Disclaimer: I don't own Adventure Time
Hey guys here is the second chapter. Its longer than the first, but that won't be the trend for the rest. I hope to make them about the same length as the first, this one just needed the extra juice because of the surprise at the end of it!
This is Chapter 2
As Finn and Jake entered, the now dubbed Mystery Kingdom, they were overwhelmed by a boxed feeling on their feet. They were slowly sinking in mud. Jake exclaimed "AWW MAN, I SHOULD'VE WORE MY BOOTIES!". But they trudged on through the mud. Finn tried to ignore the mud as much as possible and decided to look around. As they walked through a for lain path, huge pillars towered over them. Finn was so amazed at their height that he had stopped dead in his tracks causing him to sink until his knees in mud. Jake stretched his arms, wrapped them around Finn, and pulled him out, scolding him for not paying more attention. They walked on. They started to see small houses emerge into their planes of views but they had looked long abandoned. Some of the doors were almost completely off their hinges, screen were kicked in or just missing. The house in its self hadn't looked to greet either, as parts of roofing completely gone, broken steps, semi eaten wood lain everywhere. It was really pitiful, horrible
They walked on until they reached what would look like to have functioned as the kingdom center. Luckily the sign which would indicate what was where, was still there. Jake read it aloud "The arrow that points towards those houses we passed is called Soo-bu-rbs(suburbs), the arrow that points to the opposite of that is Justice Hub, for like their law making and certificates and stuff. To the left is where they have their schools, markets, stuff like that and to the right is where their crazy blooby smart people live. Where to first, Finn?"
Finn quickly said " The Justice Hub, I want to see how they dealt those who have wronged justice!" Jake nodded in agreement. The Justice Hub was no doubt nicer than the soo-bu-rbs looked. There was no mud, so nothing could slow them down, and much of the tile that had surrounded the buildings was still intact. The buildings were still somewhat rundown much like the houses though. As they went along, they saw buildings that looked a lot like: a court house, a jail, city hall and other places which would help in the process of providing justice. Finn wanted to check the court house first.
Inside the court house, there were many holes in the ceiling and pieces of ceiling lining the floor because of those holes. Finn and Jake agreed to be on the lookout for anymore that could fall. There were many rooms in the court house, many of which neither Finn nor Jake could figure the purpose for. One for sure was to put a person on trial for what wrongful things they had done and another just looked like it was for signing papers, much like a room PB has purpose for.
They continued to look around until they found a room filled with cabinets. Most were locked so Finn didn't look in those, but the ones he did look in, had the files of criminals with last names starting with M. Many of the criminals had been convicted with murder, some so gruesome, Finn almost hurled. One had stood out to him though, Arlen Mertens. The man had been convicted of arson, (Finn guessed it meant setting people on fire since the list of victims had degree of burns listed beside their names), and was electrocuted to death. What popped out to Finn was that Mertens had always pleaded not guilty, that he could never do such a thing. Another thing that popped out was that they didn't just capture and electrocute Mertens, they tried to kill his whole family too because he didn't want to admit to his crime. "Why would they do that to his family? They weren't involved in the fire. They didn't even do anything. This makes no sense." thought Finn. He felt a twinge in his chest, like something had slightly broken his heart. Tears began to tug at the edge of his eyelids, wanting to be free. Jake approached him from behind and put a hand on his shoulder, "Finn, you alright bro?" Finn, so appalled at the thought of what the Mertens family must have suffered, pushed the papers away, not wanting to look at anymore files. He motioned for them to leave. Jake snatched a look at the name on the file Finn was viewing and then did as he asked. As they were leaving, Jake asked "Finn, what happened? Whats wrong?" Finn replied slightly unraveled "I don't know man. Something came over me when I read what happened to that man and his family. I just don't know why."
Finn wanted to leave the Judicial Hub entirely, and explore somewhere else but Jake said he wanted to check out something in the City Hall real quick. Finn, not wanting to argue, agreed. The inside of City hall was completely magnificent. Surprisingly, it was hardly impacted in any way due to the old age of the kingdom. Jake went on to a room where documents of the kingdom's people, leaving Finn behind to marvel at the center room of City Hall.
Jake decided to look for this Arlen Mertens guy and his family's documents. "Let's see if he seems like the kind of person who could crisp bods." Jake said to himself. He found something that was the summary of Arlen Mertens's life and how he died. It talked about which schools he went to, how he graduated college, his extreme intelligence and the fact that before he died he was working on a top secret project that only his brother knew of. Finally it talked about who he left in memory. Jake took closer at those Arlen left. Guessing that his mom and dad had already died, he only had one brother, a twin brother, Arthur Mertens. Arthur had a wife, Fiona Mertens and a son…FINN MERTENS.
Jake slowly backed away from the documents until he tripped over a chair. He fell with an obnoxiously loud thud. Finn called out "Jake are you alright?", he started walking in his direction. "Oh no, if Finn finds out about this, it's going to send him in to his deepest darkest mind hole! He'll never come out! I can't let him find out about his family….not yet at least….." Jake frantically thought as he started hiding the Mertens's documents in ominous places. Finn came in just as Jake was trying to hide a picture of Arlen and Arthur Mertens holding Finn in the air. "Hey whatcha got there?" Finn asked as he took the picture out of Jake's hand. Jake began silently panicking. "Oh wow, it's a baby being held up by his dad and maybe his uncle (?), that's banana man cool, bro. The baby looks super happy." Finn said melting at the look of the overjoyed baby's face. Before Finn could look at the names associated with the picture, Jake snatched the picture out of his hands, put it in the desk and locked it with his key hand. Just as he turned back around, Finn questioned "What the ball, man?!" "You said you didn't want to look at anymore files, Finn." Jake hashed out not being able to think of anything better to say. Finn retorted "But that picture was getting me out of that jazz man! It made me feel better." Jake suggested that they checkout where the extremely smart people lived. Finn agreed but was suspicious of Jake's behavior.
As they walked in that direction, Finn noticed Jake had been acting strangely. He wouldn't look directly at Finn and he looked to be thinking to himself pretty hard. He was shaking profusely and his fur looked a little matted from sweat. Finn stopped and grabbed Jake by the shoulders "Dude, what is wrong with you?!" shaking him vigorously. Jake shook his head nervously " There's nothing wrong with me Finn! I'm in perfect health, right as rain, strong as a donkey, bloobarific!" as he slapped his cheeks and varied his size and shape with each 'I'm okay' phrase he uttered. Finn was still suspicious but he decided to drop the subject while still keeping an eye on Jake.
They went on to the 'Advanced Intelligence" subpart of the kingdom. The houses were beautiful, not as great as their tree house, Finn thought, but still pretty good-looking. All the houses were lined on either side, but one house was all by its lonesome, far down the length of houses. Jake and Finn were drawn to it out of sheer curiosity. Finn walked up to the door of the house, while Jake examined the mailbox setup in front of it. MERTENS is what it said. "Great, maybe I can find out more about Finn's family and about whatever happened. Good thing Finn didn't look at this mailbox." The two adventures ventured into the house.
The house was pretty plain. It was a three-story white house with four rooms. Finn strolled into one of them. Based on the looks of it, Finn guessed the family had a baby boy. On one of the book cases, there was a picture of the baby and his parents. The baby was the same as the one in the picture at City Hall. Finn, after that realization, got excited to look at the rest of the house.
He and Jake decided to check out the basement. Compared to the upper two floors, the basement a completely different game, a cooler awesomer game. There were possibly a hundred different inventions just lining the tables. All of the lesser inventions leading to the biggest of all, a huge arc of metal with what looked to be a power panel. Jake began occupying himself with an item that could showcase a smaller trinket in bigger magnification, holographically. Finn's curiosity drew him to it. " I wonder what it's supposed to do?" Finn perplexed at what the contraption could possibly be capable of. As Finn fingered the contraption, fingerprints that he left glowed blue slightly, but this went on unnoticed by Finn. All of a sudden an electrical shot emerged from the large contraption and struck Finn. Jake paralyzed by awe, shock and fear, stood and watched on the verge of soiling himself. Finn screamed and stood helpless as the blue light enveloped him. Moving was of no use, as the electrocuting light just followed him.
As he was being electrocuted, Finn underwent an ominous transformation. He grew much taller, bigger muscles, more chiseled face and other changes that would parallel the gradual changes that occur in puberty. Finally when the light had receded, Finn had emerged, not in any way scorched but did have white smoke emitting off of him. Jake, even though he had witnessed Finn transformation, he still needed conformation that his buddy that was previously standing there, was still standing there. "…Finn?" Jake said as he approached the now much taller being.
"Yea, Jake? Why are you looking at me all weird like that?" Finn replied.
Jake nervously retorted "Because you're not the same Finn you were a few minutes ago."
"What do you mean? Wait…. My voice… it sounds…..changed." Finn pondered. Jake suggested that he go look in a mirror, luckily there was one that was a part of the lesser inventions. Finn exclaimed "Wow, I really have changed. I am way taller than I was, I even grew a mustache! How strange….." Finn ventured back over to the large invention. Jake immediately disapproved "Noooo, Finn! It might happen again, or change something more!" Finn touched it again anyway. What was then seen was an image that encapsulated the entirety of the invention. It was a video message, from a man that looked eerily similar to the man in the picture upstairs and the one at the court house. He said " Hello, Finn."
Finn and Jake were taken aback, and Finn demanded "How do you know my name?!"
The nameless man replied " Now, you must understand that this is a video message, so I have no idea what you could possibly be saying. Anyhow, I am Arlen Mertens, your uncle." Finn was devastated. "This couldn't possibly be, but.." He looked in the mirror again. "I look just like him….."
Arlen spoke again "I am guessing that knowing you as a smidge of a boy, the little investigator you were, you have found out about my conviction of arson. But you must understand, my boy, I did not commit that crime. There is not a bone in my body that would want to do such bodily harm to another person. I was framed, by another member of the Advanced Intelligence society. He was jealous of my scientific discoveries, and always was, but I never gave it a second thought. But, I cannot just tell you of what was wronged of me, because these are just measly words. To you, this could very well be a lie, though I am telling the truth. With that on the table, I will show you who started the fire and how I was framed for it."
Then started a clip of a beautiful day, back when the Mystery Kingdom was in its prime. Arlen (Finn had guessed) was doing some charity work with those who lived in the soo-bu-rbs. A small experiment had harnessed the energy of the sun to create light in the household. Arlen had left the experiment unattended for a little while to help in another house. A man of maybe 20 or 30 had used a magnifying glass to increase the strength of the sun's rays tenfold, aiming it at the very dry grass surrounding the area. This caused a small fire, which then increased to a major fire. The clip stopped there.
Arlen had returned to the screen. "Well, I am sure you can figure out what happened afterwards. But as you see it, I did not start the fire. Now that that is cleared up, Finn, my dear only nephew, I am sure you're wondering how you ended up 1000 years into the future when you were born in this time. Well, by the way this contraption you're currently looking at me through is called a Time Machine. When I had finished this time machine, I went a few months ahead in time to make sure it worked. Turns out it did, but I also found out something else. There was going to be a war happening in that next few months. This war would completely demolish everything we had put effort into building and wipeout almost everyone on the planet, except for this young dark-haired child and this shaggy-bearded fellow. Being the patriotic figure that I am in this city, I couldn't let us get into the mix of that, so I modified the time machine to create a powerful barrier around the city to protect us from any kind of bombs or things of that sort. I also made it so we would become invisible to those fighting. None of the citizens knew of this action though, as most of them if I told them this would vouch for me being place in an asylum or loony bin if you will. Sadly, the barrier did not completely protect us from everything, as we did have quite a radiation wave, causing you to be born slightly abnormal, compared to your father, mother or I. I had found out about the who fire framing situation a few months prior but allowed it to happen knowing that if it wasn't at that time, then it would happen at a different time, possibly more influential time of your life. I really didn't want you to have to deal with death, when you were more understanding of the world, more impressionable. So I accepted fate, knowing that I was doing so in the best interest of my nephew, who was much like my own son. Anyhow your father and I knew the consequences of denying what one was convicted of in this city(there was no way I was going to admit to something like that), so we prepared to send you to a more comparable time, which just happened to be 1000 years in the future. We knew the future was somewhat off, which is why we provided you with that bear hat. You seemed to really like it. But now I shall let you see your parents."
Arthur and Fiona Mertens came into view as Arthur spoke "Hello Finn. I'm am your dad, Arthur, and this is your mom, Fiona. Me and your uncle Arlen are twin brothers so if your confused as to why we look the same, there's your explanation. Listen, son, we never wanted to send you away, but we wanted you to experience life. And living in this time, with your uncle being convicted of such a heinous crime, we couldn't keep you. This is why we left you there just before that nice dog couple had shown up so they would see you. " Jake nudged Finn in the arm and smiled at him. Arthur went on "I do hope they have been treating you well. Uncle Arlen made it so his time machine will disintegrate the barrier and invisibility shield he placed on the city sometime after you become 14. Oh there is a possibility the time machine will have electrical time outbursts out of not being in use for over 1000 years so be careful. Fiona, you want to finish…."
Finn a little overjoyed to his mother as she said the final words on the video "Hello, my beautiful boy," she tried her best at holding back tears " I think your dad and Uncle Arlen covered most of what we had to. I think your dad just wanted you to be able to hear my voice. " Finn felt he was on the verge of tears, but refuse to cry in front of his mother, even if she couldn't really see him. She went on "Anyway, since I won't be able to see you off on your first date, wedding, your kids, I want to give you some advice. Pick a smart one honey, like I did with your dad here. Make sure she's nice and worthy of your type of person. She should be as heroic and strict to moral code as these two are." She laughed, pointing to Arthur and Arlen. Then all three joined in "We love you, Finn. Soooooooooooo much. We hope you have a good life, and we'll be watching over you. Again, we love you." Arlen and Arthur waved goodbye on either side of Fiona, who was blowing kisses. Then the video went off.
Finn let the already brimming tears pour out, as he slumped to the floor. Jake ran to his side, trying to comfort him the best he could. He embraced Finn tightly, and Finn just cried harder. He cried and he cried and he cried.
When Finn was all cried out, he felt a lot better, happy even, but he told Jake he wanted to stay and look through the house some more. Jake said "Finn, I know you just found about all this, and you really want to find out more, but you look about….. 19 right now. We have to take you Princess Bubblegum and get you back to the right age. I don't think staying this age is a good idea."
Finn retorted " NO. I want to find out more about my family. I need to Jake, this is the key to me finding out who I really am. I….just….. really need this."
Jake replied "But Finn, your mom and dad wanted you to be a little older than 14 when you did this right?" Finn nodded. "But you're not 14 right now, don't you want to respect their wishes?" Finn nodded sadly "Yes. I do" Jake said "Alright then, let's head to Candy Kingdom, have PB fix you up, and come back here. Okay?" Finn nodded again. And with that, Jake led the way away from Mystery and towards Candy Kingdom.
A/N : That was a beefy crazy chapter right! Did you like the surprise?
Now from here on its going to be more about Finn and PB. I just needed to give you guys background on the whole time machine thing. I had so many ideas going through my head for this chapter and they just all boiled down to this grand slam.
Hope you guys liked it! Kinda hope it made you cry a little bit too.
Thanks to those who read this chapter, and thanks to those who read and reviewed the last one. Your reviews are what made pushed me to make this chapter as powerful as it seems to me.
Rate and Review PLEASE!
Spazzy
