The following takes place several weeks after "Come Along With Me."
The Sugar Apes surrounded both ends of the mountain pass, cutting off any escape. Huntress Wizard conjured two arrows. "What's the plan?" she asked.
"I'm gonna beat up those three." Finn pointed. "And I'm gonna make that one cry, and kick that one in the face until he agrees to stop stealing people's houses."
"Solid plan." HW nodded. "I did want to remind you of something, though."
"Oh, yeah! And we can try the thing. I'll give the signal."
At a howl from one of the apes, they all charged.
Finn bellowed a war cry and slashed through two in one blow, scattering sugar cubes over the gravel path. From behind, he heard Huntress Wizard shout, "Finn, 9 o'clock!"
Right at his left side, a Sugar Ape swung a candy cane at his head. Finn parried with the flat of his Nightosphere sword and shattered the cane. But three more apes charged as that one fell back.
"HW, now!" Finn called.
Whirling like a top, Huntress stabbed one ape through its crystalline white chest with an arrow and formed another arrow in her off-hand. She hurled it toward Finn. At the last second, Finn leapt into the air, letting the energy from her shot lift him higher. He kicked out in two directions, striking crunchy Sugar Ape faces with both feet. One went down right away.
Flashes and grunts from behind him told him HW had knocked out the rest. The last ape facing Finn howled and made to run back up the pass.
"No you don't!" Finn caught it around the waist from behind, bore it to the ground, then leapt up and kicked its face. "Stop stealing villagers' houses, you big jerk! It's unjust!"
"Ow! OK!" the Sugar Ape whimpered. "We'll leave the village alone! Just stop kicking me in the face!"
Finn folded his arms. "That is satisfactory. Go, and jerk no more."
Grumbling, the Sugar Apes filed out of the upper end of the pass. HW caught up with Finn at the lower exit. "You good?" he asked her.
"Yeah," she smiled. Or not smiled, necessarily. More like a crooked smirk that set Finn's guts and groin quivering. "You?"
"I'm awesome! That arrow trick worked better than it ever did when we practiced."
"Oh, believe me, I was watching." Huntress pointed to a shady grove of tall beeches at the bottom of the pass. "Want to take a break?"
She was kissing him before he'd had a chance to sit down. Finn yielded to it, to her touch and the intensity of her sweetness, sliding his hands under her tunic. They fumbled their way to a soft patch of grass behind a bush. Huntress had the warding spell cast almost before they landed on the ground.
When they'd finished, and enjoyed a long and perfect silence resting on one another, Finn kissed her in the middle of her bare chest and said, "You know, we could do that indoors one of these days."
She wriggled closer to him, making him forget he was exhausted. "Crazy talk."
The sun's rays shone slantwise through the leaves of the beech grove. Blink-flies and leaf dragons buzzed about. Huntress Wizard lay with her eyes half-closed, her lips a bit parted, as though communing with the grass and wind.
It was mad cute.
Suddenly she opened one eye. "Your heart rate is accelerating, Finn. Are you proposing another round?"
No, Finn thought, but I feel like I'm proposing something. He'd been meaning to find time to bring this up.
"Actually, H-dubs, I had something important to ask you."
She sat up and began drawing leaves over herself. "I will propose a policy that we have all important conversations with our pants on."
"Reasonable." Finn worked his way back into his jeans. "Remember how I said I met my mom?"
"Yeah. And she's on an island way off the coast of Ooo."
"Well...she's not anymore. Just the other day we found Susan and Frieda on the south coast. My mom sent them ahead to announce that the humans had decided to move back to Ooo. They'll be landing soon."
"Oh."
Huntress Wizard had finished her leggings and tunic, and paused to stare at Finn, who had just finished pulling his shirt over his head.
"And I wanted you to come and meet her. And the others like me. If that's..." He suddenly felt apprehensive. "Something you'd wanna do?"
They looked at each other. HW swallowed. Finn had the sense of a gulf growing between them, shallow but wide, against his will and out of his control.
"I, um, just remembered I have some nymph business. In the deep forest." She squeezed his hand, leaving behind the faint trace of an apology. "I'll catch up with you later, Finn. Do you have a place to stay tonight?"
"Yeah," Finn said, bewildered. "I'm gonna camp with Jake and Susan and wait for the boat. You can come anytime if you change your mind. They're landing southwest of the Candy Kingdom."
"All right." She looked at him a moment longer, as though trying to figure out another way to express something, but then sprang up into the trees to race along the ridgeline without another word.
Finn gathered up his hat, sword, and backpack. He settled his shoulders, waited for a while longer, then turned to start the long walk to the beach.
A few years ago-Glob, a few weeks ago-he would have been paralyzed with nerves after getting a non-answer like that. But he'd been with Huntress Wizard long enough to know that there were things in her head she had to deal with on her own. She was a warrior inside and out, and her battles didn't stop very often. Part of loving HW was knowing which Sugar Apes were outside and which were inside, and listening to whether or not she asked for help.
He'd gone about a mile before he realized he'd said loving in his internal monologue. Huh. Didn't think I still knew how to blush.
Huntress Wizard fumed at herself as she leapt from branch to branch, heading back toward her clifftop. What made her keep putting obstacles in her own path like this? In what way was this easier than just letting herself be loved? Finn had just asked her to meet his mother. It wasn't like he'd asked for her hand in marriage.
But as she climbed - as she burst out over a view of the gold-flecked forest canopy, with the birds winging their way homeward like shimmering curtains over the sunset - her fire began to cool.
This was, after all, known behavior for her.
She settled on a branch and sighed, half in exasperation and half in relief. She was pretty confident by now that she wasn't under the influence of wayward magic sadness. No, it was her hunter's instincts messing with her this time: if danger, then dodge. In battle, waiting for more information could mean death.
"Love," she said aloud, for nobody's benefit but her own, "is weird." She didn't have any other hobbies where being in harm's way was the entire point.
Frieda was the first one to spot the ship. "There, look! On the horizon!"
Finn leapt to his feet. "Jake, be a telescope!"
"Man, you know I can't become a convex refractive surface," Jake groused. He stretched up a few stories instead for a better look. "Yeah, that's your mom all right, coming in hot!"
"What did I miss?" Susan raced across the sand to join the others. Frieda hopped up and down beside her. "They're here!"
Finn struck a match and shot the flare up into the sky. They had company of their own coming.
Soon, the familiar human vessel appeared over the horizon. Everything was a whirl of happy chaos as the great ship banked parallel to the beach and dropped its heavy anchor chains. While humans - real humans, Finn thought, his heart soaring like a helium balloon - vaulted over the rails to haul the ship the rest of the way, PB and Marceline approached from the other direction, trailed by a capering mob of candy people. Simon brought up the rear, carrying BMO on his shoulder and Neptr under his other arm.
When the humans had finished dry-docking their ship, a moment of awkward silence followed. Humans, candy, robots, and vampires sized each other up on both sides.
Bubblegum cleared her throat. "On behalf of the entire Candy Kingdom, I, Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum, extend an official, formal, serious welcome to-"
"Mom!" Finn exclaimed.
Several of Minerva Campbell's robot bodies had joined the crowd on the shore. Finn picked out one of them and ran toward it. Above, the great screen that housed his mother's main consciousness smiled wide.
Helper #82 and Finn squeezed each other tightly. They really were amazing creations, he thought: as warm as real humans. It was enough to make him feel, for a second, like he'd never lost anything or anyone.
The screen's voice came out of the helper robot, for all the world as though it were an ordinary person down on the shore with them. "Well, aren't you going to introduce me to your friends?"
"Yeah!" Finn said. "So, you remember Jake."
"Of course!" #82 beamed.
"And this is Princess Bubblegum."
Bubblegum bowed. "We've prepared a settlement where you and your people can get started. You can go ahead and ignore any tall security fences anyone might be building around it for now."
"Aaand cancel the fence." Marceline floated in front of PB and held out her hand. "'Sup, Finn's mom. I'm responsible for everything about him that's cool."
"Hide the fence," Bubblegum whispered to Starchy, who hefted his shovel and ran off.
"It's lovely to meet you all," Minerva said, this time from the ship so everyone could hear it. "I've seen so much about you in my son's memories."
"That's, uh," Finn turned red, "That's not as creepy as it sounds."
"It's exactly as creepy as it sounds." Jake crossed his arms.
"Helper #82," Minerva commanded, "give hugs!"
And give hugs the Helper robot did, greeting dozens of Ooofolk while the other humans and non-humans mingled. BMO and Neptr oohed and aahed over the construction of all the Helpers' various robot bits. Simon, in a moment that bore absolutely no thinking about on Finn's part whatsoever, tripped over his words and stammered when Minerva shook his hand. #82 was even able to switch its language settings to converse with Lady Rainicorn in perfect Korean.
"And, uh...I guess that's everybody," Finn said, rubbing one arm with the other after what felt like hours of introductions. The humans were getting along splendidly with everyone by now - some joining Susan to teach the candy people some traditional Two Bread Tom songs, others learning to play Card Wars from BMO. Only his mom, as #82, seemed unable to join in the good feelings, instead looking sidelong at Finn with a concerned expression.
"Well." Finn took a deep breath. "Gotta get you all to your huts, right? Start you up making fire and learning how to adventure."
"Finn, it's all right," Minerva said suddenly. "She's got her own reasons for not being here."
"Oh, I know - wait. What?"
Then the forest behind them shook.
A massive shape leapt over them, casting human and robot in shadow. Finn sprang up, Nightosphere blade in hand. "Mom, get behind me. This is pretty normal Ooo stuff."
"I should say so."
He looked back. Was Helper #82-was his mother grinning?
The bird touched down in front of them, digging a trench in the sand with its haphazard landing. By the time it had stopped, a girl was lying there in its place.
"HW!" Finn sheathed his sword. Had something terrible happened?
But Huntress Wizard sprang up without needing Finn's help-unharmed, unperturbed, and only a little out of breath.
As Finn was getting used to, everyone stared at everyone else.
"Mom," he said carefully, "this is Huntress Wizard. She's my, um..."
HW shot Finn a quick, understanding glance, one that said she knew she had never been very clear on what she wanted them to be.
"I'm his girlfriend," she said. "It's a pleasure to meet you."
Then she stepped forward and hugged Helper #82 before the central Minerva could give the order.
"You could tell," Finn accused his mom, aware he was now grinning too.
"Finn, I'm inhabiting the most advanced machine ever created for monitoring vital signs." Helper #82 patted his shoulder. "And the two of you are not exactly subtle people."
Finn felt HW's arm slide around his waist. "You're a bit subtle," he whispered in her ear.
"I'm a nymph," she whispered back. "Different vital signs. The forest hides some of its feelings. But the other ones are as obvious as the wind."
They turned away a bit from Minerva, who was answering a question from Bubblegum. Huntress Wizard studied the ground. "Sorry for not being here earlier."
Finn kissed her on the top of her head. "Thanks for being here now."
"Hey, look!" Jake shouted joyfully from somewhere overhead. "I figured out how to become a convex refractive surface!"
Lady was holding him up to the sun, focusing light on a pile of wood the humans and candy people had gathered on the shore. A bonfire sprang up almost right away. Marceline produced an acoustic guitar from somewhere in her inventory, NEPTR doled out pies, and at some point the switch flipped from "we should get going" to "this party will continue indefinitely."
Finn was full. He had no other word to describe it. Full of the night and of love and of the sense of coming home.
Some time later, they lay on the beach in a daze, HW's head resting on Finn's stomach. She'd woken up after a pleasant dream she could hardly remember, and blearily checked for threats. There weren't any.
Someone was playing with her hair. Finn was awake, too. His touch helped her recall the dream she'd been muddling through.
"Hey, Finn. I've decided something."
"Hm?"
"It's time." She gulped. "I...I want you to see my tree."
His eyes opened wide. No sleep on them now. "Are you sure?"
"Totally sure. We leave at dawn."
The smile on his face then reminded her once more that love was only as weird as lovers made it.