AN:

Holy crap it's been a whiiiiiiiiiiile. Let me start by saying I'm really, really, REALLY sorry it's been so damn long. Part of this hiatus was caused by me moving back into my parents' home (long story short, academia is pure hell), and part of it was caused by lack of motivation, but in all honesty, I haven't really sat down and just worked at it in a while, and that ultimately falls on my head. Please don't remove it from my shoulders in retribution. D:

Second order of business, Adventure Time itself has sort of run away from me. I'm not up to date. DON'T SPOIL ANYTHING. I'm going to be pulling a Kitsune13 here (shoutout to my favorite author on , if you like Final Fantasy VII, and CloudxTifa doesn't make your blood boil, be sure to check out her work) in that I'll be attempting to pull major details from the canon plot and tie them in, but only when it's possible; Finn Grows Up is its own thing-thang.

Chapter 6: Ascension

The drip of melting ice, slowly worming its way through the stone, drop by drop, inch by inch, was inescapable, following a floating young woman with long raven hair and a walking young man with bright blue eyes up every step they cleared.

Their first objective, quite obviously, had been to get out of the primary access shaft. That one hadn't really been so difficult, but once they were out, they realized that it would make getting up a lot less straightforward. They had stopped by some Forgelings to ask for directions (before whomping them, naturally), and had aimed themselves towards one of the four secondary shafts, one at each corner of the mountain. The upside to the change of plan was obviously no weaponized sunlight. The downside was that there was a lot more foot-traffic. If Thoros didn't know they were still kicking around before, he sure as spit did now.

"So Marcie," Finn whispered, swords in hand and low at his sides, pulling up the rear as the Vampire Queen floated up in front, carefully scouting the smaller spiral staircase as they advanced up it. "Assuming that Thoros knows we're in here, what do you think he's going to have waiting for us at the top?"

"Well the first thing I'm really, really hoping is that he's not gonna be there himself," Marceline responded. "That'd be a really handful, but I'd wager he'll not wanna look at the bass, so…" She gave a simple shrug to close her statement.

That scant movement of her smooth, narrow shoulders sent Finn's heart racing, followed closely by the vamp casting a curious gaze back towards him. The Last Human flinched, and then hid his face behind his white hood, pretending to examine something on the wall they had passed. "He'll… He'll probably have mondo-Forgelings up and around it, though… Hmm…"

Marceline floated back down towards him. "What's that?" she asked curiously, reclining on one side as she drifted around him till they were face to face. "Got something cooking up in the ol' brainpan?"

"Well, I was thinking that it'd probably be a good idea to…" Finn was cut off by a cool hand cupped over his mouth.

"Alright, great, cool, but save it for later, bright-eyes. We've got company." She cast her ruby eyes back up the staircase, where a telltale clanking that they'd both come to recognize heralded the approach of a detachment of Thoros' minions.

The boy grasped Marceline's wrist, pulling her hand from his face. "I was actually going to suggest we try to keep a lower profile," he said, tugging her along in the opposite direction of the new danger, down the stairs. The undead dame followed. "We've come across three patrols so far, and managed to keep them from breaking away to bring reinforcements, but I dunno if that's the kinda thing that may change with our luck," he explained. "I would suggest we try to reach a different secondary shaft. At the very least, Thoros will start wondering why his patrols are going missing in this area, so we should get gone before he steps up his response."

Finn dragged Marcie towards a doorway they had passed a short while ago. "What's the wad's book say about it?" he asked, pointing to the symbol on the adjacent wall. Finn hadn't meant to add extra venom to that word, but for some reason, his memories of Ash seemed extra distasteful.

It took Marceline a few moments to respond, taken a bit off guard by the Last Human's decisiveness. "When was the last time anyone dragged you around, or gave you orders, miss Undead Mistress?" her inner voice teased her. She brushed it away, flipping open the journal to a chart Ash had made of the mountain's list of symbols. Had to hand it to the wad, he took good notes. "Hm, box on the wall means a storage level," she explained. "A plain box means it's less than half full, a box with a '+' in it means it's more than half full, a full cube means it's filled to capacity, and a box with an 'x' means it's being reorganized."

"Then this level is full, so hopefully not too active," Finn said definitively. The dragging continued, and Marceline was again too surprised to resist, though she could have pulled her hand free without any effort.

"Not too many people in Ooo with the guts to drag the Vampire Queen around, are there?" she thought to herself. "Ash was like that, too. Always bossing you around, but you liked it; made you feel more normal. Didn't it?" Marcie found that thinking of Finn and Ash as similar left a sour taste in her mouth, but at the same time, it was a different kind of bossy; Finn's sudden seizure of command was a sort of strategic necessity. He'd found a solution to a very immediate problem, and a good one. Sure, Marceline the Vampire Queen was a rockin' machine, oh so mean, who didn't take orders as a matter of routine, but at the same time, she wasn't so stubborn as to ignore good strategy.

Ash was always telling her to make him a sandwich, or a glass of fruit punch, or some other asinine task. That kind of bossiness had gone from endearingly cheeky to downright annoying, and fast. "And the wad couldn't strategize his way out of bed and into the kitchen," her inner voice reminded her, giving her a firm wall between the two in her headspace, along with a quiet giggle at several centuries worth of stubbed toes. "And he always ran into the same nightstand, too! The exact same one!"

The two slipped into the storage room, which was much more sparsely lit than either of the two stairways they'd been through, with torches placed sparingly along the walls and on supporting columns. Marceline began to float deeper, but Finn caught her attention with a few snaps of his fingers, and beckoned her over; he was glued to the wall aside the doorway, tucked out of the light that spilled through from the stairwell. Marceline raised an eyebrow questioningly, but the human boy merely beckoned her over again. She sighed, before drifting soundlessly over; Finn crouched down on one knee, making room for Marceline to hover over and slightly behind him. She then flipped herself, so that her mouth was closer to his ear.

"That looks mad uncomfy, yo," he whispered, sporting a smirk made of a mix of both amusement and confusion at her seemingly precarious orientation. Marceline merely winked and stuck out her tongue, before crossing her arms behind her head and stretching her legs up towards the ceiling, like she were relaxing on a couch that had been bolted to the wall behind her.

"Vampire rules, baby-face," she reminded him quietly, her voice husky and low in a way Finn secretly enjoyed. "We need not heed to gravity, along with anything on our persons." As if to fully detail what that meant, Finn felt tickling about his scalp, neck, and shoulders. His thoughts going first to some kinda creepy-crawly, his fingers found soft, silky tresses instead, which curled around his fingers, looking like strands of midnight under the low torches. Craning his neck up and around to view her fully, he found Marceline's hair spilled out mostly around her back where it usually hung, despite the fact that gravity should have it draped fully over his own back. A few long, thin locks had snaked off to make the touches that had gotten his attention. Their owner looked rather pleased with her tricks.

"Gnarly," Finn managed to get out after a few moments that were longer than he would have liked; the thick, spicy-sweet scent of her hair was damnably mesmerizing, until prudence and utility took hold. "Just keep it out of the light; don't want it giving us away," he said, indicating a few stray locks that had floated out towards the doorway they were sheltered next to. Marceline caught on immediately and her hair narrowed itself so that nothing protruded into a line of sight through the doorway.

"How's your neck?" she asked, cool fingers reaching past his hood to touch the spot where she had bitten him, raising goosebumps on his pale skin and sending shivers down his spine. The dude doing flips in his stomach was back again, too.

"Flob-noggit, Finn! This is no time for pretty-girl tummy-whirls," he scolded himself, pulling Marceline's hand free and refocusing himself. "A little sore, but fine. Shh…" He put his finger up to his lips. "Gotta keep your rocker-spirit in check, so we can try and get a little know-how out of these goons."

"Ohhhh…" Marceline said, nodding and keeping her mouth shut from there out. The more time she spent back-to-backing it with Finn, the more she realized how much he had changed since childhood, and how very different their methods were. Once upon a time, they played a similar game; boot down the door, bash the badguy, nab his stuff, wash, rinse, repeat. Apparently somewhere along the line, the boy must have learned that he worked a lot better as a stiletto than as a hammer; strategizing, restrategizing, doing recon, all things that Marceline definitely wouldn't have had patience for. When they set out, the Vampire Queen thought she might have to babysit him a bit, or at least that he'd make the going a little slower, what with no flight capabilities, but Finn was turning out to be quite a valuable asset.

As the clank of the Forgelings shifted from a distant echoing sound to one that was full-bodied and of close proximity, they both settled into a focused silence, and eventually the clanking stopped.

"Hm," sounded a voice through the doorway. "This is where 3-1 was supposed to check in with us. Carl, you think they ran into trouble looking for 3-3?"

"By what?" came the response. "Vampire chick got crisped, we all saw it. And I know Rick runs a tight outfit, his boys wouldn't have any issues with one measly human."

"Alright, fair enough, but then where are they?"

"Probably still looking for 'em. You and I both know that Leo is the most incompetent Lt. in 3rd Battalion, he's probably got his boys rummaging around through one of the storage levels, chasing echoes."

"Fair enough," the second voice repeated. "So what do we do? 3-1 missed their check in, do we call it in?"

There was a pause, and then "…We complete our patrol circuit. If we don't run into them by the time we're done, we call it in. Alright boys, back down to Workshop 9, then we break for chow before switching to the northern secondary and taking it up to the top. 3-1 will meet us there if they manage to catch up to their timetable."

The clanking resumed as the unit resumed their movement downwards, and Finn had to hold his excitement in check until he was confident they were all out of earshot. Carefully, he poked his head around the doorway frame, 'slicing the pie' to expose as little of himself as possible as he panned his vision around. When he finally saw that the coast was clear, he let out a little breath, and then turned up to Marceline. "Did ya catch all that?" he asked her, grinning widely.

"Hm?" The powerful undead flicked her ruby eyes sidelong towards him, stretching and yawning loudly as she left her upside-down position into a more neutral posture, reclining at a normal orientation. "Oh, nah, not really. Kinda got bored."

"It's all good," Finn assured, standing up straight with a grunt. His knee popped once, stiff from being bent in the same position for so long, but he stretched it out without too much trouble. "Because nothing got past my maximum-ears!"

Marceline chuckled, always surprised by that boundless enthusiasm. "Perfect," she said. "So what's the situation, bright eyes?"

"Well," Finn began. "If I heard correctly, they were supposed to hook up with another unit here. I'm assuming that's the gang we bashed up lower down. Anyways, they were supposed to pass each other; overlapping patrols let them check up on each other, while also covering important routes more thoroughly. But since their buddies are five levels down and definitely not going anywhere, there's not going to be anyone going through that section until the next cycle."

"Which means…" Marcie began, but then faltered. Finn gladly stepped up to the plate, eager to impress.

"Which means that we've got a clear path upwards. By the time they find the missing patrol, we'll be long gone." The Last Human said those last two words with extra radical-ity. Like, loooong gooone. Just to emphasize the awesomeness.

Marceline whistled appreciatively. "Daaamn hero-boy," she said, slugging him teasingly on the arm. "Mega-crafty. I dig it, though, now let's take this opportunity for all it's worth." She drifted back through the doorway and into the access shaft, Finn jogging close behind, which Marceline noted briefly. "Hmm… If we're wanting to cover as much ground as possible before the next patrol swings through, running up these stairs is gonna be hella work," she stated, to which Finn nodded in agreement. Marceline floated around and behind the spirited young warrior, slipping her chilly arms under his own and crossing them tight around his waist. "Don't mind me, baby-face, but this'll be a lot easier for the both of us."

There was a sharp edge of smug mirth in her voice, the kind of tone that Finn usually identified as indicating a prankster's surprise. He swallowed hard, trying to think less of what was about to happen (which, knowing Marceline, he'd probably enjoy a lot less than she would), and more about something more pleasant. Like the soft pressure against his upper back, which had his ears burning hot.

The vampire queen hoisted him into the air with negligible effort, though she noted that he was a lot heavier, at least relative to humans, than his slender frame would imply. "Whooo! Packing on the pounds, kid? You're built pretty dense," she teased. It was an empty barb; she'd already seen enough of him to know that there wasn't an ounce on him that wasn't being put to use, something that her grip on his torso corroborated quite pleasantly. "Mmm, I bet he ripples when he moves," she theorized internally. "Like… Like a panther. Or something."

"Hm, you think so? Jake's been pretty insistent lately about lots of veggie-stuff, it gets kinda annoying when I'm usually craving proteeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEIN!" Finn's statement stretched into a call of surprise as Marceline's usual leisurely drift accelerated to incredible speed, turning on a dime to zoom up the spiral staircase. The secondary access shafts were only ten feet wide, and Finn was almost certain that, at any moment, he'd fly out of his friend's grip and splatter against the stone wall that was racing past him.

Down three levels, twenty-four forgelings continued their march downwards, while the rearmost of their formation, the platoon's second-in-command, tilted his head, casting his gaze backwards. "Yo, Tony," he called. "You hear that?"

"Huh? Nah, I didn't hear nothin'," Tony responded, turning to his fellow. "Remember what the Lt. said about chasing echoes? Comes to mind pretty handily. Don't worry about it too much, or you'll end up like Leo. That dude is gonna get it hard, man. This is like his third missed check-in this month."

The forgeling shrugged, before continuing on. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"H-hoooooly flob, Marcie," Finn babbled as they began to slow to a stop. In just a few short moments, the Vampire Queen had rocketed to the top of the stairway. True to Finn's analysis of what they'd overheard, they encountered no further interruptions; the platoon that should have caught them was in pieces far below. "Like… Holy flob, that was freaky-fast!"

Beaming, Marceline pretended to pick a burr off of one of her fingernails. "Oh, it's no big deal, honestly. I'm not even that fast, in undead terms. Wraiths and wights got that cornered."

"Well you're too fast for me," Finn said definitively. "We're never doing that again. Never ever never, not ever, never."

Marceline snorted, muffling a giggle. "Awww, is ittle wittle Finny-winny afwaid of going too fast?" she teased him, her giggles breaking into full laughter.

"Sh-shut up!" the Last Human responded, going red at the face as he reached out to give Marcie a shove, which she took easily, floating away and laughing uninterrupted. "I just prefer my feet on solid ground, and my face not inches from becoming wall-paste."

Marceline just laughed him off, flicking tears from the corners of her eyes. "Ohh, I'm sorry baby-face. But look at it this way; we're all the way at the top. And that door looks miiiiighty climactic." She jabbed her thumb over her shoulder, indicating a tall door, wrought of the same iron as the main gate they had come through in the beginning.

"Nice."