The descent was slow going, but that wasn't a surprise considering how many people were marching down at once.
Thick puffs of toxic fumes clouded the air as the princess led her people down the part of the cliff that was the least steep—although it was still hard to move without sliding. Bonnie's hand had slipped out of Marceline's the first time she had almost fell and needed it to correct her balance, and she had not reached for Marceline again. Marceline wasn't quite sure how she felt about it.
At Bonnie's insistence, Marceline leaped into the air every so often to make sure everyone was still following the Morrow, who flew slowly and dutifully above the group in front. It was a sight to behold—all those banana guards and armored-up Breakfast and Slime and Worm citizens marching in rows of two between the clouds. There had to be at least a hundred makeshift soldiers there, ready to defend their homes.
Marceline's boots crunched heavily as she landed on the rocks and dirt on the ground beside Bonnie and Finn and Jake.
"How's it looking up there?" Bonnie said, falling back to walk next to Marceline and letting Finn and Jake lead the way for a moment.
"Everyone seems to be doing fine," Marceline replied. "Nobody's fallen yet, I don't think. Not that I could tell."
"And the toxic clouds?"
"Getting thicker, but only overhead. We should be fine if we stay away from the ones closer to the ground."
Bonnie nodded, sighing in relief as the incline of the cliff began to straighten out. They were nearing the bottom.
"How'd you know about the toxic clouds anyway?" Marceline asked, lifting herself back into the air.
"Research, remember?" Bonnie said. "And we used to come here when we were young."
"Here?" Marceline raised her brows. "How stupid were we?"
"We never went in," Bonnie clarified. "We weren't that stupid."
"But we were dumb enough to discover it in the first place, and then keep coming back?"
Bonnie made a noise of affirmation, but she didn't say anything.
They walked in silence for a bit. Marceline surveyed their surroundings, but she was unable to see much past the clouds and that strange haze in the air—the kind that came with a hundred years of dust and emptiness and silence.
"Are you afraid?" Bonnie asked after a while, and Marceline hesitated before replying.
Was she afraid? She was certainly apprehensive, definitely uneasy, but afraid? Every piece of her felt like it was tugging her in different directions—her heart one way and her mind another; her skin was pulling her toward the sky and her bones tugged her down toward the ground. She felt lost, and confused. Angry and resentful. It didn't help that most of her memories were either of Bonnie or of something negative, or both. Mostly both.
But as for this creature, this thing that had taken her memories, she had no real reason to be afraid of it. Even if everything went wrong and she lost her memories permanently, even if everyone did, at least they would be alive.
"No," Marceline said at last. "I'm not." She glanced at Bonnie. "Are you?"
Bonnie opened her mouth to answer, but her foot caught on a rock and she tumbled forward with a cry. Marceline's reflexes kicked in and she dove, catching the princess inches from the ground and scooping her up into the air, into her arms. Bonnie looked up at her, mouth still slightly open in surprise.
"Yes," she breathed. "I'm terrified."
Marceline swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, then she scowled and dropped Bonnie back to her feet. "It'll be okay," Marceline said, flying to catch up to Finn and Jake. "We've got this."
Okay, so maybe she was still peeved at Bonnie for everything that had gone down—but she felt like she had a right to be. Marceline knew she should set aside those feelings for now, focus on the task at hand. Finding this creature and figuring out how to get everyone's memories back. But it was hard, to have to experience so much all at once and then not have the time to process it all. After all of this was over—after all of this was over…
"So hold up," Finn said, bringing Marceline back into the present. "If we're all marching through the Abyss, hoping this thing will be drawn to everyone's memories, doesn't that mean we're just bait?"
"We're not bait, dude. We're warriors!" Jake said, puffing out his chest into the image of sculpted pecs.
"You're definitely bait," Bonnie said from behind them, her voice so deadpan that Marceline had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh.
She was going to miss that, when all of this was over. That playful banter between friends.
No, she reminded herself. She wouldn't miss it, because she wouldn't remember.
Finn stopped walking. "Uh, guys?" He pointed at something emerging from a cloud of toxic fumes and dust in front of them. A shadow that grew larger and darker as it came forward until it towered above them completely.
Bonnie whistled, two sharp notes. The Morrow responded seconds later with it's own screeching cry—a signal to the troops behind them to get ready. The fight was about to begin.
Marceline moved her bass from her back to her front, gripping the neck with one hand and resting her other on the strings. She had been carrying it around for the last couple days, but she still hadn't tried to play it. She wasn't sure exactly what the instrument did—if the music was some kind of weapon in and of itself or if it was just a plain old guitar. Either way, if muscle memory didn't kick in and she couldn't find the music, she figured she could still swing the thing around in a fight. It was made from a giant ax, after all.
She looked at Bonnie one last time. The princess looked strangely calm as she pulled two stun guns from holsters at her hips and raised them forward, as she watched the shadow become sharper and then blur all at once into the creature from Marceline's memories.
Marceline could understand Bonnie's calm, even as the creature lurched forward. It was huge, there was no denying that. But it was wildly outnumbered; one hundred to one.
"Remember, try not to kill it!" Bonnie yelled to anyone who was in earshot. She had explained earlier that it was best to keep the thing alive, if possible. If it died, there was the possibility of the candy peoples' memories dying along with it.
Bonnie raised both guns, and fired. The creature spasmed for a moment but it kept coming, the individual guns not quite strong enough to stop it. It raised it's head and let out an ungodly screech that sliced through the air like a knife.
"Finn, Jake, go!" Bonnie looked over her shoulder, looked at Marceline. "Everyone, give it all you've got!"
The banana guards and all the other makeshift soldiers let out varying cries of enthusiasm as they raced toward the monster. Marceline rose into the sky and took a deep breath before pointing her instrument in the creature's direction and strumming a string at random. The vibrations from the blast—even as small as it was—sent Marceline reeling back several feet in the air. She missed the monster by a long shot, but the feeling of playing music reverberated through her bones, and it felt good.
Several memories beat against her brain, but she ignored them and strummed the strings again. Her aim was slightly better this time, and she hit the edge of one of the creature's faces. "Take that, ya stupid slug!" she whooped as the creature cried out in pain.
"Don't kill it!" Bonnie yelled from below. "I gave you a stun gun for a reason."
Marceline spun in the air and landed another hit. "Don't worry Bons, I think I know what I'm doing."
The creature cried out in pain as two more of its faces got blown off by Marceline's music. Then it stilled.
Everyone on the ground paused, lowered their weapons, looked around in confusion. Marceline took both hands off her bass, frowning. She was sure she hadn't killed it. But there it was, frozen on the ground. Maybe someone had managed to stun it after all?
But then the thing shuddered. It's skin rippled and bubbled as it convulsed on the ground, keening and wailing in a way that sounded more frustrated than anything else.
And then the creature exploded into hundreds of lumps of black sludge.
Marceline shielded her face from the blast with an arm, but when she moved to look at the place the creature had just been, she didn't find the remains of the thing like she had expected.
No, the creature hadn't exploded at all; it had ripped apart, but it was still moving. With horror, Marceline realized what it had done. Each sagging, dead face had ripped itself from the main body and formed itself a new, smaller body—one that was shaped almost exactly like a human. One creature with hundreds of faces had now become hundreds of human-shaped creatures, outnumbering Bonnie's army by a crazy amount.
Bonnie let out a strangled cry as the creatures swarmed toward her, toward her people. "Fall back!" she yelled at her scrambling comrades, tossing the stun guns to the side and pulling a smaller, deadlier weapon from her side. "Shoot to kill if you have to!"
Marceline swung the bass off her shoulder and gripped her guitar at the neck. She wouldn't be using her shock waves anymore. If she missed the creature she could end up hurting someone else.
Marceline swung the axe at the creatures, but they just kept coming. For every one she knocked down, five more followed.
One of them grabbed onto her bass and she flew higher into the air in an attempt to shake it off. It stared at her with those cold, dead eyes until she kicked it in what might have been it's stomach and it tumbled to the ground.
Her relief was short-lived. All around her, Bonnie's army was losing. Falling back, running away. Getting swallowed and spit out by the black globs.
And Bonnie—she was fighting two of the creatures off at once at the edge of a steep cliff. She kicked one in the head and shot the other one with her tiny gun and it fell from the top of the cliff with a screech. It was strange, though, the way the creatures were fighting her. They would rush up to her only to fall back, make screeching sounds as if to draw some of the other creatures away from whatever they were doing and toward Bonnie. As if she had something they wanted more than anyone else.
"Watch out!" Marceline cried, watching Bonnie even as she sliced several more creatures up with her axe. One of the monsters was coming up behind Bonnie, but the princess turned at Marceline's warning and managed to kick him away.
But her foot caught on a rock, and she slipped.
Marceline's mind turned to blind panic as she watched Bonnie fall.
There was nothing that could have prepared her for the terror, the white-hot fear she experienced in those short, eternal seconds where Bonnie was standing on the edge of the cliff, and then she wasn't anymore.
A memory surfaced suddenly, as Marceline turned.
This one didn't hurt like the others. It didn't come from fear or from panic or from the adrenaline coursing through Marceline's veins. It didn't come from the feelings in her brain, but somewhere deep in her chest. This one was soft, kind. A sunny day. A worn red couch. Her mother, stroking her hair in the warmth of the sunbeams streaming through the window.
"I don't want to grow up," young Marceline was saying. "I want to stay small and live with you, forever."
Her mother chuckled, but it was a strange sound. An unhappy sound. Marceline scrambled off of her mother's lap, turned to face her. "You don't want me to stay with you forever?"
The expression on her mother's face changed, pulled itself into a smile that might not have been wholly real. "Of course I do, Marshmallow," the woman said kindly, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind Marceline's ear. "If I could choose, I would freeze time and we would always be together."
"So, freeze time then," young Marceline said, and her mother laughed. Marceline liked the sound of her mother's laughter, even when she didn't fully understand where it came from.
"I'm afraid it doesn't work quite like that." Her mother pulled her back onto her lap, circled her arms around Marceline and rested her chin on her head. "Time is weird. Seasons change—things grow and then they die." Her mother paused, and hugged Marceline tighter. "You're going to live for a very, very long time, Marshmallow."
"I am?"
Marceline felt her mother nod. "You are. But other people—they're not going to be around forever."
"Why not?" Marceline said, growing afraid. "Where will they go?" Marceline tried to pull away, to face her mother again, but the woman only held her closer.
"They'll go where everything goes," her mother said in a soothing voice. "But they'll also stay."
Marceline pouted. "I don't get it."
"You will," her mother said, and there was a smile in her voice. A real one this time. "Just remember that letting go is important," she continued. "But so is holding on." The arms around Marceline tightened into a great big bear hug, and Marceline giggled. "You've got to hold on really tight to what's important, Marshmallow. Never forget that."
Hold on tight.
Never forget.
A scream ripped through Marceline's throat as she tore through the wind and the dust and the toxic fumes toward where Bonnie had fallen. Toward the clouds, then through them. Dropping at a speed she had never known before.
Hold on.
