Chapter 22:
"I just need an answer," said Billy. "I just want to know why your brother was in the wilds north of Purple Kingdom..." The hapless humanoid looked as if he were mere moments away from pissing himself. Of course Leo Pedersen imagined he'd be feeling the same if his wall suddenly shattered that way. The elemental standing at Billy's left elbow was certainly adding to his terror. Olesia had hardly spoken. The plump woman had merely stood at Billy's side as the young wizard put the inhabitants to the question.
Blood might well be thicker than water, but it wasn't stronger than cold fear. Their mark had found that he suddenly had nobody willing to back him. He was alone here. One man had fled out the window. Another had locked himself in a backroom. With nobody willing to stand against them, Pedersen had turned the house upside down, ransacking cabinets and closets for evidence that Princess Nieve had been here. This whole thing was a longshot–a leap of faith kicked off by the junk in their assailants' pockets. Those men had intended to come here to get paid by this fellow.
As Billy squeezed their hapless mook, noise outside alerted them that trouble had arrived. A dozen men came rolling up in trucks. As Billy continued talking at their mook, several men got down, and nearly all were armed. It said something about who ran the town that many had firearms. Leo eased the pistol at his hip. This could go sideways fast. Indeed everyone except Billy seemed to be responding to the new threat.
"Need you to let go of Wally," said a fat fellow near the lead car. "Wally's in a lot of trouble," Billy replied. "It's against the law to try to assassinate a Royal..." "Who're you," the fat man demanded? A wave of supernatural cold lashed out and froze the fat man where he stood. Shit got real in that moment as three mooks opened fire and four more tore out of there as if their lives depended on it. A forcefield sprang into being, stopping a speeding iron dart from burying itself in Leo Pedersen's neck. Olesia set fire to two of the men and one of the trucks besides.
That decided one more man, who decided to make himself scarce. Time seemed to slow down then. One of the thugs sprayed the elemental woman in the face with an extinguisher. One of the gunmen turned his weapon on Lina. As Olesia squealed in pain and terror, Billy hurled an ice-javelin, spearing a gunman through his belly. As that fellow fell forward, Leo shot the man with the extinguisher, and Tom lit up a second gunman, who promptly threw himself down and lay there rolling around in flames.
The burning truck exploded, shattering the frozen corpse and setting the last gunman alight. As he lay writhing and screaming, Billy turned to the plump girl. Picking her up, the young hero carried her out to the burning vehicle. "You're going to be ok," he said. "Happened to Phoebes a couple times..." Seeing what he was about to do, she said, "y-you better put me down." Billy insisted on laying her almost within the flames, at great risk of burning himself.
Standing inside, Lina watched Tom as he watched the young hero. "Jealous," she teased? The answer was plain on his face. Leo picked that moment to snatch the cyborg-girl off her feet. He kissed her thoroughly, adding to the elemental's humiliation. "Thanks, baby," he murmured. "Eto nichto," she replied. Billy rejoined them, saying, "let's make tracks. There might be more." Tom stood a moment, staring out at the young princess, as she fed on the flames of the burning truck. Her eyes were fixed on their leader. Muttering in disgust, he turned back to the job at hand.
Hundreds of miles away in the Lizard Kingdom, a terrified messenger came running out of the north as the sun was setting, looking as though the Night-O-Sphere was chasing him. Seeing his panic, the Lizard-Guards immediately summoned their Captain. It took a couple of tries to get the story out of him about why he was seemingly running for his life. When the answer finally came, it left the Captain in terror for his life. The Captain stared in fear at the horizon, and it took several moments for his officers to get his attention. And then, he turned and began shouting for the gates to be closed and barred. As that command got passed down the walls, the Captain headed for the palace to share the bad news with his Princess.
Back in Bormio, Patrick Petrikov licked his lips for the taste of the sweet, sweet sauce that his meal had come bathed in. The meal had left him so full, he felt like he'd pop. A glance across the table found Thor rubbing his belly. The princess had spoiled them. She'd plied them with food most of the evening, bouncing questions off their foreheads about their investigation and how it was going. She'd professed to be terrified that a pack of armed thugs would be moving through her kingdom. She'd admitted that things happened around her domain, implying that her father had lost his life to bandits, but she kept the town clean of such things.
The bit about the firearms had properly worried her. Her guards were armed with nothing more than crossbows. She'd suggested and more than suggested that she needed a defender–someone to keep such awful people at bay. She was alone, was the young princess. Patrick felt a little bit of brotherly concern for her. She was young for the job of princess, and he knew she was vulnerable. Honestly, if he let himself admit it, she pushed buttons he didn't realize he had. He'd honestly not felt like this since Fionna was sick.
Listening to the young girl's problems and worries, he felt like he mattered. Often, with Fionna, he found himself wondering what she needed him for. That had only gotten worse not better with 'New Fionna'. New Fionna was a fucking genius, at the same time she'd lost none of her combat-skills. New Fionna could probably dribble him around the floor like a basketball and dunk him all day, wizard or not. Cerelia acted like she needed him, and she wasn't embarrassed about that in the least.
Rising, the little princess announced, "I'll be right back. You'll have to tell me if you'd like dessert." And then she went into the bathroom. When she'd gone, Thor turned to him and said, "we really should be getting back to work. We... we haven't found anything." The princesses were going to be irritated with them. They were supposed to be hunting the thugs that had hit the palace and swiped Maja and Blargetha. While Thor really had no use for either of the pair, he knew Cherry thought the whole episode was dangerous. The Boss of Bosses didn't use that word lightly.
"We've been looking," Patrick insisted. They'd talked to a lot of people. Cerelia's guards had helped them. Shaking his head, Thor said, "I... I'm not sure that's what we should be doing..." He was having a little trouble articulating what he wanted to say. Right now, his brain felt like mush, and his little brother was doing a lot of his thinking for him. He'd been dealing with a fair bit of no-sex from his lady for a while now. Star was a nymph, and he'd gotten used to her wanting to fuck his eye-balls out every chance she got. She was a fiend for it. At least she had been until twins came into the picture. He'd gotten cut off forthwith, and he was feeling it. So, yeah, he would gleefully have hung out with Cerelia for days just for a whiff. But they should be getting back to work.
"Ready for dessert," Cerelia asked?
Both men glanced up to find her standing near the door to her bedroom. She was wearing a sheer nighty that clung tight to her young curves, exposing acres of her deep purple skin. Those awesome knockers of hers were held up high on display for both men to gawk at. Her deep black hair was teased out just-so, and she'd applied a generous coating of red lipstick to her plump lips. Patrick licked his lips in hunger at the sight of the curvy princess, as she came striding towards them, six-inch heels adding a little to her height.
Stopping at the end of the table, she glanced down and opined, "oh, you do want some dessert..." Patrick flushed as he realized he had a boner that wouldn't quit. After months of no sex, he wanted pussy, and he would have done just about anything to get it. This was wrong. A voice in the back of his mind said this was wrong, and he found himself shouting that voice down and then giving it a kick for good measure.
Rising, he stepped towards the little princess. It was only when he was reaching out to her that he realized Thor was mirroring him. The young wizard turned an angry glare on the soldier. "No need to fight," Cerelia murmured, as she stepped between both men. Taking their hands, she turned and headed for the bedroom.
Far to the west, Bonnibel Bubblegum walked into her private space in the palace–the one little bit of palace she had kept for herself–to find Sarah waiting on her. Strangely enough, she'd warmed to this strange relationship. It was oddly relaxing to talk to someone who was so much like her. She didn't have to dumb herself down the way she did with Marceline, and she didn't feel like she was dealing with a rival as she did when she was dealing with Nadia or Cherry. That last was almost the worst of her daily trials. Cherry was 'feeling her oats' as Princess of the Underworld, and it was starting to really fry Bonnie's ass that the little cunt thought she could just do what she wanted. It helped not at all that Cherry had been one of the driving forces behind pushing Fionna's 'cure' onto the Candy-People. Bonnie had lost her control of them, and she didn't like that at all.
From being irritated by Sarah's independence, Bonnie had come to see her android double as a sounding-board and confidante. Sarah had saved her life, when she could simply have moved in and taken over the Candy Kingdom herself. Bonnie felt like Sarah was the one person who'd never hurt or betray her. And, bonus-points, Sarah was one of only three people who could really keep up with Bonnie sexually. Finn and Marceline did a thorough job of scratching the itch, but Sarah outdid both as only a tireless machine could do it. She was planning on having a nice, long session with her double tonight to unwind.
On her side, Sarah was in a bit of a bind because, honestly, she wasn't really in the mood tonight. She wasn't in the mood and hadn't been in the mood for weeks. She loved Bonnie as only someone who intimately knew her could. At the same time, she felt conflicted, and she didn't understand why. She'd been ducking this encounter for a while, finding piles of things that urgently needed doing, but she'd run flat out of ideas when she'd come to the bottom of tasks that the Kingdom depended on.
So here she was, dressed to the nines, and looking forward to a miserable evening pretending she was in the mood. It was dreadful every way she looked at it, and she'd found herself praying, as illogical as it seemed, to Glob to get her out of this mess. "Evenin', babe," said Bonnie, as she kissed the android-girl's cheek. "Mmm," Sarah replied, "evening..." As she sat herself, Bonnie said, "it's been a helluva day! Lots to talk about!" Sarah nodded. So she'd heard. She'd gotten an earful from Nadia about the blowout in the council chambers.
Sarah had been fruitlessly searching for ways to bridge the gap between her fellow Finn-wives for months with little real success. The trouble was that Cherry seemed to have dropped the whole business with her first husband, but the same deadly passion seemed to have transferred itself to Finn. Anything Cherry saw as slighting Finn was sure to earn her wrath. Bonnie, as committed as she was to their shared life, was far more committed to what she saw as justice. Bonnie's rigid sense of right and wrong were at loggerheads with Cherry's more malleable ethics, and that gap was proving impossible to bridge.
Sarah went and retrieved dinner, laying out plates, as Bonnie chattered away about whatever was on her mind in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way that only she would have understood. It was every kind of crazy, but Sarah could understand easily how her creator and Marceline so often parted company. Listening to that stream of verbal diarrhea would have been maddening for someone who didn't know Bonnie. It was illogical, but it was failings like these that endeared Bonnie to Sarah and made her desperate not to lose the candy princess again.
Bonnie was nattering on about her hopes and dreams for her grand-children–dreams Sarah lived vicariously–when the phone rang. "Fuck," growled Bonnie, as she fumbled the thing out of her pocket. She fumbled with it twice before getting it to open. "What," she growled? Sarah's hands on her shoulders calmed her, as she tried again. "I'm fine," said Bonnie. "What's the problem?" Sarah found herself massaging the candy-monarch's tense shoulders as that one-sided conversation droned on. Finally, with a heavy sigh, Bonnie hung up. "I've got to go," she muttered. The tone said it all. Something unpleasant had come up. Leaning down, Sarah kissed her cheek and whispered, "you'll do well. You always do."
Rising, the Candy Monarch headed out to deal with yet another consequence of Wildberry's actions. Finn had expected the people of the wastes to make a bee-line straight for her kingdom. Lacking any sort of evidence to the contrary, Bonnie had agreed with the assumption. Hungry people didn't really have energy or resources to make big strategic moves. They'd expected the people of the wastes to be hung up at the borders of the Peanut Kingdom for months–long enough to get their alliances squared away and rebuild the civilized kingdoms. Unfortunately, things weren't quite playing out as planned.
Bonnie's newest problem became Billy Mertens' problem in the middle of a very late dinner after a long trek through the mountains in the dark. Bill's crew had spent the whole trip on edge and in fear of getting jumped, with Olesia all but clinging to Billy after her ordeal with the fire extinguisher. They'd gotten home to camp feeling exhausted, and been delighted to find that the forcefield protecting Lina's truck was still active and their camp was ok.
With the forcefield back up, Lina and Olesia had set to work making up dinner, while Billy himself dug into what they'd found. That had turned into a bout of muttering and musing to himself, as he sorted through his notes and the various clues they had. So engrossed in the business was he, that Billy hardly noticed when the two girls finished cooking up supper. Indeed, to Leo, it looked as if he would have gone on working at the problem all night.
As he sat reading and whispering to himself, Olesia knelt beside him and handed him a plate. When he glanced up, she gave him a winsome smile and said, "it's hot..." Blushing, Billy took hold of the plate, creating a small cloud of steam from his icy fingers. The sight made Lina giggle. Tom glared at her, jealousy naked on his face. "You missed your best chance," Lina murmured. Olesia would have been happy with the attention, but Tom had discounted her as being a 'fatty' and below his standards.
With every eye on him, Billy finally put work aside, saying, "I think she went with them." Glancing at Olesia, he told her, "I think maybe you were right..." The elemental blushed prettily at being told that she was right about something. She had stars in her eyes. Lina could see it. The plump girl had the hunger. They'd talked about it while the boys were in town running down leads. Now Billy was in her sights and showing signs that he valued her.
Billy's phone rang, breaking the spell. Setting his plate aside, the big man fished out his phone. Eyeing it with a frown, he flicked it open, announcing, "Rags?" As his companions watched, the big man's face slowly changed expression, showing growing unease. "Slow down," he said. "What does Lizard Princess want?" The young man adopted a listening attitude, implying that he was getting an answer to his question. Apparently, what she wanted was bad news, though, judging by the muttered riddley-raddley-ragglesnatzes coming out of Billy's mouth. The young soldier sat shaking his head and cursing under his breath throughout that one-side conversation. From time to time, their leader interjected arguments against what he was being asked, and Lina could see him growing more and more tense.
"I don't fucking have time for this," Billy finally blurted! He was really angry if he was swearing at his wife like that. Olesia winced at every word. "Rags," he interrupted. "We're getting close. We're close to finding Princess Nieve..." On the other end of the line, Bonnie interjected, "this is more important, Bill. There's an army moving south into Lizard Kingdom. They're threatening two of our most important allies. They're threatening our flank. They can cross the sea and come in through Purple Kingdom." The big man blushed. He hadn't even known Bonnie was there. She had him, though.
The young hero spent a few moments thinking about that. Yeah, he didn't want his wife's kingdom to get invaded, did he? At the same time, he just needed a couple more days. Injecting a little calm into his voice, the big man tried one last gambit. "Rags... Every time I go there, that woman tries to hit on me," he said. "I'd..." "Then play nice, William," Noemi retorted. "You know how to play nice. I've seen it." His face went red hot at what she'd so casually suggested. Voice pleading, he said, "Rags..." "This is necessary, William," Ragnhild replied. "Play nice. Take care of this army. With the peanuts on the loose inside our defensive perimeter, we're depending on you." "Yes, dear," he muttered. He was already swearing under his breath when he hung up.
"So we're going to Lizard Kingdom," Leo announced. Muttering curses, Billy replied, "I'm gonna' go. It's... She's got an army. I don't know why she can't handle this. You guys keep chasing leads." Olesia tutted, "the faster this army gets sent packing, the faster we get back to work." Picking up his plate, she channeled a little heat into it, saying, "eat your dinner..."
Patrick's little head is thinking for him. And... Thor crosses a line. We'll see what the Mertens girls think of this development. Looks like Billy will be dodging a Cougar at the same time he puts down an army.