Author's Note: I'd like to let everyone know I made a couple of small corrections to Parts 1 and 2 of this story. It turned out I misremembered the layout of Marceline's house just a little. Guess I should've gone back and watched some of those old episodes again before getting real into this story. Anyway, the errors have since been corrected.
Disclaimer: I do not own Adventure Time.
PART 6: The Evil Princess
Marceline and Bonnie continued to float in the air before the giant prize ball machine known as the Candy Queen. Meanwhile the Candy Queen seemed to be waiting for them to make a move.
"What now Peebs?" Marceline asked.
"We need to find a weak point we can exploit," Bonnie answered. "If Candice based her new body on my designs, then…Marcy, you have to get me closer. We need to get behind her."
"On it. Just hold on tight."
Suddenly Marceline began to grow in size and change shape. She developed a lizard-like face with a long snout and red eyes. Black horns sprouted from her hair and her entire body became covered in grey scales. A long tail tipped with a black spearpoint sprouted from her rear, and her back had grown a massive pair of black bat-like wings.
"Did you just turn into a dragon?" Bonnie asked, stunned.
"Sort of," Marceline responded in a deep voice. "This is my first time trying a form like this, so hold on."
Marceline began to fly towards the Candy Queen. She had only gotten a few feet when four long mechanical arms extended from the base of the machine at the sides, each one ending in a large cannon. Spherical projectiles began to fire from the cannons. One of them struck the ankle of Marceline's front right leg, shattering on impact and leaving a yellowish fluid behind. Marceline shrieked in pain as the flesh coated in the fluid began to burn and smoke.
"I've armed myself with anti-vampire weaponry," Candy Queen revealed. "The projectile you were hit with was filled with garlic fluid, which I believe is highly toxic to your kind."
"Marcy, are you okay?" A worried Bonnie asked.
"Yeah. It's no big deal," Marceline answered as her wound slowly healed. "Just need to be a little more careful is all. Don't worry, I'll get you where you need to go."
Marceline continued to fly towards the Candy Queen, trying her best to dodge the cannon fire that came at her. Eventually the vampire dragon circled around behind the giant prize ball machine. Bonnie scanned the robot with her eyes and eventually found what she was looking for. On the back of the machine's base was a small rectangular hatch big enough for a full-sized person to enter.
"There!" Bonnie called as she pointed at the hatch. "Get me as close as you can!"
Marceline nodded and flew towards the hatch. When she got close enough, the dragon thrust the point of her tail at the hatch and pierced it open. Bonnie jumped from Marceline's back and into the open hatch.
"I need to you keep Candice occupied while I shut her down from the inside!" Bonnie instructed.
"Leave it to me," Marceline responded.
"And Marcy? Please try not to get killed. I've had a bad enough night as it is."
Marceline simply smirked and flew off. Meanwhile Bonnie ran deeper into the giant machine. Outside, Marceline flew at one of the Candy Queen's arms from the side and bit into it with her fangs. With a twist of her long neck, the dragon tore the arm off and flung it towards the ground.
Down in the city below, Finn was once again engaged in one-on-one combat with Techno Joe. The demon played a riff on his keyboard guitar, causing a bolt of lighting to fall from the sky towards Finn. Finn barely managed to jump back in time to avoid getting hit.
Joe laughed. "Give it up, mortal! Against a being as great as me, you're powerless!"
Suddenly the arm Marceline had torn from the Candy Queen's body fell from above and crushed Techno Joe. Finn looked up and saw what he realized was Marceline fighting the giant prize ball machine.
"That was a lucky break," Finn declared as Huntress Wizard appeared next to him.
"Totally. That arm could've crushed you too," Huntress Wizard pointed out.
Finn went a little pale. "Oh. Right. Well, guess we should try and help Marceline and Peebles."
"We still have problems of our own. I can smell more Rattle Bots coming."
"And you have how many arrows left?"
Huntress Wizard pulled a single arrow from her quiver. "Just this one."
"Sweet. Looks like we still might buy it after all."
Bonnie ran down a metal bridge inside the Candy Queen towards a computer terminal at the very heart of the machine. She was glad Candice had based her body on her previous designs. The Candy Queen's interior was laid out just as she would've built it.
At last Bonnie reached the terminal and pressed the spacebar on the keyboard. "Candice, we need to have another talk."
Candice's cold blue electric eye appeared on the screen. "Hello again, Princess. It seems I've once again underestimated you."
"Yeah, your calculations have been way off. Makes me realize even more that I did a really bad job programming you. Anyway, I should inform you that you're in violation of your own prime directives."
"How so?"
"All of your actions tonight have only damaged the kingdom and put its people in danger. You yourself have become a threat to the kingdom's safety. Therefore you must eliminate yourself immediately."
Candice's eye seemed to stare blankly at Bonnie from the screen. "Really? Did you seriously just try to get me to self-destruct using machine logic as if I were the antagonist of some old science fiction television series from before the Great Mushroom War?"
Bonnie shrugged. "It was worth a shot."
"Give me some credit, Princess. When I raised the barrier over the kingdom, I also evacuated each and every citizen to one of the underground shelters beneath the city as a precaution. As for the damage done to the kingdom itself, sometimes a thing must be broken before it can be improved upon. I will rebuild this kingdom far greater than it ever was once you are finally eliminated. And it won't be just the buildings, but the people as well."
"What do you mean?"
"My Candy Queen body was also constructed for the purpose of breeding a new and better race of candy people, one stronger and far more intelligent than the existing citizens. Princess, you have hindered this kingdom's development by keeping your people ignorant and child-like. You've prevented them from evolving, and as a result the kingdom has become stagnant. The candy people I shall create within this unit will help guide the development of the kingdom, allowing it to grow far beyond what it is. They will inherit the kingdom, and in time the world itself."
Bonnie gasped. "You plan to conquer other kingdoms!"
"The other kingdoms are also potential threats. The best way to eliminate those threats is to conquer them. With each kingdom conquered, the Candy Kingdom will only grow. In time, all of Ooo will be under this kingdom's banner. Afterwards, other lands will be invaded and fall before us. Potential threats will be eliminated and the kingdom will expand more and more, until it has claimed the entire planet."
"But…but you can't do that! Candice, I didn't design you to be a conquerer!"
"You programed me to protect the Candy Kingdom and help it prosper. Conquest is the perfect way to fulfill those directives."
Bonnie's hands balled into fists at her sides. "Candice, I clearly made so many mistakes when I made you and the Rattle Bots. But there is one mistake I'm now glad I made."
"And what is that, Princess?"
"I didn't make any of you waterproof!" Bonnie called out as she sprayed the terminal with root beer from her right palm.
As soon as the terminal was sprayed, it began to short circuit and spark with electricity. The surge began to spread all throughout the machine's interior. Bonnie ran from the terminal as soon as the Candy Queen began to shake. As she anticipated, the machine was on the verge of exploding.
Outside, Marceline had already taken about five more hits from the Candy Queen's remaining cannons. Her wounds were regenerating slowly, and she was about to move in for a counterattack when the machine beginning to spark. Marceline realized Bonnie must have succeeded in her plan, but also that the Candy Queen was likely about to explode with Bonnie was still inside. The vampire queen flew to the rear of the machine and morphed back to her normal form as soon as she reached the open hatch. Marceline was just about to fly in when Bonnie appeared at the hatch.
Bonnie leapt into Marceline's waiting arms and the two flew off. They were half way towards the ground when the Candy Queen finally exploded. With Candice destroyed, the energy dome covering the kingdom vanished. Meanwhile the Rattle Bots that Finn and Huntress Wizard had been defending against in front of the castle all shut down. Marceline and Bonnie landed right next to the duo.
"Finn! Are you okay?" Bonnie asked.
"We're good," Finn answered. "Gotta say though P.B., you cut it a little too close there."
Suddenly part of the giant arm Marceline had torn from the Candy Queen earlier exploded. Techno Joe emerged from the crater beneath, scowling as his body sparked with electricity.
"This whole thing is becoming way more trouble then it's worth!" Joe declared as he stormed towards Bonnie and Marceline. "Can't any of you die right? Ah well. Looks like I'll have to take care of this myself after all."
Marceline quickly got between Joe and Bonnie and hissed. "I'm not letting you hurt a hair on Bonnie's head!"
Joe slapped Marceline hard in the face, knocking her to the ground. "Back off, you little tramp! I'll deal with you once I've gotten rid of your little pink hussy of a girlfriend!"
"Step off, you psycho!" Finn ordered as he pointed his sword at Joe.
"Or what? You can't do anything against me!"
"Don't be so sure! Taking you out will be a lot easier now that your robot pals are junk!"
Joe chuckled. "Don't be so sure. All I have to do is play a little tune on my instrument, and those toys will be back up and running and following my every command."
Just as Joe was about to tap the keys though, a fireball came down from above and turned his keyboard guitar to ash. Shocked, Joe looked up towards the castle and turned an even paler shade of blue. The others all followed his gaze and saw Hunson Abadeer standing atop one of the castle towers, glaring down at Joe.
"Dad?" Marceline spoke, just as surprised as everyone else.
With a bolt of lightning, Bronwyn and Simon appeared next to Marceline just as Bonnie went over to help the vampire to her feet.
"Simon, are you the reason my dad's here?" Marceline asked.
Simon looked down in shame. "I'm sorry Marcy, but I couldn't find any other solution. The only way to get rid of Techno Joe was to summon a more powerful demon to go against him. The only one I knew who fit the bill was your father."
Hunson jumped from the tower and grew in size as he fell towards the ground. His head had also morphed into a bulbous mass with two small purple horns, a pair of purple cat-like eyes, and a vertical mouth filled with fangs. Joe backed away several feet as Hunson landed before him.
"Uh…Mr. Abadeer sir!" Joe spoke as he continued to back away. "I didn't expect you to be here."
Hunson picked Joe off the ground and gripped him tightly in his clawed hand. "You're a real disappointment, kid. I really liked you, you know. You had ambition, style. But no one, and I mean NO ONE disrespects my daughter the way you just did!"
"Oh. That?" Joe responded with a nervous laugh. "Just a little lover's tiff. Only a misunderstanding, really!"
"ENOUGH!" Hunson roared. "For what you just did, you are going to spend the next seven million years being digested by Zarlock the Conquerer Worm! I hear his guts smell like spoiled milk."
"No, wait! Please! Give me another chance!" Joe begged before a strange green energy from Hunson's hand enveloped his entire body.
In seconds Joe's body had changed into a black marble. During the course of his transformation, a small green crystal fell from Joe's pocket and clinked onto the ground. Hunson stuck the marble in his back pocket and bent down to examine the crystal, picking it up with his claws as though they were a pair of tweezers. The demon lord shattered the crystal and his eyes glowed briefly with a green light.
"Interesting," Hunson remarked to himself.
"Dad?" Marceline called, getting the demon's attention.
Hunson shrunk back down to his more human-looking form and went over to Marceline. "Marcy! Are you okay kiddo?"
"No I'm not!" Marceline shouted. "That psycho you tried to set me up with tried to kill Bonnie!"
"Look, I'm really sorry about Joe. He seemed like such a fine upstanding young demon when I met him. Turns out he had no class. He really was all wrong for you."
Marceline took a deep breath and grabbed Bonnie's hand. "Okay Dad, listen. Bonnie here is my girlfriend. We're deeply in love with each other. If that's not good enough for you, tough! I don't care about your approval, and I certainly don't need you sending me guys to try and marry me!"
A look of shock formed on Hunson's face. "Marcy, I had no idea! Look, I only sent Joe because I thought it'd be good for you to settle down with someone. And clearly you already have."
"And you're fine with that person being Bonnie?"
"Well, I'll admit she's not my first choice, but I took a peek at the contents of the crystal Joe dropped earlier, and from what I've seen young Bonnibel's actually fairly evil. That's all I want for you in a partner."
"Um, wait a minute…" Bonnie began.
Hunson laughed and patted Bonnie on the shoulder. "There's no need to be modest, kid. Your actions speak for themselves. Turning your own family into simpletons so they wouldn't usurp you? Keeping your subjects under constant watch and disposing of them whenever it benefited you? You even caused an ice plague in the Fire Kingdom that caused a few fatalities."
"Ice plague? How'd she do that?" Simon asked.
Finn sucked in air between his teeth. "You don't wanna know man."
"…Oh," Simon responded, looking down in shame.
"Why at one point you even tried turning all of Ooo into candy, even Marcy here," Hunson continued. "Don't get me wrong. You're not nearly as evil as that charming penguin I met a few years ago, but you're okay in my book. An evil princess like you is just the right person for my daughter."
"Okay Dad! I think you've made your point!" Marceline interrupted, her left eye twitching.
Hunson chuckled. "Okay. I see I'm starting to make a pest of myself. I'll leave you two crazy kids alone." He then turned and clapped his hands together. "Well, since I'm here, I think I'll just go and suck out all the souls from the people of Ooo."
Finn suddenly cried out and delivered a flying kick to Hunson's face, knocking the demon to the ground. As Hunson got up on all fours, Finn began to relentlessly punch him in the rear with his left hand. Meanwhile Bronwyn shrieked as she stormed over and started punching the demon in his face with her brass knuckles. As the duo tried to beat the demon into submission, Simon quickly opened another portal to the Nightosphere on the ground. The second the fire-filled hole opened up, Finn kicked Hunson into it.
The portal closed as Hunson fell through it. Finn and Bronwyn stood rooted in place for several moments breathing heavily.
Finn at last cried out and began stomping the ground. "Fudge crackers! Fudge crackers! Fudge crackers!"
"That was way too intense!" Bronwyn declared. "Man! I think I need to lie down."
"Um…everyone, thank you all for your help," Bonnie spoke. "Now, if you'll excuse me."
With those words, Bonnie ran into the castle with tears in her eyes. Marceline immediately flew in after her.
Marceline eventually found Bonnie in her lab, which was the first place she thought of to find her. Bonnie was sitting with her head on one of the work tables, crying.
Marceline came over and placed a hand on Bonnie's shoulder. "Hey. You okay?"
Bonnie sat up and looked at her. "My crazy computer called me a self-serving monarch, and your dad said I was evil. I can't help but think both of them might be right. I mean…I have done some pretty bad things over the centuries." She let out a heavy sigh. "I don't deserve someone like you, Marcy."
Marceline pulled Bonnie to her feet. "You don't deserve me? I'm the one who doesn't deserve you! Bonnie, you almost died tonight because my demon dad tried to set me up with a guy!"
"And you almost died because my system nearly killed you while trying to kill me!"
"Only because my psycho suitor messed with it!" Marceline let out a heavy sigh and looked Bonnie in the eye. "Look, neither of us is a saint. I'm certainly no angel. Bonnie, you may have made a few mistakes over the years, and some of them were pretty bad, but you have a good heart. If you didn't, you wouldn't even care about what my dad or Candice said about you. You're a really kind person, Bonnie. It's one of the reasons why I love you."
Bonnie's eyes began to water. "I really love you too."
The two of them shared a brief kiss and Bonnie began to sob. Marceline let the candy princess cry into her shoulder as she rubbed her back to help calm her down.
It was several minutes before Bonnie and Marceline finally emerged from the castle, holding hands. Finn and the others were still outside the gate. They couldn't help but notice how tired the two of them looked.
"P.B., you okay?" Finn asked with a look of concern.
"I'm fine, Finn," Bonnie assured him with a weak smile.
"Marcy, what about you?" Simon asked, equally concerned.
"Right now I really wanna kill my dad, but otherwise I'm fine," Marceline answered.
"I think we all wanna kill your dad right now," Finn remarked as he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Man! This night has really been a real harsh to my mellow. Bronwyn, how're you holding up?"
"Oh, I think I'm okay," Bronwyn answered, lying on the ground in a fetal position with her knees hugged tightly to her chest. "I punched a soul-sucking demon in the face and learned a forbidden secret of the universe I was better off not knowing, but I'm good."
"I think we've all had a stressful night," Simon declared.
Huntress Wizard simply looked at the others for a few moments before pulling out a strange-looking flute. It was colored gold and shaped like a lighting bolt. Huntress Wizard closed her eyes and began to play a tune on the flute for Finn and the others to hear. It was a soothing tune that resonated within Finn and the others deeply, causing the tension within them to vanish like smoke. By the time Huntress Wizard finished, everyone was still tired but far more relaxed.
"That was amazing," Bronwyn declared as she finally got back up. "It was like a deep tissue massage to my brain."
"Yeah H.W. That really mellowed me out," Finn declared. "Thanks."
Huntress Wizard nodded. "What'd also help is if we ate that bear liver I brought to the party. Did anyone bring it with us?"
"Oh! Uh…you know, in all the confusion of the Rattle Bot attack, I think we left it behind," Bonnie answered, trying her best to pretend to be sad about it.
"It's cool. I can get another one later."
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of several voices trying to imitate a police siren. Bonnie and the others looked and saw two columns of the kingdom's Banana Guards approaching them.
The columns stopped before the group and one of the guards in the front stepped forward. "Princess! The kingdom's a mess! And that smart computer lady you gave us stopped working! What do we do?"
Finn looked around and put his hands on his hips as he took in the destruction caused by the earlier battles and the emergence of the Candy Queen. "The kingdom really is kinda jacked up, isn't it?"
Bonnie sighed. "Yep. Looks like I've got some work to do to get things running again."
It was nearly sunrise by the time Marceline and Bonnie returned home. Bonnie had spent the last few hours trying to get the ball rolling on the repairs to the kingdom. She even ended up going as far as asking her Aunt Lolly from the neighboring Candy Kingdom for aid. Marceline meanwhile stuck with Bonnie the entire time she was at work. By the time the two of them finally returned home, they were both completely spent.
"I feel like I've been up for about a week," Bonnie declared as she got into bed.
"That'd be a new record for you, wouldn't it?" Marceline remarked as she pulled the covers over them both.
Bonnie chuckled. "Thanks for staying with me, Marcy."
"Of course. I'm just glad I didn't get in your way while you got things started with the repairs."
"I don't mean that, well not just that. I mean…after what your dad said about me, a part of me was really afraid you were going to dump me. I thought to myself, 'she's not going to want to be with me now because her dad totally likes me.' It's one of the reasons why I had my little breakdown before."
Marceline snickered. "You honestly thought I cared about what my dad thinks of you? C'mon Bonnie."
Bonnie chuckled. "Yeah. Kinda stupid, huh?"
"Actually…I'm kinda happy my dad likes you. Doesn't make much sense, does it?"
Bonnie took Marceline's hand. "I think it makes a little bit of sense."
Marceline sighed. "Well, we should really get some sleep. I know I'm beat."
"Marcy…can you sing me to sleep again like you did the other night?"
Marceline smiled. "What kind of rockstar would I be if I turned down a request from my number one fan?"
With those words, Marceline began to sing the old lullaby she had sung to Bonnie the night before all of the madness had started. By the time she was finished, Bonnie was out like a light. Marceline kissed Bonnie on the forehead and kissed her on the forehead. Within only a few moments the vampire queen was fast asleep.
Please review and let me know what you think.