Chapter 21:
"I can't see," Lollipop groused. "You don't need to see," retorted an irritated Warrior Princess. The little fashionista was getting on her nerves just now, and Ingrid was close to belting her. Lollipop had been clear and unwavering in her opposition to coming out here, and she'd found endless things to gripe over on the long slog through the forest. Ingrid had twice told her to hit the road if she didn't want to stick this out. As far as the Warrior Princess was concerned, this was every bit as important as raising their kids. If they wanted the babies to have a home to grow up in, they needed to make sure there were no threats to the Empire of Ooo.
Just now, the pair were perched high in a tree, staring into the blight. Ordinarily, Ingrid would have done leaders' reconnaissance by physically walking the ground. It was clear to her that their foes had anticipated that. There would be no sneaking around in the blight. There was no cover to hide anything. Of course, there were still trees they could use to do the job from a distance.
"Peanuts," muttered Ingrid. "There's a lot of them," Plantain opined. "They should be defending their border," Lollipop burbled. Which Ingrid well knew. Finn had left them in a bind with waves of homeless refugees crashing against their borders. It was one of the utterly ruthless maneuvers that 'New Finn' had shown himself capable of and something that at once aroused admiration and terror in Ingrid. It was the maneuver a man should be executing. It was what a warrior-king should do to put his enemies on the defensive. At the same time, it was nothing like the kind, compassionate man she'd fallen in love with. Ingrid's sister-wives often complained of 'New Finn' behind their husband's back, and now Ingrid was starting to understand.
More on point, the peanuts should be barely hanging on. How did they find troops for an adventure? There were hundreds–possibly thousands. The warrior woman felt a profound unease. There was something dangerous afoot here, and Finn was in the far east, chasing shadows. She understood it. With the Slime-Folk taken in hand, and the peanuts turned towards the brutal fight just for survival, the would-be conqueror in the east had seemed like the larger threat. Still, their enemies seemed to be as slippery as the fish-woman who'd tricked Finn into fathering her child.
As the Warrior-Princess ruminated on the threat before her, the model managed to climb up onto a higher branch. Hanging on that wobbly branch, she tried to get a look at what the others had been talking about. "You'll give us away, sugarlips," Ingrid muttered, as she slipped her telescope back into its protective pouch. "There's sure a lot of themmmm," wailed the candy-person as her branch gave way. Plantain caught her by the wrist and levered her onto a sturdier branch while Princess Ingrid pondered this development. "I don't understand their play," he offered. "Their kingdom is wrecked too." The peanuts should be fighting for their lives. An uneasy Ingrid declared, "we'll head back to the enclave. I'll call this in."
Far to the east, Patrick Petrikov looked up from studying the inside of his eyeballs to find that Thor had stopped the truck in a muddy village high in the mountains north of Purple Kingdom. They had been trailing the men who'd invaded the Candy Palace for days now. They'd traced them from an abandoned van in Candy-Town south and east to a train-station in the middle of nowhere and then across Engagement Ring Kingdom into the bandit kingdoms north of Purple Kingdom. The trail was the sort of steady that suggested the men in question were either stupid patsies or cunningly baiting a trap.
Patrick was uneasy about a lot of this. He was uneasy with Cherry, who had terrorized his wife's family. She was their nominal ally, but Patrick still harbored suspicions. He was uneasy with Thor, who was a reformed gangster. And he wasn't thrilled to be away from Fionna and their child. He felt Star's hunger to be retired. He wanted to be done with adventures. He'd lived through a lifetime's worth already. Now as he looked on an eerily familiar village, he felt that hunger keenly.
He'd killed someone here–several someones. He'd been protecting Fionna when the Quicksilver Curse was slowly killing her. A local had threatened them, offering to enslave the both of them. Patrick had killed him–had taken his money and frozen him and his guards to death on the village square. The memory made him uneasy, but the trail of the assault team led here.
"That place," Patrick announced, when Thor asked where he wanted to stay. He'd considered it the last time he was here before the local lord tried to enslave him. The giant gathered up the bulk of their gear before locking the truck. He was useful that way. Patrick gathered up his working gear and fell in behind as his brother-in-law headed up the walk to the front door of the Sarna inn. Standing inside the open-air atrium, the young man found himself remembering. He'd intended to stay the night here with Fionna. The food had smelled good, and his mind had been on maybe getting Fionna to eat–to see if she could get it down and hold it. He'd been thinking as though she had some kind of familiar sickness instead of a phantom eating her heart from the inside.
Acquiring a pair of rooms, the duo went upstairs and locked their gear up before heading back down to dinner. Settling in at a corner spot in the inn's large common room, the two ordered up supper and talked over what they were going to be doing while they waited. Thor had half a hundred contacts to pursue. They were almost all among the masterless men that preyed on travelers in this mountainous land. Their quarry had come this way. They had likely either paid off the locals as Thor had or been forced to fight.
As the pair chatted, hostile eyes watched with interest from the VIP table near the kitchen. She had learned of the strangers before they'd entered the town. Her father had been little more than a bandit himself, preying on folk passing his castle. He had once secretly controlled all the gangs operating within a hundred miles of the town, using them to suss out who was passing through the area and whether or not they were worth preying on. And of course she well remembered the description of the stranger who'd slain her father's vizier along with several guards on the town square. Rising, the young lady slipped into the kitchen. Standing in an alcove there, the fallen noble drew a phone and dialed the number of her nemesis and abuser.
The wax-person took her time in answering. When she finally did, she sounded breathless as she demanded, "what do you need, princess?" Cerelia got right to the point, stammering, "men have come here chasing your soldiers. I-I think it's the Ice-King's son a-and his bodyguard..." "You think," growled the murderess? "I-I... He's the man who killed my father's vizier," the young girl babbled. There was a pause on the other end of the line, and Cerelia found herself waiting in terror. Finally her tormenter spoke, commanding, "lure them to your castle, princess. Keep them there for me. Entertain them if you have to. If they try to leave, kill both. Understand?"
Cerelia stared at the phone in terror. Coldly, the wax-person reminded her, "it's not like you're a virgin anymore princess. You know what happens when you disobey..." Terrified by the prospect of being handed to a bunch of thugs again, the young princess babbled, "I-I'll do as you say." The wax-hustler hung up in her face.
Hundreds of miles away, the murderess climbed off her hapless patsy, the mood spoiled by that phone-call. Finn was still out of her reach. He was out there doing what he could to disrupt her plans. The lizard person reached out and stroked her thigh. Chelsea ignored him, her mind turning on vengeance. Lighting a licorice stick, the lizardman closed her fingers around it in subtle suggestion. With a sigh, the pale beauty put the potent cigar to her lips and drew deeply.
A cloud of euphoria swept over her, bringing calm. It would be a shame to kill all the candy-people. They grew some of the best shit in the world! Taking another hit from the blunt, the murderess decided she'd have to leave a few alive to feed her habit. Climbing back on her toy, the evil witch focused her mind on getting the books in the royal library in the Lizard Kingdom. Her pawn was making progress. She'd demonstrated a rocket that could go at least a mile. But she needed better metal. Chelsea sighed. Much as she wanted to see the Candy Kingdom go up in a mushroom cloud, she wanted to live on after the fact. The rockets would need much more range. Of course she could raid the library to her heart's content with the Lizard-Folk fighting off an invasion.
Thousands of miles to the east, her partner was facing a crisis that had sprung up seemingly out of her own fears. The Bandit Princess had been in a half-drunken stupor when Finn the Human massacred half the staff of the Red Queen and set the place ablaze. Nor was that the only incident. He'd hit a drug den and bounced a weapon-smuggling operation. Within the last twenty-four hours, he'd hit another of her gambling dens. He'd fought his way up to the control booth where the manager ran the place, and ended up slaughtering one of the body-doubles that 'stood in' for the Bandit Princess when she didn't want to be found. Her partners and allies were running scared. He was tearing up the operations that put money in her coffers, and the Yakuza were getting irritated.
Nor were they the only ones afraid.
She'd watched the video recovered from the Sea Lion casino seventeen times already. She'd watched it and watched it and watched it, examining it from every angle. She'd marveled at the ferocity that the so-called Last Human displayed. She'd watched in shock and amazement at the fluid way he moved. He moved like the guards were wooden dummies, just there to be beat-up. However, more to the point, he'd been so fast that it seemed like he was untouchable. She'd come to an ugly conclusion from watching and rewatching.
She couldn't fight him.
There was absolutely no way she could defeat him so long as he had the power of the Quicksilver Curse on his side. She would have to find some way to slow him down. She'd have to find some way to balance the scales. She needed the Firebleeder. She needed rockets to deliver her poisons and plagues. She needed something so profoundly catastrophic that it would occupy all his attention dealing with the problem. While Finn the Human could certainly not see himself fighting wars of empire while the world drowned in sickness and death, she had no such qualms. What she lacked right now was a way to deliver her deadly weapons against his people while preserving her own power-base.
"Why don't you let me fight him," rumbled Móguĭ? His sister glared at him. Striding across the room, the half-demon shut off the awful scenes of carnage on the holo-player. Taking his sister's battered hands, he said, "let me fight him. Let me crush this cockroach." Her eyes said it. When Móguĭ was gone, she would be alone. She was afraid of being alone. It was one of her deepest fears. Only the fear of the people she'd murdered was stronger. Turning away, the younger woman growled, "I need rockets... or an airship. I need something to move my weapons, Móguĭ. I have to hold the world hostage, or I have to hold his people hostage. It has to be one of the two." "Then I'll deliver you a hostage," growled the half-demon. Turning to go, he said, "stay away from him until I get back."
Morning found Patrick out front of the inn after a cold shower in icy water. He'd gotten spoiled by life in the Candy Kingdom. Oh, he'd still had the joy of humping wood into the house to heat it, but the solar-heaters on the roof kept the water plenty hot for washing. Out here in the uncivilized kingdoms, things often went from inconvenient to hazardous in an instant. It was another reason to want an end to the adventures.
Thor was under the typically armored hood of their ride. Patrick announced himself with a wary, "hey..." Thor grunted something, letting Patrick know he'd kind of been a jerk. They weren't friends, but the big man was trying. He'd been trying, when Patrick had been holding him at arm's length and treating him as though he were a criminal instead of Captain of the Guard.
"Trouble with the truck," Patrick asked? With a shrug, the giant replied, "preventing problems." "I'll buy breakfast," Patrick offered. "Then we can look around a little..." With a grunt, the former gangster shut the hood of the truck and locked it. As the pair headed across the inn's muddy front yard to the door, Patrick admitted, "this isn't really easy. You guys were the enemy not long ago..." "You were too," Thor replied. Patrick's head whipped around. Only a good long look at Star's hubby told him the big man was jerking his chain. Fi had said he was a lot sharper than he let on. With a sigh, the wizard admitted, "ok, that was kind of a dick thing for me to say..."
Laughing like bro's, the pair went inside the inn once more and headed straight for the buffet line to score some breakfast chow. As Patrick went to fill his plate, the head man approached, announcing, "your pardon, young masters..." Patrick's hackles went up as he turned to face the purple-person standing there. "There a problem," the wizard asked? "We've paid our rooms through three days." They were entitled to breakfast. "Oh, no, sirs," replied the head waiter. Nodding at the table near the kitchen door, the old man explained, "the lady asked if you wouldn't mind joining her..."
Patrick's unease grew as he turned to face the young woman sitting alone at a table. The finery she wore suggested she was a woman of means, and a strange thought intruded. This was the sort of thing that happened to his father-in-law/stepdad. Finn was forever getting invited to pretty ladies' quarters or to sit down and eat with them. Invariably the lady in question would end up wanting to play Footsie. Finn, strangely enough for a man who clearly liked the sex, did his best to turn it down. He's married, Patrick, thought the wizard. So are you. The King of Ooo was doing his best to be a respectable figure, in spite of his... handicaps, and Patrick realized that he had reasons for doing the same. At the same time, they needed information. This woman might have some.
With a sigh, the young man stepped off, praying he wasn't going to regret this. Shaking his head and muttering curses, the soldier-turned-bandit-turned-soldier stepped off after him. The pair approached the curvy young woman at the table. She had the kind of curves that would have had teen-Patrick drooling. Purple Folk were built like that. At least the women were. Patrick found himself thinking of Billy. Billy was bangin' the Purple Princess herself. Noemi was still kinda' smokin' for a gal her age, and Patrick couldn't help thinking that this young lady was the archetype of what the Purple Princess might have looked like with blue-black hair, deep purple skin, and yellow eyes that seemed to almost be sparkling.
"Hello," offered the young lady, "I'm Cerelia... Princess of Bormio..." That name sent a shiver down Patrick's spine. He'd whacked the Prince's flunky. Was this the Prince's daughter? "I saw you last night," offered Cerelia. "You came to town yesterday. Why don't you join me for breakfast. We've not had much for visitors in a while." Inwardly cursing his luck, Patrick burbled, "uh, yeah. Sure." Smooth, dummy, he thought. Real smooth. Why was it that the man who had always been the dimmest bulb in the room almost always had something to say to talk his way through something like this? The pair sat themselves at the Princess's table. It was time to see if this thing would hunt.
Back in the Candy Kingdom, the Finn Family was once again staring at alarming news with most of their assets already deployed and the Patriarch of the family out of town. Ingrid was on the line, and the information she had to share had Bonnie biting at her nails. An army. Inside the defensive perimeter. They had a rogue army inside their defenses!
"The peanuts," muttered Ingrid. "Somehow they scraped together an army, and they've put it to use inside what's left of Wildberry Kingdom." "But why," demanded Breakfast?! "Finn's treasure," sighed Cherry. Every face there whipped around. With a dry chuckle, Cherry remarked, "surely you didn't think he squandered it all, Bonnie?" The pink princess flushed. That was exactly what she'd thought happened. Shaking her head, Cherry said, "his idiot brother managed to torque off the crazy berry and got them both on her shit list. She confiscated pretty much ninety-percent of what they had..." "Wait," demanded Nadia! "We should have known about that!"
"It wasn't direct confiscation," Cherry explained. "Crazy-berry was going to have the pair of them put down on the spot, and half the people in her capitol gathered for the show. Her citizens aren't much brighter than Bonnie's. When Finn and Jake fled Wildberry Kingdom, the treasure was just left there on the street. The berries took it all and... squandered it. Where do you think the mansions and the hotels came from?" That news left the others goggling at her. "He told me the story," Cherry sighed. It was a good memory in a way. They'd talked about the strangely empty neighborhood of mansions and swimming pools on the way back to her hotel the night James Plumly tried to do them in. She'd been shocked, appalled, and strangely saddened that Finn had lost everything to his idiot brother's bad behavior.
Shaking off the mood, the little woman explained, "she taxed it. She levied special taxes. And then she levied more taxes atop the taxes. The nouveau-rich got poor, and they lost those mansions and swimming pools. All that money... it ended up in her treasury. It's more than likely she spent a lot of it on her stupid war, but she was a miser. I'd bet anything that most of its still there." "Making a tempting target for our would-be prince," Bonnie grumbled, as she stared at the table. Strangely enough, she'd found Jake a more compelling person than Finn back in the day. Jake was wild and fun and uninhibited and seemingly much more mature. He'd known how to talk to girls, where Finn had been shy and awkward.
Now she saw that he was a dolt. He was clearly an idiot and a bad influence on his younger brother. She'd had no idea how Finn and Jake lost their fortune. Now she knew, and she understood things she hadn't seen until now. It left her feeling an unease of a different sort. Finn had once told her to her face that she behaved like every other girl–chasing jerks who hurt her and dumping on guys who cared. And he was right, a voice whispered.
Breaking the tension gripping the room, Hurletta burbled, "you guys are stressing for nothing..." Bonnie's face whipped around to find the Slime Princess leaning over on the table, her chin resting on her hand. "I have an army," she reminded them. "I was sort of watching the border anyway. I can go at the peanuts and keep them in check..." Face bent in a frown, Ragnhild asked, "are you sure?" With a smirk, Hurletta replied, "we got this. Piece of cake."
The gathering moved on. Cherry opined, "we can't leave the treasure there, Bonnie. It's a target. As long as it's laying there, people will be trying to steal it. Those people might be threats." Ingrid agreed, opining, "wars require finance. The less we have of unregulated dark money, the fewer conflicts we'll have." "Ok," said Bonnie, "but we need to take this before the council... We can't just expropriate another kingdom's property."
Cherry rolled her eyes. Bonnie was going squeamish. Again. Still. "That money belongs to Finn," she growled. Glaring back, the First Minister replied, "we'll follow the law, not your whims..." Cherry was the council's wild-card and always had been. She was ready, willing, and able to be the source of chaos, something Bonnie never forgot. It helped not at all that it was Cherry who seemed to so often see more in Finn than Bonnie herself did. How many of their nasty fights in this room were the result of their very real rivalry over Finn?
Standing up, Cherry shot back, "what berry-breath did constitutes an Illegal Taking." Bonnie opened her mouth and shut it again. Clearly she'd forgotten Cherry had been a lawyer. The point of law she'd just cited was a cherished article of Bonnie's own laws. You couldn't just take somebody's stuff. Not even the Ruler had the right to do that. "Alright," growled the pink princess, "Mr. Mertens is certainly clear to take the government of Wildberry Kingdom to court and sue like anybody else. The Privy Council doesn't take sides." To seal the deal, Bonnibel added, "weren't you supposed to be finding that illegal gun factory?"
The tension was thick enough to cut with a knife with the two women leaning over the table and glaring at each other. Straightening, Cherry proclaimed in icy tones, "alright, then..." Without a further word, the gangster turned and stalked out. A fuming Bonnibel glared at the door, but Ingrid forced the meeting back on course. "I need that army, Hurletta," she said. "As soon as I can get it." "You'll have it," the Slime Princess replied. Her phone chimed then, and she shot to her feet, announcing, "oops! Gotta' go! Got counseling!"
Late that same day, Patrick and Thor found themselves walking in company with Princess Cerelia, one on either side. They'd spent most of the day with her, laughing and enjoying themselves. The wizard had quite forgotten about his reasons for coming here. Thor had been uneasy earlier. Now he was charming and gregarious. The princess herself was touchy and affectionate, never hesitating to get close to her guests as she flirted and laughed with them. The day had been a whirlwind, and Patrick didn't want it to end. Thus it was that when the young princess suggested they join her in her suite for dinner, he all but fell over himself to agree. The young princess left them then, and Patrick found himself staring at her round butt as she strode back towards the hotel.
As Patrick wrestled with a hunger he'd forgotten he had, the Matriarch's advisor walked into a back-room in one of her illicit businesses with her mind on taking a little cash out of the pile for a spending-spree. It was one of the uglier aspects of their strange species. A wood-nymph was often at as much or greater risk from her fellows as from outsiders. Gemma had bought and sold her share of wood-nymph snatch over the years. At first, it was just selling someone else's ass to get herself out of a tight spot. That had just been the catalyst though. That had only made it easier for Gemma to do the deed.
She'd graduated from the occasional ugly act to embracing the world of slaver and madam without qualms when she saw how much money there was to be had from it. Now she had two illegal houses setup south of the ugly pleasure district with a staff of brutal thugs on guard. While the so-called 'King of Ooo' had deigned to make the trade legal, and the Matriarch had been made to accept that decision, neither would have accepted women being forced into the trade. They certainly wouldn't have accepted under-aged girls.
Gemma needed the money. She had habits to feed, including a persistent addiction to licorice-sticks laced with Fruit-Witch Venom. The two drugs left her feeling sooo good, and the Matriarch was paying her a pittance to be shouted at and harangued. Things would change once Gemma was Matriarch. She had plans for things she could do with her new powers. Finn the Human had gotten the bitches of the various Kingdoms to accept the sex-trade. Her master would certainly not be revoking that decree. Gemma would make bank as the new lord of vice of the civilized kingdoms.
Strolling into her office, the evil woman toggled on the light, the better to see by. Only, the light hardly seemed to do anything for the darkness in the room. It was... odd to say the least. The light was on. She could clearly see it was on. Except it was like she was viewing the light from the far end of a deep cave. It was only when she thought those words that she remembered Móguĭ. Almost as if summoned, the fiend clamped a massive hand around her throat, snatching her up off the floor. "Please," she wheezed. Móguĭ wasn't listening, though. "I need the Matriarch," he hissed. "I need you to bring her to me."
Gemma was starting to see streamers and spots before her eyes. He was choking her to death. He was going to strangle her without even realizing it. Tears flooded her cheeks, as she clawed at his hand. "The mistress needs a hostage, Gemma," Móguĭ explained. "We need someone to hold over Finn the Human's head. Someone dear to him. As you said, she's his woman. Bring her to me. Bring her to the Emerald Kingdom." The fiend dropped the hapless slaver on the floor. As she wheezed and coughed, he stepped into a shadow and disappeared.
Finn is kicking butt in the East. In the West... the girls are fighting. And Patrick is scopin' out another girl's bad bod. Don't do it, buddy. Just say no.
And it looks like Gemma's going to be making that move against Huntress sooner rather than later.