The following takes place between "King's Ransom" and "Scamps."
Huntress Wizard was careful to make sure she hadn't left anything behind. She checked the front room, her bedroom, the bathroom, even the roof where she'd spent a lot of time hanging out. Not that there was much to miss. Her remaining possessions were slung over one shoulder in a bag. Everything else she'd given away. Even now, Laser Wizard was probably dissecting her furniture for practice.
She hoped Abracadaniel got some pleasure out of the books. Huntress worried a bit about that guy.
She took one last look around, and sighed. As much as she'd been certain she wasn't going to miss the Wizard City apartment…well, no battle plan survived contact with the enemy. She was fond of the place: its rooftop garden, her bedroll, the spit she'd rigged over the fireplace, the picture window overlooking the square. Looking through it, she could see Ron James outside his shop, messing with some ingredients that were almost certainly going to blow up in his face.
I'm making the right choice, Huntress thought. But there was no such thing as an easy goodbye. Even if she'd gotten a lot of practice at leaving things.
As she turned away, someone knocked on the door. Huntress leapt back, conjuring an energy arrow in her free hand. If this was the Bufo with one last "small chore" they needed done…
"Hello?" said a voice on the other side. "Is someone here?"
She didn't recognize the voice. Huntress set down her bag, then crept forward carefully, other hand on the handle of her camp knife.
When she swung the door wide, she instantly felt silly for her overabundance of caution. The girl standing on the walk-up balcony was a little shorter than her, dressed in a sweater and skirt, with floppy ears and a horn protruding from her head. She carried a box of odds and ends in both arms.
Her eyes brightened. "Oh, you must be Huntress Wizard! I'm dreadfully sorry, I thought I'd find the place empty."
Huntress made sure to vanish her arrow, hoping the dog-girl hadn't noticed. "That's me. And you are?"
"I'm the new tenant." The girl set her box down by the front door and extended a paw. "Viola, at your service. You have a…" Her eyes swept quickly over the empty room. "A lovely home."
"Nope," said Huntress Wizard. "You do. Ya need help carrying anything?"
"It's all right, I've got it." Before HW's eyes, Viola disappeared in a rainbow flash, then quickly reappeared holding another box. "It's much too slow to go up and down those stairs, you see."
Nonetheless, supernatural agility did allow Huntress to grab one or two bags of Viola's things before all the teleporting was done. A few minutes later, a tidy pile of furnishings sat just inside the front door.
"That's impressive," Huntress said when they were both back atop the walk-up. "You're a spatial wizard, then?"
"Actually…" Viola leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper. "Truth be told, I'm not much of a wizard at all. I've moved in under Grandmaster Wizard's new rainicorn exemption. I…"
She trailed off, looking a bit uncomfortable for the first time. "Actually, Huntress Wizard-"
"Huntress is fine. Or HW. Whatever's easier."
"Huntress, I don't know anybody in town yet. I'm sure you must be in a rush, but would you let me take you to lunch? I can explain it all there."
Huntress glanced out the window. The sun was high already. Finding a campsite would get harder the longer she waited, and that was the purely mundane work of the forest.
But she remembered how she'd felt when she first arrived in Wizard City: uncertain, second-guessing everything, more lost among the buildings than in the pathless woods where she'd grown up. Maybe if she'd had someone to help her then, she would have done what she needed to do sooner, instead of lingering around here for three whole years.
"Sure," she said. "There's a café down the street. Fire-Lemon fusion. Between the two of them, it actually ends up being pretty good."
Over curries and tea, Viola told Huntress how she had made her way to Wizard City. It transpired that she was an actress. Huntress could definitely see it - though unconsciously, every move and word of the girl's was studied, as though meant to be seen from a mile away. Makes sense we'd meet, she thought. I guess I've been an actress for a while too.
"I just finished up a run in the Candy Kingdom. A play called Summer Showers," Viola was saying. "And on our closing night, who should be sitting in the audience but Grandmaster Wizard? He came up to me after the show, and said he'd been looking for someone to bring the theater to Wizard City, and would I be up for the job."
"In the old amphitheater?" Huntress said around a mouthful.
"That's the one! It's quite a striking space. I've no idea how it sat unused for so long." Viola sipped her tea. "Anyway, I told him I was no wizard, but he said we rainicorns are magical enough by nature that he could grant an exception. I always thought I had more of my father's side, personally, but," she shrugged. "Here I am."
"Your father?" A pang of familiarity asserted itself in Huntress's eyes. "Sorry, I don't want to assume anything, but do you know Jake?"
Viola lit up, for a moment showing her youth through her poised exterior. "He's my dad! Do you know him?"
"Only by reputation." Huntress finished off the last of her lemon rice. "I think I saw him around here once. Not sure how he got inside."
"Really! Perhaps he'll be able to visit after all, then. Grandmaster said my brothers and sisters can get guest visas. There's five of us in all," she added. "You know, my father actually helped me land the job. He's a friend of…I believe his name is Ice King?"
"Ice King vouched for you? That's surprising." HW was not a fan of Ice King. Hardly anybody was, and they didn't have to endure his clumsy pickup lines. That was definitely something she would not miss.
She was still thinking about that when Viola asked, "So, why did you decide to move away?"
Huntress sighed. She'd done everything in her power to keep Viola talking about herself. The truth was, it was easier to face this stuff when it wasn't being said aloud. People called her quiet, reserved, standoffish even, but she just liked to keep things on the inside that belonged inside.
If she didn't talk about it, she could go back to the forest with Wizard City nothing more than a hazy dream. But Viola had paid, and she didn't want to be rude.
"I was born in the forest," she said. "The wood nymphs raised me until I was fifteen, when I won my first Wizard Battle."
"Goodness!" Viola's big eyes widened. "You must be awfully talented."
"I was lucky," Huntress replied. "And then I wasn't. We nymphs don't usually take to magic, you see. At least not," she waved her arms in an all-encompassing gesture, "not this kind of magic. We have older, subtler spells, ones that take ages to weave. I'm considered something of a black sheep back home."
Viola said nothing, riveted on the story. Huntress continued. "This is the hard part to explain, but evocation magic…tends to affect the brain. Almost in proportion with its power. Just look at Ice King if you don't believe me."
"Oh, my." Viola set down her tea.
"After I won Wizard Battle, I was offered scholarships and sponsorships. But all I really wanted was…" There's no good way to phrase this. "…was a cure to the sadness. The feeling of vulnerability, of softness. I came to Wizard City to see if I could find it. And I did, for a while. But a year or so ago, right around the Bella Noche incident, I started to fear that - that I'd traded away some of myself for a temporary respite."
Without speaking, Viola reached out and covered Huntress's hand with her own.
"It took me a long time to decide. But I've realized that the key to finding myself again is to get back out where things are hard. I need to go back to the forest so I can remind myself what matters in this world. Maybe then…I can get back to looking straight ahead."
Viola squeezed Huntress's hand and let go. "I'm deeply sorry," she said. "It seems as though you've made the right decision, though. It is…it is vitally important to know what one wants in this world."
Huntress smiled. "Hey, I'm just glad it led to you getting a nice apartment."
She suddenly remembered why she had agreed to this lunch, and sat up straight, folding her hands. "About that. There are some things you'll need to know."
To her surprise, Viola pulled out a small notebook, and sat waiting with a pencil hovering over the page.
"Never under any circumstances allow the Bufo inside. You'll find yourself stuck with a magical contract to do all their housework. Ron James stocks the best potions, but don't buy anything he mixed himself. Wholesale only. The secret societies have a membership fair at the start of autumn-sign up for more than you think you're going to join, you can always quit the mailing list later. If you can stand to, try and hang out with Abracadaniel once or twice, he needs friends other than Ice King. And…" She hesitated only a moment before plowing ahead. "If you need anything while you're getting started, send me a bird. They all know how to find me."
When Viola finished scratching everything into her notebook, she stood, and pushed back her chair. "I should begin moving in, I suppose," she said. "And you seem to need to get going as well."
"I've been away a long time," Huntress said. "I need to start by spending time in meditation. Listening to all the things I've lost."
"I think you'll do fine out there." Viola smiled, and before Huntress could react, pulled her into a brief hug. "You're an exceptional beast, Huntress Wizard. Do stay in touch."
"Exceptional beast," Huntress said to herself, as she waved at the dog-girl from the front door of the café. "I might have to steal that."
And, shouldering her small bag of essentials, she set off toward the exit from the city, and her long, winding path back home.
Author's note: As I mentioned, I really wanted to explore Huntress Wizard's mindset in a scene that didn't involve Finn at all. But I still needed someone for her to play off of, and as luck would have it, that gave me a chance to include one of my other favorite underused characters, Viola Dog-Rainicorn!
If I have one complaint about late-season Adventure Time, it's the way the pups were handled (if I have two, it's that Finn and Marceline pretty much stopped directly interacting after season four, but that's for another time). I understand why they did the rapid aging, but I'll never get why a surly businessman and a basement-dweller got more screen time than an actress, a master criminal voiced by Mabel Pines, and an occultist who lives in a pyramid and can grow to the size of a planet at will. But I guess that's what fanfic is for!
Next one will go even farther afield, but don't worry, I still have plenty of ideas for the Finntress goodness that you all came here for. Stick around!