Dave was in a rhythm now- peddling on a small bicycle to generate energy for a strange cauldron of some description, emanating light as it swirled and bubbled in response to Simon's avid hand movements above it. Like an air orchestra, Dave tried to find a rhythm Simon was using but found nothing.

"So… How long do you think Marcy will be?"

Dave spoke moments before Marceline entered the room with the small doll that was Hambo- a treasure from her childhood, it was present throughout her entire life after the bombs fell, her only friend to never turn its back to her when she needed it most.

"I'm sorry Marcy but I need to tell Betty I'm sorry to her face. I know you'll understand."

"Of course, Simon-"

"So, is there any chance of hurrying this up now? My legs are getting kinda tired, you know, cycling constantly to keep the reaction from failing and ruining the one stock of ingredients you decided to keep. But you know, if you want to just keep up the tenderness of this moment, you go right ahead."

Said Dave, panting between breaths and struggling to keep a steady pace, his legs screaming to him on the inside as the resistance keeps growing from the cauldron.

Marceline retorted to him, "Oh you don't mind? Thanks Dave, we'll take this opportunity you have been so generous to give us."

Dave simply smiled in submission, he knew it was either going to get no response or would have an adverse effect on him and his wanting of not peddling away his evening.

It's not worth wasting time retorting if I can spend it breathing instead! Ha ha… That wasn't all that funny but I don't care, when you are this oxygen starved, it doesn't matter anymore…

Dave was on the verge of passing out when Simon finally put the doll in the soup and he was told not to worry about continuing with the peddling, he could finally get off the wretched bike.

With gusto and a slight drunkenness about him, he stumbled off of the bike and crawled to the others, his gear still weighing down on him.

Why, oh why did I keep the gear on?! I need to take a serious look at myself before I try anything extraneous again… A very good look at myself…

The corners of his eyes began to darken and every bone in his body seemed to weigh more with every second. But he did not want to miss this- He needed to not miss this. The bear began to float out of the cauldron and glowed a white/gold light.

In Dave's mind, he could vaguely hear the Cosmic Owl speaking to him in his mind. Heyyy… How's it going...? Oh wait, this bits kinda important… I'll just leave, see ya soon man... and good luck!

I thought he wasn't supposed to show up until I was done with my mission… He said so himself didn't he? I don't care anymore…

Voices began to bounce around the room. Dave couldn't understand what they were saying but only that they were probably important to saving his friends. Try as he would, his vision would not clear, the sounds would not make sense and he could not move.

When he regained his ability to see and could just about see a new character in the room, presumably Betty Grof. He could not hear anything as of yet and so, he had no idea what exchange was going on between the people before him, as Simon fell to the ground, seemed to speak a few meaningful words and Betty held him. She moved towards a magic carpet and at this point Dave managed to spit out a couple of words.

"Please, take me with you Betty."

"I can't know, I have to save Simon but I will come back from you when I can."

This wasn't going to be enough, how could she save Simon if she had no idea what was outside of the door, yet alone over the mountains, hills and through the valleys that lay beyond the horizon? She would need someone with some sense of direction back to wizard city. Dave was that someone.

Marceline tried to warn her of the impending doom of Bella Noche that would have grown to city wide devastation by this point. Dave had a plan.

"Just drop me off at the edge of the swamp on the way to wizard city and we'll be ready to completely destroy Bella Noche. Just give me 2 minutes to get something and to get to wizard city and there will be nothing but ash left."

"That sounds like a good result, let's do it but be quick."

Marceline was stood at the edge of the conversation, looking in and wondering why no one was suggesting her for the assassination of the ancient wizard, but simply let the two humans go with their idea of a plan.

Within 4 minutes, they were both on the magic carpet, Simon attached to it, trying to convince Betty to let him die but not working one bit on either other human.

By the time they reached the swamp, Dave simply jumped off of the carpet and reached deep into the swamp goo. "Come on, I saw you here on the way to the ice kingdom and you just up and disappear on me when I need you most?!"

Just as Dave began to give up, he found what he was looking for. A slightly rusted, though loaded Type 42 light ordinance catapult- or to the common man, the Fat Man. "Yes! We're going to have some fun today…"

Simon had tried to drown himself in the swamp while Dave searched but Betty wouldn't have it, she kept a vice-like grip on him as he weakly squirmed. She tried time and time again to explain her plan of rescuing her love but he didn't want it now. He just wanted to die. Dave checked the basic functionality of the weapon before taking it in, it worked well enough for one firing at least.

Within a few minutes, they were within visual range of the wizard city, as they approached closer to the black mound that formed over the city, growing in size with every bolt of energy that hit it. Dave knew this would either mean a quick victory, or a very quick defeat.

As he readied his old weapon, he almost turned the safety off before a bolt struck the now stationary carpet, sending it spiralling towards the ground with the passengers flailing in the air.

They landed after a few hundred feet of freefalling only to find themselves in perfect health. The wizards had set up various healing auras for the battle and they were lucky enough to land in one of them. It would be enough to stop Simon from killing himself but not enough to stop him from aging into death.

Dave readied himself, he had no way of testing the trajectory, he had only one shot, if the spring loaded mechanism was rustier than he thought or if it was uneven after 1000 years of swamp water corrosion, it would misfire, either killing them all were the stood, fire correctly and hit the tower or just miss entirely and destroy a whole city district.

Dave simply pointed at the mass and began a little countdown, sounding less afraid and more psychotic with each number closer to firing. "5, 4, 3, 2, 1!" It was at this point that the entire wizard army stopped firing and looked back to the manically giggling human with a big slingshot over his shoulder. "FIRING THE DOG'S BOLLOCK, MOTHER FUCKERS!"

A moment of silence filled the air and an atmosphere of peace overcame them before a soothing whistling wired over-head. The attention of all the wizards looked toward the small projectile that flew steadily towards the black tower. It became invisible a moment before impact and a barely audible 'ding' sound could be heard. Then a bright flashing light filled the valley.

The manic laughter of the human that fired it was barely audible over the blast sound, largely directed out, into the atmosphere. An epic mushroom cloud raised into the heavens and a dark could of black rain fell shortly after.

The people of wizard city didn't know what to think of this. They had one the battle but had lost their city, a dark radiation had rendered their homes uninhabitable for the best part of another 1000 years and while many of them would likely live longer than that, they had still lost their homes, their wellbeing.

Before long the human that fired the weapon was done manically laughing and the man formerly known as Simon was replacing the atmosphere with equally maniacal and, somehow more annoying laughter. He received a stern look from the king wizard before he stopped and the healer wizards turned to fixing the city. The radiation left over from the surprisingly high yield explosion would take years to truly clear out and for the time being, they would have to avoid spending any amount of time longer than a few minutes in the ruins of the city before it would start to eat at their bodies and minds.

They were at a win and a loss and the fallout was to follow. The carpet sprang to life again and picked up Dave, still gigging childishly at his mass destruction, while Betty was still shocked to have witnessed such destruction in such a short time. She had known this new world for only a few minutes and had already known a person that gets giddy over the idea of nuclear annihilation… And he was flying.

She knew she owed him for saving Simon, even if he was now a wild old man, frantically taking his clothes off.

Author's Note-

If found another chapter lying around… No idea when I wrote this but it all felt familiar, I could swear I had already written it and uploaded it but it had a few errors and bits I didn't like so it was, ultimately a good thing to hold it back and read it over again.

It feels almost good to be back… Almost… Considering all I have done in this time is read a few fics and edit this thing (only the last half, I need a place-setter if I am to finish this storey…)

I now have the finale all planned out and so it is just a matter or writing it up- which should be a tiring pain for the summer, when my final exam has passed and I don't need to panic over hospital placements or Uni stuff, I can knuckle down to this…