Chapter 1:
"Nothing, honey," Cherry declared. "I've got nothing. No signs at all that she's doing anything right now. No chatter. Nothing." It had been a month since the climactic fight with the wax-hustler's hired thugs. They had mostly cleaned up the mess, and life had returned to a semblance of normalcy across the kingdoms. Unfortunately, with only one of the toxic-twins down, Finn was still worried that there was another shoe waiting to drop. Orzsebet was, once again, out of pocket, leading him to be a little worried about her. Was she in hock with the Committee again?
It helped not at all that the Privy Council was bombarding him daily with the latest idiotic idea for what to do with Abieuwa's nuke-fuel. He had been forcing himself to think of it in those terms. He'd been trying to come to terms with the material in the bunker as more than just a Deadly Legacy. It was hope for people who didn't have much hope now. He knew a lot of towns and villages in the wastes had windmills, and that was pretty much all they had. Many didn't have so much as that. A man who was supposed to be King of All had to be thinking about all.
In his mind, he saw a legion of Nadia's reactor-machines, scattered across the wastes, stretching from west to east. Powering water-pumps to pull water from wells. Powering factories to build things people needed. Powering machines to help people plant food and bring in their harvests. He wanted to end starvation on Ooo.
And the Princesses? They wanted to pursue idiotic vanity projects.
He'd seen some of everything in the last few days. Atomic trains. Somebody had suggested building atomic trains to run up and down the tracks because that was safe. He'd had to pull dozens of survivors out of a trainwreck near the tree-house twenty years back. Another idiot wanted to build atomic-powered cars and trucks because they couldn't have Bonnie holding a monopoly on the car-making business. All that glorious gold going into the Candy-Princess's coffers was a terrible thing! Even Sheila had hit him up, hinting that he ought to give her first crack. Her people's fleet of submarines could sure use the fuel.
Finn knew he needed to make some decisions, but he was swamped by worry. He was worried about the twin problems bedeviling him. He had the aliens out there in the ether, and that kept him up nights, wondering what they were up to and were they planning a reprise. On the flipside, he had Peihong the Bandit Princess out there, working on ways to shatter the peace. And so Finn wasn't at peace. And if that wasn't enough, he had Hurletta, who was love-bombing him every time she saw him now. He was worried about her, and he didn't have anybody to talk to now that his shrink was in jail for telling Chelsea the Wax-Hustler about Riley and Teri.
And, of course, he was doing his best to make amends for the drama he'd brought to Teri and Riley's club. He was spending a little of his newly-recovered wealth to fix up the club and repair the damage. He'd feared the distressing effects of his world on Riley and Teri, and he'd been terrified and shamed to be proven right. The girls were processing it still, with Simone particularly upset by the whole business. And, of course, Cherry and Bonnie were feuding over just how Cherry had 'found' the money Wildberry had taken from him. Bonnie was pissed off that Cherry went behind her back, and the two weren't speaking. Again. Far from having his stress levels go back down, Finn was ready to start climbing the walls again. Honestly, he was starting to think that being out on the road would be a relief!
"Thank-you for your report, Your Highness," Finn rumbled, as he nodded for Lollipop to bring up the next item on the agenda. As Cherry left the stage, the tall sucker cleared her throat and announced, "the next item on the agenda is Princess Blargetha's proposal..." Finn groaned. Another problem had just reared its ugly head, as 'Letta's younger sister approached, wearing a sexy red dress with a cleavage-window right down the middle, exposing gooey green skin down to her belly.
The big man immediately felt a surge of guilt. He felt guilty for screwing Blargetha, both for taking advantage of a prisoner and for fucking 'Letta's younger sister. When you added in her complete lack of social skills, there were moments where he wanted to drown her in a bucket. Now, as Finn listened, the plump pretty showed just how bad her social skills really were, as she began to recite the same proposal as before with no more grace than she'd shown the first time. The only difference between the first proposal and today's followup was that she'd dialed it up with a little bit with more information. She wanted a hundred tons of nuke-fuel to build a thousand death-rockets–a stockpile to see off an attack from another alien battleship. Naturally, the council, already on edge and uneasy about the tattered Peace of Ooo, fell immediately into bickering.
On the far side of the world, the Ice Prince stood staring at a schematic, trying to understand what he was seeing. Even with his education, he was at a bit of a loss here. He'd studied the sciences, but he wasn't a genius like his various stepmoms. "It's simple," Nadia remarked. "A rocket needs oxygen to burn its fuel... There's no air in space." Billy remembered that from his dad's stories about Orgalorg and Jake's croak-dream. "The fuel was supplied from that stand over there...," she said, pointing to a tremendous burn-scar that had leveled a giant swath of jungle. "Pipes carried it down to the stand there in the center."
"I guess I'm having trouble understanding how you can see all this," Billy rumbled. When he looked at the place, all he saw was blasted earth, smashed trees, and chunks of random concrete scattered everywhere. It helped not at all that Coca Kingdom witch-doctors were underfoot praying at everything and everyone in sight. The locals were a little touchy about all the foreigners touching things in this place.
Of course, to Billy's mind, they were a little late with the concern. The Bandit Princess had not just touched, she'd exploited the place and then practically blown it to kingdom come. The damage was tremendous. There were chunks of singed concrete scattered for miles. The structures that had stood here for centuries had been shattered and scattered to the winds, and the trees were felled in windrows. He couldn't imagine that anything had survived all of this.
It was as he was scanning the scene, his eyes locked with familiar red-orange eyes, and his breath caught in his chest. Olesia. Here. He'd exchanged text messages with her off and on these last few weeks. Service was sketchy here, though Nadia's peeps had been working on that. His girl had been coy about what was going on, filling their conversations with banal talk about the weather where he was and what he was doing. He'd had to add her to the worry pile. Noemi was having trouble with pregnancy. Rags was depressed, and Abieuwa was... raising hell.
The touchy Jungle Princess was feuding with Fionna, who was far more concerned about preventing another theft than satisfying anybody's sensibilities. Billy was pissed at her because she really didn't seem to get the whole 'the world changed' problem. She was fighting to maintain the status quo, and that was going to get her smashed if she wasn't careful. His kids were suffering because their mothers were suffering, and daddy was nowhere in sight. When you added the ongoing mystery surrounding Olesia's condition, it was driving Billy straight up the wall.
Rolling her eyes, Nadia declared, "well, off with you, then." When Billy's face snapped around to hers, the buxom cyborg pointedly remarked, "I won't get anything useful out of you, so you might as well go." Billy blushed to his hair. At the same time, he knew she was right. Sheepishly, he offered, "thanks." The tall woman chuckled, as Billy turned to face his lady.
Olesia was wearing a winsome smile as he approached. When he might have embraced her, she held up a hand to stop him, announcing, "here to work, actually." She wasn't on the meds at the moment. Frowning, he asked, "you ok?" "Fine," she replied. "I got a clean bill of health." She'd been agitating for well over a week to get out of that damned hospital. They'd held her long past her sell-by date before finally kicking her out to come back. Billy didn't give a damn for any of that. "Baby, I'm just glad you're ok," he said.
Just those words brought tears to her eyes, and she glanced away. "Where do you need me," she murmured? "For now," he said? "We're just getting our arms around the problem. There's an old harbor near here. We think it's the place she brought in stuff for her rocket, and it's maybe the way she left again." Evidence suggested that thousands of slaves had hacked their way through the jungle from the port, building a road to move the enormous equipment the Bandit Princess had needed. A sunken ship at the coast had been filled with casks of Tequila-Kingdom's rotgut to support the effort.
A puzzled Olesia asked, "how did you learn that?" "Crabs that walked forwards instead of sideways," Billy replied. "It was so odd, one of the witch-doctors pointed it out. When we fished one out of the water, we realized he was blind, stinking drunk." The plump girl laughed out loud at that. He'd missed her laugh. It was a little bit of home to have her here. Nodding at the smashed rocket-base, Billy remarked, "we figure that was what she used for fuel. She's had her agents buying it by the ton in secret." "That's where the tequila was going," Olesia murmured.
Nodding, Billy said, "we figure the coca was getting reprocessed into something stronger than the tea the locals drink. They were trying to sell it in the civilized kingdoms to make cash." Bandit Princess had nearly managed to get everything she needed to bring back death-rockets and Armageddon to the world, and she'd done it so slickly nobody realized what she was doing. She'd gotten Coca Princess fighting Tequila Princess over nothing. That had neatly gotten Coca Princess occupied away from her people's sacred site. With nobody watching over the Deadly Legacy that was the rocket-base for months, Bandit Princess was free to move in with her army of slaves.
"We found pieces left over from the rocket," Billy said. "Maybe they were spare sections. It's hard to say..." Nodding at the wreckage on the far end of the site, the big man said, "still trying to figure out where they were built." Nodding, Olesia remarked, "it has to be somewhere in the Civilized Kingdoms, darling. Somebody built that for her. Nobody in Coca Kingdom would have been able to do that." "Tequila Kingdom's a possible," Billy replied. He was a little uneasy about this. There were only seven places that had the know-how. Three were on the far side of the world and much too far away to make that a possibility.
Standing there, staring at the massive cylinder, Olesia remarked, "my people could have built it in the forges, but they've been working night and day on war-robots for the King. Besides, it's not like this Bandit Princess could have even entered the Fire Kingdom without burning alive." Billy frowned at her back. She was closing in on the ugly reality he had been dodging around. The Grid-Face People had a thorough accounting of the metal and materials in their kingdom. More to the point, they were too far away. They would have had to fly the sections of the rocket here, and that would have been impossible to miss. Bonnie was notoriously uptight about who was building what in the Candy Kingdom, and the material in question didn't look like Bonnie's peculiar alloy, candy-steel. That only left two places the rocket could have been built. One of those places would cause him a lot of trouble. He was praying his answers were in Tequila Kingdom.
"Any idea where she might have gone," Olesia asked? Turning to face her boyfriend, she casually remarked, "I'm better with flying now." It was almost too casual. Billy frowned at her. Flushing, the plump girl admitted, "there's... There's some permanent changes, William. I'm getting used to them." The big man's fists clenched, and she could see the rage in his eyes. "We're going to be ok," she said. "I'm fine. It's... It's small..." She wasn't ready for him to know the hard reality she was looking at just yet. In the grand scheme of things, she was fine with this. Turning towards the wrecked rocket-base, she said, "show me around. Let's talk."
Back in the Candy Kingdom, the morning session had just broken up, and an irritated Finn was on his way to his office with Cherry and Bonnie hot on his heels. The meeting had devolved into an ugly accusation-fest with a couple of idiots suggesting that maybe Hurletta was in league with her sister to build weapons to conquer the world. As if. It wasn't like there was any love lost between the two. If Hurletta was suggesting that they proceed with her sister's ideas, it was for the good of the planet. At the same time, it was one more reason to be wary of entanglements with the pair. He dared not wreck the trust he had with those women, airheads or not.
His neck hurt. He was so tense, his neck hurt, and the big man stopped and tried to stretch to work the kinks out. "Honey," Cherry murmured, "you need somebody to talk to. We should find you another councilor..." Finn glared at her. After what the last one did, he was ready to hang anybody who wanted to send him back there! Finn had trusted that idiot, and what did he do? He'd screwed Riley and Teri! He'd almost gotten all of their dancers and dozens of normies whacked!
"I am often in conflict with my colleague," Bonnie rumbled, "but I agree with her on this issue. The King should seek a new Royal Councilor." It was Bonnie's way of saying, 'I have to agree with the person I hate.' Since they were being polite, Finn offered her a response that came right out of Sakura's homeland. "I'll give your suggestion all due consideration," he said, as he turned to go. He intended to feed their idea to the goats! He left Bonnie staring at his back with her jaw hanging.
"He's not going to go back unless he's given an example," Cherry declared. Bonnie spun to face her, but the Boss of Bosses merely handed her a sheet of paper. "Your appointment, Bonnie," she said. "It's two days from now. Initial assessment. I've already had mine." Bonnie's face went red hot. They'd promised to go get help, but she'd done pretty much the same nothing she always did when it came down to her own mental health. "We need to think about Marceline," Cherry said. She was moving onward, the way she always did.
"W-what do you mean," Bonnie babbled? "She's a member of the family, Bonnie," Cherry replied. "We all get help. It doesn't do us any good if one or two of us go. We all need it. You died, honey. That's before we get into all the other things..." Bonnie shushed her, waving her frantically to silence. Finn wasn't supposed to know that. "I made a promise that I'd get help, Bonnie," Cherry said. "I promised more than just us wives. I promised Marshall. He promised that if I went, he'd go. Don't let the family down, Bonnie. Be an example. Talk to Marceline."
"You could do the ritual just as well as I could," Bonnie retorted. She was wearing a sly smile now. "Hell, Sarah was able to do it, so it must work for pretty much anyone." Cherry glared at her. "What," Bonnie teased? "You think you wouldn't be allowed to leave?" "Make the call, Bonnie," Cherry rumbled. "None of us should be going it alone." With a sigh, the tall princess said, "ok. I'll do it tomorrow..." "This afternoon," Cherry insisted. "Ok, ok," Bonnie sighed.
Finn meanwhile, came striding into his office, wearing an expression like a thundercloud. His face was a mask, and it was clear that the daily meeting had not gone well at all. Breakfast was halfway out of her chair, but one look sent her scrambling to sit down again. Today didn't look like a good day to talk about being pregnant or having new kids on the way. More to the point, she feared the current stack of complications would blow things up. She wanted to belt Toast and Strudel. She wanted to punch the pair of them for complicating things and trying to horn in on her good thing. Now the pair of them were preggers too, which would do nothing at all for Finn's peace of mind.
Toggling the intercom on his desk, the King snapped, "Mrs. Mertens. Come in, please." Breakfast all but jumped out of her chair. She barely remembered to grab her notepad and pen before rushing into her husband's office. Yes, it was definitely going to be 'one of those days'.
The fallout continues from Bandit Princess's antics, while Finn tries to get his arms around his family's past, present, and future. And what's going on with Olesia? Hmm?