Finn felt he was in a world of thickness, a world of soft. He was upright, but he could just let his feet hang.
Then he slammed on a hard floor. Finn got up, and saw people laying on the floor distant from him. They were Jake, B.M.O., PB, Marceline, Flame Princess; all of his friends. He scrambled up, and ran toward them, to see if they were okay.
He was stopped by a hard, mercilessly strong claw suddenly gripping his head. Violent rumbling rang into his hears. The claw turned him around, and he was brought face to face with an enlarged image of Karas Brimstone. She was point blank to him, her gaze ran him through, and her mouth opened, calmly, to speak. "You live in my world now, boy." Her voice rattled his ears, it was the voice of a demon, a monster.
The claw turned him around, and he saw Craw, standing over Finn's friends, who were still fainted.
"Craw!" Came Brimstone's voice. "Kill them! Kill all this boy cares for."
Craw raised his blade, and cut them all to pieces.
"No!" Finn shrieked. He reached out for them, and found that his arm was gone, cut off.
He fell to the floor. Oh no, he thought. He couldn't survive if he lost an entire arm, he felt the floor hit his face, and front body.
Finn awoke.
He was in Marceline's couch-bed. Night had long fallen. He sat up, and leaned forward, holding his face in his left palm. It had been a week since that day. Pain still emanated from the stub past his right shoulder, and the ache spread to his entire chest.
There was no way he could go back to sleep. He got out of bed, and got his clothes on. Marceline was a vampire, so she was probably awake at night. That, and she had to keep an eye out for scouting parties. The moonlight outside made its way into the cave a little bit.
Finn went outside, into the cold night air, into the vast cavern in which Marceline's house was located. He raised his remaining arm, and the grass blade moved over to it.
He took the cold, and the scare of the night with stoic endurance. It was time to train.
Flame Princess was curled in the corner of her cell. Beyond boredom, beyond loneliness. Her only contact with anything was the chute that fed her coal. Sometimes she shouted up at it when it opened, but there was never a reply, never a reaction.
She had a long time to think. It felt like months, but a more objective speculation would put it at about a week. Flame Princess knew beyond a doubt that she was being held in the Fire Kingdom. There was no other place anybody would have time to move her after whatever happened at the pass. Plus, until her reign began not long ago, the fire elementals had a xenophobic policy toward other cultures. It was unlikely anybody outside the kingdom knew of this method of imprisoning their own kind.
Her train of thought took her to wondering who did it. It was most likely a corrupt member of the nobility. She went through a bunch of tedious names, crossing off those too stupid, or cowardly to pull something like this. It left only three, two of them were criminals who had been arrested by her order, and stripped of their ranks, leaving only her father, who had also been stripped of his rank, but in a different way.
She avoided increasing her anger at him, settling her feelings with the verdict that when she got out, and if it turned out he was responsible for this, he was going in this cell.
She snapped out of what she was doing; curled up off in the side. She was the ruler of the Fire Kingdom, she rebuked herself; and she was going to act like it, imprisoned or no, whether or not anybody saw her. With this, she got up, and sat off to the side with dignity. She leaned forward, and picked up a chunk of coal, nibbling at it with all the formality she could muster without a plate or eating tools.
A tear rolled down her face.
She was so lonely. Ruler of the Fire Kingdom, sure, but before that she was a person, a living, feeling person. If given the choice to instead be locked in the lamp above the throne room, she would take it, happily. At least there she could see things happen, and sometimes talk to people.
But this, this was hell. There was nothing here. The terror from before made its way back into her mind.
What if nothing changed?
It was noon, and the sun beat down. Lemonhope stood before the rubble of the candy palace. It had been a week since the invasion, and things had finally cooled down. The rubble was closed off, by a simple rope fence with signs on the posts. The signs read:
Area may be hazardous, enter at your own risk.
None of the foreign soldiers occupying the city seemed to care if anybody crossed it. Lemonhope couldn't say he disapproved of this. If they meant to police the city, it seemed perfectly fair to draw the line at protecting people from themselves.
He was there to contemplate. It had been a crazy past week since the invasion. School had been canceled, and the city was under marshal law for a while, until the foreign army set up a new building to serve as a simultaneous courthouse and jail; functions once performed by the now destroyed palace.
Rumors had been circulating, discreetly, that Princess Bubblegum was dead. The military governor, a horse called Van Duke, didn't address this in any official statement. When asked directly, he said that she was 'missing' and that no further information was available.
The horse did unbelievably well in keeping the candy citizens calm. In the morning following the invasion, he held a public assembly in which he answered questions; laying down a code of laws, carved into a metal plate in the center of town, and also keeping an air of ease whenever he made a public appearance, sometimes stumbling on two hoofs, then immediately correcting himself, hoping nobody saw; or lighting his pipe in front of everyone. Whenever Lemonhope talked to someone else about the occupation, they all expressed disdain for the Brimstone Empire, but then amended the remark by saying; 'that horse is alright, though.'
The soldiers also made their presence more and more discreet, being gradually replaced by a civilian police force recruited from the local citizenry.
Rubble of the palace began to shift, snapping Lemonhope out of his thoughts. He watched, interested in what would happen next. The chunk of rubble shifted more, then flipped over away from the pile, revealing a hand and arm. After the arm cleared the chunk, it braced itself on the outside surface, and pushed.
A head came out next, gasping for air. Then the person shuffled and struggled the rest of the way. He rolled forward coming out of the pile head first. After emerging, he walked straight at Lemonhope. The stranger was a lot taller than he, and covered with dust and debris.
Lemonhope was too terrified to move.
He stopped in front of the kid, "water."
"Water?"
The stranger picked up a hand, and combed it over his head, getting a long mane of hair out of the way of his face. "Where can I find water?"
Lemonhope decided to just answer the question. "There's a fountain in the plaza." He noticed a large amount of blood crusted on his upper body. "Are you hurt, sir?"
The stranger chuckled as he walked past, toward the road. "Lesson for the ages, kid; shotgun beats sword."
Lemonhope followed. The stranger carried himself tall and erect, walking with evident mastery of the physical world. "Are you a hero?" He asked.
"Yes, I am."
Lemonhope never heard such a direct answer before, it surprised him. "How come?"
"Well, because I've done big things, in big places."
"Wow, you must be really strong to do big things." He tagged along energetically.
They went along the road. "It's not easy."
"How do you do it?"
"There's lots of ways to do it."
"What about you? How did you do it?"
He coughed from a dry throat, "I did it by destroying evil people with power. They thought they could substitute borrowed power with their own worth, and people suffered under them. I moved the world by crushing them to nothing. Being party to the rise of the greatest ruler in all of history."
Lemonhope mulled this in his head. "Are you Princess Bubblegum's husband?"
The stranger burst into laughter, immediately cut short by coughing from his dry throat. "I don't want to know what train of thought led to that guess."
Lemonhope lifted his eyebrows. He knew who she was. "Do you know where she is?"
"Afraid I don't, I've been buried alive for the past week." He looked down at him, intently. "Do you know where she is?"
Lemonhope saw that he really wanted to know. "Sorry, if I knew, I'd tell you. She's been missing since the invasion. Lotta folks are saying she's dead, but nobody knows for sure."
They reached the fountain in the plaza. The stranger dunked his head in the pool, and it remained there for what felt like an entire minute, but what a more objective speculation would place at twenty seconds.
Lemonhope had something he needed to ask this stranger. When his head emerged, he did. "You get rid of bad guys with power, right?"
The stranger's hair hung like a mop, he ran his fingers through it, moving it back behind his head. "That's right."
"So... do you think maybe..."
He looked down at him. "Life's too short not to say what you feel, kid. Let it out."
"The Candy Kingdom was taken over by a bunch of strange people."
"The Brimstone Empire."
"You know about them!"
"Yeah, I do."
"You can save us from them, right?"
"Save you?"
"Yeah, that's right!"
The stranger frowned, and sat down on the fountain ledge. "What have they done, that you need saving from?"
Lemonhope stood in front of him, with the stranger sitting, they were almost at even height. "They're like those people you said you destroy. They're bad people with power."
The stranger shook his head. "The Brimstone Empire is a force for good, every territory they take has always become a better place. And they were all places that needed to become better."
"But the Candy Kingdom was already a great place before they came along."
The stranger's cheek was propped on an arm.
"Don't get me wrong, they make a good effort. I can imagine doing a lot worse job running a conquered place. And I'm sure there are a lot of good people in there, but..." He shook his head. "They never had to come here in the first place! They have no reason."
The stranger had his eyes shut. "I see your point."
"So then, will you..?"
"I can't."
"Why not?"
The stranger laughed. "I wish I was young enough to ask that.: Why not." He shook his head. "So naïve, but so proper to ask."
"Why can't you?"
The stranger frowned, introspectively. "It's more of a won't."
"Why won't you then?"
"Because..." he lifted a hand, then let it drop. "Because I don't believe in protecting people."
"Why wouldn't you want to protect people?"
He paused, thinking of what to say to that. Then he looked Lemonhope in the eye. "Because people are arrogant, and they try to tell other people what to do."
Lemonhope shrugged at this.
The stranger sighed, "you're a kid though, not people." He got up, and walked past. "I'm not going to help you, or any of these people. That's my final answer."
"But what about-"
The stranger looked back at Lemonhope, cutting him off. He wore a hard, terrifying glare. "Kid, if you want something, then you have to reach for it. If you need a hero, then become that hero. I'm not going to help a bunch of people who sit around whining, and won't lift a finger to help themselves."
He shrunk down a bit. "But... you said you were a hero."
His face gradually began to soften, "the rarest kind." He went back to walking away.
Lemonhope watched him leave, until he rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
Finn stood alone, in the dark, in the cold. It was the middle of the night, and he was in the cavern that housed Marceline's house, deeper in than the house, where it was even darker. He was perfectly still, ignoring the cold, ignoring the aching from his wound.
"Ready?"
Finn reached out his left arm, and the grass blade came to it, he nodded. Just as he nodded, rocks came at his head at a high velocity. They came from all directions, in an even formation.
As the rocks flew, needing only seconds to reach his head, Finn merely moved his sword through the air, slowly, deliberately, gracefully.
Then a blur.
His form blurred behind each rock in full circle, not missing one and not slowing down for any of them.
A carved out piece of each rock reached the point where Finn's head was at the start. They combined, forming together into a perfect bust of Finn's head. Finn appeared kneeling under it, holding the bust in his raised hand. He stood up, holding it more naturally.
Marceline came out of the shadows. "Wow, Finn! How do you do that?"
Finn looked at the bust. "I can't focus while its happening, it's all I can do to plan where I want to go."
"Finn, I couldn't keep up with it, and I'm a vampire! I can keep up with bullets!" She floated behind him, leaning on his shoulders and staring at the bust with him. "How'd you make that if you can't focus while doing it?"
"It's the sword," Finn explained, "it has... habits. It likes to sculpt my face for some reason."
"Ooh," said Marceline. "Maybe it has a spirit inside it, and she's in love with you."
"Cut it out!" He said humorously.
She laughed as she levitated in circles around him.
"Has anybody come here?" He had to ask, he knew the invasion would advance sooner or later. It had been a week.
She shook her head. "A couple of scouting parties came close. Directing them away from here was easy." She didn't want to talk about that. "So, should I reload the shooters? I wanna see you do that again, or at least try to see you do it."
"Marceline, I need to know." He had calmed to a serious disposition. "Tell me everything you know." She had heightened senses, and the ability to travel very fast, it was likely she already knew a lot.
She sighed, and slowed to a stop in her levitation. "I guess you're gonna get involved in this, sooner or later."
"The land of Ooo is my home, and also my charge. I can't ignore this."
She lowered her head patiently, "of course it is."
"So?"
"I'll start wherever then. The guy who cut off your arm was buried alive when the palace went down. He's lucky the palace got him before I did, let me tell you."
"Marceline, I told you not to-"
"Finn, I like you, but I don't take orders from you, okay?" She shook her head. "I wouldn't have just charged at him like a cowboy, I know how to size up a mark first."
That remark stopped Finn cold. He looked at his severed arm, frowning in thought.
"Bonnibel is M.I.A., and Jake and Rainicorn are on the D.L. I think they're hiding out in the subterranean Slime Kingdom."
"You can't find PB?"
"I don't think she wants to be found. Believe me, if I can't find someone, then they're making a good effort to hide."
Finn nodded. "What about the invaders?"
"I'm not gonna lie, Finn. They've unloaded a large force, at least fifty thousand troops."
Finn thought of what it would be like to fight fifty thousand people, and felt overwhelmed. "What are they doing?"
Marceline put up two fingers. "They're constructing two big things, one at the seashore, and another out in the grasslands. I don't know what they are."
Finn began to pace. "Anything else?"
His sudden change in attitude surprised her, not in an unpleasant way either. "There's a unit of banana guards who escaped from the Candy Kingdom. They've been moving through the other kingdoms, warning them."
Finn nodded, "that frees a considerable chunk off my schedule."
"Oh? do you have a plan already?"
"I've had a week to think things through." He turned and headed back to the house. "As soon as the sun comes up, I'm leaving."
Marceline followed. "One more thing, Finn."
"What?" He kept walking.
"That empire, you're on their list, if you know what I mean."
"I see."
"They'll kill you if they get the chance." They reached the porch door, behind the house, and went inside. She floated up the hatch to the second floor. "Wait there, Finn, there's something I want to give you."
Finn waited, it was only a few seconds before she came down holding a cloth bag. She set it down on the table. Then she backed away, letting him walk up to it. He unzipped the bag, and took out a long, mostly metallic construct. It had a handle in the back, with two triggers, one further up than the other. The middle and front were taken by six wide, metal barrels arranged in a horizontal oval.
"I nicked it from one of those Brimstone guys." Said Marceline. "They called it a hex blaster.
Finn pressed a switch near where the barrels began, and the barrels fell, swinging down on a small hinge, allowing him a view through each barrel. "It's a gun."
"Yeah, and the bag's full of ammo." She floated over, and took a handful out of the bag. They were cylinder-shaped paper packets, each with a metal ring braced on one end.
Finn grabbed a thick lever on top of the handle with his thumb, pulling it back. It linked with a mechanism that pulled six individual hammers behind each of the six barrels, locking them in place. "Why are you giving this to me?"
Marceline shrugged, "I saw it and thought of you. It might help you."
Finn pulled the back trigger, the one easiest to reach with his index finger. One of the hammers snapped down. Pulling the front trigger made all of them snap down. "I can't use it."
"What? Why not?"
Finn shook his head, "for one, it'll probably kill whoever I use it on. I don't want that."
"Your grass blade can cut people up just as easily." Marceline argued.
Finn turned the weapon over, still examining it. "Yeah, but I have a lot more control over the grass blade. Besides, I can't use this with just one arm."
"You're holding it just fine."
"Yeah, but can you imagine loading it with one arm? I'd have to set it on something, that makes it unusable during battle." He set it down on the table.
Marceline sighed. "You're right, I just..."
Finn sensed how she felt, and put a hand on her shoulder. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. I'm Ooo's greatest champion!"
She frowned, "maybe you should stay a bit longer, get some more training in. Besides, you haven't fully recovered from your injuries."
Finn smiled sheepishly. "My arm isn't gonna grow back."
Her frown deepened. "You have to be careful, Finn. Those people, invading Ooo..." She picked up the gun. "They have weapons like these, and they won't hesitate to use them on you. You know what these do, right?"
Finn nodded. "I've seen them in movies we dig up. They're actually very inaccurate, you have to be really good to hit something."
Marceline shook her head. "It's not like in the movies. The truth is that they're very accurate and very easy to aim." She paused for a moment, thinking, then she took a couple of shells out of the bag, and put them in the open barrels of the gun, flipping them so the metal rings go in last. They slid in without effort, stopping at where the rings hit the rim of the barrels. She loaded each barrel with a shell, then closed it up, clicking it into place and re-aligning the barrels with the body.
She headed out the back door, "follow me."
Seeing her go outside right after loading a multi-barreled firearm gave Finn a weird sense of deja-vu. He followed her outside.
She stopped in the middle of her large back porch, waiting for Finn to get behind her, once he did, she leveled the gun at the outside wall of her house. "I don't want to do this to my house, but you need it, Finn." She pulled back the main hammer.
Finn knew what she was about to do, and his curiosity kept him from saying anything. He saw her finger pull the front trigger.
When the gun fired, it let out a blast so loud that it made Finn afraid out of impulse, he wanted to jump and float in the air from the tingly sense in his back neck.
He opened his eyes, and saw the house. He didn't recognize it at first, it was like a small rain cloud of acid rained on it horizontally for an entire day. The siding was nearly all gone, and there were several holes in the wall, showing the interior, and several mutilated items within that.
Marceline was still holding the gun level. All six barrels were smoking. She let it hang at her side. "Don't know why they gave it a trigger to fire all six at once, the recoil of that would knock a mortal off their feet."
She looked over at Finn. "It only takes a second, to aim and fire."
Finn was paralyzed. If Craw had used a weapon like that on him, he would have lost more than his arm. "I..."
"Do you understand, Finn?"
He managed a nod.
"You can't just think of things that are close to you as a threat. If you hear someone nearby, use that speed technique, and change your position. Play it safe, don't wait to see who it is first." She began to pace. "If you can catch them by surprise, great, but you have to make sure you know how many there are, and where each of them is at all times."
Finn was quiet.
"I wish you'd stay here, Finn. Mortals have so many parts that if one of them fails, they cease to exist. Jake is less vulnerable in that respect, but not you." She walked closer to him. "You're lucky your arm was expendable."
"Actually, I think he spared my life." He'd been thinking about what happened a week ago. "He cut off my arm, knowing it wouldn't kill me."
Marceline put her hands on his shoulders, getting his attention, then she shook her head. "That blow was meant to kill you."
"What? How do you know?"
"I saw the wound. Given the texture, and angle of the cut, I can tell it was an upward slash, perfectly vertical. I've seen a lot of things in my thousand years, and I can say for certain you were moving, extremely fast, to the left as the blade went through your arm."
Finn's eyes widened. "So..."
"He wasn't aiming for your arm."
Finn took a couple steps back, realizing how close he was to death. "Then... why didn't he finish me off?"
"Were you his objective?"
Finn snapped his fingers. "That's right, he was there to kill PB."
"What?" Her voice was low and forced, her face darkened, "What kind of sick monster would try to kill Bonnie?"
"He was ordered."
"What kind of sick monster would order it!" She got more unsettled. "All right, Finn, good luck with whatever you're gonna do. I've got a mission now. I'm gonna find that guy, and make him wish he was never born! And if he's dead, I'm gonna find everyone else responsible for this, and make them pay."
Finn looked her in the eye, his uneasiness at witnessing the effect of the gun was gone, he was certain now. "Marceline, all I have to say is, good luck."
"Sent you did she?" Craw was laying atop the walls of the Candy Kingdom city. "Hope you're noseblind, 'cause I haven't washed in a week."
Standing over him was Vang Hespiris. Her glowing red mechanical eye, and green unnatural eye were both visible from underneath pulled cowl. A billowing black cloak concealed her half mechanized, half unnatural body.
Craw relaxed a bit more, shifting his position. "I know what you're thinking," he made fingerquotes. "You're alive, that makes my presence here superfluous. Oh, glob, I spent a week aboard a loud, crowded zeppelin for nothing."
She said nothing, continuing to stare down at him.
"Then your next thought would be something like; oh, but Karas means everything to me, I'd happily toss myself into the Nitosphere for her."
She did not react.
Craw moved his head, looking up at her. "You ever thought maybe she'd be more comfortable if one of her closest associates wasn't a dependent drone?"
Still, she just stood there, saying nothing, no movement, except her cloak whenever the wind picked up.
Craw was still relaxed. "I so enjoy our talks. You got something for me?"
She took out a sealed metal case, then tossed it at Craw.
He caught it naturally, then got up on his feet. He dug under his collar, and pulled out a key on a rope around his neck. He used the key to unlock the case, and then he took out a rolled up paper scroll. He looked over at Vang. "Are you here to stay?"
She still just stood there, staring at him.
Craw pointed the rolled up scroll at her as he walked away. "Seriously Vang, you are my compass."
She watched him walk away as he disappeared into one of the roof doors, leading to a staircase inside the wall. Still just standing there.
