"Well that figures. She's plumb dumbed out."

The dog folds his arms slightly as he and Marceline are sitting outside the infirmary in the Candy Kingdom. Marceline is sucking the red off some gumdrops while he paces a bit on the floor. Finn, Fiona, Cake and Ice King had gone in some time ago.

"Well, it's not surprising. She did, like, croak, right?" The queen tosses a drained gumdrop that bounces harmlessly off Jake's head, much to his annoyance, "You croaked before. Maybe it's like that."

"Well I didn't forget my best friend! Or … well, I didn't forget anything actually!" Jake pauses, "Wait, why is Ice King in there with them anyway?"

Marceline shrugs, "He seems to care for Fiona and he's kinda like her dad, right…?"

In the infirmary meanwhile, Dr. Ice Cream and nurse Pound Cake are shining a light in a slightly annoyed Finn's eyes, testing his pupil reflexes. He has no bruising despite his head smack into that stalactite earlier.

Finn keeps getting distracted and moving his head to look over the dessert's shoulder to Fiona, who's on a bed across the room. She sits there on the bed side, talking to Cake about something probably. But what could they be talking about? About him? About how she croaked?

Nurse Pound Cake scolds Finn as he fidgets, "Quit looking elsewhere, Finn! We need to properly examine you! You might have a concussion!"

Dr. Ice Cream sighs and gestures for the nurse to turn off the light, "The boy's had worse headbutts. A skull thick as diamond almost from all that adventuring…"

Ice King hollers from the next curtain over, "Hey can I come out now? I wanna see Fiona. I get to see Fiona. I got the visiting rights, right?"

Dr. Ice Cream points over at the next curtain, "Now please get him out of here, Finn."

"Uh, yeah, I'm good to go then?"

"Do take care Finn…" The doctor sighs wearily, having said this possible a bajillion times already. Finn never listens. He just does what he wants. Though he usually ends up the better for it. Usually.

Finn hops off the bed and darts over to Fiona, seemingly cutting in between her conversation with Cake. The cat seethes a second but backs off slightly, making room for the boy in their space. Fiona blinks at the boy's intrusion like he's a stranger, then she scolds him somewhat.

"Hey…! I was talking to my cat!"

"Uh…oh, sorry…! I-uh…" Finn stutters. He'd not thought anything through. Especially for when Fiona was going to berate him.

Cake steps in, thankfully.

"Fiona! This is Finn! He's the boy I was talkin' about!"

"H-Hi…! We met… like before! Uhm, before you uh, croaked and uh, we bought you back, so, uh…" the boy is clearly flustered.

Fiona looks at him with a somewhat apprehensive expression. She had no idea what he was talking about. Instead, she looks to Cake, as though for clarification. The cat shrugs.

"Welp, I tried."

Finn lets out a long sigh of exhaustion. Why was it so hard for him just to like a girl?

…

Cinnamon bun was not happy. Who was that man with the flaming mohawk who just swooped in and regaled the princess? Of course, he wasn't jealous. He was just doing his job as the knight to protect the princess. He is her closest servant, whom she told all her troubles and secrets.

Yet, now, there she is, sitting with that oddball out of nowhere. He'd been found sleeping or unconscious or something at the edge of the kingdom. The fire wolves did not tear him to pieces on sight. He'd been so timid waking up, and so unstable. So much like the princess.

The two did not see the spying pastry behind them.

Flame prince clears his throat but says nothing.

"Hm?" Flame princess looks at him.

"I... I was just clearing my throat."

"Oh."

They look at each other, by pure accident. They were both so awkward, turning away. As fire elementals, their bodies were unnaturally hot to begin with. This spike in temperature did not register to them. But CB saw their flames climb higher.

"There's... something off about that guy. And I'm gonna get down to it...!"

…

Ice queen is just howling in her prison cell, pining for Gumball. The banana guards got tired of watching her about an hour ago. PB is just scanning the crown alongside Gumball. A perplexed expression comes onto Peeble's face.

"Hmm... I think I've almost got it..."

"Me too," The prince quips, "My muffins are almost done."

The princess sighs as her counterpart goes to fetch the muffins he was making in one of her state of the art microwaves in lieu of an oven. He cooks, in the old, boring way. She used perpetual motion to make sandwiches. It was a small victory for her, that Ice King had not been able to capture her intelligence in some phony clone. But ... did he see her as servile or something? To be occupied with such menial housework... It must play to that fantasy of his...

"The energy signatures from this crown should have the answers I need. But I need to compare it to the Ice Kings."

"What is your hypothesis, if you don't mind sharing?" The prince speaks through a small mouthful of hot muffins.

"What is making the rifts in your structures is getting wider, caused by some strain I think that's because you're here in our world. This strain will eventually stretch and engulf you in a sort of black hole effect."

The prince spits out his muffin. "WHAT?"

"This is probably because your being violates some laws of physical science. You aren't meant to be here. But the fact that you are is making the fabric of the universe invert and tear. So you're all dangers to us on Ooo."

The prince half expects her to blast him to smithereens with a hidden ray gun as she calmly explains her findings. She felt that urge too. Why not just eliminate these burdens? They don't belong here anyway. But something made her pause on that thought and continue just talking.

"But this is the result ultimately of some kind of rule. Once I find out what that rule is, maybe I can reverse engineer it to send you back to your own world."

These were fascinating specimens in the end of the day. They came from a world of 2-D drawings and writing, pure Euclidean geometry... Yet they were here in 3-D space now. The power to bring it from Ice King's mind... even PB had to put a halter on herself before she was fully bought by the magic mumbo jumbo.

"T-that certainly beats, um..." The prince pulls at his collar a bit and avoids mentioning the unsavory alternative.

"I just need to be sure. And for that, I need Ice King."