AN:

Hey there everybody. The first thing I wanna say is that the feedback that I'm getting is truly insane, it's flattering beyond words to hear that you enjoy this to such an extent, and I only hope that the enjoyment builds as the story goes on.

Moving on to more details on the story itself, I've been thinking on a set schedule, so you guys can check in at a regular time instead of having to guess if I've uploaded again. I'm going to try to start at two uploads a week; the next upload will be on Monday, and after that I'll post next on Friday, so you guys can start and end the week with it. Sometimes I might be writing more, and I'm thinking that that'll go towards a buffer, so I'll have chapters handy if the dreaded writers block ever rears its ugly head. Things are starting to heat up though, and I'm more excited than ever to continue. Hope you enjoy!

Chapter 3: Watch Out for Flying Sparks

"By the smell of it… I'd guess this is it."

Finn waved his hand in front of his nose, coughing and grimacing. "Sure smells like something. Yuck."

Marceline drifted over to the cave's mouth, a tall, sharp fissure in a sheer wall of iced rock. The chasm echoed with white noise, far-distant projections of sounds made deep within. Finn couldn't help but grin with anticipation; that kinda sound mumbo-jumbo could often trick beginners into thinking a place was haunted, but to a seasoned ear like the Last Human of Ooo, it was a telltale sign of an extensive cave system.

"That 'something' you're smelling are volcanic gasses," Marceline explained. "Don't smell them too much Finn, they're crazy toxic."

"Nasty stuffs," Finn said, peering into the gloom that clouded the depths of the fissure. "But how are we gonna do this, then? Gas plus caves and tunnels is pretty much the worst combo in forever. If we could be running into pockets of it down there, we may as well go home now."

"Hmm…" Marceline thumbed her way through a tattered old notebook. "According to Ash's journal, Thoros has a mondo ventilation setup. You may smell it at times, but the concentrations are low enough that it shouldn't be a problem so long as you don't stop in a spot where it's built up."

"Nice nice nice," Finn half-sang, pumping his hands in the air as he approached the cave mouth. Marceline followed along, and the two made their first steps into the dungeon. Thankfully, it was lit; there were torches propped in stone sconces placed along the walls. With a sigh of relief, Marceline removed her hat and gloves, stuffing the latter into the former and setting them by the cave entryway.

"Oh man that feels better," she sighed, lacing her fingers together and stretching her arms out over her head. "Do you have any idea how much those gloves can itch?"

"Hmm, I guess? I feel that way with long socks sometimes," Finn responded. "Ooh, and turtleneck sweaters. Laaaaame."

"Huh… I dunno, I kinda like turtlenecks. Mad cozy, ya know?"

Finn blew his red-eating pal a raspberry, but said nothing further about it as they continued their march into the bowels of the mountain. It seemed that Ash's journal was accurate about the gas; Finn detected an occasional faint whiff here and there, but never for more than a few moments. Eventually, scenery started to switch around; rough, natural cave transitioned into smoother, hewn stone along the floor and walls, and the stalagmites and stalactites they had been navigating around had been obviously broken down, if the flat nubs dotting the ceiling were anything to go by. The torch sconces, previously mere iron frames, bolted to the stone walls wherever smooth spots presented themselves, became ornate articles, carved into the stone with exacting detail. They depicted the visage of some fearsome beast, with curved horns atop its head and four long, vicious tusks protruding from its mouth, between which the torch was cradled. The angle of the floor began to take a gentle downward incline, step by step leading them deeper and deeper in.

"Alrighty then… According to the journal, we should be reaching one of the first hazards; the gatehouse." Marceline slapped the journal shut and passed it to her companion, who stuffed it into his bag.

"Sounds gnarly," the blond boy responded with a grin. "I'm going to assume that there are some gnarly gatekeepers keeping the gnarly gate?"

"You know it, wild-child," Marcie said with a wink. "Thoros rules over his Forgelings. They're like his kids, made of scraps, slag, and cuttings from the things he smiths, brought to life by bits of his power. They help him with his creations, mine the ores that he needs, and take care of his domain while he works. And they can be pretty tough sometimes." The last bit was laced with a tiny bit of challenge; just enough to get Finn's blood pumping at the thought. A little test, to gauge the presence of something that had left as suddenly as it had arrived, much to Marceline's confusion.

"Finn is strong. He's always been strong," she thought to herself, watching the boy studiously as he strolled along, arms resting idly on the hilts of his swords. "But… Not like this… Never quite like this…"

For the first time in centuries, Marceline held her left arm with her right hand, and felt goosebumps along her ashen skin. The imagines were still fresh in her mind; one moment, he was Finn. Goofy, childish, excitable Finn, practically stupefied in that way he got whenever he was trying to hide something. Bright. Familiar. Like a little shard of sunshine, bound in human form. Normal, even, if that word could ever apply to the Last Human of Ooo.

Then she had been hit, and in an instant her mortal friend had changed completely, into something of a different nature entirely. She remembered watching him, head tilted in confusion as he had pulled himself to his feet. Even there, he seemed like a complete stranger, no longer the joy filled, carefree young man with an immaculate heart. And though she had thought it at first, he hadn't devolved to some animalistic state. It was no mad, brutal rage, though he was mad, and his actions were brutal. There was intent. Calculation. He hadn't savaged those spirit-armors.

He took them apart, with the same purposeful method that a butcher takes apart a steer. Cut by cut, from roast to steak to trimmings. It was a manner she expected from serial killers, not that bouncing ball of positivity and selflessness. And that was only the abstract; her more immediate observations were far more mundane, but even more unsettling.

"The kid's a friggin' killing machine," she admitted in awe, and it was an objective statement. He had struck like a meteor, completely sudden and utterly devastating. His blades were a whirlwind of steel, his movements like greased lightning. He cut deeper than a razor, pierced further than any arrow. He was a ghost, completely untouchable, and then he was a fiend, terrible and mighty.

In honesty, it scared her. And in honesty still, it aroused her like nothing she had witnessed before. She thought back to that morning, when she had teased his state of undress. At the time, she hadn't even made note of it; Finn wasn't a sexual being to her. How could he have been, he was as pure as newly fallen snow? But now her mind was racing with images that found her biting her lip and hoping there was no rosy color to the pallor of her skin. She imagined the way his trim, slender frame moved beneath that sweatshirt, his pale skin hiding bundles of lean but powerful muscle, and how firm it'd feel beneath her touch, like cords of steel. It had been over a thousand years since Marceline Abadeer had felt the beat of her own heart. And for the first time since, she had to remind herself that it could beat no more, and the pounding drum in her chest was only her imagination.

"This is bad," she thought to herself. "Dangerous. You can't do that to him… You closed your heart a long, long time ago and Finn… I can't put him through that. I won't. It'd break him completely."

It had been centuries since her cold heart had felt love, but that certainly didn't leave the Vampire Queen celibate. Mortal love dies. It fades. Marceline did not. Could not. Oh, she had tried at first, and again and again, but the pain it brought her was too much to bear, so love was no more for her. But while mortal love would always fall to the passage of time, mortal lovers could be quite transient without repercussion. No more abandonment. No more loneliness. No more pain. She found company, comfort, and pleasure, and to her battered, lonely heart, that was enough, and it had been enough ever since.

"Finn can't be like that," she decided immediately. "He's too clean, too pure. If we did… Anything, he would fall for me, and then he would age, and I would watch. Unchanging. And eventually, I would move on, and it would break him. And you would hate yourself. Again…"

She eyed Finn, watching him with a cautious expression on her face. She wanted him. Badly. Wanted to feel that focused, precise ferocity, but she knew she never could. And that only made it worse.

"Whoa…" Finn stopped in his tracks, breaking Marceline's train of thought. She stopped too, and they both stared at the sight before them. The door was twenty feet tall, and made entirely of black iron. Its surfaces bore the image of Thoros at his forge, his horned, tusked face stooped over an anvil, a piece of steel between his tongs and his hammer raised to strike it. The image was seamless with the door, forged from the very same metal. How such detail was achieved was completely unknown to either of the two adventurers. "I guess this is it," the Last Human said, rather impressed.

"Yeah, seems like it." Marceline flashed her friend a sly grin. No sense in losing her cool. "You wanna knock, or should I?" she asked jokingly.

"Heh, no reason we can't do it together. Teamwork, girl!" He began an easy stride forward towards the door, completely unfazed, and Marceline followed, eyeing the slabs of black metal with a bit more caution than her companion.

"Halt!" called a thunderous voice, seemingly from nowhere. "Who are you, to seek passage into the halls of mighty Thoros? State your business!"

"I'm Finn, a human boy, and this is Marceline the Vampire Queen!" Finn responded. "And we're here for your bass!"

For a while, there was no response, before the voice returned. "There… There is no bass here! Now begone, buffoon. Find your fish elsewhere!"

"F-fish…?" The hero looked to Marceline in confusion, who wore a rather exasperated expression. "Marcie, what the gonk are they talkin' about?"

"Ahhh… Heheh…" The immortal took a sheepish grin, scratching her neck nervously. "Ah yeah, about that. I meant to tell you that it's pronounced 'base', but… Well, you were singing that song and I didn't wanna kill your vibe. Soooooo sorry."

"Huh. Eh, no worries." He turned back to face the gate. "I mean bass! We're here for the bass!"

"Oh, well why didn't you just say so?" the gate called back. "People come around to see it all the time!"

"So… So you'll let us have it then?"

"NOPE!" Came the thunderous response. "People come for the bass, and we make 'em cry about it!" The gate began to grind its way open, revealing an assembling platoon of Forgelings, their dull metal bodies seeping at the joints with the fire that animated them. Each bore a pair of bladed arms, which they brandished and waved at their two foes. "Get ready to CRY!" The door roared, and the formation charged, their iron feet clanking along the ground.

"We're gonna make you guys cry!" Finn shouted back, drawing his root swords. Marceline began her transformation, shifting into the massive, monstrous bat form that she preferred. As Finn charged in, a bolt of lightning streaking across the chamber, his vampire ally spread her wings, soaring above his head to strike the rear ranks of their foes.

Finn met the Forgelings with his swords leading, dipping and sliding between and around the attacks of the iron warriors to find homes in joints and gaps. He knew their metallic bodies would be immune to his attacks; maybe if he still had his father's demonblood sword, he would have had more success, but his root swords would never prevail against such a sturdy construction. Their joints, however, were bound together by a less hardy mix of slag and shavings, and proved to be much more vulnerable. The golden-haired hero began to dispatch them handily, a whirling gale of parries, deflections, and killing strokes.

Marceline landed among them with a thunderous impact, shaking the entire cavern when she did, and she immediately began wading in among them, grinding the group down between Finn's furious onslaught and her own crushing blows, sending the Forgelings tumbling aside like bowling pins. Their heated blades bit into her, but her hide had a supernatural toughness, and what little damage they did healed itself almost instantly. She gave a low, grating chuckle at the Forgelings' efforts; they were completely outclassed.

Marceline smashed the last foe before her, bringing her hands down in a brutal axe-handle, just in time to see Finn parry his last Forgeling's slash wide, bringing his longer blade down to sever it and spinning round to take advantage of the opening, his shorter blade hacking into the neck joint and nearly severing it. He raised his foot, thrusting it forward into his foe's chest with his hips driving it through, blasting the Forgeling off its feet and onto its back. The Last Human leapt in, showing no mercy as he hacked the prone Forgeling apart. He stood, sheathing his blades as Marceline shifted back into her humanoid form. She brushed some lint off the front of her top.

"We cleaned them up pretty nicely," she said, looking around to admire their handiwork. "I've got high hopes baby-face. You and I make a pretty rad combo."

"Mucho thanko, Marcie," he responds, grinning wide. "Now let's get this show on the road, we've got a bass to nab!"

"Slam-jammin'," she agreed, reaching down to nab something from a fallen Forgeling. "And I've got the key. Follow on, bright eyes."

As Marceline floated off, she was relieved to note that she felt calm and collected; not the charged hormonal mess she had felt like before their most recent conflict. "Ok, Finn is growing up, and he's growing up to be obscenely hot. But that's alright, you're not worried. Marcie, you're more than a thousand years old. You've seen it all, I'm sure you can handle staying platonic with an attractive friend. Besides, he's still got the mentality of a child! Come on girl, if you were looking for a fling you could definitely do better. Yeah. Heck yeah. Keep it real, baby, you're doin' alright."

And with that, she took a deep breath in and opened the gate.