bubblegum fake gasped. "Is my company not enough for you, Finn?" she asked, feigning hurt.
Finn laughed, loud and obnoxious. "Sorry, Princess, but hanging out with the same girls you have to save all the time is kind of stressful," he said, only half-joking.
He hopped off the makeshift ladder he was on (it was really just a pile of large boxes that was threating to topple over at any second) and went over to help Bubblegum move the furniture. "Yikes," he muttered as his hand caught on the rough, cracked leather, "these babies are in bad shape!"
"Yeah," Bubblegum mused, eying the old upholstery disapprovingly. "I'll probably have to bring furniture in from the Castle," she sighed, pulling her pink-bubblegum hair into a ponytail to get it off of her neck and securing it with a gummy tie.
Finn tracked the motion with his eyes. He nodded distractedly as he watched her fingers dance through her hair for a bit before her hands dropped to her sides.
"That'll look nice," Jake agreed as he sat in one of the ugly chairs upside down.
Bubblegum took one more glance at the room; still pretty much barren, but much cleaner than before they had worked all day on it. She sighed and said, "Alright guys, let's go home. We'll have to get stuff from the castle tomorrow."
Finn and Jake nodded and helped Bubblegum lock up the large building. The lock was super complicated and involved many puzzles and spells to insure that no one would break in and ruin all the carefully planned decorations.
Finn wasn't sure why anyone would want to break into the building, seeing as it was just an enormous tortoise shell-like dome set into the sand in the middle of the barren desert, but he guessed it was necessary, or Bubblegum wouldn't be wasting her time on it. After the princess cast the last spell over the lot, the trio took off on an enlarged Jake's back.
A few short weeks full of late nights and hard work later, the empty building that Bubblegum had stumbled upon had been completely transformed. In the middle of the room stood a large, circular table that had been in storage at the Candy Castle. The white rock candy top was freshly polished, and the stained-sugar windows set into the stone walls bathed it in a rainbow of colors. Dozens of regal-looking chairs were set around the circumference of the table, the large marshmallow cushioning much comfier than the hard-backed leather chairs that were native to the building. Across the room, a large white sheet was plastered to the stone wall as a makeshift screen for the projector that hung from the high ceiling.
A large, self-replenishing table full of all sorts of foods was pushed against the wall. On it sat Finn and Jake's Cup of Many Ales; the magical pitcher that appeared to always be empty, but could pour any drink you could possibly ask for.
The cream-colored carpet was soft under her feet and made the almost dungeon-esque room feel a little cozier. The whole room looked a lot like the tearoom in her castle, and she was pleased at the masterpiece she had created.
The candy princess smiled at the room as she gave it a last once-over the day before the conference. All of her hard work had paid off and she could finally rest; if only for a few hours.
Finn glanced over his outfit one last time as he stood outside of the large dome building the conference was being held in. He could already hear the excited chatter of hundreds of people inside. "Are you sure this is 'business casual'?" he asked Jake. He was dressed in a white t-shirt with a black button down (that was unbuttoned) thrown over it, and black pants. He wasn't exactly sure where Jake had gotten the clothes, but Bubblegum told them they had to dress business causal, and that was what the bulldog had picked out for him.
"It's fine," Jake assured him, twisting his hands into spirals and spinning them a few times. "Fine, fine, fine."
"Alright," Finn sighed, pushing the door to the building open. When Bubblegum had told him that the princes of Aaa were just like the princesses of Ooo in a gender bend, she wasn't kidding. The poor Human thought he was going crazy when he first walked in. There was two of everyone! He rubbed his fists over his eyes to make sure he wasn't just seeing things, but when he pulled them away there were still twice as many princesses as usual.
"Whoa," Jake breathed. "This is banaynays."
Upon closer examination of the large round table, Finn realized that there weren't two of everyone; rather there was one princess and an almost identical prince seated next to them. There was a counterpart for everyone- even Peppermint Butler, who was chatting with a red-striped candy in a cute little French-maid's outfit.
Finn was so busy being overwhelmed that he didn't notice the conversation in the room slow to a stop as all of the prince's eyes locked on him.
Whispers of "Look at that boy," and "is he a Human?" passed between the Princes. The Princesses looked at their counterparts strangely, wondering what they were talking about. They were all used to Finn by now, and it shocked them to know that anyone didn't know Finn the Human; the great hero of Ooo. Soon whispers of, "Why are they so surprised?" and, "It's just Finn," joined the chorus of hushed conversation from the table.
The room soon fell into a tense silence. The prince's eyes were all locked on Finn, all the princess' on the princes.
The silence was broken by who Finn assumed to be the prince of Aaa's Candy Kingdom. "I thought Fionna was the last Human," he said quietly. His voice was laced with the slightest bit of campness that Finn noticed seemed to accent most of the prince's voices.
Some of the other princes muttered agreements.
Finn's eyebrows knitted together in confusion. He was about to ask what the prince had meant when the large door behind him swung open.
He turned around in time to see a Jake-sized cat stumbling through the door, dragging a seemingly petrified girl after it.
Finn didn't notice that a layer of harsh desert sand clung to her burnt orange sweater and black, skin-tight jeans, or the fact that her radiant cerulean eyes were widened in what could only be described as pure terror. His brain didn't even register that the girl was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen in his entire fourteen years of existence.
He was hung up on the fact that she was a Human.
It was now the princess' turn to gape and point and whisper as all of the princes' attention shifted onto the trembling Human girl in the doorway.
"Fionna!" the one who looked like LSP exclaimed in an oddly high-pitched voice. "What happened?"
The girl (whose name was apparently Fionna) muttered incoherently for a few seconds before her cat-friend spoke up for her. "Caught in a slight desert storm," she shrugged. "You know how Fi's afraid of the desert," she added in a stage-whisper.
Fionna's cheeks flushed and she glared at the cat before she slowly lifted her head and her gaze landed on Finn. Her eyes widened much in the way Finn's own eyes had earlier as their gazes locked.
The room around them grew dark and all Finn could see was the beautiful girl in front of him, her confused face glowing like a beacon in the dead of night. The air in the room was picking up then settling rapidly, almost as if a giant invisible bird were flapping its wings over their heads.
Finn liked the way it ruffled the long strands of hair that flowed out of Fionna's bunny-eared hat.
"Whoa," they breathed simultaneously.
Finn felt himself stumbling forward, being pushed forward by some invisible force. By the looks of it, Fionna was too. A heavy, tingling, unnatural pressure built up in his right hand and spread up his arm followed by a searing pain that caused him to gasp.
Her hand, a voice hissed. Take her hand.
Finn did, albeit hesitantly, reach for her hand. He wrapped his fingers around her palm and hers closed over the back of his hand.
The pain ceased almost instantly and was replaced by a strange slushing as if his arm was being filled by water. Thousands of dark, scary voices filled his head, hissing words that he couldn't quite catch. There was a loud, piercing shriek and then suddenly they were back in the conference room, surrounded by their concerned friends.
All of the princes and princesses had assembled around the pair and were now watching them with worried expressions. The anxious royals muttered things like 'are you alright?' and 'what just happened?'
Finn noticed that he was still holding the other Human's hand and quickly dropped it, hissing silently when a slight pain shot through his fingers at the loss of contact.
He glanced at the head of the room where Princess Bubblegum still stood, looking flustered that something had already gone wrong.
"Alright," she called, gathering the attention back to herself. "Now that we've had our daily dose of weird," she joked, trying to garner a few laughs out of the still mostly freaked out princess and princes. "Let's get this conference started."
The royals shot the humans (who were pointedly looking anywhere but each other) another glance before slinking back to their seats.
"Aren't we missing someone?" the guy-Bubblegum asked, gesturing at two empty seats at the table.
"Marceline and Marshall," Bubblegum rattled off without even having to think. "Who knows when they'll get here? We'll be lucky if they even show up."
The royals at the table all nodded their agreement, and then Princess Bubblegum started talking about some official-sounding, business-y stuff that Finn immediately tuned out.
He took a seat in one of the many extra chairs littered about the room and pretended not to watch as Fionna and her cat-friend wandered out of the room.
Jake wound his arms around his friend's shoulders. "What happened to you, buddy?" he whispered, voice concerned. "You and the girl kind of…spaced out."
Finn shrugged. "I don't really know what happened," he said honestly, "it was just sort of…" he trailed off, searching for the right word. But he found he couldn't find a word that described the interaction he'd just had with the other Human. "Weird," he finally settled on.
Jake nodded even though his face said that he wanted more details, and the two sat in silence for a little while until Fionna came back, dragging her cat-friend by the hand behind her. All of the sand grains had been shaken off of her orange sweater and dark pants and she looked a lot more relaxed than she had a few minutes ago. She grabbed a chair from somewhere else in the room and strutted over to wear Finn was sitting.
She smiled at him as she flipped the chair around and sat in it backwards, facing Finn as her cat sat on the floor next to her looking slightly put-out. "Hey," she said coolly. Finn noticed that her voice was sort of nasally and that usually would have irritated him to no end but it for some reason made the other Human that much more appealing.
He was taken aback by her confidence. She'd seemed so shy and quiet earlier, but now she was talking to him as if they were the best of friends when in reality they'd only known each other for a few minutes.
"Hi," Finn replied a little unsurely.
"I'm Fionna," she introduced herself, smiling boldly at him. "And this is my sister Cake," she motioned to the cat by her side.
"Finn," the other Human shot back, some of his usual fearlessness coming back to him. "That's my brother Jake," he added, pointing to where said brother had escaped in favor of scarfing down food at the snack table.
"Aha, classy," Fionna laughed, and Finn literally felt his entire body fill with warmth at the sound.
"Yeah," Finn agreed, "real classy." He over exaggeratedly mimed Jake eating, opening his mouth comically wide and clenching his jaw obscenely, wanting to elicit another tinkling laugh from the girl.
He was rewarded with an amazingly adorable giggle and he couldn't stop the crooked smile that attacked his face.
The conversation between the two flowed extremely easily. They figured out that they were both adventurers and had gone on a lot of similar quests and missions. Fionna told Finn the name of each of the Princes at the table and Finn, in turn, did the same with the princesses.
They talked about everything and nothing at all for hours while the royals droned on about boring, serious matters in the background.
At around eleven o'clock, the conference drew to a close for the day and everyone loaded up on a super-sized Jake and Cake's backs and headed back towards the Candy Castle where they'd be staying for the duration of the two and a half week conference. ("Why do they even need two and a half weeks?" Fionna had asked, and Finn had shrugged his shoulders and answered, "There are a lot of kingdoms in Ooo and probably the same amount in Aaa.")
Fionna had been a little shaky when they first left (she'd admitted to being afraid of the desert after Finn had told her he was scared of the ocean earlier in the day), but Finn offered to sit with her and 'keep her safe' on the way home, earning an embarrassed punch on the arm from Fionna who warned Finn that she wasn't 'some weak girl like the princesses you're used to saving' and that she could (usually) take care of herself.
But she didn't protest when Finn slung an arm around her and pulled her into his chest when she started trembling lightly.
Finn's whole body seemed to be vibrating as the girl snuggled close to him, and he swore he could hear a faint whispering in his ear: yes, like this. Forever like this. Forever. Forever. Forever…