Where You Are

I am running to you on the other side

- Sweater Beats

Last chapter: Marceline, Gumball, and LSP journey to the Vampire Kingdom.

Marceline is not dressed for questing through the snow, but Prince Gumball's rucksack conveniently has jackets for 10 different climates and 3-ply toilet paper and probably even a llama if they ever needed to ride one.

Lumpy Space Prince offers to get her a mammoth-pelt cloak just like his, fresh off the skin, because that's what all the real wilderness explorers wear, ha-ha oh PG get that Anthropologie nonsense outta here.

Argument ensues. Marceline takes the parka. "Thanks for not making it super weird and being all suspicious of me just cuz I'm a vampire, you dudes."

"You're our buddy's girlfriend," Gumball replies. "Of course we'll trust you."

LSP rubs his stubble. "He does have quite the history of questionable girlfriends. But I do trust your, Marceline. You know why?"

LSP has his hand on her shoulder and she leans down and now they're eye to eye, and solemnly he whispers "I see him in you. He's like, reflected in your eyes or something. And that only comes from the Power of Liking Someone A Lot."

"That was poetry," she sniffs, mostly from not snorting. "LSP I bet you read fanfiction."

"Ooh gurl, however did you know?"

Sometime later, though, Gumball is still indignant. "What's wrong with Anthropologie?"

It's only been a day or so, and they're different people living different lives, but Marceline has this feeling that these two guys are pretty much just Bubblegum and LS-Princess but with nads.

\/\/\/\/

"So," Prince Gumball says, eyes twinkling. "How'd you guys meet?"

"Flob that," LSP says, cutting in. "How'd you start dating?"

"Uhh." Marceline says because they're not actually at a slumber party here, they're crouched around a fire in the middle of the wilderness freezing their cheeks off. Also, these guys are literally Bubblegum and LSP but with nads. It's not a bad thing, just weird at times, like when princely Gumball chants "Tell! Tell!" and 007-Rambo-LSP says "Mm, yes, I do love a good romance" as he polishes shivs.

Uhh….

Their dating story..?

"No romance," she admits. "More like he got lost, crashed at my place, and never left."

The princes shake their heads like they're not even surprised.

"Typical."

"That sounds just like him."

"Frightfully so."

Then later when they're huddled again, this time inside Gumball's tent, and Marceline thinks she's the only one left awake, and there's nothing but man-snoring inside and crazy-nasty blizzarding outside,

"He's probably buns-deep in problems, you know," LSP tells her quietly across their small shared space. "A real bother to bail out."

Marceline shrugs. "Eh. What's new. You know he once called me to bail him outta jail?"

"Typical."

"So typical."

"All jests aside," LSP throws her a sly look from under his sleeping bag. "Your man owes me a squad, a best mate, and six months in the bloody lumpin' wilderness. As such, I intend to give him a sound thrashing."

He's serious. She smirks. They bump fists over Gumball's sleeping head, and somewhere up north the distressed damsel in question is going to get rescued, whether or not he feels like he needs to be.

\/\/\/\/

The burnt, abandoned villages are few and far in between, but are grim sights none the less.

"This is messed up."

"You should've seen it before The Wall was built."

"Bloody white-walkers."

Marceline hasn't seen vampire-made mounds of drained, impaled bodies since the darker ages in Ooo, but apparently it's a thing again here in Aaa.

\/\/\/\/

LSP suddenly flies off the beaten path. Moments later, he comes flying back into file as if he never missed a step.

"What is it?" Gumball inquires as they trudge on.

He waves casually. "Oh, nothing, just saw some white-walkers over yonder swamp."

"What," Marceline exclaims.

"Oh, it's alright, looks like they already fought themselves to the death so I rifled through their pockets and took all their valuables. Fancy a look?"

Nobody looks LSP in the eye for a while as he plays some dead guy's harmonica and reads his diary, no figs given.

\/\/\/\/

Gumball excuses himself to take a royal leak at the edge of the winterlands. He disappears into the thicket and takes his sweet time. So Marceline polishes her axe bass. LSP throws some ninja stars.

Then an unmistakeable shriek pierces the woods.

"Vampires!" LSP flies into action. They find Gumball surrounded by cloaked strangers, all hooded and armed except for that one guy writhing on the ground from what looks like pepper spray. One look is all LSP needs.

"ASDFGHJKLHUIRAWR VAMPIRES ARE MY TRIGGER."

He's a whirl of purple vengeance soaring into the fray. Meanwhile Marceline fends off the remaining vampires from Gumball who's doing a pretty good job pepper-spraying them in the face, until that one time he gets her right in the eye.

"DUDE."

"I'M SORRY."

Real-life teamfighting is NOT coordinated.

"Find your own candy-prince!" one vampire spits at her.

"You guys are people-traffickers," Marceline exclaims, and she tightens her grip on his throat. So farming people-blood is a thing again here, too.

"You're one of those vegans," he sniffs, and this time he spits on her face, ew, it's brown and it reeks of old blood, nas-tay.

She slams him into the nearest tree and points her axe bass to his neck, ohmyglob, what if AIDS. "Imma carve a penis on your face, ya low-life!"

His expression changes, from disdain to surprise to frozen in fear, but not about the penis thing. He's staring, eyes bugged out, at her bass.

"That's… i-it can't be the…" This time, he looks at her. "You have the Vampire King's axe."

Taking a hostage sounds like a good idea. The corners of her mouth lift into a sinister smile…

Thunk. One of LSP's ninja stars buries itself into the back of her hand. Marceline drops the vampire.

"DUDE."

"HEAT OF THE MOMENT. DREADFULLY SORRY."

The vampire scrambles away into the night. The rest follow. And then nothing remains of the epically short skirmish aside from broken branches, abandoned whips, and LSP's weapons that got thrown into trees and into Marceline's right hand.

\/\/\/\/

Democratically, they decide that Gumball is no longer allowed unescorted pee breaks. Unfortunately, the prince protests this decision the whole way through the Manly Moutains.

"I am an independent candy-man!" Gumball objects. "I can take care of myself!"

Marceline has heard something similar to that before, from someone who wandered into the Spooky Forest at midnight and watched a Scream Queens concert all by herself, dressed in bright pink.

"Sure you can, Bubba, it's just…"

You make tea for a workout?

You think babies come from storks?

You shop at Anthropologie?

LSP slaps Gumball right in the cheek-meat instead. "Nobody has got the time for your flim-flammery, soldier! You'll do as you're told and go to the loo with your designated pee-buddy!"

Marceline waves her bandaged hand. "Uhh yeah! Or else he's gonna knife your hand!"

Outraged Gumball is outraged.

"Of all the… I'll have you know that I was a four-time aquatics champion back at—"

Suddenly, LSP grabs her and Gumball and backflips them all into the nearest bush. "Shh."

"What the—"

"Bloody white-walkers."

Now, she hears what he hears (props to this battle-hardened LSP for hearing before she did). Moments later, black shadows fly through the trees. One after the other, scarcely brushing the ground, leaving glints of silver steel and rustled snow in their wake, and as suddenly as they came, gone.

Marceline knows she just saw a whole vampire coven, headed for the Vampire Kingdom.

A moment of tense silence, and then Gumball swallows audibly. "Yup, pee-buddies sounds good."

LSP wonders "Dare we follow them..?"

Marceline says "We should totally follow them."

But five minutes later,

"We should totally unfollow them."

"Quite right, we should."

She kinda wanted to see what those guys were up to - probably trying to take over the Vampire Kingdom or something political like that- but then the coven ran into this other coven and everyone suddenly started hacking each other's limbs off, that shit cray, oh no here comes even more guys.

"Interesting," Gumball muses for the rest of the way. "There must be a recent power vacuum where there used to be none, thereby displacing traditional vampire hierarchy sideways."

"Mm, yeah, that's nice, now get into this small dark cave." She points into an inconspicuous outcropping of rock. They must've really bonded during this brief journey through the wilderness, because Gumball and LSP both follow her into the cave no questions asked. Marceline slaps at the walls, in the general area where the thing should be or rather was back in Ooo, until the stone gives way and the door opens for the first time in Glob-knows how long.

"Guuurl, is that a super-secret passage to the Vampire Kingdom?

"It's totally a super-secret passage to the Vampire Kingdom."

LSP does have one problem though. He rubs his stubble and frowns. "We're going to sneak in to the Vampire Kingdom? Like lily-livered lollies?"

"Who wants to not run into vampire turf wars," Marceline declares and, through a democratic show of hands, they decide to go into the dank dark passageway after all. The door closes. They're in total blackness. And for the first time in days, neither wind nor chill is biting at their faces.

\/\/\/\/

"Oh my Grod."

"What is it?"

That whole way in the dark through mazes and booby traps and crumbling narrowed ledges should have led them to… well, back on her parallel but kinda-opposite world it would have led them to…

"Dudes… I think we've been going the opposite way this whole time."

By flashlight, Gumball and LSP look like they died and went to the wrong afterlife. Marceline caves.

"Just kidding we're totally here."

She pushes that one last secret stone wall-lever that opens the one last super-secret door.

\/\/\/\/

They find him in his study, though Glob knows there's likely never any studying done here, just slouching sideways on an armchair playing paper football out of important documents across the desk and into the fireplace like he's doing now.

Marshall Lee is very, very bored.

This surprise attack has been planned for days.

"HI-YAH." LSP and Gumball scream mid-air during synchronized flying kicks. The armchair stands no chance. Marshall Lee topples over with it. There's cursing and stuck landings and then for the first time in two years the three bros are all together in each other's presence.

"Omg."

Gumball can smirk after all. "What's going on, nerd."

Doors open. Two new voices join in.

"Marshall Lee what's going o—"

"Fionna!" Gumball exclaims. "Cake!"

"Prince Gumball!" Fionna beams. "LSP!"

"You're alive!" LSP says.

"How'd you get in here!" Cake wonders.

"Yes, how did you get into my hella-fortified kingdom," Marshall Lee picks himself up off the floor, and he's shaking his head at getting jumped by Gumball of all people, and yet he's smirking back all the same. She holds out a hand. He takes it like she helps him up all the time. The hands fall easily into place and he almost doesn't even think about it, except their eyes meet.

Marceline smiles. One year used to be nothing.

"Hey babe."

\/\/\/\/

TL;DR: Squad backdoors into the castle now the whole team here, aye.

What's going on in the Vampire Kingdom? Who will bring balance to Aaa? Is Marceline going to slap a betch? Will the genre ever go back to romance?

Lol find out next time. Thanks for reviews last chapter everybody!

Disclaimer: I didn't come up with The Wall, the white walkers, or Anthropologie.