Part 3: Survivor's Guilt

"Awaken, Fred."

Finn's eyes grogged tighter. "Uggh."

A shaft of light materialized photon by photon directly behind his eyelids. "Aaaaaaaah, all right, all right, I'm awake!"

And now Finn couldn't tell whether or not his eyelids were open, since the world without was just as white.

"You are awake. Fred."

He didn't like the sounds of this. He looked up. Sure enough, there floated Quasipan, his sinister smile intact.

"Where—"

"Your inner world. Rather barren, I must say," he chided snidely.

"It can't be! I've been to my inner world before, back when Marceline lost her memory! It had stuff!"

"Marceline? Oh, yes, isn't she that poor princess you slew?"

"What!?" Finn squinted as blots of color dripped down from Quasipan's perch in the blank sky.

"What's this? You don't remember? Well, I suppose a mass murderer such as yourself WOULD need to scrub his mind of his heinous deeds when faced with a psychic. You probably can't even remember that last desperate act of deception. No last-minute memory swapping can fool me, however. I'll tan your hide inside and out. Shall I paint the scene for you, tyrant boy?"

The mind-ink swirled and spiraled and took form.

"I don't know what you wore when you drove the stake through her heart… I'm looking through your mind's eye, after all, and I only know almost everything…" he purred. "So I'll just go with what suits you best."

At Quasipan's behest, an executioner's dread drapery superimposed itself on Finn's clothes. Finn felt dazed, disoriented, even as the paint hopped onto his hand and congealed into blood and splinters. Finn began to breathe heavily, afraid at what the mass of black at the corners of his eye, quivering at his feet, might be.

"Marceline… No, I… but…"

It was mute, this memory; even the bats and the shuddering castle doors didn't make a sound. But the pleading, the pleading was in her eyes. No outstretched hand could wound his heart so totally.

"She looked too human, she had to die." Quasipan had to stuff his paw in his mouth to keep from snickering. The false memory was working, it was taking root!

"Who!? WHO DID THIS?" Finn's adventurer instinct took hold of him; he searched the chamber wildly for a culprit, a clue.

"Oh how you tormented her," Quasipan pressed on. "And to think, it all started with an innocent prank. But in the end, a vampire couldn't be allowed to be happy—especially a loner like her! She may not have had a reflection herself, but she certainly reflected YOU."

Maddeningly, only the cat's voice rang in Finn's head. Overtaking his own thoughts. Replacing them with lies.

"NO!" Finn resisted, he pushed, he held his ground. He crouched down and cradled Marceline's shrinking, withered form in his arms. This is humanity—humanity is warmth and love. Feel my warmth, Marceline!

"Oh the humanity," said Quasipan.

The castle doors flew open and the sunlight erased Marceline like an overexposed photo.

"You humans did love abusing your 'warmth and love,' didn't you?"

A crest of paint engulfed Finn, leaving him with a torch in one hand and a gun in the other, before they dissolved and dribbled down his fingers.

"It's not as though you were any less cruel in the sunlight, you know. And as the last of your kind, you must have been one nasty nugget indeed. Were your fellow humans not enough to slake your thirst for violence?"

Quasipan's confabulations were stacking one on top of the other. If there was one thing Quasipan knew precisely how to do, it was to instill self-loathing.

"Once, you slaughtered an entire tribe before lunch!"

The painterly scene of the vampire castle flipped upside-down, so that Finn's feet rested on the other reverse side of the floor, and the silent bats fluttered upside down beneath him. Added mind-ink bubbled before him into shapes and hues—a new scene painted on top of the old one, both playing in real time simultaneously.

Balloonfolk! It was a party. A celebration, congratulating the smiley balloon people for the successful lifting of their curse to die. They had braved the rain of daggers, and survived to the last man, now taking refuge in Finn's friendless, video game-less hovel of a house.

A voice that sound curiously like Quasipan's escaped one of the balloonfolk's lips: "At last our blood oath is fulfilled! Finally, we can live!"

"But they weren't counting on your deadly fascination with knives, were they?"

Before Finn even realized it, A skean span into existence in the palm of his hand. And the balloonfolk appeared gouged, and popped in turn.

"Without allies, without hope. The last human, enemy even to the most harmless and innocuous creatures, you are without a doubt the most evil being an Ooo. Nay, but had you not committed those awful, awful things, then still you would have suffered, since your fellow humans plunged the world into chaos before you yourself could rip the leg off an ant."

Finn stood dazed, frowning, as the skean in his palm spun and pointed itself at him.

"I want YOU to admit that your race, that your life, should end now, by your own hand. Of course, the planet would rather you and your evil brethren had never seen the light of day to begin with, but we can't be picky about the past, now can we."

Finn could only chuckle.

"What's so funny? Cracked at last?"

Finn sighed and shook his head. "You don't know almost everything, Quasipan. You don't know ANYTHING. At! Allllllllllllll!"

Quasipan hissed, feline slits darting left and right.

"This, this is a lame-o sword, my friend." Finn gripped and shattered it. He poked the paint with his free hand. "Heh heh."

Panic. "C-Cretin! FOOL! Knave, scoundrel, CRETIN! What of your campaign to skewer Princess Bubblegum's heart!?"

A figure vaguely resembling Ricardio the Heart Guy began to form from the gloop in his hand, but Finn gently molded it over and applied his own will. The erstwhile dagger transformed into a copy of his trusty beat-up sword.

"You can't skewer a heart, Quasipan. You can maybe mess with memories, but bonds of the heart are UNBEATABLE! And there's one person you forgot to factor into your lies—"

"Who, the Flame Princess whom you encased in eternal cryo-slumber, ICE KING!?"

The executioner's garb turned into the Ice King's blue robe, but Finn was more preoccupied with slashing away at the procession of frozen princesses Quasipan was parading before him.

"Haha, they all look way different than normal," Finn said as he dispelled Lumpy Space Princess, whose figment was lacking the star on her forehead. "Rush job, your godliness? Look , you even forgot to give Turtle Princess her crown, you patoot!"

Now it was Quasipan searching for a culprit. "Who!? Who is this person closest to your heart!? I'll eat that memory and spit it back at you!"

"It's…" Finn pointed his mind-sword skyward and hollered it out: ADVENTURE TIIIIIIIIIIME!"

Poof. Jake appeared at Finn's flank, still hovering in his meditation pose.