Impossible to Find
Chapter #3- The Months it Took
He was in the perfect position for failure, right from the beginning. That morning when he said his goodbyes the strongest thought breathing inside his mind was how he'd be back in the Candy Kingdom by Lunch Time. Why not? He could've stopped whenever he wanted to.
He was presented with the option to drop everything since the moment he started, so why hadn't he begun his walk back to Jake and Lady Rainicorn's "Get Together" until ten o'clock that night?
The answer was beyond him.
It only took him four days for him to think it was hopeless, a week for him to understand that it actually was impossible. Yet all day, every day for a month, he woke before the sun and returned after he could no longer feel his legs. It only took a week for him to realize it was completely his fault that she was gone. But at the same time- it took the idiot a whole week for him to realize that it was all his doing.
But in his reality, there was no avoiding speaking to her when he declared to Jake that he'd bring her home.
Every night he came back surprisingly, the same expression on his face, and the identical sentence spoken.
"Dude."
Whoever it was, they could not get through his haze.
"Dude!"
His judgment of everything was tightly sealed away within him.
"Dude!"
What could he be seeing through his eyes, just darkness?
"DUDE!"
Two hands slammed themselves down on his shoulders, balled his torn shirt into fists, and vigorously rocked him up and out of his blank thoughts.
"Dude! What happened to you?" It was Jake? Why was Jake shaking him like a jar? "Buddy, is that blood?"
What?
"Jake?" Why was Jake even there with him?
Where was he?
"Bro, you can't be here," That sounded like an insult.
That was the moment when the actual noise exploded right into his eardrums: The petrifying sound of women.
It took a few moments for his completely disoriented mind to realize that Jake was in fact trying to push him back out the door from which he came.
"What the heck are you doing?" He physically and mentally was incapable of putting up any kind of resistance, but at least he could open his eyes to see the colors bursting in the room he'd entered.
"Man, mans aren't allowed at these parties. Just…" The Gram-cracker double doors turned in on themselves, echoing throughout the grand hall. Jake briefly scanned all directions, "Here, sit here," He shoved him down into a Cotton Candy Loveseat, "You've gotta stay here, okay? Don't do anything stupid."
What was Jake talking about?
The candy cushions sunk down beneath him, giving him the illusion of clouds.
That day had been exhausting. All he could have wished for was to fall into an eternal slumber.
But before that could happen-
"Jake?"
He only blank.
"Are you wearing a dress?" his subconscious was rapidly taking over him with innocent and insensitive questions. It might've been his eyesight breaking in the light with unshed tears, but he could've sworn that there were large lumps on Jake's chest, covered in a green and pink cloth which traveled all the way down to his knees.
A high pitched voice replaced his brother's. "I'm not Jake, I'm Madam Hot-Stuff," Then- whoever Jake had turned into- walked right back into the room full of women, leaving the other behind.
He was unable to move, unable to think, unable to continue, so he finally let himself rest in oblivion.
He wasn't alone- he could tell at least that within the moment he had woken.
"Jake?" He breathed out, clamping his eyes shut from the unexpected light that shone down on his bruised face after a cloud shifted out of the way in the sky.
"Right under you."
He felt something beneath his lower back move. "Why are you there?" He yawned through his nose, unshed tears gathered behind his eyelids.
Full of muffles, he said, "Last night when I was bringing you to bed, you sorta fell on me," Jake flattened himself down thin enough to slide out of the other's weight, and float down to the animal-fur covered floor as a yellow sheet of paper. "It was pretty warm under your butt, I should sleep there more often."
He took in several breaths through his flaking lips to awaken his lungs, "What time is it?" The sun was usually hidden behind the window pane, though that morning it poked around in his retinas.
"Adventure time?"
"No, seriously, what time is it?"
"Oh, like eleven," He popped himself out into his typical form, "Do you really have to go? It's Sunday, you said you'd stay!"
Sunday? It was supposed to be Friday.
"You sure it's Sunday?" He asked, beginning to emerge out of his sleeping bag.
"Yeah man, yesterday was Lady's first Baby Shower. I dunno why you came to it, guys aren't allowed."
He kicked himself all the way out of the bed roll, only then completely understanding he was in his underwear. "Where did my clothes go?"
"The trash," he said simply, stretching up to his bed to sit his hairy butt down in the blanket, "They weren't doing you any good- we could see all your junk."
He felt his face warm up, "If dudes weren't allowed, why were you there?"
Jake gestured to the small pile of green and pink fabric on the floor, "That's what disguises are for. And I'll be using the same five more times."
He swung his bare legs around the edge of the bed, "It was a Baby Shower, right? I thought it was bad luck to have one before the baby's born," He hissed, standing up from the mattress. He took a blanket and wrapped it around his bare shoulders.
"It's bad luck to be superstitious," his doggy-face suddenly became very serious.
He only shrugged, "Whatever dude, I've gotta go," Now where we his white shorts?
Jake groaned, "But it's Sunday, I thought you were gonna come with me to help Lady open presents!"
"Yeah, I lied." He dropped his gaze to the glassy eyes of the slain beast below him, "I still have no idea where she is- so until I frickin' do there's no way I'm slowing down."
Well, actually he could stop whenever he wanted.
"You really have zip so far? Where did you check?"
He blew a gust of air through his nose, "Where didn't I check?" He found his spare shirt from under his bed, "The Fire Kingdom hasn't seen her in months, apparently, same thing with the Ice Kingdom. I went through all of the Grasslands, every forest in existence-" He stopped short, "Dude, I even went down The Hole Near the Center of the Earth…" he squinted his eyes in shallow thought, "It wasn't fun." He abandoned the quilt around his ankles, hooking his shirt around his finger, and pulling it out of the empty space between the bottom of the bad-frame and the floor-boards.
"Why did you do that?"
"She could'a fell!"
"SHE. CAN. FLY."
He pulled the cloth over his head, and began searching for his shoes, "Last week I asked PB- she said she hadn't seen her in like, two months or something."
"Months?"
"Since October," He recovered his kicks from behind Jake's wardrobe.
"But we just got into January…" He brought his eyebrows together, "Why would she even leave, anyway?"
Leaning up against the wall, he slipped his shoes onto his feet, squeezing his fingers where the heel met. "It's not important why," He mumbled, tugging the collar of his shirt into the right position, "'Sides, I know I'll find her today, I already looked everywhere."
"You said that yesterday."
Was it really that simple?
He'd walked the entire continent, fought so many jerks that he probably beat some who were innocent to the ground. He put his life at risk all the time.
He couldn't stop.
Because it was his entire fault that she was gone.
No one else had played a part in it but him. It was just him.
The only thing that could be his safety net as he was falling would be to find her. He would be saving his own hide that time.
"Man, if I don't find her, I'm just gonna put up 'Missing' posters all over the place."
Jake's eyes dropped, "Dude, you're positive you went all over?"
"That's a stupid question." He grabbed his pack off the bed, and slung it across his shoulders.
"Bro, you're sure she's not anywhere?"
"Times a gazillion."
Jake sat up in his drawer, "Then that's it man, she's not anywhere here."
"What, are you saying she's dead or something?"
She could have been.
"No way!" He pinched the bridge of his nose between two doggy-fingers, "I mean, if you checked everywhere, and she wasn't- where else would she be that you know?"
"I'm too tired to think," He walked over to the cavity I the floor, ready to climb down.
Jake suddenly felt the urge to tackle his brother, "Dude, if she's nowhere in Ooo, then she's not in Ooo."
What was even outside of Ooo besides the water of the ocean?
The worst kinds of monsters lived in the sea, waiting for him, hidden beneath the fatal waves. The simple promise of drowning to death was enough to make him cower.
"Thank you, for making no sense at all."
"No, brother," Jake came back out of his drawer, stretching himself down, "If you didn't find her, and nobody's seen her- plus you went all over the place, then she's not here man. You've gotta go even farther if you're ever gonna get to her."
He would.
He would find her.
No matter what it took- he would bring her back home. And if believing in Jake meant he could actually have a chance at saving himself- why not take it?
"Alright," He said cynically, "let's go."
The canine's worry lines only creased. His brother was missing something critically important.
Now how should he tell him?
"I'm not going."
"What?"
"I can't."
"Why?"
"Because it's not right!"
"But… she's our friend!"
"Lady's pregnant!"
From the floor below, they heard Beemo scream at them to shut up.
He molded his hands into fists, "I THOUGHT YOU SAID WE'D ALWAYS STICK TOGETHER WHEN THIS KINDA STUFF IS INVOLVED IN OUR EVERYDAY LIVES!"
"We will, Homie! But not with Lady Rainicorn almost a month away."
"IT WON'T TAKE THAT LONG!"
"It could, brother! It could take a heck of a long time to find this chick! We could be gone for months and months without finding her- there's a lot of places out there, she could be in any of them."
What other choice did he have? He couldn't just leave her behind with soon-to-be hybrids.
"Jake…"
"Look man, I wanna go- I just can't. I would if I could. Besides," He shrunk almost an inch lower to the ground, "if it's so important to find her, you can do it yourself…"
Since when? Jake had never let him go solo on adventures so far from home.
He stared for a lengthy amount of time at his bed before stripping off his green pack, and going Down-Ladder to find a larger one.
Even before he left the security of both Jake, and home, he knew for certain that he'd be gone for a while.
But months would be out of the question completely.
Jake walked with him most of the way to the Mountain Kingdom before he had to hang right, and return to the Candy Kingdom. He hardly said goodbye to Jake. But still, he hugged him, promised him he'd be home as soon as possible- all the cheesy stuff.
But what the problem was was that the only way to get to and from Ooo was by a ship which docked in the Mountain Kingdom, and went out to the Sea of Sure Death.
What was it that our hero feared so dearly?
Ahead of him was an adventure which he might never come back from. But as he walked away with nothing more to say to his brother, the fact fully set into his stomach- He was leaving Ooo utterly alone with a very slim chance of ever fulfilling his quest.
If he could turn right back around and abandon his search, he would.
Yet because more than just fixing a mistake depended on finding her, he would stop at nothing to bring her home.
Assuming she was still out there.
A/N: Ooooooookay. I'm REALLY sorry for how long this took. The reason for its lateness is nothing more than lack of motivation, because I've been studying quite a lot for (stupid) state testing. Uuuurgh….
BUT ANYWAY, I do hope you don't completely hate me, enjoyed the chapter at least a little, all that good stuff.
And as always, thank you for reading! :D
