"Life is lonely, but unlikely, too…"
A little more than a week on from the capture of the Leaflan, Marceline sits in her house trying to come up with new songs for her upcoming show. She'd told Bonnibel that she had it all planned out, but that was a lie; with only a few weeks until her performance, she's only got three songs ready. Of them, two are covers, and one is one of her older songs.
"So take my hand and we'll be fine."
Bonnibel had released the Leaflan after some interrogation, but learned nothing from him, save that he was a prince of his people. At least, nothing that she'd told Marceline.
"Together see the world anew…"
As she tries to write music, the smell of nachos slowly pervades her house. Finn and Jake laugh loudly in the kitchen, messing around as they cook.
"And watch the stars align."
Marceline grunts and gives up on the song. "Lonely, but unlikely. Yeah, yeah-yeah. Marcy has no talent. Woah, woah-woah."
She tosses her bass onto the couch beside her and whips her music journal onto the ground, shouting angrily. "No, no, NO! Pointless and boring and bad!" Fury coursing through her veins, she uncaps a liter-bottle of soda and dumps it out, sticky carbonated liquid spilling over the pages and blurring her writing.
"Who— hoahh, Marcy!" Finn exclaims, leaning around the door, before nervously asking, "How's the song coming along?"
Her eyes literally ablaze, Marceline crushes the bottle in her hands, splitting the plastic along the neck in the process. "How do you think?" She sits back on the couch and kicks the bottle away as Finn cowers back behind the wall.
The human walked out from the wall somewhat hesitantly. "Aww, don't slam your jam! Your songs are great! Stupid great!"
"That's just the thing, Finn," Marceline groans, picking up her wet and sticky journal. "My old songs were different—I was inspired to write them! They came from within!" She stands up and begins pacing around agitatedly. "Ever since the tour, people expect new, better songs! From an even deeper and more complex part of my soul!" She glances at a picture on the wall above her couch, a band photo of her, Bonnibel, and the rest of the Scream Queens. "It's been years since then, and my fans haven't calmed down. Every time I do a show without any new songs, they tear it apart. And my new singles are all hit-or-miss at best."
She sits down. "But my soul has been—"
Her voice breaks as she flashes back to her brief moment of solace with Bonnibel from months prior. This had been progressively happening more often, and it's gotten to the point that she can barely see or think about her without it happening.
Marceline swallows and refocuses herself. "It's been bored and complacent for months now. And all the craziness over the past six months hasn't done anything but confuse it." She throws her arms out towards the kitchen door. "I've been stuck eating nachos with you and Jake!"
As soon as she mentions the magic dog, he walks out of the kitchen with a plate stacked high with nachos. "Rea-dy!" he announces, eliciting an annoyed glare from the Vampire Queen.
"What am I supposed to write? A 13-opus about beans and cheese?!" Finn and Jake glance at each other as she throws her head back and groans, dramatically throwing one arm over her eyes. "It's hopeless! How am I supposed to live up to anybody's standards?!"
"I'm right there with ya, Marcy-Marce!" Jake concurs, plopping onto the couch beside her with a plate of nachos. "That's why I don't try to live up to any standards! I impress myself by just obeying my most basic instincts!"
"With all due respect, Jake, I need more than a tight existence game."
The humanoid dog fills his mouth with nachos. "Eh, whatever."
A soft electrical hum and the smell of ozone begins permeating the room, but nobody in the room seems to realize it. "My brain's stuck in a vacuum of past knowledge! I need new sights… experiences… stories!" she cries out. "I need…"
The lights in the room go out and are replaced with a bright blue glow from a few sparks dancing along the ceiling. "Woah!" Finn yells as Jake leaps over him. A split second later, an electrical bolt arcs down and strikes both the half-vampire and the human on the couch.
"G-good instincts… nice instincts…" Jake whimpers in the corner, watching his friends convulse for a moment before being thrown away from one-another. Finn slams into the floor in front of the couch, while Marceline is launched through the window.
Meanwhile, in the Candy Kingdom, Peppermint Butler slowly pushes open the door to the princess' lab. Atop his hand, he carries a sandwich on a silver platter. A "Please Knock" sign is hung on the door, with a plank reading "NO Knocking!" overtop of it, and finally a sticky note reading "You know what… just…" stuck to that.
"Princess…" Peppermint Butler nervously says as he enters the darkened room. He sees her looking into her telescope, as she's done constantly since releasing the Leaflan prince. "You know I value your honor, and respect your choices unfalteringly…"
Not looking up from her telescope, Bonnibel asks, slightly annoyed, "What do you want, Peppermint Butler?"
"It's just…" he starts as Bubblegum grabs the sandwich, "is a public insult really that insulting if you're the only one who can see it?"
The princesses turns to him with an annoyed expression—and crumbs—on her face, interrogatively grunting. "Don't you know the first thing about insults? It's actually more insulting.
"M-maybe to you, but…" Peppermint Butler stutters, holding the platter to his chest.
"The leaflans aren't even interested in astronomy! They're totally bored with the great beyond!" she continues, ignoring her butler as she rants. Lowering herself to her telescope's eyepiece, she adds with a grumble, "But they knew I'd be checking."
Written out of small asteroids and bits of orbital debris, the leaflans have written the words "Bubelgum is a hairy scab."
"I never should've freed that leaflan prince. He could've rotted in the dungeon for all I cared!"
Peppermint Butler nervously wrings his hands. "Our relations with the leaflan kingdoms are strained at best! We really shouldn't provoke them anymore!"
"We're not provoking…" Bonnibel responds, looking to a large object somewhat resembling an electrical cannon with a large pink orb on the end on the other side of the room. "Just cleaning up the trash."
Above her, one of the fluorescent lights goes out with an electrical decrescendo. The other soon follows suit as the princess looks around in surprise. "Blown circuit?"
"For Glob's sake!" Peppermint Butler groans.
Bubblegum walks over to the window. "I bet someone tripped over the power supply." She leans out, but the large power cable is still plugged into its socket. "Uh… there must be some interference. Where's it—"
As she looks up the cable's length, she sees a large electrical blast running up the power supply with a piercing voltaic shriek. The princess stares with wide eyes for a moment, paralyzed by shock, before whirling around. "Get down!" she cries. "This place is gonna—"
Before she can finish her sentence, the wall of the lab erupts with blue light as electricity begins streaking through its sugary material. She dives behind her desk, using her body to protect Peppermint Butler while the sparks climb all over the lab, the heat and energy cracking the structure apart. A flash of red streaks past her face as PepBut cries, "My clip on! Oh the shame!"
There is a brief moment where the electricity seems to stop, before the walls are suddenly thrown apart, chunks of candy-concrete being blasted outwards and littering the area around the foundations, which still pop and spark slightly. Only the table, the cannon-like contraption, and the two figures who were within the lab remain. Bonnibel furiously looks around, her clothes ripped and singed and her hair frazzled, trying to find anybody to blame. "When I find out who did this…"
"Careful, Princess," Peppermint Butler advises, trying to calm her down.
She ignores him and rises to her feet. "Is this what the Leaflan really had in store?! I'll have every last one of them—"
An orb of electricity flies towards the princess, and for a moment she stands completely still, rooted to the spot and looking on in terror. It stops about ten feet from her, however, and the princess notices a figure within the pulsing orb. "Marceline," she whispers in shock, her throat suddenly dry as she witnesses her friend's body encased in the electricity, her eyes closed and muscles twitching. The sphere suddenly changes direction and darts off, the Vampire Queen limply being pulled along with it.
The image of her friend on her bed, charred and on the brink of death, inserts itself into Bonnibel's mind, shaking her out of her shocked stupor. She looks over her shoulder to see four banana guards cowering behind a rock. "Guards! Capture her immediately!" she demands. All of her guards look to her nervously. "But don't hurt her!"
One banana guard leans his head on his hand, his brow furrowed as another guard tries to urge him to remain silent. "Any other basically impossible requests?"
Anger quickly rising in her system, the princess leans over the rock with a maniacal gleam in her eye, staring right into the face of the insubordinate soldier. "You're very existence seems impossible—almost a miracle, really!"
She doesn't even need to continue beyond this, as the guard immediately turns around to his allies with wide, scared eyes. "All right, dudes. Can't be ripe forever!"
"We can't?" one asks, while another nods to him. He takes a breath. "Right."
The four guards rush at Marceline, spears in hand as they shout in an attempt to muster their courage. Once they get close, though, their weapons are ripped from their grasp and hover around the Vampire Queen's unconscious form for a moment, before being magnetically propelled towards them.
"Really?!" Bonnibel exclaims, before analyzing the situation. "It seems Marceline is generating some kind of force… pulling objects towards her."
"Or is she pushing them away?" Peppermint Butler asks.
The princess glances down at him. "She can't seem to decide." In the corner of her vision, she sees her cannon-like device, with the clone of Cinnamon Bun—which she'd gotten permission from Flame Princess and Cinnamon Bun to make in order to determine if his newfound mental acuity was genetic—standing behind it, licking the orb at the end.
"Wait..." She glances between the cannon and her friend. "Cinnamon Bun! Point the orbital capsule at Marceline!"
"Orbittle capso?" CB asks, confused.
"Yes! The big round thing!"
"Oh!" The clone laughs to himself as he turns the capsule to face Marceline. "Haha, I was like 'what round thing?!' I'm such a ne'er-do-well!"
As soon as the orb is facing Marceline, the electrical energy surrounding her begins being pulled towards it, and she soon follows it, being wrenched from her path and speeding towards the orb at high velocity. She hits it and immediately slows as she is absorbed into its gelatinous surface, while her electrical energy begins running along the sphere's exterior.
Bonnibel rushes to the side of the cannon and watches her friend within the pink ball with great concern. A large group of candy people slowly gather around her, many looking on in confusion and fear. "The capsule is sparking!" Peppermint Butler informs the princess.
She watches as the surface of the orb begins rippling and Marceline shudders within. "It can't hold her long." Her emotions clouding her judgement, she nervously tries to come up with a solution for the issue that wouldn't mean sending her friend into orbit.
"Shoot it away!" a voice shouts from behind the princess.
"But isn't that Marceline?" another asks.
Electricity suddenly begin jumping from the orb much faster, running down the metallic frame of the launcher. A bolt arcs from the side and jumps into the ground mere inches from Peppermint Butler's foot. "We need to do something now!"
"I-I just need to think!" the princess cries, desperately trying to think of anything that she could do without harming her best friend. "I can't just— I need to—" She stops mid-stammer as she thinks she sees Marceline's eyes briefly flutter open for a short moment as she weakly presses her hand against the interior of the capsule. "I'm sorry Marceline, I—"
"Princess!"
She takes a breath to steady herself, then throws a fist up. "Fire!"
Peppermint Butler slams his fist into the large red button on the side of the machine, a bolt of electricity leaping into his arm in the process. Marceline blasts out from the end of its launcher, quickly breaching the clouds and taking on a spiraling tail as it disappears from sight.
Bonnibel watches on regretfully, the entire world fading from sight as she sees her closest friend and confidante disappear into the distance. She is momentarily unaware of the candy people all around her, each of them visibly upset by the situation as well.
"Princess…" Peppermint Butler begins, trying to comfort her.
She steps away, wanting only privacy. "Let me be."
Meanwhile, far above and a great distance away, Marceline shudders within her orb as the last of the electricity dissipates, gently discharging into the air without anything else to arc to.
The following morning, she tiredly opens her eyes only to see the dark abyss of space, tinted pink by the orbital capsule. She glances down and sees the planet below her before exhaustion once again overtakes her, slipping her back into unconsciousness as she leaves the last vestiges of the atmosphere behind.
Meanwhile, back in Ooo, Bonnibel sits atop a scaffold as workers beneath her haul away the remains of her short-lived astronomy lab. She wears a black sweatshirt, its hood pulled low over her face, and a pair of sunglasses to cover her eyes, which are bloodshot after a sleepness night plagued by guilt and regret, the image of the Vampire Queen looking through the capsule at her in the final moment before she was blasted not just out of the kingdom, but off the planet itself.
A couple of the workers walk past her, carrying one of the large instruments from the lab. "'Scuse me, Princess. Where d'ya want this contraption?"
"Put it into storage, please," she responds, her voice barely louder than a whisper.
"How 'bout 'dis faraway looky-thing?" another asks.
"Storage," she pauses to sigh, "...deep storage."
"Alright already!"
Bonnibel hears the sound of the nearby crane raising up. She sulkily stares into the distance for a few moments before she scooches towards the edge of the scaffold. "Princess…" Peppermint Butler begins, standing on a small wooden platform suspended on the crane's hook.
"How's everybody holding up down there?" she asks as she begins climbing from her perch.
The crane lowers to follow her. "The people's grief has taken a…" he purses his lips, "a somewhat disturbing shape."
"Yeah." Bubblegum drops onto the ground and walks into the city, her hands thrust deeply into her pockets "I bet it has."
Peppermint Butler watches as she walks off, standing in the same spot he had roughly 500 years prior, when the kingdom was first being established. A sudden sense of deja vu comes over him, and his mind momentarily goes blank…
"So," Marceline chuckled as she walked between the walls, which were then still being built, "the walls're made of cake, huh?"
Bonnibel was walking behind her, giving the Vampire Queen a tour of the city. "Well, for the most part." She giggled. "An intruder would be hard-pressed to chew through the icing layers I'm formulating!"
"Mmm, yes, I gotcha…" She turned around, grinning. "Well Bonnie, I'm impressed! You've really done a lot with the place."
The princess chuckles bashfully, blushing slightly. "Heh heh… thanks! It's been a ton of work to—"
"So, are you coming to the show tonight? It's my final gig at Slimy Brian's…"
"Oh, I don't know. I can't really leave the new candies…"
"Aw, c'mon, Bonnie." Marceline leaned against the wall, a small smile on her face. "Your lil' mutants can survive a few hours…"
"Well…" Bonnibel sighed, "I'll try."
Behind them, Peppermint Butler watched on, drooling slightly.
"Huh?" The candy butler blinks as he comes out of his trance and wipes away a bit of saliva that had dribbled out of the corner of his mouth.
By the time he came out of the daze, the princess has reached her palace and was entering storage. Several candy laborers huddle against the walls as she walks through the halls, not wanting to do anything to trigger her while she's in this emotionally-delicate state. She pushes open the door and looks at the things countless she'd decided to get rid of, putting them here because she either no longer had any use for them, or she was trying to hide them from the public eye. Several weapons were on the wall—swords, shields, pikes, a crossbow—as well as various impliments of torture, including an iron maiden with a model of her face on top, and a guillotine whose blade was replaced with a buzz saw.
She walks down the steps and glances around the room, paying little to no mind to the workers who were groaning and grumbling as they carefully lowering her equipment to the ground. Her eyes pass over more items in the room. A painting of Lemongrab she'd sent him when he first set up his city-state, only to have him immediately return it, is hung up on one wall. Nearby, on the other side of the corner, is mounted a juvenile dragon's skull—the skull of the last dragon (Neddy not included) in Ooo, which she'd personally had killed. At least, the last dragon they knew of; there could always be more.
The princess' eyes finally settle on a small pink bass amp sat against one wall, just below a few swords. She slowly makes her way over to it, regretful and nostalgic tears forming in her eyes as she remembered where it had come from.
"Bonnie! You made it!" Marceline exclaimed after her show, flying across the room towards the princess.
"...Yeah. I missed the opening act but—" Bonnibel stopped mid-sentence as she was quickly enveloped in a hug, something somewhat rare from the Vampire Queen. She quickly overcame her surprise and reciprocated the embrace, blushing slightly. While pulled close, she noticed the sweat on the rockstar's blue-grey skin, although the building wasn't particularly warm; she assumed that it was from the show, seeing how intense Marceline got at certain points.
"I saw you from the crowd," the half-demon said with a grin, breaking the hug, "and I was like… 'I'm going to annihilate this show, just for Bonnie!' But metaphorically, for a change."
Bubblegum chuckled bashfully. She begans wringing a bit of her hair. "Well, you were great. I'm glad I engineered that good babysitter to watch that evil babysitter I engineered by mistake."
"Cool, cool." Marceline glanced over PB's shoulder, noticing Slimy Brian talking to some fans near the door. "There's an after-party at Poison Gulch. We can hitch a ride with Slimy Brian."
"Oh…" The princess' smile dropped slightly. "...I can't. I really have to get back."
"For real? Already?" The Vampire Queen leaned back in the air, crossing her arms and cocking an eyebrow. Her face quickly softened, however. "Well, I'm glad you made it." Her expression became somewhat somber, and she glanced at the stage. "The room looks so dark from up there… you were the only one I could see."
Bonnibel leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. "I'd stay if I could—really, I want to go with you—but I can't be away for very long. Not while the candies are so… undeveloped."
Bonnibel is torn out of her flashback by the sound of the workers. "Just there… yes!" one of them shouts, followed by the sound of her telescope dropping to the ground.
"Oh Lorb! Finally!" another cries. All three collapse to the ground, sweating and breathing heavily.
"Actually guys," she begins, turning to the exhausted workers, "I'm gonna need that upstairs." One of them sits up in disbelief, while the others groan in agony.
The following morning, she's in her lab, again looking through her telescope. Countless papers covered in notes and thick scientific books full of bookmarks, along with various mathematical and engineering implements, are scattered across the table to one side, with spare papers and a clear glass helmet on the opposing table.
Peppermint Butler enters the room, finding her as he had so often for the prior days. "Here's that research material, Princess. Do you need anything else?"
"That'll be all," she responds as she adjusts the eyepiece. "Thanks."
"So… back to observing the leaflans?" PepBut asks nervously, wringing his hands.
"Not quite." Bonnibel moves telescope over another message, reading 'Princess Bubblegum is Princess Bubbledumb'. "Though I'm happy to see that they're still thinking about me."
"I don't understand."
"Our technology is lacking. I'm going to need their help."
"Th-the leaflans?!"
The princess looks to her butler with a large grin. "I can flex some of my famous foreign diplomacy!" She rises from her seat. "Better bring a really excellent gift…"
"I'm soooo confused, Princess!"
Bubblegum sits at her cleaner table and looks sadly at a picture of her friend on her table, which she'd taken a few years prior while she was managing the Scream Queens. "I sent her away, Peppermint Butler. It wasn't right."
"Marceline?" Peppermint Butler asks. The princess nods, then begins tracing her finger along the surface of her helmet. "You did what needed to be done! In the heat of the moment, you fulfilled your responsibility to the candy people."
Lifting the helmet from the table, she determinedly says, "My job is not yet done. I'm going to find her."
"You mean… up in space?" The princess grunts affirmably as she rises and moves to a suit rack on the other side of the room. "What'll you do if you find her…?"
"Bring her home." She picks up the arm of a spacesuit she'd made a few years prior, although she never expected to use it. "I'll need something tougher than a tiny space pod, of course."
"The ability to live no matter what?"
"Haha, no," she laughs, sliding her arm into the suit piece. "A space suit!" Leaning down and putting a hand on her butler's head, she adds, "You've helped me build a great big world, Peppermint Butler. It seemed almost impossible in the beginning." She glances up at the starry night sky. "Sometimes I forget how small it used to be. How small it still is."
Meanwhile, floating between large chunks of space rock orbiting the Earth, Marceline's pod is brought to a dead stop with a shake. The Vampire Queen opens her eyes as the light on her, which was diminished enough by the semi-opaque capsule as to not cause her much harm, turns to shadow. She sees a large lasso-like thing made from leaves and vines wrapping around her capsule and pulling it towards one of the asteroids. She tiredly watches as she is slowly brought down towards the grey rocky surface, her eyelids once more growing heavy in spite of what was happening. Before she even reaches the asteroid, she passes out again, slumping against the inside wall of the capsule.
"It's a really great business opportunity for you," Suspencer, a sniveling vegetoid wannabe talent manager for his self-run label, said in his nasally voice. "I'm getting a variety of talent in on the ground floor. Day one. Folks are gonna be clawing for a spot on this label." Marceline, cleary disinterested, filed her nails while reclining in her chair. "We handle all the event booking and promotion, obviously. All for a nominal cut—no more noticeable than white noise!"
Marceline sat up and turned away from him, making Suspencer nervous. "Uh, we can also handle your interviews and—"
The Vampire Queen begins walking away, looking for something to drink. "People already show up to my concerts. I'm not worried about it."
"B-but audiences are fickle, Marceline!" Suspencer cried, rushing after her. "You really think you can count on their loyalty?"
"Did you germinate onto the scene yesterday, dude?" Marceline asked, annoyed, as she picked up a red plastic cup and sank her fangs into it. "These people are my friends. They'd follow me to the ends of the galaxy."
Suspenser exasperatedly groaned. "Do you really believe that? Or is it just something you tell yourself?"
In an instant, Marceline whirled around and whipped the un-red cup at the vegetoid, who brought his clipboard up with a cry just in time to protect his face. "You sniveling little hanger-on! Shove your record label through your boneless skull!" The Vampire Queen marched out of the Poison Gulch nightclub, all of the patrons completely silent and watching after her in surprise, although a few glared at Suspencer.
"Well, don't come crying to me when you're alone and forgotten!" Suspencer shouts after her. "Then we'll see if your so-called talent keeps you warm!"
"She can't hear you, dude," one of the people sat at the nearest table said, leaning back in his chair.
Marceline suddenly awakens from her dream, finding herself on a stone slab roughly carved to resemble a bed. She bolts upright, looking around at the room she's in. The walls and floors are blank grey stone, save for the glowing gems imbedded in the rock. In the corner of the room, the torn remains of the capsule are discarded, only a small portion remaining. A staircase in one wall leads up, out of her chamber. "Hello? Is someone there?" she asked, putting her foot on the first step.
She finds no response, and curiously, she can't even hear her own voice, either. "I'm really tired and I promise not to hurt you!" she calls out, climbing up the staircase. As she gets to the top of the staircase, she arrives in the bottom of a small canyon. She notices a strange sensation, almost like voices being turned into energy, radiating from the top of the opposing wall. "Something's up there…"
Leaning forward, the Vampire Queen tries to levitate, only to fall on her face with a grunt. "Float body! Float!" she yells, before peelings herself from the ground and rubbing her cheek, in spite of the pain and scratches immediately fading away "I must be severely un-red."
With a sigh, she begins climbing up the canyon wall. "The indignity of other people's problems!"
As she scales the wall, she tries to remember how she got there. "Think, Marcy… what the blood happened?" Blue flashes in her mind. "...blue…?" She pulls herself onto a new ridge and sees her arms covered in blue energy. "Sparks? Electricity?" Marceline swallows hard as she remembers being rendered comatose within the last year by lightning. "An unchill scenario?"
Continuing her climb, she has a brief image of her pouring out a soda bottle onto her music journal. "Did I run away…? Was I drawn to this place?" She sees Bonnibel standing in front of her, clearly distraught as she feebly pounds on the interior of the capsule. "Or was I…?"
Sudden realization dawns on her, as she realizes what had happened. "Bonnie…" she sneers. "THAT—"
Back on Earth, Bonnibel is crouched next to a shuttle, a tool belt around her waist and a toolbox at her side, various instruments scattered around her on the floor. "It's ready." She takes a breath, looking at her ship tiredly. "The ship is ready. There's nothing left to do."
"I know it is…" Peppermint Butler groans, wiping his sugary sweat from his brow. "I've been tightening and untightening the same bolt for an hour…"
"Oh Peppermint Butler…" The princess kneels next to him and puts a hand atop his head. "I need you to endure. You're my only partner. The candy people can no nothing of this mission."
PepBut sighs. "I know…"
"Besides," Bubblegum smiles, "I'll need your killer sense of humor when I'm up there." Peppermint Butler exasperatedly laughs, the force behind it visible on his face.
She returns to the shuttle, running through all of her maintenance checks multiple times before she moves it to the launch station. By the time she's finally entered the ship, night has fallen. "Pink Marble to Mint Base," Bonnibel says into her mic, running through the pre-flight protocol, "confirming we are ready for takeoff."
"Mint Base to Pink Marble," Peppermint Butler responds, flipping switches and hitting buttons on his control board, "taffy thrust is go. Syrup fuel cells are activated. We are good to launch."
Inside the rocket, the princess deactivates her mic as she adjusts herself inside the suit as she feels the ship rumble while the fuel ignites. "I wonder if I'm an impulsive person?" After a few moments, the ship begins lifting off the grounds as the flames begin blasting out from the massive thrusters.
As their fuel depletes, she hears Peppermint Butler once more in her ear while she clutches at her safety belts. "Booster rockets disengaging." The shuttle shakes as the strapped-on rockets are discarded, dropping off leaving only the central sustainer rocket and the shuttle.
Once they exit Earth's atmosphere, she breaths a sigh of relief and looks out the window at the broken planet. "A calm descends," she mumbles to herself, "but this is the scariest part."
On the asteroid, Marceline wanders across the grey rock, alone save for her own thoughts and the nagging sensation of which she's been trying to find the source for the past several hours. She stands at the edge of a cliff, staring out over the near-featureless landscape.
"Neither lost nor found… a vague whirlwind of hope and worry. A new and terrifying loneliness." With an inaudible, breathless sigh, she sits down and leans against a rock, her emotions as bleak as the land around her. "Stranded between the wonders of discovery… and a fear that no one else will ever see it."
She suddenly notices the sensation is stronger than ever, and a blue light is gently washing over the edge of the rocks she's sat against. Marceline rises to her feet and peers over the rocks, and her the sight that greets her eyes is one she never expected to see: a gathering of small dog- or wolf-like humanoids hanging around, with one of them—an older, grey-haired one with a scar along one eye—is sat lounging in a pool of glowing, bubbly blue-green liquid.
Although its mouth doesn't move in any way that would denote speech, instead curling into a calm smile, she clearly hears its voice in her head. "Well, well, well~," it says, clearly humored, "Look who's awake."
Marceline silently screams in a combination of shock and revulsion.