What happened last:

After returning to the Candy Kingdom, Marceline was feeling as though all of Finn's injuries were all her fault while the princess was scheming with Jake on how to overcome their problem with the Guild of Assassins.

J: "PB? What are you thinking?"

PB: "What? You're not thinking the same thing? It's simple really." She was still looking as if she had some dark plan up her sleeve.

J: "Does it look like I'm thinking the same thing?" Jake said, sounding a bit irritated.

PB: "Well, I suppose not."

J: "Well? What's the plan?"

PB: "We hack them." Her face immediately turned back to its normal cheery look.

J: "Oh… I thought you had some evil plan to kill them all using the power of the cosmic owl to suck the life from their souls and render them zombies so me and Finn could destroy them."

PB: "N-no. What?" She was caught off guard by his oddly detailed answer.

Jake just shrugged his shoulders thinking that it was actually a logical idea.

PB: "Well, I think my idea might be just a bit easier to do. You see, the Guild of Assassins has been around for a long time. So, as they grew and grew they needed some way to account for everything; all of the assassins, equipment, the hits etcetera. And that's when these cute little hologram computers came into play." She said as she showed Jake the hologram laptop that she had sitting on the floor next to her.

PB: "So I'm thinking is that we hack into the guild's mainframe and look for a blacklist database and put Finn's name on it; after deleting the hit of course."

PB: "And that will make Finn a non-targetable entity." She said, sounding satisfied with her well developed plan.

She pressed one button on the device and a small holographic screen projected out of a small camera. It was displaying random bits of code and other encryption based numbers and symbols.

J: "I have… no idea what any of this means." Jake felt dumb at this point.

PB: "Yeah, I thought so. I mean, it's not easy, because believe it or not, I have a tough time with this stuff too sometimes. Luckily, Marcy is actually not too bad with hacking."

J: "Marceline? SHE can do this hacking stuff? Is that just a fancy name for a musical instrument or something?"

PB: "No, she's actually more than just some regular old script kiddie."

J: "Script kiddie?"

PB: "Yeah, someone who basically sucks at hacking, or just really new at it."

J: "Oh, cool." Jake felt impressed but he was still mostly confused.

PB: "I remember this one time Marcy and I wanted to see who was a better hacker so we both got computers on different networks and tried to see who could hack the other faster. After about 22 hours and 12 minutes of straight hacking with no sleep, I was able to beat her. And you know what's funny about that?"

J: "What?" Jake was prepared to hear some words or terminology that he wouldn't understand.

PB: "Long story short, I was able to beat her with binary code being my main tool. Binary! Can you believe it? It's not like it really did anything besides confuse her. It's pretty funny." She said while giggling.

J: "Uh, yeah… Binary." Jake didn't know much about computers and was obviously confused.

PB: "Speaking of people that are binary-illiterate, we should go get her to help with the hacking."

J: "Sounds good to me, sister."

Jake and Bubblegum went to go retrieve Finn and Marceline who were probably still in the hospital room. Jake assumed that about 25 minutes should have been enough time to talk about what they needed to talk about.

The princess walked in the doorway first. She saw that Finn and Marcy were both peacefully asleep on the hospital bed.

PB: "Aww, how cute." She whispered in a monotonous voice. She said it with a barely noticeable hint of resentment.

J: "Yeah, we should just come back later PB. Let's let 'em sleep."

BMO: Hey guys! What's going on? I wanna see!" Beemo said, being loud as he usually is when he gets excited or curious. He was trying to look past everyone's legs.

J: "Shhh! Finn and Marcy are asleep, Beemo. So, we gotta be quiet."

BMO: "Oh ok… I didn't even get to play the sleep jam." Beemo sounded a bit sad and walked away.

J: "Well PB, I'm gonna go take a dog-nap. Come get me if they wake up." Jake said as he yawned and walked off.

The princess took one last glance into the room before going to her lab. She looked at the recovering human boy and couldn't help but have her mind wander.

PB: "Who could have put that hit on Finn?" She thought.

She went down to her lab and sat down in her usual chair. There was scattered paperwork and datasheets all over her desk. They mostly seemed unorganized but the princess knew what everything was. She put her elbows on the desk in front of her and buried her face in her hands. She was brainstorming but nothing logical came to mind.

The princess was smarter than anyone truly ever knew. She analyzed all of the most possible culprits in her mind and didn't find enough supporting evidence on one of them to lead her to believe that they were the one.

Maja, although it would seem obvious given the recent events, didn't seem to be it. If Maja was as smart as she posed to be then she wouldn't dare try to destroy Finn. Primarily because he is one of the royal elite of the Candy Kingdom which gives him VIP status with many things. Also, he is widely seen as the hero of Ooo. If any of the kingdoms were informed of something that endangered him then they would surely act and terminate the threat with extreme prejudice.

The Lich is also a slight possibility, although highly unlikely because there isn't really anything that is more powerful than him. Also, he hasn't been around in what seemed like ages since Finn defeated him in his lair. It couldn't be the Lich. It just couldn't…

Besides those two, there weren't many other evil things that would specifically want to put a hit on Finn. They would all either do it themselves or not even take it that far. Many of the evil beings in Ooo aren't trying to kill everything. Most of them just wanted to assert their dominance or feel like they were in control of something in their lives.

Princess Bubblegum eventually gave up on trying to figure it out for the time being and just assumed that it was Maja. Regardless of what she thought, Maja was the most believable suspect. The princess liked to think that she could never make a mistake after analyzing or calculating something precisely but even she had her flaws.

She decided to set her mind on figuring out the next steps in the plan to save Finn.

PB: "If I were Maja, where would I run off to?" She said as she placed her computer on her desk and got to work.

PB: "Ok let's see… hmmm…" She was looking at random bits of code. The princess was good at standard hacking procedures but she wasn't honestly as good as Marceline.

She would never admit to that.

She was already looking at the firewall for the Guild of Assassins database. It was definitely confusing to her and she couldn't quite grasp how to decode the information.

..

sub procedure sendBit3(dim b as boolean)

if (r) then

gpio.2 = 1

delay_Ooo(1425)

gpio.2 = 0

delay_ck(385)

file_t f; mach_trgt_type_number_t amount; char *buf; error_t err; if (argc != 2)

error (1, 0, "Usage: %s guild_of_assassins_mainframe", argv[0]);

..

The data and random bits of information went on and on and on.

PB: "What the…?"

The princess was confused because the data looked familiar because she's dealt with this sort of stuff before but there was something off about it and she couldn't figure it out.

PB: "Globbit… I'm gonna need Marcy's help with this one." She hated to admit it, but she needed the vampire's help.

She got up and was going to go get a cup of coffee because nobody was probably awake and was stopped when she realized how stiff her entire body was.

PB: "Oh man! I'm soo freakin' sore!" She said as she stretched and yawned to loosen up.

After she was done stretching she walked into the kitchen and to her surprise, everyone was there awake. They were all playing and joking around.

They were playing tag and Finn seemed to be "it" although he was at a major disadvantage. Whenever he tried to go for Marceline, she would just fly out of his reach. Whenever he went for Jake, he just stretched himself out of Finn's reach as well. And as for Beemo… well, he just went on sleep mode and fell on the ground.

Regardless of not being able to catch anyone, Finn and everyone else were having an algebraic time.

As soon as Finn noticed PB walking in the doorway he stopped to say hi and everyone else pretty much stopped playing as well.

Beemo was still on sleep mode.

F: "Waddup PB?! Are you done studying or whatevs you were doing?"

PB: "Huh? What do you mean?"

M: "You were in your room looking at bits of code for a pretty long time Bonnie." She said, slightly giggling.

J: "Yeah, and Marcy walked in there to tell you that we were all awake and Finn was feeling much better but you didn't really respond so we just let you do yo thang." Jake was intentionally sounding silly.

PB: "Well, I guess I was trying to get into the Guild of Assassins' mainframe for longer than I thought."

The princess didn't realize that she completely lost track of time. Literally hours passed and she never even noticed.

M: "You were hacking and didn't even tell me?!" She sounded more surprised and excited than upset that she wasn't invited.

Finn and Jake's eyes began to widen from the thought of how cool hacking is and the fact that Marceline and Bubblegum know how to do it. Marceline must have gotten up and found a computer to start the hacking process while Finn and Jake were asleep.

PB: "Well, yeah I wanted to start on figuring out how to remove that bounty on Finn's head. Wait… do you even know about that?"

M: "Of course, Finn told me about all of it."

M: "Oh, and I don't mean to upset you but I already hacked the mainframe and everything. It was pretty easy actually." She sounded smug.

Finn began to blush. He really liked how crazy smart Marcy was, even though she seldom showed it.

PB: "Wha-? Well… what did you find out? Did you find out if they have any sort of blacklist for people who shouldn't get assassinated?"

M: "That IS a pretty good idea but…"

PB: "But…?"

M: "But for some reason when I hacked the mainframe, all of the information was showing up as binary code so-"

PB: "-So you couldn't read it." She finished her sentence, starting to sound smug just like Marceline did.

M: "Pretty much…"

There was a brief moment of silence then Jake broke it.

J: "So uh… I think that you guys should go hack some stuff so me and Finn can watch." Jake was trying to contain his excitement.

F: "Yes, I second that notion." Finn was also having a hard time holding his excitement in.

PB: "Ok, but can we take a break for-"

F: "No! We must do it now!" Finn lost control for a second.

M: "Jeez, Finn. You really like this kind of stuff don't you?"

F: "… It's just... soo math." His eyes widened and he stared off into space, daydreaming about hacking computers.

M: "Ok then, let's do it."

PB: "Oh uh, can we use my computer? I kind of want to save all of the data from these exploits." The princess said honestly.

The real reason that the princess wanted Marceline to use her computer is so that she can study all of the data later and possibly one day become better at hacking than Marceline.

She would never tell anyone that either.

As they all got up and started to walk to Bubblegum's lab, Marceline couldn't help but think of the conversation during the alone time that she and Finn had just a few hours ago. She's glad that he seems ok with everything. He was always soo strong and seems to always be able to handle anything. She told him everything that's been happening recently and everything that's on her mind… Everything but for exception of one thing…

She's falling apart.

So, what are your guys' thoughts on the story so far?