It wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be. As soon as she was in the smaller room, the walls slid closed, and a shower of sweet-smelling bubbles fell on her, then a deluge of lemon-scented water, which left her cold and shivering. However, the walls opened to reveal circular dryers, which blew warm wind on her and left her dry in less than five minutes.
The walls slid open again, and she floated into the lab, where the…personage who had trapped her was preparing a rather intimidating pink leather chair with gadgets sticking out all over it. Behind the chair, a glowing screen waited, silent, for figures and numbers to appear on it that would analyze.
"I still don't know who you are," Marceline said.
She turned to face Marceline, giving Marceline a good chance to take all of her in. Her cherry-pink hair, and her bubblegum skin, and white lab coat that somehow managed to fit her figure perfectly, and the golden diadem set in her knee-length hair that marked her as a princess.
"I'm the princess of the Candy Kingdom," said the princess of the Candy Kingdom. "Princess Bubblegum!"
"Princess Bubblegum!" Marceline cried. She'd heard of this bubblegum princess, whose inventions were used all across Ooo. "Sweet!"
Princess Bubblegum looked as if she were trying not to smile. "You don't say," she said.
Marceline almost laughed then, before remembering that she was captive. "What are you going to do?" she asked.
"You're sterilized now, so you're authorized to go near the lab equipment. Go in that chair," said Princess Bubblegum.
Marceline floated toward the pink leather chair. "Why?"
"Now I'm going to take a few notes before I begin my investigation," said Princess Bubblegum, keying in a few words on her digital pad. "The appendages won't hurt you, even though they might look a little intimidating. One of them will come down to clamp over your forehead, but that's the most it'll do. You might feel some vibrations, but they won't hurt your skin."
"Why?" asked Marceline, as the metal gadgets whirred towards her. One, just like Bubblegum had said, came to a smooth stop fractions of an inch above her forehead, vibrated, then moved to just touch her.
"They detect emotion," said Princess Bubblegum.
Marceline almost choked. "You've seen me going through this much, and you still don't believe I have emotion?"
The princess shrugged. "I don't believe anything, until it is proven scientifically in a way I can understand. That's how I've survived this long." Marceline thought she saw hurt then, behind the princess's impeccably beautiful eyes. It was hurt, and there was something else behind it too—Marceline had not lived nine and a half centuries for nothing. As well as the princess hid it, Marceline could see her distrust of the world.
Behind the princess, the glowing screen Bubblegum had set up and connected to the chair began to show pink waves, beeping as they zoomed up and down and across the screen.
Marceline almost began to pity the pink candy princess then, although it was she who was trapped in the pink leather chair in the cool, pink candy lab in the perfectly pink candy tower in the mellow, pastel pink Candy Kingdom, with the pink waves analyzing her as if she was a scientific experiment, which, of course, she was; everyone was a scientific experiment, a toy put there by some higher being, an existential joke, a stardust nothing…Marceline started to see stars. Even the pink personage before her who trusted no one, but whom everyone trusted, was merely a trick of fate.
The princess tutted and typed furiously in her notepad. "You're not even that far into the test, and the emotion meter is already starting to show your emotion waves. That's a fairly good sign of emotion. But…what is this emotion you're feeling?"
Marceline held her breath and threw around words in her head. She thought of cherries and crystals, and stared behind Bubblegum at the pink waves riding up and down on the black screen, slowly steadying themselves…
"You're holding it in." The princess's voice had become gentler. "Don't."
And Marceline made a crazy decision.
She remembered that night, so long ago, when her father had eaten her fries and she had cried and realized that maybe it was time for her to leave. She remembered Simon, who had turned into the Ice King, trying to save her. In the corner of her eye, she saw the pink waves almost vibrating, they were moving so hard.
"You can stop now," said the princess in a voice that was almost shaky. "I don't think any logical human being can say you're emotionless."
"Any logical human being would have figured that out long ago," Marceline grumbled, as the metal gadgets retreated from her.