The sun peeked through the windows of the Tree Fort, gradually lighting up the room until its rays hit Jake's face. Slowly, they stirred to life, rubbing their eyes. Finn, lying on a mattress across the room, was still asleep. BMO was knocked out next to him, emitting soft snoring beeps. Jake chuckled. Another Saturday in the Land of Ahh.
They swung their paws over the side of their bed, but quickly pulled them back up after stepping in something suspiciously sticky.
"Gross, man!" He looked down at a puddle of melted ice cream on the floor. Jake and Finn had gone overboard chowing down on a gallon of mint chocolate chip the night before, and while they were a fairly awesome pair at most things, cleaning up was not necessarily one of their best skills. "I'll make Finn deal with that later," he thought.
Jake stretched safely over the mess and made their way to the window. The birds were chirping, there were barely any clouds in sight, and if you looked hard enough, you could just make out the Candy Kingdom stirring to life in the distance. Jake turned away from the window and started shuffling to the bathroom to brush their teeth. He and Finn didn't have much planned for their day except for the usual: make some bacon, make some pancakes, make some bacon pancakes, and then go mess around somewhere. Jake was contemplating whether they should go sledding in the Ice Kingdom when he noticed something out of the corner of their eye.
"Huh…that's pretty weird." A shoe box he didn't recognize stuck out from a shelf on the wall. He pulled it out and brushed a layer of dust off the top of it, which promptly went up their nose and made them sneeze.
"People are sleeping over here, dude" mumbled Finn groggily. "My bad, sleeping beauty," whispered Jake. They took the box over to the living room, sat on the couch, and popped it open.
"What the heck?" they thought. It was a pair of tan high heeled shoes, with a flower fixed on top of the toes. Jake knew they weren't Finn's or BMO's…so whose could they be?
Then suddenly, they had a flashback to childhood. Back in the puppy days, Jake left for school after their parents headed out for work, so they usually ate breakfast with them while they got ready. In this random memory, Jake remembered looking at their mom put on a pair of heels before walking out the door. The exact same pair, tan with a flower on the toes. Jake snapped back to reality.
"That's so weird, I thought I had gotten rid of all of mom's stuff." Jake pulled the shoes all the way out of the box. Then, in a flash, a strong urge came over them. They wanted to try the shoes on.
See, Jake had been raised as a boy and much of their relationship with Finn was based on being a boy. They would wrestle, play video games, talk about cute girls, the usual male adolescent topics. But recently, Jake was feeling a little...boxed in. They didn't want to be just a dude. They wanted to be feminine when they felt like it, dress the way they wanted to dress, and not worry about being super "manly" all the time. They wanted to just be Jake.
But Jake hadn't told Finn about their feelings. They'd been going on for a while, but Jake wanted to keep them under wraps, just because they didn't want Finn to be freaked out. So, they took the shoes to the bathroom just to be safe.
Closing the door behind him, Jake sat on the toilet and pulled the heels on. They stood up, wobbling slightly, and admired themselves in the mirror. "Dang...mom had some good taste. Must run in the family," Jake chuckled. "This dog looks goooooodd!"
From out of nowhere, though, the door swung open. "Uh...whatcha doing Jake?" Jake whipped their head around and saw Finn. "Oh! Uh..nothin' dude. I just...found these old shoes and thought it would be funny to try them on," they replied nervously. "Ha! These dumb old things." Jake took off the heels and chucked them out the window. Finn looked perplexed.
Jake scratched their ear. "So you want to make some bacon pancakes or what?!" Finn stared for another couple seconds, but the pull of bacon pancakes was too strong. "Heck yeah! Let's do it." Nodding their head, Jake ran out the bathroom, punching Finn in the arm on their way to the kitchen. "Last one to the kitchen is totally lame!"
Jake and Finn were probably some of the worst cooks in the Land of Ahh, but they could whip up a mean pancake. And this Saturday morning, they were in tip-top shape, churning out stacks and stacks of them. By the time they finished, the pancakes towered over Finn's head.
"Wow, it's a masterpiece," he said.
Jake agreed. "Sure is buddy. Just one last step." They pulled out a can of whipped cream from their pocket and sprayed it all over the pancakes. By the time Jake finished, you could barely see the pancakes. They tore into the stack, and while they were finishing up, Finn turned to Jake with a full mouth. "Dude, it was so funny seeing you in those girl shoes! You looked like a total dork," he said.
Jake, all of a sudden, lost their appetite. "Uh...I don't know man. I thought they looked cool."
"Ha! Yeah right. Whatever you say Jake-alina."
"Look dude, that's not cool! How about you mind your own beeswax?"
Finn looked taken aback. "Jeez man, I was just messing around with you. What's your deal?"
"I just...I don't know Finn. I've been feeling weird. I actually wanted to talk with you about-"
But Jake couldn't finish their sentence because at that very moment, Princess Bubblegum burst through the door. "P-Bubs! What's up!" said Finn excitedly. It wasn't much of a secret that he had a crush on the Princess. Jake shook their head. The conversation with Finn would have to wait.
"Oh, I'm so glad you guys are here! We found something really weird, and I was hoping you could help me figure out what to do with it."
"Uh, we can definitely try our best, Princess!" said Finn. You could practically see the hearts in his eyes. "What's the dealio?"
"Well Finn, one of the Candy people was out on a walk along the beach this morning when they found a huge chunk of ice washed up on shore. Even stranger, this one looks like it has something inside of it."
"Wait...like something is frozen inside of it?" said Jake.
"Well...it might be more accurate to say someone is frozen inside of it. It looks like a person! That's why I was hoping to get your advice."
Finn turned to Jake. "Well buddy, looks like we got ourselves a good old fashioned adventure! Let's see what this popsicle dude is all about." He bounded out the door with Princess Bubblegum following right behind. Jake followed after them, and saw the heels in a bush under the bathroom window as walked through the door. They sighed.
The beach was pretty far away, but distances don't matter that much when you have a shape-shifting dog. Jake stretched their arms out super wide and flattened their body, turning into a furry hang glider. "Hop on!"
Princess Bubblegum and Finn grabbed hold of Jake's back and they were off. It didn't take too long for them to make a gentle landing on the sandy shores of Candy Beach. "It's this way," said Princess Bubblegum. She started trotting off down the shoreline, with Finn and Jake following close behind.
"Oooohhhh baby, we got a real adventure coming, I can smell it!" said Finn excitedly.
"I don't smell anything and my nose is way better than yours," mumbled Jake. Now, Jake loved a good old adventure of course, but they couldn't stop thinking about the shoe incident back at the Tree Fort. Why was I so ashamed to be caught wearing those? Will Finn be weirded out if I tell him that I think I'm a...wait, what am I anyways?
But Jake didn't have much time to work through those dilemmas, because all of a sudden they heard Finn shout: "Jake! You gotta see this!"
Jake caught up to Finn and Princess Bubblegum, who were walking around an enormous chunk of ice about the size of a car. "Holy mackerel! I didn't even know we had ice in the Sea of Something, our climate is way too bomb for that," they exclaimed.
Princess Bubblegum gulped. "Well...that's what's so strange. I have no idea how it got here! We haven't had ice like this since way before the Great Mushroom Divide." She walked around to the other side of the ice chunk, indicating to Finn and Jake that they should follow, which they did. "From this angle, you can justttt see the figure inside of it!"
Finn and Jake leaned in and peered into the ice. Sure enough, under the surface you could see the outline of a head. A very oddly shaped head, at that.
"Well, what are we waiting for," asked Finn. "Let's bust this dude out of here, they're probably freezing."
"Uh, yeah. That's what being frozen tends to feel like," sighed Jake. "Stand back, guys."
They wound their fist back, ballooned it to 20 times its normal size, and swung it down on the ice chunk. It exploded, sending shards everywhere. They looked back at Finn and the Princess sheepishly. Jake never was much for subtlety.
But Finn, unperturbed, brushed the ice dust off his head and raced forward. "Wow! There really is a person." And sure enough, curled up in the middle of the ice debris was a small figure lying on its side in a ball.
"Is it dead?" asked Jake.
"Only one way to find out," replied Finn. He picked up a piece of driftwood and poked at the body. One poke, two pokes, three pokes, but not even a twitch. "Well," said Finn, "guess this guy was frozen for-"
"AHH!" All of a sudden, the figure jumped up wildly, screaming. The trio, justifiably alarmed, jumped back. As the figure shook the ice off itself frantically, Jake took a closer look and nudged the Princess and Finn. "Guys...look at his head!"
The figure's head was oddly capped...almost like a mushroom. The Princess gasped. "It... it can't be! Is that...is that...a Mushroom person?!"
A shrill voice came from the figure, who was now glaring at the trio angrily. "I sure am! And who in the devil are you supposed to be?"
Finn stepped forward. "Well, um, I'm Finn, this is my best friend Jake, and this is my girlfri-I mean, my friend Princess Bubblegum."
At that moment, the Princess yanked him back. "Finn! Do you even know what a Mushroom person is?"
Finally, it clicked. "Wait. As in, the Mushroom people who took over hundreds of years ago? As in, the Great Mushroom Divide? I thought they were all gone!"
"I did too, Finn! But I guess this one got frozen in some sort of freak accident. We must be very careful! The Mushroom people were very cruel to the Land of Ahh's people, there's no telling what he could do."
Jake interjected. "I don't know guys, maybe this one is nice."
The Mushroom person piped up again from behind them. "Where am I? And why are you people on the beaches? This is a mushrooms-only zone, you know!"
"Ah, nevermind," said Jake to Finn and the Princess before turning to the thawing visitor. "Look fella, I know how things were way back then, but it's a different Land of Ahh now. We don't do that separation stuff anymore, got it?"
The Mushroom person scoffed. "Ha! An outspoken non-shroom, huh? Just wait until I tell the King Mushroom about this, you have a lot of pain coming!"
The Princess turned to Finn and Jake with a desperate look on her face. "We simply cannot let him go! He's stuck in the past. A dangerous past. We must capture him and bring him back to the Candy Kingdom, I can try and unbrainwash him in my lab."
Jake and Finn nodded. Jake stepped forward, transforming their arm into a massive net. "All right old-timer, you're coming with us. It's a brand new world out there, and we've got to teach you some things." They slammed the arm-net down, but the Mushroom person scurried out of reach.
"What in heavens are you doing? You dare treat a Mushroom person like this?! I'll have you in the Mushroom Prison in no time!" he hollered, spittle flying from his lips. Jake reared their net back again, but the confused and furious Mushroom took off down the beach at a surprising speed.
Jeez, thought Jake. For someone who's been frozen for hundreds of years, he can really move. They turned back to Finn and the Princess.
"So what are we gonna do?"
Finn scoffed. "Capture him, dummy. Time to be manly and brave. Let's go!" He tore off down the beach in the direction of the Mushroom person, with the Princess right behind. Jake yelled after him: "Why does being brave mean being manly, huh?!" But Finn was too far ahead to hear it. Jake ran after him.
Finn, Jake and Princess Bubblegum were pretty fast, but the Mushroom person was faster, so after a couple minutes of chasing, they pulled up, gasping.
"We lost him. Dang it!" shouted Finn. Princess Bubblegum rubbed her temple. "I can't believe it. Not only did we unfreeze a Mushroom person, but we don't even know where he is anymore."
Jake, though, had a plan. They turned themselves back into his hang glider form and indicated that they should hop on. "C'mon guys, he might be faster than us but we're smarter. Let's get an aerial view and see if we can track him down." Seeing as they had no better ideas, Finn and the Princess clambered on and they took off.
It didn't take long for them to get to cloud level. Princess Bubblegum whipped out her telescope and peered at the land below. "Hm...nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. Where could he have gone?"
"What about that over there?" asked Jake. They pointed a paw at a plume of smoke coming from a small town near the shore. "I'm pretty positive that smoke wasn't there before. Let's check it out."
Jake dipped into a nosedive as Finn and the Princess held on for dear life. Right before they hit the town, Jake pulled up for a soft landing. "Thanks for riding Jake Airways. Ha!" they said. Finn and the Princess were already running towards the town, though, so the joke landed on empty ears. Jake sighed again. It just wasn't their day. They caught up with Finn and the Princess just as they got to the edge of the village.
It was an outpost of the Candy Kingdom, so life should have been fairly bucolic there. But at the moment, it was chaos. People were running everywhere, strollers were overturned, and it looked like a house was on fire.
"What is going here!" cried out the Princess. A Candy citizen ran up to her, hugging her leg. "Oh, thank goodness you're here! This funny-looking person showed up not too long ago and freaked out! He started calling us names, told us we were breaking Mushroom law, and even threatened to call the police on us. We didn't take him seriously at first, but that just made him even more mad! He started hitting us and trashing our homes, saying that we had no right to be here. Please help us, brave adventurers!"
Jake growled. Finn pulled his hat tighter around his head. "No one...messes...with our….friends!" he cried out. The pair rushed into the madness while the Princess helped round up terrified Candy people.
It didn't take long to find the Mushroom person. He had cornered a teenager and was shouting all kinds of things at him.
"You people aren't fit to live in these houses! I can't believe the Mushroom King doesn't know about this! I'm coming back here and when I do, I'm bringing my fellow Mushrooms and we'll clear out this whole village. You animals are in DIRE need of civilisation!"
Jake, furious, yelled out: "Hey! Get away from that kid, you crazy old kook! The Mushroom Divide is history, all right? It's over! Everyone is equal now."
"Ha!" scoffed the Mushroom person. "As if a non-shroom could ever be equal to a true-blooded Mushroom. That will be the day!"
"I promise you! Look at the year!" said Jake. They pulled out a newspaper and threw it at the angry invader.
The Mushroom picked it up. "How dare you thro-wait. No, no, no…."
Finn and Jake watched as the Mushroom read the date. "See?" Finn said. "You're old news! The Mushrooms haven't ruled for, like, tons of years!"
Suddenly, the Mushroom crumpled to the ground. "How can this be? All I remember is going to work in the ice factory and then waking up with you three huddled around me. There must have been some sort of terrible accident."
"Well, accident or not pal, it's time for you to accept reality. Your old antiquated ways are gone, and it's time to adjust," said Jake emphatically. "Come with us, we can show how much better the Land of Ahh is now that the Mushroom Divide is over."
At this, the Mushroom person leaped up. "Never! My people and their rule might be over, but I'll never live in a world where non-shrooms are treated the same as me. It's simply unnatural!" The teenager, who had run off at this point amid the hubbub, had left a lighter in his haste. The Mushroom person eyed it, grabbed it, lit it, and took off.
"Now where is he going?" yelled Finn. Jake looked in the direction he was running. "Oh no, Finn. The gas tank! He's going for the village's gas tank!"
The Mushroom person was nearly halfway there, so normal foot speed wouldn't get them there in time. So, Jake did what they do best: transform. They turned their hind legs into propellers, blasted off after the Mushroom person, and knocked him over right before he reached the tank. Before he could get up again, Jake turned their paw into a net and snagged him.
"Jake, that was tubular!" shouted Finn, who had just caught up to the action. "What should we do with him now?"
Jake looked at the figure wriggling around in their net paw. "I'm not sure Finn. This guy has got some serious spunk, though, and it doesn't smell like he's taken a shower in about 5 million years. We have to do something with him."
"I got it!" said Finn. "We'll take him around the village and each Candy person who he bothered today gets to punch him. That seems fair."
Jake sighed, in what was becoming a recurring theme of the day. "Look Finn, we can't just solve all our problems by punching people. Let's take him to Princess Bubblegum, she'll know best."
"Humph. Fine, I guess. You're so lame today," mumbled Finn under his breath. "Let's go, I think I see her over there."
The pair raced over to the Princess, who had managed to calm down most of the villagers. "Princess! Princess!" said Finn. "We got him! Now what?" He pointed to the unhappy mass in Jake's net. "Let me out of here you cretins!" yelled the Mushroom person.
The Princess stepped away from the villager she was talking to. "I knew I could count on you guys! That would have been a real mess if he got to any other Candy towns. Let's take him back to my castle, I can make sure he's locked down and that way I might even be able to reverse the brainwashing that's been done to him."
"Uh...will that really work though?" asked Jake.
"Yeah Princess, this guy just seems like a bad egg to me. Let's freeze him again and push him back out to sea," said Finn.
Princess Bubblegum shook her head. "I know that's tempting Finn, but then what? Then we're just as bad as them. When the Mushroom people were in power, if anyone disagreed with them, they would just toss them in some dungeon. We can be better! I don't know if it's possible, but I owe it to the Candy people to at least try and rehabilitate him."
Jake nudged Finn. "She has a point. We're better than them, buddy."
Finn looked at the two of them. "Okay Princess, I'm gonna trust you on this one."
"Great!" she said in response. She beckoned a nearby Candy person, and then whispered something in their ear. The Candy person scurried off. "I just told them to get a wagon. We'll transport the Mushroom to the castle and I'll start my rehabilitation immediately!"
The Candy person returned with the wagon, and Jake dumped the net over into it. The Princess slammed a top onto the wagon. The Mushroom banged around the wagon and shouted more obscenities, but before long, he was being wheeled off towards the castle. The Princess turned back to the adventurers.
"Thank you so much! The Candy Kingdom is indebted to you."
Finn turned to Jake for a high five. "You hear that buddy? We're heroes!" Jake returned the high five, but in a very meek fashion. Finn's smile turned to a frown. "Hey, what's wrong Jake? Your high fives usually knock me on my butt."
Jake looked down, kicking around a pebble at his feet. "I know man, I know. I love being heroes and all but...I don't know. I've just been feeling off for a while."
"Off in what way?" asked the Princess.
"Well...you remember those shoes from this morning, Finn? The high heels?"
Finn laughed. "Hahaha! Oh yeah, that was so funny. What about them?"
Jake gulped. "Uh. That's sort of the thing. I wasn't being funny. It just felt right to wear those, even just for a little bit. I can't really explain it, but I've just found myself being kind of tired of boy stuff all the time."
"What? What do you mean Jake? We love doing boy stuff. Wrestling, adventuring, all that!"
"Hey!" interjected the Princess. "Adventuring is not just a 'boys' thing, thank you very much."
Jake nodded. "She's right, Finn. Now don't get me wrong, I still love punching and sledding and video games and all that, but I just feel like there's more to me than that. It's fun being all tough and whatnot, but I just feel kind of...stuck. Like I'm playing a role in a play almost, a role that limits to me to less than what I actually am. I'm sorry, I know this is confusing, it's confusing for me, too"
The Princess stepped up to Jake and put a hand on their shoulder. "Jake, there's nothing to be sorry for. And you know what? I think I can fix a little bit of this confusion. What you're describing sounds a lot like you're gender fluid!"
Jake cocked their head to the side. "Gender whatnow?"
"Gender fluid!" she repeated. "It means you don't like being stuck in one gender or the other."
Finn, now thoroughly confused, scratched his head. "Wait...so you're gay?"
The Princess sighed. "No, Finn, it's not that simple. We don't always have to put people into boxes. Jake is just...Jake!"
Jake smiled for the first time in a while. Jake is just Jake. They liked that a lot. "I'm sorry to dump this on you, Finn. I know this is a lot to process. Honestly, I'm having trouble processing it too."
The Princess came over and hugged Jake. "It IS a lot to process! Especially because we get funneled into these roles as kids. Heck, I remember when I was a little girl I would always talk about the laboratory I wanted to build one day. My dad said science was for boys, and I listened to him for a while. But now I know better."
Finn came over and joined the hug. "Buddy, you're my best friend because you're Jake, not because you're a dude….uh, wait, should I still you that?"
Jake, relieved at Finn's acceptance, laughed. "Thanks for asking, but it doesn't bother me. Whew guys, this was taking dog years off my life keeping this bottled up. It's awesome I have peeps who won't judge me."
"Of course!" said the Princess. "Now, I gotta get back to the laboratory. But I'll come over to the Tree Fort tonight. I'm in an ice cream sundae kind of mood, I think."
"Sounds good to me, Princess," said Jake. "Finn, you ready to go home? BMO is probably getting lonely."
"Yeah, poor BMO. Let's do it, I'm feeling some more bacon pancakes, too."
With that, Jake turned into their hang glider form again. Finn hopped on and they took off. "You know what, Jake?" yelled Finn over the wind.
"What," shouted Jake.
"You actually kind of rocked those heels."