Relief was evident on the vampire's face as she took Bubblegum's hand. It didn't sit too well with the princess, knowing it was relief from her. From having to see her again.
Ten minutes later, the two of them were in Bubblegum's lab.
It was just as she had left it; furniture upright but skewed; scattered, ruined papers from the explosion; large, bubbly hole in the floor looking down on the stairs below. Bubblegum took several large gulps of the coffee she had asked Peppermint Butler to brew, then pulled a chair to the center of the room and gestured for Marceline to sit.
"This would be easier with the rest of my equipment," Bubblegum muttered as she taped several wires to Marceline's head and chest. "But it'll be okay. This is going to work."
Bubblegum reached into her pocket and pulled out the same small metal box she had used previously to moniter Marceline's heart rate and brain waves. She stared at the device, feeling heavy, then put it aside for a moment. After poking an IV needle into the crook of Marceline's elbow, she attached the other end of the IV tube to a giant machine in the corner of the lab.
"What is that?" Marceline asked, sounding apprehensive.
"It's my chemical library," Bubblegum explained. "I've got just about every chemical compound you can think of in isolation." Bubblegum typed a sequence into her computer, and the machine whirred. "The idea is that if I pump you with the right ratio of concentrated neurotransmitters, I should be able to induce specific emotions in your brain, which should cause specific memories to resurface." She glanced at Marceline. "In other words, it'll make you feel things. It will get your memories back, but it won't be pleasant." Bubblegum turned to Marceline fully. "Are you sure you still want to go through with this?"
Marceline nodded, face determined, and Bubblegum let out a shallow breath. She connected the wires taped to Marceline's head and chest to the small box. "This is to moniter your heart rate and your brain waves, to make sure I don't go... overboard, with the stimulation."
Marceline nodded again, and for the first time in her long, long life, Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum found that she was not enjoying a science project.
"Alright," Bubblegum said, adjusting her science goggles on her face and bracing herself. "Let's begin."
Somewhere in the grasslands several miles away, something large and dark was moving underneath the pouring rain.
It slithered between the water-slicked blades of grass, massive body rippling with every movement, sniffing at the ground and the air in a calculated attempt to find her. His prey.
The one he had been looking for.
The one that had escaped.
But the rain was too angry, the grass too wet and muddy for him to smell her, and he let out a deep roar of frustration, an outcry that rumbled the ground beneath him and the air above.
But then he smelled it, faintly, on the wind that came from the west, scented of sugar and syrup. The scent of a change.
The smell of intention.
The creature smiled with all of its hundreds of mouths on all of its hundreds of faces, and it turned around, dragging itself east beneath the thunder and lightning, crawling toward the Abyss.
It was time to go home.
