Notes:
LG1 = Limoncello "Cello"
LG2 = Meringue

Trigger Warnings: General violence including depictions of dismemberment and devouring other creatures, hallucinations, dissociative episodes, implied PTSD.

They called them "Prancers."

Rather, the Queen of Vampires, Marceline, called them that once as a joke and the name just stuck. They looked as if a very large, very flamboyant feathered lizard decided to get up on two legs one day, though they did not walk or run like nearly every other bipedal creature. Instead, they bounced and skipped and hopped and it made them very hard to pin down.

Cello would know, as he just barely manages to clothesline one as it tries to leapfrog over him. He slams it into the ground, spinning on his heel to block another's bite with his sword. The metal gives a reverberating clang as its teeth connect and it falls limp with a garbled wail, blood bursting from its ear holes.

The prancers seemed to have appeared out of the blue, scampering around the Candy Kingdom's bulwarks until the Gumball Guardians noticed and drove them off. From time to time, a small group of prancers would come bounding into the perimeter of the kingdom, though they were skittish and fled when shouted at or mildly threatened. Princess Bubblegum had been annoyed by their presence and by how they were scaring her peeps, but had assumed that they were only odd pests to be shooed away if necessary.

At least until the first sugar plum tot went missing.

Normally, Cello would have declined getting involved in hunting them down as it was beneath him, but as more candies disappeared, the issue had quickly ratcheted up from that's-an-unfortunate-happenstance to an all-hands-on-deck situation. The prancers, it seemed, had a sweet tooth.

Tracking them down had been child's play, the prancers' odd gait leaving distinctive footprints and crushed vegetation. Princess Bubblegum, Queen Marceline, Finn and his dog brother, Earl Limoncello, Meringue, and a platoon of banana guards had followed the pests' tracks out of the borders of the Candy Kingdom, past the Grass Lands, and to the edge of a vast, unmapped forest bordering a valley of blue grass dotted with spires and plateaus of russet colored stone that almost looked as if some great, unknowable thing had stacked each boulder with a purpose. What they had found there was less a pack of renegade beasts, and more of an absolute infestation of the little monsters.

An infestation they were now tasked with cleaning up.

Cello catches movement out of the corner of his eye and turns to get a better look while backhanding another prancer in midair. Three of the banana guards holding the line had been incapacitated and a pair of prancers were making a break from the field that had purposefully enclosed with guards to try and keep the mob in one place.

He spits out something vulgar and not at all fitting for someone of his station in life. Following after the quickly retreating prancers wasn't an option for him. He couldn't leave the battlefield without express permission from mother princess because, while he was an effective combatant, he also doubled as bait. He may have been lemon, but he was candy as well. Him and Meringue both.

He curls his thumb and forefinger into his mouth and whistles long and loud, the signal for immediate assistance. Also a fantastic way to alert more prancers to his presence and he carves his sword across the ground to his right, the pulsing sound digging a trench and throwing up rock and dust into the snouts of three more prancers. They fall back squealing and confused by the smokescreen of debris.

"Cello!"

The shout reaches him over the sounds of crumbling rock falling back to earth before Finn catapults himself through the wall of dust towards him. He catches the boy in one arm and lets the weight of the impact drag them back a bit so Finn doesn't get whiplash.

"Twenty-seven prancers down!" Finn hoots and looks very proud of himself as Cello drops him to the ground, "You can't beat that!"

"Two of them west past the defensive line!" He barks, because there was no time for this, and Finn just looks up at him imploringly instead of moving.

"But Cello!"

"Forty-three down!" Cello yells at him - no, it isn't a competition, merely a friendly game to keep certain members focused on the task at hand - and he points sharply in the direction Finn really ought to be heading, "Stop them! Go! Now!"

Finn, looking disappointed but at least finally getting the idea, dashes off, unsheathing his sword to swipe at a few prancers following in his wake. Cello watches him go, needing a moment to catch his breath. They've been at this for days with no sign of stopping and it's becoming difficult to keep up the pace. He hopes that Finn landing against him didn't crack the glasses stored in his breast pocket for safe keeping. If he did break them, Cello might not be able to forgive the boy for a few days. A week at most.

He's relieved when he spies his brother once more, assured that Meringue is still in one piece, until he spots the four or five prancers pursuing him and rage and protectiveness roars to life in him with a fury. How dare they!

Meringue is almost imitating them, hopping and dodging and feinting and the prancers are snapping at his heels, so close, but never close enough. It only takes Cello a second to grasp what his brother is trying to do and he spins his sword in his hand and spreads his feet a little to root himself as though he were an immovable wall He lets out a breath as he settles into position.

Closer.

Closer.

Now!

Cello strikes forward, running through the prancers his brother had been baiting towards him with his blade while Meringue vaults off his outstretched arm. His brother lands on another prancer behind him with a bone-crunching crack before dashing off into the fray once more.

His sword catches in the corpses more firmly than he expected it to, though he manages to pry it loose with a few twists and a spurt of blood that soaks into his clothes. The air smells of iron and the edges of his vision blur in a way that has nothing to do with his far-sightedness. He bites the inside of his cheek, the pain focusing his thoughts on three things he knows to be true.

One: He is Earl Limoncello Bubblegum.

He stumbles forward as a prancer lands on his back, sharp claws digging into his rind and teeth coming for his neck. It only manages to get a mouthful of feathers from his collar before he seizes it by the throat, ripping it from his back and responding in kind. His teeth catch a limb just above the joint and he bites down and twists his head until the bone snaps and the tendons tear loose. The thing is shrieking in agony in his grasp, going silent once he finally rends its arm from its body. It tastes hot and brackish and metallic, not pleasant at all, but he chomps and swallows it regardless.

Two: He takes three sugars with his earl grey tea.

He drops the body to the ground, letting it writhe and twitch before falling still, and wipes his mouth on his sleeve. He's not particularly hungry, but he needs to replenish his energy in whatever way he can.

Three: The Pluto 670 Technical Drafting Pencil is his tool of choice.

The remaining prancers in the vicinity recoil back, some chirping and bouncing on their heels in distress and others standing tall and cocking their heads to get a better look at him with their bulbous eyes. They weren't very intelligent creatures to begin with, only knowing so much as to meet their basic needs of eating, resting, and breeding, but even they could sense that something had gone terribly awry.

Their intended prey had revealed that he was, in fact, a predator that sat on a rung much higher up the food chain than themselves.

One prancer, all blue-gold and on the skinny side, gives a screech in alarm, flaring its ruff of feathers wide, and turns tail to spring away. More quickly follow suit, bounding and hurdling over boulders and the few scraggly bushes that dotted the landscape. Again Cello swears, sheathes his sword, and races after them. He had only meant to intimidate, not scare them off in all directions and make them even more difficult to keep in one place.

He's almost caught up with one of the slower ones when his footing suddenly becomes slick and wrenches his leg out from beneath him and he goes crashing to the ground, skidding to a stop on his side. Pain flares white and hot all across his right from the impact and Cello hisses and curls up slightly, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. It's not long before the pain dulls to an uncomfortable throb, he was bioengineered to be resilient after all, but pushing himself up onto his elbows is unusually difficult. His strength isn't there and it made managing these limbs and all this weight far too big an ask for him.

He wants to go home, back to his books and architecture projects and where there was hot water and quiet, companionable moments with his brother. Back to where he didn't have to run himself ragged fighting for hours with no reprieve and he didn't have to skip meals because there was too much to do and not enough time in the day and mother princess couldn't demand him to come up with strategy after strategy after strategy that never worked because they weren't fighting sentient beings that could actually plan ahead, but a bunch of dumb, wild animals that outnumbered them thirty to one.

A smaller prancer that must have been in its adolescence notices that he's down and gives a trill that sounds too much like a giggle. Cello tries to get his feet under him as it skips over, but his arms are trembling and a stab of pain shoots through his right shoulder when he puts too much weight on it and he falters. Claws uncurl as the prancer makes one final leap and jaws snap shut in front of his face, but oddly its feet never touch the ground. Instead, it hovers in midair for a moment, its wide eyes somehow growing wider in confusion, before being pulled back sharply.

"Ally oop!"

The prancer had been caught in the dog's grossly overextended limbs and he slingshots it across the valley, its screams of terror growing faded and distant until it lands in the canopy of the nearby forest with a crunch of leaves and breaking branches. The dog chuckles self-satisfied to himself, his body looping around spires and across the ground like a wet noodle. Something clicks in Cello's mind at the sight of him, and his shocked expression hardens into a glower.

"Chalk up another point for Jakey!" The dog crows, his tail set to wagging far and away from the rest of him.

"Oh, please," Cello growls, forcing himself back to his feet, even though his legs still felt a little wobbly, "You did that on purpose!"

The dog turns towards him with a scowl, shrinking somewhat back to his normal state (or as normal as it got for some weird, stretchy dog-thing) and placing his hands on the rough equivalent of his hips. "What'choo talkin' about?" His whole body shifts and melds to stand closer to him in a way that would have been disturbing had Cello not been familiar with his abilities. "I just saved your ugly mug! You should be thanking me!"

"Saved me?!" Cello practically spits in incredulity, his hands curling into fists, "You tripped me!"

Of course he must have! The ground was covered in thick grass with nary a puddle or patch of mud for him to have slipped on and to have nearly gotten himself maimed over unless the dog had tripped him up on purpose with his stupid, rubber body!

The dog narrows his eyes and stretches himself upwards until he's not only matched Cello's towering height, but is infuriatingly hovering a few inches above his eye line, forcing him to tilt his head up ever so slightly to match him glare for glare.

"You tryin' ta start somethin'?"

"Oh goodness, no," Cello says in a falsetto, pressing a hand to his chest as though offended by the suggestion, "I intend to end it."

"Bite me!"

"I wouldn't tempt me if I were you…" He snarls in warning, going so far as to bare his teeth a little.

In all their bickering, Cello fails to notice that the dog has looped part of himself around his ankles until he's suddenly yanked off his feet. This time his head bounces off a rock painfully and stars burst across his eyes. It takes a moment for his vision to stop swimming and there's a faint ringing in his ears, but Cello can still hear the dog laughing and proclaiming that he has two left feet. What had been irritation mixed with extreme dislike erupts into a cocktail of burning, furious hatred for this idiot dog who dared humiliate him. Once he gets himself more upright, Cello rears back and throws the hardest, meanest left hook he can manage, aiming for whatever part of the orange body is closest. His fist connects with the dog's jaw and his head pings off and away like a slinky.

Satisfaction in revenge curls pleasingly in his belly. He had been wanting to do something like that for awhile, held back only by the very real possibility of Meringue's disapproval and Finn's disappointment. The dog deserved it after all. If not for this, then for a few other things he had done in the past.

His victory is short-lived as part of the dog stabs outward like a lance, nailing his injured shoulder and stealing his breath away. Retaliation was inevitable, though Cello didn't expect the blow to transform into a vice of tough, rubbery skin curling around his shoulder and bicep. He grabs at it with his left hand, intent on tearing the dog from him only for it to get stuck and lost in the mass of flesh as well. He quickly slips into a fog of rage and pain, half-screaming curses and every other nasty remark he can think of over the dog's taunts about giving him a taste of his own medicine and flexing and straining his muscles as hard as he can to break free, but the snare is catching around his chest and stomach and squeezing and movement was getting difficult.

A sharp, piercing shriek that no prancer could make hits his ears and he jerks his head over to see Finn standing on a sizable rock and blowing into his flute as hard as possible and Meringue charging over to them in the distance, prancer blood dripping a line in the ground from his mace. The distraction makes Cello's strength falter and the dog takes this advantage to engulf him more completely, shoving him to the ground once more and grinding the side of his face into the dirt.

By the time the two younger brothers have reached them with demands of what was going on and why they were fighting, Cello finds himself quite immobilized. His legs are tangled in a net of orange limbs, though he's freed one foot enough to dig it into what flesh he can reach, and one arm is pinned to his side and the other is trapped against his chest and this is honestly the most compromising position he's ever been caught in.

"I'll tell ya what happened!" The dog proclaims, stretching out a small part of himself for his head to be level with Finn and pointing a thumb at Cello behind his back, "This guy's a complete nutso! A whack job!"

His temper flares once more, stoked by the insults and the steadily building panic at not being able to move freely, and Cello can't stop himself from giving the dog what he asked for. He sinks his teeth into the strange rubbery skin and fur until the dog yelps. They untangle and break away very quickly afterwards, Cello driving a heel into the soft body one last time, and they're left sitting and panting and furious with each other.

Meringue hovers about him like a nervous mother hen in the aftermath, rattling off questions pertaining to his well-being and giving light, fluttery touches to his hands, his arms, his face until Cello grows fed up and waves off his offers to help him to his feet. Finn is tending to his own brother even as the dog is nursing his aching jaw and griping to himself. Neither party is keen on engaging the other, even as a long shadow throws them into darkness and a delighted howl rings out.

The sun has started to set, turning the skyline a beautiful, radiant orange and signaling that Queen Marceline could finally come out to play, however briefly. Cello has only just stood up and begun dusting himself off in a huff, Meringue still fretting at his side, when she loop-de-loops in the air and races down towards them.

"Tag out!" She hollers almost infuriatingly cheerfully, clapping a hand on his injured shoulder as she whooshes past his head. He winces as another bolt of pain races down to the tips of his fingers, but she had no way of knowing he had been hurt. He watches her as she spins gracefully in midair, body morphing into something huge and inky and rimmed with claws, and falls onto a group of prancers with an echoing laugh.

He's being relieved from the field, finally. It's probably for the best as he doesn't want to be around anyone right now, especially not his so-called allies. He needs time to cool his head and compose himself. Time he likely won't get because even back at camp he had responsibilities to attend to and orders to follow.

Finn and the dog have already recovered enough to chase after Queen Marceline and take care of what prancers they can before night falls. Cello turns on his heel to stalk in the opposite direction, only to be briefly chased down by his brother. Meringue clasps a hand about his wrist and Cello skids to a stop lest he pull him off his feet.

"What happened?"

What ire Cello had been able to tamp down floods back in a rush and makes his voice harsh and cruel. "If he gets in my way one more time, I-!"

"Stop, stop," Meringue instructs, raising his hands in a placating gesture, "Take a moment. Explain properly. What happened?"

Cello does so, fueled by anger and embarrassment and feeling very much not respected as an authority figure, but the more he talks, the less and less his words seem to make sense. Yes, he had fallen and, yes, the dog had been there, but the two matters aren't connected by anything other than Cello's own assumptions that the dog could have tripped him with his strange abilities and strengthened only by the fact that they despised each other. There was also the point to be made that the dog had stopped a prancer from taking his nose off and that had to count for something. The malice drains out of him like poison from a wound as he comes to terms with the fact that everything had happened quite quickly and confusingly and that fault could only be found in their words and actions afterwards. He trails off in his explanation, avoiding Meringue's eyes and mumbling something about a lack of focus in the recruits and how one doesn't speak to a commanding officer like that in a weak attempt to preserve his dignity and lay blame elsewhere before his voice dies out completely.

Meringue takes this all in without reprimanding him or suggesting what he ought to have done. In fact, he's been silent and only frowns a little once Cello has finished.

"Are you unharmed? Nothing broken?"

Physically, he's alright and he assures his brother as such. Though his shoulder is still a bit tender, the only thing truly wounded is his pride. Meringue appears relieved, but his eyes are still tight with concern.

"When you return to our tent, perhaps you should lie down? You're looking a bit peaked."

"I'm fine," Cello insists in a rush, making it sound like the lie that it was, "I have work to do. You know this."

The look Meringue gives him is reproachful, but patient as always. "If only for one evening, can you stuff your work? Leave it to mother princess for once since she's been off combat duty for the day."

Cello narrows his eyes at him, offended by the suggestion. It was fine if others saw him as cross or short-tempered, but the last thing he wanted to be known as was lazy.

It takes a moment, but his brother sighs and answers his own question with fondness in his voice. "Of course you can't."

Cello is appreciative of his brother's understanding, reluctant though it may be. One day soon, he hopes to have the words to explain that his efforts, exhaustive and stressful as they are, have always been intended for Meringue's benefit; ensuring that his brother could live happy and carefree in a way that Cello himself never could. But not today. Instead, he takes Meringue's hand in his own and presses the tips of his fingers into the palm, a reassurance and a promise in the gesture. He's happy when his brother squeezes back tightly, his fingers cool and slender, but just as strong as his own.

"I will be awaiting your return to camp and to me. Rest will come easier once I know you are safe."

Meringue's expression shifts into something determined, his blue eyes hardening like rock candy. Cello almost blanches under its intensity before finding his own resolve to do whatever it took to be worthy of such unwavering loyalty and unconditional love from the person he considered to be his other half. They both let go reluctantly, Meringue moving to unholster his weapon and Cello turning to head back to their campsite.

"One more thing, brother."

Cello pauses and looks back, cocking his head expectantly.

"Promise me you will go easier on them," Meringue gestures with his free hand towards Finn and Queen Marceline and the dog, "They are not used to war games like you are. They were not there for things like the Candy Rebellion."

His heart clenches and skips several beats at the mention of the Rebellion, but Cello pushes it from his mind. He snorts derisively and looks away, not because he's being asked too much, but because saying no to such a request from his brother is next to impossible. "I will try," he mumbles, hoping that it doesn't fully count as a promise since his temper likely won't let him keep it.

End of Chapter