The question came out more bluntly than Fionna had meant it. She'd been sitting on it for nearly the whole trip though, and it had been dying to escape her lips the entire time.
"Kinda...I mean, I guess so." Cake sounded unimpressed, but not particularly bitter. "Everything kinda looks the same, but that's mostly cause it's just snow and ice. That stuff doesn't change, pretty much ever."
"Hmm..." was the only response Fionna could think of.
She slid off Cake's back as she returned to her usual size and stepped once more into the mouth of the queen's drawing room. "Queenie, we're home!"
Cake flicked Fionna's arm. "What are you, her wife?"
"Relax girl, I bet you a muffin top she's not even here." Fionna adjusted her backpack and strode casually into the cave.
Cake raised an eyebrow, then followed behind her. "If she's not here, then why are we?"
"I told you dude, I have a hunch," Fionna said, noting to herself that the polar bear statue she'd beheaded earlier this morning was now standing proud and tall and re-headed. "First I wanna find some good, solid evidence that she's been here between the time I got back to the treehouse and now."
Cake groaned, but carried on beside her, looking around at the room in a state of subdued curiosity. "...dang, when did she get so many penguins? She only had, like a handful when I was a kitten 'round here."
"Yeah," Fionna said, keeping the grabby little penguins away with her foot as she waded through the lot of them flubbing about in the living room. "I don't even know how or if she takes care of them at all. It's like they kind of just own the place."
"Big difference between the way she treats them and the way she treated me...". There was a hint of remorse attached to the end of that sentence, but Cake left it hanging.
Fionna waited a moment before responding, eyes on a wall poster. "You miss her at all?"
Cake sighed, thumbing her way through titles on the bookshelf. Fionna blushed, remembering what she'd read in those same books. "I don't know...maybe? I mean, it's different now. I might still miss her if I was still the baby. But I'm not the baby anymore. I'm the adult, now that I've got you. It's like a whole different relationship we'd have...ya know, if she wasn't evil and all that."
"...yeah." Fionna turned away to roll her eyes at the insinuation of her being the "baby" now. She took note of the reogranized bookshelf and made her way into the kitchen.
This place had definitely been cleaned up. Fionna had left all her dirty dishes in a heap on the counter, which was now polished and glimmering with the midday sunlight streaming through the window. She's totally been back already, she thought as her heart started beating faster.
She moved on to the bathroom. The mirror had been completely restored, her bandaged hand now being the only proof it was ever broken in the first place. All the snow and ice shards had been cleared from the floor as well. She darted for the bedroom.
The door had been rehinged, and swung open with ease, but the bedroom was still a cluttered, fragmented mess. The floor was as littered with clothes and paper as ever, a few drawers were half-opened with sleeves hanging out, and the closet door was slightly ajar, with a dress sleeve reaching out. Was the queen still here or not?
"Hey Cake, come check this out!"
Knocking penguins aside, Cake sauntered into the bedroom, then stopped. "...whoa. What kinda train wreck tornado hit THIS place?"
"I know, right?" Fionna kicked aside a crumple of poetry and knelt down to check under the bed. "She's worse than me!"
Cake's face softened into an uncomfortable expression as she turned around, viewing the mess. "Fi...somethin' about this doesn't feel right."
"Whatcha mean?" Fionna asked, butt in the air as she groped around under the mattress, looking for a trapdoor handle.
"I mean...feels like I shouldn't be in here. Somethin's making my tail all kinds of frizzy." She took her bushy tail in her hands and glanced from side to side, half-expecting something to leap out at her.
"What, you mean like you weren't allowed in here when you were a kitten?" Nothing under the bed.
"No, I mean like there's somethin' here right now...somethin' about to happen."
"Wait, you're all frizzed up?" Fionna pulled herself free and back-flipped to her feet. "That means she's probably hiding out in here somewhere!"
With swift, fluid movements, she drew her sword and dashed over to the closet, swinging in wide but controlled arcs. "Queenie-pants! Chug your caboose out here!" She prodded the dress sleeve with her foot. "That you, you old hag?"
Receiving no response, Fionna sighed heavily and proceeded to kick the door in, smashing it against the trunk inside. As she expected, the queen was not standing there with an ice sword in hand and slick grin on her face. The trunk was shut, no pink sleeve hanging out this time.
Cake crept up behind her and peeked around the corner. "What was that for? Were you expecting her to just be sittin' in her closet, knittin' a...new faucet?"
Fionna snorted as she pushed the queen's hanging garments aside, wondering if she should show the Gumball suit to Cake, just for kicks. "What kind of rhyme fail was that, Cake?"
"Oh, shush! Like you could do any better. You know I'm the best rapper."
"Oh, you think so?"
"Girl, I KNOW so! You prob'ly can't even get through one verse without droppin' the beat like a hot potato!"
"You're on, dude!" Fionna looked around for quick inspiration as Cake improvised a beatbox rhythm behind her. Her gaze stopped on the trunk. She grinned and counted her way into the beat.
"Alright now, listen to me girl I'm flippin' out the funk, while I spill the Queen's beans about her trash nasty junk, she needs tissues for her issues cause she thinks that she's a hunk, so relax your backs and hold your chunks and peek inside her trunk!"
Right on cue, she kicked open the lid of the trunk and gestured inside with a flourish. She held the pose for a few seconds, and looked up after a few seconds more to see Cake with a confused and disgusted expression pasted on her face. Fionna turned to look for herself and uttered a noise that sounded like "Gyut!"
Sitting in the trunk was not a puffy pink suit. It was a simple two-tone blue outfit. With a long-eared white hat. And cornfield-yellow hair. Fionna slowly sank back into reality, finding herself staring at a second skin of her own body.
Ice Queen was a psychopath, and Fionna's lifeless body was in her trunk.
"...oh my Grod, what am I looking at...". Fionna carefully picked up the suit by one arm, holding it between thumb and forefinger like it was some kind of toxic sludge.
Cake tried to assume the role of the logical, level-headed lab assistant. "Well...it's uh...obviously you. Well, y'know, a suit that looks like you...and, uh...".
Fionna turned the suit around once or twice, examining it in fascinated horror. "Why does she...who's been wearing this thing?! Why would she-".
"She was tryin' to take your place!" Cake interrupted, snatching the suit from her and quickly thinking of a way she could prevent Fionna from coming to any other weird conclusions. "Obviously! She...she probably wore this herself! Impersonatin' you when you're outta the treehouse!"
Fionna processed this silently for a moment. Then she came back to life. "So that was it! You thought you saw ME sleeping there all night long, but it was really Ice Queen!"
"Y-yeah, that must have been it! That butt!" Cake took the suit from Fionna's hand and hastily stuffed it back in the trunk. "So, now we know she's not here right? We can go back home now, yeah?"
Fionna shook her head. "No Cake, don't you get it? If Ice Queen isn't here, and there's a Fionna suit in here instead of a Gumball suit...that means she's out impersonating Gumball right now! We gotta STOP her!"
"But why? Why's she impersonating Gumball again?" Cake thought aloud. "Is she planning to trick you into another date?!"
"WHO CARES DUDE, LET'S JUST GO CRACK HER SKULL!" Fionna shouted, making a beeline for the door. She was blocked by Cake's stretchy belly. "What the crumpets, Cake?!"
"Fionna, listen! Do you even have a plan at all?"
"Yeah, I got a great plan!"
"What is it?"
"SCREAMING SWORD SCRAMBLE!" she roared, smashing her sword into the wall.
"That's stupid, Fi!" Cake tried to snatch the sword from Fionna's hand, but she was swinging it around too much for her to get a grip on it. "Look, what if she pulls another crazy psycho trick on you?"
Fionna poked Cake's stomach with her pinky finger, then slid under her belly and out the door when she involuntarily doubled over from the touch. "Heep! Fionna you march those buns back here this MOMENT!"
The penguins were once again crowding the floor space, making it difficult for Fionna to slip through them. The more that got in her way, the less respect she showed them, kicking them aside like she'd done earlier. The anger was coming back, and quickly.
There was a scrambling, scraping sound coming from behind her. "Fionna! You gotta wait up for me, girl! This is important!" She instead listened to instinct and started leaping her way past penguins gracefully. Until she landed a particularly fat grubber and crashed awkwardly in a pile of limbs.
Cake quickly crawled over to her, stretching right over the heads of the wayward penguin throng, pulled Fionna upright and held her by the cheeks. "What's wrong with you?! I'm tryin' to tell you somethin' IMPORTANT!"
Fionna winced slightly, something had twinged in her ankle when she fell. Great, she thought. The classic blunder where the girl trips and hurts her ankle while running. Whatevs, I got this. This is nothing. Wait, what did Cake just say?
"I SAID, what if Ice Queen plays the old 'Two Gumballs' trick?"
"Which one is that?"
"Exactly!" Cake said as she cleared away the penguins to make some room, then pushed Fionna to the ground and sat on her stomach. "What if she's all wearin' the Gumball suit at the Candy Kingdom, then you spot her, but it's really the Prince? And then she shows up in the Gumball suit and the fightin' starts and then you can't tell the two apart?"
"Oh..." came a wheezed response as Fionna squirmed under Cake's girth. "I could totally tell them apart...I mean...well, probably. Maybe? Ooof...".
"She pretty darned well tricked you once before, she could do it again, don'tcha think?"
"...maybe...".
"Thought so," Cake smirked for a moment, proud to finally trump her best friend for a change. "Now, the real question is...what are we gonna do to make sure that doesn't happen?"
Constricted airways were making it difficult for Fionna's brain to process thoughts. Or at least that's what she chose to blame for the moment. "...uh...do we have like, any x-ray glasses? Or like...mirrors of revelation?"
Cake thought for a moment. "No on the specs, and I think we gave our mirror to that one muffin pixie, remember?"
"Yerp," Fionna responded.
"Hmm...what else...", Cake purred, debating on how long she should stretch out her moment of triumph. She decided breathing was probably a privilege her sister deserved and rolled off to Fionna's side. "I s'pose we'll have to get some backup or something."
"Who we gonna get?" Fionna asked, gasping over-dramatically.
Cake put her paws on her chin and rocked slightly, rubbing her lips together as she thought. Behind her, a pair of penguins began a long and sensual kiss.
After a moment, "Ooh, what about Marshall?" suddenly came out of both girl's mouths. "Yeah!"
"Marshall's got that sort of sixth sense thingy, right? He can probably smell when a person's fakin' it!"
"Yeah, he's got weird vampire powers and junk! We should totally recruit him for Operation ICEBREAKER!"
"Wooo, yeah!" Cake suddenly paused. "Wait, you mean like you wanna BREAK the Ice Queen, or you wanna 'break the ice' with the Queen?"
Fionna blushed and sputtered, "Th-the first one. That thing. Yeah."
She was met with a chuckle and a roll of the eyes. "Just teasin', ya goose. Now get on my back and let's go talk to that sexy vampire dude!"
Momentarily relieved, she hopped to her feet and climbed on Cake's back as the two of them quickly strode back down the chilly mountainside.
Marshall will totally help us, she thought to herself. He's my bud. My skillet bacon. My ham fry. He'll help. He's got to.
...I hope.
The sun was long since past its peak and sinking slowly into the bed of the horizon when Cake set foot in front of the cave that housed Marshall's otherwise quite unassuming, picket-fence house. Both girls had often admired the uniqueness of that house. Marshall had told them that this is what houses looked like a thousand years ago, though neither of them were quick to believe such a tale. Bright green wooden houses with little white fences were normal back then? What a bunch of marshmallows. Still, they had both admitted it was a neat contrast to the dark and foreboding cave it sat nestled inside.
Cake downsized herself to her familiar two-foot stature and walked alongside Fionna on all fours. It was a habit. Even after living with and acting like a human for so many years, she still found time to be a cat.
"We should probably knock softly, in case he's like...still asleep or something," Fionna advised.
"Remember the time he was actually a bat sleeping on the cave ceiling and we decided to play that one really loud Beemo remix outside his house?"
"How could I forget? Boy he was MAAAAD!"
Fionna nodded and led the way up the steps of Marshall's porch and raised a hand to knock on the door, then stopped. Something pink had caught her eye in the window.
"Hang on a sec. What's going...oh...OH."
She quickly dropped into a squat and forced Cake's head down, peeking up slowly to the window. "Whaskfrikipthbt-" was all Cake had time to say.
"Shh...look." She pointed at the pink thing, which, from behind, looked a lot like Prince Gumball. Wrapped around his body were two greyish arms, bearing a flannel shirt. And...was he floating?
Fionna stared for a moment, watching with wide eyes. Cake looked at the window, then back at Fionna. "Girl? You okay?"
"Shh!"
"Hey, is that Gumball?"
"SHUSHERS, CAKE!"
"Or wait, more accurately, is that Ice-MMFNHMGR?"
Fionna clamped her hand over her cat-sister's mouth, which was immediately met with the sandpaper scratch feeling of Cake's tongue scraping over it. "Eww! Did you just lick me? What the dump, dude!"
"Alright, what the heck's going on out here?"
There was an awkward silence as both girls looked up to see Marshall Lee standing in the doorway, arms crossed and chewing something that was probably bubblegum.
"Oh, uhh..." Fionna made a couple of nervous hand movements and false starts to broken sentences. "I, uh...we were, we just came over to uh...we were-".
"Creepin' and peepin' on me and Gumball?"
Fionna raised her hands and let out a forced laugh. "Ha, no, not at all, it's not like...uhm, I mean, we were seriously just coming over and didn't know you...had company, that's all!"
"Right. You two were totally perving it up out here, watching us, weren't ya?" He looped his way around Fionna and caught in her a headlock, proceeding to grace her head with a noogie.
"Bluhh, stop it, Marshall!"
Cake sidled up to the vampire king and grinned. "And I'm glad we did! I didn't know you had a thing with Gumball, Marshall! Hoo, that is EXCITIN'!" She elbowed Marshall's leg in congratulations.
Prince Gumball stepped forward. "Cake, it would be most helpful if you and Fionna were to keep this sort of 'under wraps'," he said somewhat apprehensively, applying air quotes with his fingers. Fionna momentarily suspended the thought of Ice Queen being in the suit.
Cake turned to look up at him. "What? Why?" She suddenly gasped. "You mean because you're...SECRET LOVERS?" Her grin expanded nearly twice its size at the thought.
"Agh, no, shut it!" Marshall said, releasing Fionna and drifting over toward Cake. "It's not like...you've totally got that wrong!"
Cake laughed and put her face right up in Marshall's. "That's it, isn't it! I figured it right out! Heeeehehehe!"
Fionna picked herself up, straightening her bunny hat. "Cake, don't...".
"Cake," Marshall said, pressing a finger down on the cat's nose, "If you tell anyone about this, I swear, I'll hang you like a pi ata and beat your candy guts out with my axe bass, you hear me?"
"Marshall, that...that was obscene!" Prince Gumball protested, shrinking away from the argument.
Ice Queen wouldn't shrink away like that...unless she's really playing this up...
That didn't stop Cake. "Bah, you wouldn't! I know you wouldn't! You're too much of a softy to do somethin' like that to a sweet little kitty mow mow like me!" She blinked out a few butterfly kisses for added effect.
Marshall reared back and opened his mouth wide as his face contorted to match. "You wanna try me, then?!"
"Cake, you should probably stop..." Fionna's words were drowned out by a swarthy fog welling up around Marshall.
Naturally, Cake heeded no attention to the warning. Instead, she stretched her own face into a mirror image of Marshall's. "I ain't scared of you, vampire boy! Bring it on!" Marshall hissed furiously in response, forked tongue wriggling between his arrowhead teeth.
"GUYS!"
Everyone, including the smoke, stopped hissing for a moment to look at Fionna, who was turned toward the mouth of the cave with a suspicious look on her face.
"PG, where are you going?"
Prince Gumball had already stepped back out of the cave and into the post-apocalyptic orange light of the sunset. "I can see this is a bad time. I thought it would be appropriate if I left you to resolve your issues amongst yourselves."
Fionna stepped toward him as Cake and Marshall stared each other down, still not relenting from their scream faces. She really wasn't certain what tone to take with him...if that was him. "No dude, this is just...it's all a misunder-well, bad timing, yeah, on our part, I guess, but...that doesn't mean you need to like, leave or anything...before we talk some more, that is."
"No, I really, actually should leave," the prince said, eyes running along the ground in embarrassment. "Things have clearly become awkward, and whatever tender moment there might have been is likely now extinguished...".
Marshall threw his hands up and floated back toward the doorway. "Ugh, see what you guys did here just now? That's called 'uncool'! You two are seriously uncool right now."
Fionna hunched forward, arms swinging and head cocked to one side. "Buh...PG, wait, you really shouldn't go...".
"No, no, no," The prince said, clearly disappointed, but not completely defeated. "I really must go anyway, there are duties I've yet neglected today."
There was a heavy sigh from Marshall, who donned a condescending frown and pointed it at both girls.
"Thank you for allowing me to chill with you today, Marshall. It was certainly very ice of you."
There it was.
Marshall raised an eyebrow. "Very ice?" he snarked.
"Nice. Nice," the prince replied, running a hand through his hair. "Sorry, slip of the tongue. It happens when things get awkward, you understand. Snow big deal, though, right?"
The world seemed to stop turning for a moment as Gumball looked at Marshall, who looked at Cake, who looked at Fionna, who was staring blankly back at Gumball. She was the first to animate.
"...ICE QUEEN!"
Her sword flashed in the retreating sunlight as she brandished it in the air then struck a fighting pose. Marshall hissed as a rogue beam reflected onto his face and he ducked into the shadow beside the house.
"Ice Queen? Where?!" Gumball immediately scanned the skies and covered his head.
"Don't play dumb, you Sicle Hag, I KNOW that's you in there!" She began a slow walk toward the prince.
"...that's Ice Queen?" Marshall asked, rubbing his eye as it began to turn a fluorescent, acid green color.
Gumball raised his hands and looked around nervously, stuttering "I...I...", then grinning and gaining confidence as he continued, "I...must admit, I was worried you wouldn't catch on!"
And in the dying light of the ember sunset, Gumball pulled open his suit at the chest and a snow-haired, cackling face emerged, rising to full height before letting the lifeless prince fall in two to the ground.
"Wait just one jack-knifed minute here..." Marshall said, eyes gleaming in the darkness. "Are you seriously telling me I was just kissing the ICE QUEEN a few minutes ago?"
The queen simply grinned and licked her lips. Marshall hissed and smashed his head against the side of the house a few times, cursing in some indecipherable mystic language.
"So, you've found me out," the queen said, training her sparkling expression on Fionna. "I've indeed been up to my old tricks, and I'd have gotten away with it if it weren't for you two twittering boobs!"
"Ice Queen, why is my body in your trunk?" Fionna blurted out. She hadn't meant to lead with that question, but her brain wasn't following the plan she'd been trying to make up to this point for some reason. She could feel it heating up inside her skull.
"Oh, so you saw that one too?" Ice Queen's icicle smile stretched wider. "Good, isn't it? A spitting image of the absolute cutie patoot you are. Even Cake couldn't tell the difference!"
It was Cake's turn to animate. "Ice Queen, SO HELP ME, I am gonna rip you some new stitches!" She lunged forward, but was knocked out the way by the rampaging beast of darkness that was Marshall Lee, who was screaming in unholy harmonics, "You're a dead woman, Ice Queen! You're DEAD!"
Fionna watched as the queen casually side-stepped Marshall's first swipe, producing a small, diamond-shaped ice crystal from thin air and holding it up against the light of the sunset. Marshall's skin began to burn as the refracted light washed over it in gleaming waves. He screamed and thrashed around in the air, coming back to make another pass at his assailant. She again side-stepped as he threw himself back into the shadow of the cave, returning to his normal shape and size.
"Marshall!" Fionna dashed over to him, watching the queen over her shoulder as Cake stepped forward for her turn. "You alright, dude?"
"Shut it, I'm fine," he rasped, glaring back over his burning shoulder to watch Cake take a blow to the stomach from an ice mace. "Just have to wait in the shadows until the sun goes down a little further."
Seconds later, Cake landed in a heap beside him. "Uff, she's not lettin' up today. She's really packin' a wallop, girl!"
Fionna stood up and tightened the grip on her sword, seething. "I got this, you guys. It's probably me she wants, anyway."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Marshall asked, sitting up and leaning against a nearby stalagmite.
"I'll explain later," she responded, and stepped forward to face her nemesis once again. The queen was fiddling with her ice prism, trying to find just the right angle to burn Marshall with another beam from her place in the waning sunlight.
"Ice Queen, what the clam is wrong with you? Why are you such a pervator?"
She grinned and tucked the crystal away in the frontmost part of her dress. "Fionna, please. I know you're not THAT innocent. Surely even a numbskull such as yourself can put two and two together."
"So all you were trying to do was get a few smooches?" Fionna asked, hands in the air. "That was your one and only goal?"
"Mm, perhaps," the queen responded, picking tiny ice crystals from under her sharpened fingernails. "Smooches are pretty great things, don't deny that."
"Well...yeah...I mean...I guess, but...". Her brain continued sputtering as she tried unsuccessfully to predict the queen's next move. "...if that's true, why do all the dressing-up games and creepin' around in my bedroom biz? Isn't it easier to just...like, kidnap princes like a normal ice queen?"
"Oh please, Fionna," came the reply, the queen now moving on to tossing and straightening her extravagant hair, "That never, ever works. I'm not going to get any legit smooches from my captives." There was a pause before she finished with, "Nobody actually WANTS to kiss these icy lips."
Fionna snorted and spit on the ground. "Ya got that right, creeper."
"And anyway," the queen continued, "If I were to go out and kidnap Marshall - or ANYONE, for that matter - you'd come running out to my cave in a heartbeat to come play the mighty hero and perform the daring rescue, wouldn't you? You'd crash my party and snatch my boy toys before I'd even get a chance to play with them!"
Fionna eyed the queen as she carried on. What's her game now? Is she trying to distract me?
"So think about it," came Ice Queen's continued speech. "I asked myself...how can I cash in on someone else's smooches? How do I make off with a makeout? It's quite simple, really. I just have to pretend I'm someone who's looking to light up an old flame again...". She winked at the glowing green eyes in the cave darkness.
"You...you knew about my old relationship?" Marshall asked, adding a little more scathe with each word. "I guess you'd have to have known...you're such a SICKO!"
She responded with a smirk, flashing the ice prism from within her cleavage. Marshall shielded his eyes and tucked himself against the porch, hissing vehemently.
"Cake, you stay back," Fionna warned as she pulled her sword from her pocket. "Go play light shield for Marshall."
"I hope you know what you're doin'...". Cake hesitated before dashing over to the porch. "Be safe, baby."
Fionna retrained her attention on the queen, who stood there, calm as ever, head tilted slightly to one side. "Ice Queen, you're a gross old witch. Your brains are like a rotten cauliflower. I really oughtta just chop 'em right off your stem right now." Her grip on the sword hilt tightened. "...but I have to know some stuff first."
Ice Queen frowned. "Fionna, it's not like to you ask questions first and shoot later...are you feeling alright?"
"I'm fine," Fionna said through partially-clenched teeth. She took a breath before continuing. "I don't know if I even really wanna fight you right now. More than anything, I just wanna talk to you."
Unamused, Ice Queen cracked her knuckles and shifted her weight to her other foot. "You wanna talk? That's particularly boring for an adventurer...".
"No it isn't! Stop that!" She could feel eyes narrowing as the fire behind them was being stoked. "I really need to know what's going on inside that stupid head of yours! I need to know what game you're trying to play here!"
"Game? Oh yes, Fionna, this is most definitely a game. I love games." A wicked smile crossed her lips. "Do you think I'm going to just tell you what kind of game this is, though?"
Fionna's teeth were grinding together. The air around her took on an electrified smell. "...no. I really didn't think you'd just talk that easy...".
The queen held out a hand. "Sounds like there's an 'unless' waiting to follow that sentence...".
The fist holding her sword was visibly shaking now. "...unless I beat it out of your mouth."
The evil grin became a small laugh. She put her hands together and pulled them apart slowly, pulling a long, gleaming ice sword from the air. She grasped the handle, arced it above her head, then brought it to rest at eye level and stepped back into a fighting stance, never once putting her grin away.
She made the taunt. Self-restraint dropped the leash and Fionna charged forward, growling.
So is this it, then? This is what she wants?
She ducked an oncoming swipe and countered with an upward thrust.
She wants to fight me...no, she wants me to fight her.
She whipped a figure-eight through the air, then quickly deflected a counterthrust.
She looks like she's enjoying herself. She looks...alive.
She jumped, kicked, missed, blocked, slashed, missed.
Hard to tell...we're moving too fast.
The swords clashed together, Fionna bearing down on the queen and staring into her unblinking eyes.
"...you seem a little weak today, Fionna..." Ice Queen said with a certain condescending, motherly voice. "I should think you'd have your strength back by now. Especially after eating all that big, healthy breakfast, hm?"
Fionna growled and shoved Ice Queen back, only to clash and hold steady again with the next swing.
"You can probably take that bandage off your hand now. My mirror is only a thin sheet of ice, it shouldn't have hurt THAT hard...".
Fionna snarled and dropped into a sweep kick. Ice Queen leaped just in time to avoid it, then struck down hard, bearing down on her as they once again held their position.
"I kind of figured you'd be nicer to my penguins, though," she goaded. "For a heroine, you sure can be a crab sometimes!"
The fire that had been burning in the pit of Fionna's stomach quickly shot up through her body and burst out of her mouth in the form of an enraged roar. She flew to her feet and began swinging with reckless abandon, sword singing as it sliced the air around them in two. And the ever-grinning Ice Queen danced on the most nimble of feet, ice sword swishing and slashing in great swaths, trailing glittering ice fragments in each arc.
Cake and Marshall watched in curious fascination as the two wove tight circles around each other, sparks and shards speckling at every twist. "...are they even fightin' anymore?" Cake asked.
Marshall shook his head as he watched through squinted eyes. "Can't tell...looks more like they're...dancing or something. I almost feel like I should be laying down a chill jam for them."
Cake elbowed him without taking her eyes off the scene. "Hush, you. I've just never seen Fionna this intense before. Ice Queen neither."
"Yeah...", Marshall said, rubbing his side. "It's kind of pretty."
Fionna landed a mighty blow that shattered the queen's blade. While she tried to respawn a new blade, Fionna seized the opportunity and body-slammed her full weight against the queen, throwing her to the ground. She quickly flew down on top of her nemesis, straddling her midsection and placing the blade against her throat.
"...well done, Fionna," Ice Queen wheezed. "I'm impressed you were even able to keep up with me at all!"
"Shut it." The words sounded hollow now, after using them so many times. "You've got nowhere left to go, witch! Now are you going to tell me what this stupid game is all about, or not?"
"That depends..." came the reply, accompanied by a sharp poke against Fionna's neck. "Are you going to keep playing?"
Fionna slowly turned her head to see a gnarled rod of ice pointed directly at her, stemming up from Ice Queen's upturned palm on the ground. "Ugh, that's not fair!"
"What's not fair, darling?" The words were again crooned in the Condescending Mom voice, with a hint of puckered lips.
"You!" Fionna yelled. "You're not fair! You won't tell me what's going on at all! You act like my enemy for years, then suddenly you start acting like we should be friends! You stalk me and mess with my head, you even KISS me! And then when I go try to talk to you, you disappear! BUT I KNOW YOU'RE STILL THERE BECAUSE YOU MADE ME A FREAKIN' BREAKFAST! And NOW, you suddenly drop me and start trying to perv up my vampire bro here, with NO EXPLANATION AT ALL!"
There was a distinct pause filled only with the sound of Fionna's heavy breathing. Cake's mouth had been hanging slightly open since the word 'kiss'.
Fionna took a moment before resuming with, "I just don't understand what you're trying to do!"
Ice queen blinked, then life came back to her face. "Oh, for a moment I wasn't sure which part of that was the 'not fair' part."
"The what?"
"The part where I won't explain the game, or the part where I started chasing Marshall instead of you," she chimed, snickering softly.
"AAAAGGH!" Fionna reared back, both hands raising the sword up. As she brought it down, the queen shoved Fionna's face to one side with her free hand, rolled out from under her, then spun around, kicking Fionna hard in the stomach before cartwheeling back to her feet.
Fionna was on all fours, sputtering for breath and nearly vomiting before struggling to her feet again. She's so FAST, was all she could manage to think.
When she looked up, the queen had once again formed a gleaming ice blade, halos of sunset beams dancing and spinning in the air around it. A slightly exasperated but still bemused expression was on her face.
"Fionna, you're so incredibly dense. It's one of the things that keeps our lovely little game going, but it really gets annoying sometimes. I suppose I'll have to spell this out for you."
She ran her finger along the edge of the ice blade, opening up a cut when it reached the tip. "Look at me. I'm an old immortal queen. Nobody loves me. Nobody wants to love me. And for that, I'm a bitter old witch. But that doesn't mean I don't crave a little company now and again, right?"
She licked the purple blood from finger, closing her eyes and beginning to pace in a large circle. Fionna gripped her sword and matched her movements to the queen's, not taking her eyes off her.
"I needed to feel like I could be loved," Ice Queen continued, a bit sourly. "I needed to feel like someone out there would willingly kiss me and mean it. I wanted to feel some true compassion for a change! There's no hope for Ice Queen, with a reputation like hers. There's no love in that future. No way. But Marshall seemed so...alone. So vulnerable. So ripe and ready to feel the warmth of an embrace again. I decided to use his old relationship with Gumball as a stepping stone and hijack a few kisses out of him."
There was a retching sound from near the porch.
"I played all the right cards, pulled all the right strings. And Marshall gave me exactly what I wanted. I had him, long and hard. But something still didn't feel right."
"Of course it didn't feel right," came Marshall's disgusted voice. "Gumball doesn't have what you have down there...in your cold, dead heart!"
Ice Queen scowled at him and bared her ice prism, once again throwing him back with a hiss. "I mean I wasn't satisfied! It turns out that getting what I want isn't exactly what I want. The real fun of the game is finding out there's more to it. To find there's another chapter at the end of the book. True, Marshall gave me what I wanted, but he gave it to me all too easily. All I had to was know which levers to pull. What fun is a game when you already know whether you'll win or lose?"
Fionna hesitated, listening carefully while remaining poised for action.
The queen wasn't staring at Fionna anymore. Her eyes were unfocused. She was staring into empty space as she continued, feet carrying her automatically.
"What I really want are the the things I can't have. What I really want is for there to be no ending to the game, only another bonus level. I want to keep chasing shadows. That's the fun of it for me, Fionna. I'm obsessed with playing games."
She wasn't moving in a circle anymore. She was slowly advancing. Her piercing eyes were staring right through Fionna's as she continued her monologue. "The only thing that drives these old bones anymore is obsession. Desire for more. Obsession and desire, the vehicle of passion, the life-affirming heat of pursuit. That's what Marshall couldn't give me. He wanted a 'happily ever after'. He wanted an ending. But it's so easy to get that. Where's the challenge? Where's the thrill? The passion?"
She stopped a few feet before Fionna and inhaled deeply. "...but you, Fionna. You are a challenge."
She oozed her way into a sparring stance, wicked smile once again stretching across her face. "I can never tell if you're serious about lopping my head clean off my shoulders. I've seen just how angry and vicious you can become. And I know our little game hasn't helped calm you down at all...".
"What is she waiting for?" Cake whispered furiously from her position beside the porch. "Why doesn't she clock her upside the head already?"
Marshall grabbed her arm. "Shh. Let this play out first. She needs this...".
Which one are you talking about? Cake thought surreptitiously.
Fionna noticed she'd been grinding her teeth again and consciously stopped. She didn't ease her grip on the sword, though. "You're a disgusting creep, Ice Queen...".
"You say that so often," the queen continued, shuffling forward a bit, looking more and more like a cat ready to pounce. "You say that I have no heart. That I only hunt down innocent princes to seal some unfillable hole in my unkillable soul, and that I can never truly be happy...but you're wrong."
Fionna brought her sword in close, ready to strike.
"I'm the Ice Queen. I'm nothing BUT a creature of passion. I haven't stopped chasing what I love since the game started. I feel alive whenever the game is going. I'd say my heart is on fire, but that's not very Ice Queenly, is it? My heart burns, yes, but it's like...like the cold icy burn of winter's deathbite...yeah, that's more like it. I have my motivation. I have my drive. My obsession. And that obsession, that PASSION...is presently focused on you."
Fionna's body shuddered slightly as she exhaled. I knew it. I knew it was going to come down to this. She's...actually in love with me.
What. The. PLOP.
Her muscles tightened. Her heels dug into the earth and she surged forward. An enraged yell flew from her mouth. Sword raised high, she launched into a powerful overhead arc. The blade came down, faltered, and tumbled end-over-end, landing at the queen's feet with a thump. Fionna's hands maintained momentum though, and completed their arc, stopping with a muffled thump of their own as her wrists banged against her crotch. She quickly looked down to see her wrists bound in ice.
She snapped her head up to see the queen launch another two bolts of ice in swirling coils around her body, freezing her in a thinly-bound lump of ice that encompassed all but her head.
On cue, Cake dashed out from the shadows, limbs bulking up and stretching out with each snarling step. Ice Queen deftly launched into a fluid, swaying motion, ice flowing from her fingertips as it formed a twisting, sprawling rollercoaster ride of loops and curves all around the immediate vicinity. Cake slid forward, uncontrollably riding atop the slick curves. She hissed at the queen, trying to extend her fist into a punch, but her body was being thrown around too violently to maintain a stable transformation. Her fist might be impaled by the ubiquitous icicles on the undersides of the ice track if she tried.
With Cake momentarily indisposed, Ice Queen refocused her attention on her victim. "And now, to prove my point..." she said, playing with the tuft of hair dangling at the front of Fionna's forehead. "Look at yourself right now. I have you in my icy grip, and there's nothing you can do to stop me."
She trailed a stinging, cold finger along Fionna's already nearly numb cheek as she sidled around behind her. "I've won the battle. I have you all to myself. I can quite literally do anything I see fit to my little prisoner."
Fionna felt her skin crawling. Not exactly in a disgusted way, but in an excited way. Her skin itched. No, it boiled. She could feel the burning, bubbling heat welling up from the depths of her stomach, surging up beneath her breast and into her heart, right up her throat and into her cheeks, which were now flaming red. She wasn't sure what emotion this was anymore. It was deeper than anger, and it burned like embarrassment. It was infuriatingly difficult for her to describe. She felt the queen glide behind her, her face slowly coming into view from the other side as she continued to speak.
"Look at you, Fionna. You're frozen on the outside, but boiling on the inside. There's nothing you can do to stop me."
Fionna felt the queen's cold breath against her face as she whispered, "I've got you in the palm of my hand...". She shivered as the queen's cold tongue slithered gently up her earlobe.
Something definitely stirred inside her, bringing her body to a full boil.
"But, as I've said," Ice Queen continued, much louder now, swinging back around to face Fionna head-on. "Where's the fun if you can't even struggle? What challenge is there if I've got all the cards? Where's the danger? Where's the passion? No, this isn't what I want. It's too easy. I'd much rather you were in face than under my thumb."
"This battle is over. I've clearly won," she announced, hands gesturing to the scene around them. "I certainly expect you to do better next time, my darling...I think I'll leave you to thaw on your own. Let me just leave you with this, as a parting gift...".
Taking her face in her hands, Ice Queen pulled in close and kissed Fionna, slowly and deeply. This wasn't like Fionna's dream at all. No funny business, no wriggling tongues, no pumping cold air down her throat. This was a soft, honest-to-Grod kiss. Fionna swore she could feel herself floating inside her ice tomb, whole body buzzing and cold-burning.
When at last the queen released her and took a step back, she asked in a smooth, silken voice, "Well...how did you like it, my dear?"
Chin quivering, Fionna clenched her fists and responded the only way she knew how. She leaned her head back as far as it would go, then angrily spit on Ice Queen's face.
Her familiar grin resurfaced as she licked the offending saliva from her cheek. "That's what I love about you, Fionna. Always so eloquent. You know exactly the right words to say to get my blood boiling. But it's time now I bid you farewell. Until we meet agyeaAAAGHK!"
The queen doubled over as the broad side of Marshall's axe bass slammed into her stomach. Marshall sat hunched on all fours at her feet, delicately stepping his way through the ever-lengthening shadows of the evening. He rose to a fuller height and hit her again, on the back this time. As she hit the ground, her tiara flew forward off her head and into the grass.
Fionna snapped out of her shock and tried flexing her way out of the ice prison. She found that she could move her limbs between her body and the walls of the ice, like they were floating in water. Makes sense, she thought. I've been boiling this thing alive with my feelings!
As she rocked from side to side, Cake meandered her way over to the scene, after finally reaching the end of the roller coaster. Ice Queen was gasping for air, breath coming out in heavy fog as she realized what was missing. She scrambled for the tiara, but Cake was first to set hands on it.
"Give it back!" the queen shrieked. "I NEED that!"
"No way, you freak!" Cake stretched herself upward on elongating legs, out of reach of the queen's flailing fingers. Marshall grabbed her snow white hair and yanked, hearing the old joints in her back crack and pop loudly as she bent backward. The queen frantically took hold of Cake's legs and pulled hard, toppling her to the ground. The tiara rolled out of her hands a short distance away.
Fionna had meanwhile rocked her tomb hard enough to bring it down on its side, where with one final shove, she was able to shatter it, shivering as the water gushed out all around her. She quickly pulled herself to her feet to join the fray.
In a fit of panic, Ice Queen rolled her way out from under her assailants, kicking them both away and focusing her attention on the tiara. Marshall landed in a heap in one of the few remaining pools of sunlight. He screamed and struggled to get to his feet as his skin burned and bubbled.
On cue, all of the girls jumped into a dive. Before Cake could snatch the tiara, she was knocked aside by Fionna, who had been diving instead for Marshall. She quickly scooped him into the nearest shadow as Ice Queen clutched her treasured headpiece tightly against her bosom. She stayed that way for a few moments, breathing hard before slowly rising back to her feet and replacing it on her head.
She turned to Fionna, face slowly melting from fear to a hint of that familiar grin. "...see what I mean? Always so eloquent...".
Without another word, she blasted off, riding atop a flurry of billowing snow. She half giggled, half cackled as she looked back over her shoulder, soaring off into the sky. Fionna glared up at her, waiting for her to disappear into the pillowed clouds before coming back down to earth.
"Why didn't you grab her crown, Fionna?!" Cake growled as she dusted herself off. "We coulda been done with her for good!"
"I had to save Marshall, Cake!" Fionna replied defensively. "...I didn't want anyone to die out here."
Marshall hissed as he curled up against a large rock. "I would've lived. You should've gone for the tiara."
Fionna crossed her arms and frowned. "You're welcome, by the way."
She turned to look back at Ice Queen's rollercoaster creation. It was already melting fast, despite the evening air being quite cool. None of the queen's creations lasted long once she left the scene. Thoughts were screaming through her head faster than she could think them all, and the weird, burning feeling had never left. She wanted to hit something. She wanted to hit Ice Queen. But now she knew that was exactly what the queen wanted.
This is so messed up, she thought grimly.
The sun continued to drop out of sight. The world definitely felt like spring had finally come, now that it was already over. The snow had finally retreated back into the mountains, and there was a definite aura of love wafting through the air.
And all of it made Fionna's stomach turn.