The sound of the bottle reverberated through the crystalline catacombs, stirring the attention of various penguins, who all waddled toward its source.
Slumped low in her shimmering ice recliner, dress and hair disheveled, the Ice Queen blew a ring of cold air as one might blow a smoke ring and topped her glass up again. She wore a flattened frown across her face, no doubt aggravated by the glasses of root beer she couldn't seem to stop forcing down her throat.
She shifted her gaze down to the exposed ankle she was resting on the edge of the table. A penguin stared back at her, eyes shimmering and curious.
"What do you want?" She glared back into those eyes for a moment, unblinking, as though channeling her frustration into a single psychic assault, then released her energy in the form of an unfiltered belch.
She automatically reached again for the bottle, which was now empty. Coordination slightly inhibited, she bumped it with her hand and knocked it off the table, where it clattered and rolled into the congregation of penguins forming nearby. Like any penguins would, they formed a circle and began spinning the bottle to see who should kiss who.
The Ice Queen watched the bottle spin through a root beer filter. The spirits did funny things to her perception, causing her to see the strangest of patterns. Watching the bottle point to each unique penguin was like watching her own emotions spinning round and round to each different point on the Wheel of Feels. First it pointed to happy, flappy Gertrude, reminding her that it was indeed her birthday, and she'd gone out and done something exciting, and that should count for something. Then the bottle pointed to fussy, pouty Gertrude, who represented the fact that the excitement had been cut short and she'd gotten rather painfully rejected from all sides. Then it pointed to passive, relaxed Gertrude, the 'well, the pain wasn't that bad, not really. Surely I've had worse...' feeling. Then it pointed to unremarkable Gertrude, confirming that this analogy would have made a lot more sense if she had only bothered to give every penguin an individual name.
Summoning whatever strength she was able to dredge up from the deepest parts of her bones, she sat up, picking up the nearest Gertrude and sitting her properly on her lap.
"Gertrude, what should mommy do, hmm? What should mommy do about this crinkle-crumb birthday dilemma she's having?"
"WENK, WENK." Gertrude flapped her wings pathetically.
"What?" A weird look shot briefly across Ice Queen's face. "No, that's a one-person game. I want to do something WITH someone."
"WENK?"
Another weird look, with a hint of blush (or perhaps just natural intoxication). "Well, yes...THAT...but I want to do something...more socially acceptable. You know?"
There was a pause, followed by a rather curt "WENK."
"Something not with you," she responded flatly.
Gertrude looked up to the ceiling. "...WEEEENK..."
Ice Queen forced the penguin's head back level with her own. "Don't take that tone with me, you little runt. And don't give me those snotty little penguin tears. You're such a drama queen, honestly...".
That returned a somewhat hopeful "...WENK?".
Ice Queen considered this, eyes a bit glazed. "Yes...yes, I think you're probably right, Gertrude. In fact, you're very right! Yes!"
She stood up, letting the penguin fall to the floor where she landed on her bottom with a tiny 'squeak' sound.
"Yes, no more mama drama! I'm making a definite choice! It's my party and I'll cry if I want to! And I DON'T want to!"
She gathered up the hem of her dress and straightened the whole thing out, smoothing it back its former regal glory, then stormed across the room to the open window, greeted by a rather chilling draft.
Oh. No wonder. Night was already upon the land.
Well, no matter, she thought. The cover of night is mine to hide under as I see fit.
She stepped up on the windowsill, turned to the Gertrudes and gave a sharp warning about going in Mommy's Bedroom, threw back her snowdrift hair and leaped out the window, into the early night's breeze. Intoxication aside, she gracefully rode the chilly gusts of wind into the staggered cloud cover above, cackling giddily to herself. It was going to be a fun birthday after all...
Flying through the night skies was far more relaxing for the queen than most people knew. A few glasses of root beer may have inhibited her basic coordination a bit, but flying was something far more automatic. The magic of the tiara and the strength of the wind allowed her to glide as freely as she pleased. She need only know which direction she wanted to go (not an issue for tonight's mission), and to watch out for trees. With so much freedom, she'd begun putting herself on autopilot and using the flight time to pursue other interests like poetry, star-gazing and even personal grooming.
Coming upon the massive tree house, she slowed her flight and righted herself, descending slowly as the resisting air washed over her like a gentle stream. She alighted in the back yard, ducking below a window near the rear entrance. She slowly peeked her head up to look inside.
The room was a bit dim, lit by a dozen disorganized candles. Sitting slouched in the middle of the floor was Cake, hunched over her dulcimer, sheets of scribble-covered paper scattered all around her. She hammered a couple of notes, wrote something down, then scratched her head with the mallet, and repeated.
Stupid cat. Hum...but where was Fionna? The queen cupped her hands around her eyes and peered from side to side, unable to locate any shadows with bunny ears. Must be in another room...
With a flip of her hair, she rose off the ground and flew up to another window on the second floor. The kitchen was surprisingly clean and proper. Then again, it was dark and not completely visible. She hovered, ghostlike, over to another window.
Fionna's bedroom was a train wreck. Piles of treasure glinting in the moonlight. Broken statuettes lined the shelves on the walls. Maps and paintings and crayon renderings of monsters on every wall. The floor and bed were littered with shirts and boots and bras and even just scraps of detached material. But Fionna was still nowhere to be seen.
The queen scratched her shoulder and flew over to the detached room that sat precariously on an outgrown limb from the main unit. She popped her head up through the hole in the floor, scanned in 360 degrees, then pulled out and back toward the tree.
Where is she? She demanded of herself.
Oh, wait.
There was another light in a lonely window on the far side of the tree house. Moving in closer, she saw it was a bathroom, lit much brighter than the other rooms. Using her carefully-rehearsed stealth tactics, she peered up over the edge of the window sill, trying to conceal her otherwise prominent eyebrows.
Her eyes widened a bit.
There was Fionna, lounged in the entirely-too-small bathtub in the center of the room, eyes closed and mouth slightly agape. Her arms and legs hung limply over the sides, and her hair was strewn messily across her face. Come to think of it, the Ice Queen had never seen the hair beneath that silly bunny hat of hers. It was very short and well-kept, except for the one long tuft in the front. Hum...cute.
She definitely seemed to be asleep, if the slight bobbing of her chest was any indication. How anyone could sleep in such a squished and awkward position was beyond the queen's understanding. She ascended a bit higher to get a better look.
Well now...she's plumping out quite nicely, isn't she? The queen ran her eyes up and down the length of Fionna's blossoming body, vague memories of such youthfulness shifting in and out of her memory. Arms and legs of different proportion, all growing out of phase. The confusing new bags of flesh with pointy knobs on her chest. The sprouting of hair where once such pastures were barren and smooth. Ah, to be young and curious again...
She smiled when the girl twitched her arm involuntarily, then turned to alarm when she saw her reach forward and sit up. She ducked out of the line of sight, but quickly moved back to the nearest point where she could at least continue her little peep show.
She watched the water sliding and dripping off of Fionna's tree-trunk thighs and barbarian back as she stood up and crossed the room to grab a towel. As soon as her enticing parts were covered, the queen snapped back into reality. It was show time.
The wooden wall creaked and groaned, then smashed and crashed open, the Ice Queen's glaring shadow silhouetted by the moonlight of the night behind her.
"WHAT THE CRAM?" Fionna backed herself against the makeshift sink, struggling to wrap the towel around her body. Her eyes went from wide with fear to glowering slits when she saw who the shadow belonged to.
"What are you doing in my bathroom, Ice Queen?" she demanded.
The queen took an awkward step forward, still a bit tipsy. "You didn't finish your dinner, tomboy!" She held up an electric blue finger and tossed a tiny ice bolt at the hand holding the towel in place. Fionna didn't move, or flinch when the bolt deflected off the back of her hand.
"Get out of here! I'll beat you tomorrow or something." Her eyes darted around the small room, looking for something sharp or heavy she could swing. All of her usual arsenal was back in the bedroom, no time to run across in front of the queen and grab something.
"Not good enough! My birthday is TODAY, so I want some action TODAY!" Ice Queen began charging up another blast as she staggered closer. Fionna's brain worked quickly, but her nemesis seemed particularly unpredictable tonight.
The Queen fired two hooked shots, resulting in two ice manacles pinning her wrists to the wall. She stepped in a bit closer, one hand raised. "Come on, is that the best you've got?"
"What do you even want from me?" Fionna arched her back forward, struggling against her braces. The towel slipped a bit further down with each thrust.
The Queen hesitated her strike, eyes on the edge of the towel. Just a little bit more...CRASH!
"What's going on in here?" Cake growled furiously. "Wha-Ice Queen?"
There is a law at work in the universe that ensures that of all possible scenarios in a given situation, the worst possible one will occur when you are the least prepared for it. Ice Queen remembered reading that a long time ago. She also remembered it happening; it happened the time she was learning to fix her shower, the time she tried kidnapping the Flame Prince, and it was happening right now.
Claws, fur, hair, snow, and fists, collided and contorted in many ways as Cake and Fionna double-teamed the Ice Queen against the bathtub. Punches were thrown, clothes were torn, hair pulled, body parts were frozen. It was a mess.
Now, it may have been the root beer thinking for her, but the Ice Queen noticed that despite the snarling, yelling, and hacking, she was enjoying this. Faced with the threat of imminent pummeling, she found her body pumping with adrenaline and buzzing with life. She tapped into that energy and redoubled her resistance against her attackers, freeing her neck from Fionna's fingers and knocking her and her cat back against the far wall.
She hacked for a moment as she caught her breath, and that hacking turned to cackling and laughter as she rose to full height, hands once again charging up ice beams.
"What's wrong with you, you old hag?" Fionna demanded, springing to her feet and once again readjusting her towel. "You don't just bust into people's bathrooms!"
The queen raised a hand and fired a bolt into the floor before Fionna's feet. "And YOU don't just go around forgetting people's birthdays!"
Fionna glanced over to Cake, who just shrugged. "It's...no way, it's not your birthday. Is it?"
The queen took a few steps forward, ice crystals surging around her hands and slowly wrapping out in a constricting spiral, forming edges and lines that slowly solidified into two blades. "It doesn't really matter anymore now, does it?" she said, grinning coldly. "...because you're about to give me a gift either way."
Fionna took a fighting stance and shot her eyes around the room once more. Time was running out. Not many options left.
The queen raised the blades in a menacing pose as she continued her slow advance, her feet much more coordinated this time. She casually fired a bolt at Cake when the cat leaped at her from one side, putting her out of commission for the moment. She didn't release Fionna from her frozen glance for even one moment, the fire in her heart mingling with the chill of her face to produce an aura of faint steam around her entire body.
Her prey remained motionless, breathing subdued and heart beating wildly. She saw it. She just needed an opening. She licked her lips.
...now.
The queen lashed forward, one blade arcing from on high as Fionna ducked down low and twisted past her toward the bathtub. She jerked the faucet loose and turned on her heel just in time to duck from the wild swing of the other blade. The queen spun around and faltered in mid-swing, pausing to stare at Fionna for a moment. The towel was lying on the floor.
Fionna quickly glanced down and felt her cheeks flush, but when she looked back up, the queen seemed to be flushed as well. Taking advantage of the moment, she swung the faucet head hard, connecting with Ice Queen's face and sending her crashing to the ground.
The queen lay there for a moment, then grabbed her tiara and returned it to her head, pushing herself up on all fours. She ran the back of her hand across her face, watching it return with a streak of purple blood.
With a cracking sound, Cake pulled herself out of her glacial prison and stood beside Fionna, whose white-knuckled hand was still gripping the faucet and visibly shaking.
The queen stood up, her ice blades abandoned on the floor, and wordlessly looked over to her two nemeses, breathing heavily. Fionna looked down at her faucet hand, noting the blood spatter, and looking intensely back at its previous owner. Then she turned to Cake, usually her advisor in moments like these. Cake reflected her expression, then frowned again at the queen.
Raising a hand to her face, the queen slowly licked the partially dried blood from her hand like Cake might lick a wound, then stared straight into Fionna's eyes...and smiled. A wicked smile.
She moved back toward the hole she'd made in the wall, eyes not leaving the girl for a moment. She stood on the very edge of the floor, watching over her shoulder. "That's it for tonight then, eh, tomboy?"
Fionna glared back at her, shivering from the cold air filling the bathroom and washing over her bare skin.
"Thanks for breaking my nose," the queen added, sniffing and wiping away another dribble of blood before running her eyes up and down Fionna's body once more. "And thanks for the show."
"You'd best get the fluff out of here, Ice Queen!" Cake snarled.
The queen held the moment a little longer, her smile devilish and ambiguous, then jumped out into the night, disappearing within seconds.
"You hurt, booger?" Cake asked, shifting moods on a dime.
"I'm fine," Fionna said automatically, looking down once more at the faucet head in her hand. "Really. She didn't even hurt me."
"You sure?" Cake asked, picking up the towel and handing it to her friend. Fionna ignored it, walking out into the bedroom.
"Cake, I'm fine! Really." She dropped the faucet head on the floor among the stacks of other junk and rummaged in the dresser for a pair of fuzzy pajamas. "Totally fine."
"Alright, alright," Cake submitted. "Just a little worried, girl. Not every day a queen breaks into your bathroom and tries to slice your skull open."
Her empathy was met with a slam of the dresser drawer and a grunt as Fionna threw herself on the bed.
"Sorry I peeped your beepers, girl," the cat added, picking up the faucet head and returning it to the bathroom.
"Whatevs," Fionna responded with a hand wave. "Nothing you haven't seen before."
"Sorry Ice Queen peeped your beepers..." came a mumble from the bathroom.
"Cake!" The word was delivered very sharply. "Just...just don't even mention her right now, okay? Just drop it. I don't want any. Nobody's home. No more Ice Queen."
Cake returned to the foot of the bed, hands on her hips. She stared at Fionna a moment, trying to read her flustered expression. It wasn't like her to stay upset after a battle, especially one she had won. "Well, I'm just trying to help."
She was met with an angry sigh as Fionna flipped over to stare out the window. "You want some time alone, then?"
"...yeah."
She hesitated, but left the room, leaving Fionna bathed in moonlight and swamped in uncertainty. Ice Queen didn't quite seem to be herself tonight. Something was off about her expression. That smile certainly worried her. Ice Queen was acting funny, but Fionna wasn't laughing...
She didn't fall asleep that night until the moon finally tucked itself under a quilt of dark, puffy clouds.