Candy Time II

Adventure Time © Pendelton Ward & Cartoon Network

Candy Land © Hasbro

Chapter 1

One month later…

It was sunset, and Finn the Human was at his home Tree Fort, generally alone. This was a rare event, as usually he and Jake the Dog would be out together and go on dangerous if not thrilling adventures. Now, Finn was watching a Blu-Ray that his in-home companion BMO had burned for future reference. It showed one of Finn & Jake's strangest adventures yet: the trip to another Candy Kingdom that was not familiar to anyone at all, named "Candy Land". Weirder still, the entire country was inhabited by humans, something Finn had not seen since he was a baby. They showed no memory of the War, had their own villain, "Lord Licorice" and it turned out that the entire section of land that place was built on had been teleported centuries from AD 2013, their most recent time, to the present, 2930. Princess Bubblegum had helped in sending them back with her newly refurbished time travel device.

Even though he'd scanned the Blu-ray back and forth in hopes of finding clues, nothing came up. Questions rattled around in his head from that adventure:

"What happened to Me-Mow?" A 3-inch cat that was crushed in a tunnel below Candy Land, yet small enough to get out of the rubble.

"What did that Lord Licorice really want?" At that time, he bragged of being able to rule beyond Candy Land, and into the surrounding area of Ooo, but how did he know about Ooo in the first place?

"What was Candy Land's heyday like?" That was a personal question. With another Candy Kingdom like it, this was hard to answer. The entire area of Candy Land felt like a generally scaled-down version of Ooo itself, judging from what he saw.

And most importantly, "How did it get to Ooo in the first place?" Whatever sent them into the present could not have been an accident…could it?

Finally he stood up, stretched his arms, and ejected the disc out of BMO to put back in its case. Finn had never been so worked up about an adventure before. In the past, he and Jake always had fun with them; fighting crazy monsters, doing dangerous things for Princess Bubblegum, and/or saving peoples' lives. This one, Finn thought, was something that would keep him awake for a while if he didn't get answers soon. Recent adventures had kept it out of his head for a while up to this point, but not anymore.

Finn stepped towards the front door and left his home, out to have a little chat with PB.

Jake was already at the Candy Kingdom, though he was just minding his own business walking through the town square and exploring some of the places outside of the castle proper. Most of the candy people were happy to see him around, as usual for frequent visitors. But just as Jake finished complimenting Lollipop Girl's hair, he turned around just in time to see Finn speeding through the front gate and right into the castle.

He immediately noticed this and called out, "Yo Finn, what's the rush?!"

"I wanna talk to Peebles! It's important!" Finn yelled back.

So, out of curiosity, Jake immediately began running in after the kid. He followed Finn's trail and scent, up several stairs and left into a large, fancy tea room lined with dozens of pictures, and as if on cue, Princess Bubblegum was there on a rather lavish couch with a teacup in one hand and a book in the other.

Finn asked her, "Hello, Princess? I came to ask you about something."

She looked up from her tea and noticed the duo standing there, and she said, "Of course, Finn."

He sat down in an armchair close by and began, "Hey, remember that mission last month?"

"The one with that foreign 'Candy Land'? Yes, I do. Why?"

"Um…It's just that I feel like…we missed something important then."

"What do you mean? I sent them back to the year they came from and no further anomalies showed up on the grid since."

"What about Me-Mow?"

Jake caught on, "Hey, he's right! Wasn't she trapped in that tunnel I helped break to stop her? She's only 5 inches tall."

PB answered, "A cat that small should have been able to get out of there before I started the time travel device."

Finn hung his head in a sigh, "I guess I came to the wrong girl. Who else should I talk to?"

PB suggested with a grimace, "You could ask the Ice King, I suppose."

"Yeah, didn't you see how his princess junk paid off on that…Queen whats-her-face?" Jake nodded.

Finn stood up and turned towards the door, but before he left with Jake, Princess Bubblegum stopped him and explained, "Wait, I'll need to stay in touch later, so you'd better take this."

She handed Finn an amulet with a mini-hologram projector in the center, and once he strung its band around his neck, the Princess added, "Don't let Ice King see that. There's a camera on it, so I'll know whether it's safe to talk, okay?"

"Got it, Peebles," Finn nodded.

Then he and Jake backtracked the route out of the kingdom and made a sharp left turn, along with Jake scaling his body size to elephant proportions, and raced off to the Ice King's lair, passing their own Tree Fort on the path.

While the trip progressed, Finn spoke low into his friend's ear, "I just can't stop thinking about that…that 'Candy Land'. Something's up, I swear!"

"Finn, I'm sure somebody knows about it; Ice King has to be one," Jake assured him.

Soon enough, the crystalline mountain came into view from the snow-covered landscape. Jake returned to normal size at the front door, and Finn, instead of bashing it down with his shoulder, simply knocked on the door and waited patiently – if not anxiously – for the Ice King to answer. In just a minute, that man opened the door and almost instantly reared back in fear, "Aah! What do you want?! Don't hurt me, I haven't caught anyone!"

"We're not here for that, I just want to talk," Finn restated his business.

"Oh, really? Well…" Ice King started sweating a little and turned his thumbs around some. Then he tried to smile and act more polite, "Uh, come on in, then."

The 3 causally ascended some stairs to the blue bearded man's home cavern, and Finn started the conversation, "Ice King, I don't know why, but that 'Candy Land' place has me all gummed up."

"What?"

"I have the strangest feeling that…we missed something that day."

Jake mistakenly added, "Um, he's trying to say, 'what was that place like to you'?"

"Well, it looked more organized than anywhere else in Ooo, and for once I met a girl who actually liked me!"

"I just…" Finn's voice turned to a stammer as he ran out of words to use at the time.

Then Gunter started quacking and pointing to the window.

"Quiet, Gunter!" Ice King yelled at him.

But the penguin kept yammering.

"What, Gunter? What is it?!" He finally stood up and shuffled towards the window. Finn and Jake followed and focused on just where Gunter was pointing. Past the Tree Fort, several miles southeast of the Candy Kingdom, and right in the middle of the Grass Lands, a huge bank of gray clouds overhead started swirling like a tornado, with reddish-pink lightning arcing out of the bottom and shooting right into the ground.

"Sweet ba-gloobles!" Jake's jaw dropped.

"What the blazes is that?" Ice King squinted to focus more on whatever that phenomenon was.

Then as the lightning grew more and more intense, it split apart into several beams and started to form something on the ground.

"Gosh darn, I can't see that far out!" The blue bearded cryopath grunted as he reached down and used a telescope he just now remembered was there. Zooming in closer on the scope, he now made out the shape of none other than Candy Land, again embedded in the Grass Lands with entire foundations seemingly ripped away from the foreign country's portion, like a huge island that once was floating in midair.

"Let me see!" Finn shooed Ice King away and took his turn. Looking at that place more closely, and judging it against the lightning storm, Finn made a startling discovery, "Holy stuff! It's back!"

Jake added, "And now we know that…thing was no accident."

Just then, the holo-amulet started beeping, and rather conveniently, Ice King was in another room. Finn pulled it out and touched the center, shooting up a small pink hologram of Princess Bubblegum's head. It spoke, "Finn, are you there? I've discovered something bizarre!"

"Yeah, we saw it!" Jake replied in hearing her voice.

"That foreign country we visited…it's back, and it practically fell out of the sky!" She explained.

Finn, only guessing at this point, concluded, "Some whacked-up junk is happening, and I want to find out what it is."

"Dude, I think you're WAY into this." Jake advised his companion.

Ice King considered the circumstances, compared it to Finn's statement, and said, "No, Jake, I think he's right."