AUTHOR'S NOTE:

milomeepit: *Tied to a chair with a laptop sitting on my lap which I am poking the keyboard with a chopstick held between my teeth* After my near death at the hands of my own characters, I am frantically typing to save my bacon (and eggs, toast, etc.). I may be slow with updates for a bit (Something about using a chopstick on a half-dead laptop), so please be patient! Oh, crap, gotta go, Marcy's coming!

Marceline's P.O.V.

I scuffed my shoe back and forth on the rock. I was sitting on a rocky outcropping near-ish to my cave, pondering about my own... well, me.

Upheaval from turning into a dragon, I was getting used to, but as for a certain pain-in-the-butt, annoying, awkward, useless, dreamy, cute, sweet, lovable...

"Gah!" I lept up and started pacing. "What's wrong with me?" I wondered aloud. It somehow seemed to help, to let my thoughts out into the empty, still air, letting them out from clouding up my head. "Seriously, I'm more than 1600 years old, a powerful form of dragon, can fly... well, I need lessons, but the point is made, I breathe fire, for crying out loud, and-and then he comes along and makes me look like a total ditzy royalty groupie, and-and... aaaaaaah!" I half-screamed, half-dragon roared frustratedly at the sky, spitting sparks in my wailing. I kicked furiously at a rock, sending it flying a good few hundred feet across the grassy plains that stretched before me. I yelled semi-unintelligibly at the clouds above me for a while, mostly ranting about Gumball and my 'dad', Hunson Abadeer.

See, my problems weren't just my love life, or even my brother, before we sorted that out. Hunson -considering I now knew (sort of) who my real dad was, I refused to call him Dad- was always finding some way to make me miserable. I was treated as an outcast by him, practically. If you asked 90% of the Nightospherians, I was the 'Abadeer Half-Breed', just because I was a turned vampire, rather than a born one. Hunson, however, was still one of the main people who had helped raise me, and I just wanted to be accepted.

I sighed, a little out of breath, and sat on my rock again. "Why can't I just wave a wand around and be perfect? Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo?" I waved my finger in the air and tapped myself on the head. I felt my eyes tearing up a little. "Oh, screw it." I muttered. "I never get a moment to myself, so I may as well." I let the tears slip over onto my cheeks, letting a sob rip itself from my throat.

I heard a shuffling of feet behind me, my elven hearing pricking into my self-pitying state. I glanced behind me and groaned inwardly. Gumball was picking his way over tangles of foot-and-a-half long grass, making his way toward my outcropping of rock. I stood up and took off, feeling my legs pumping underneath me, carrying me further and further away from him, deeper and deeper into the forest treeline before me. I plunged headlong into the thick, dark greenery as I heard Gumball call out to me.

"Marceline? It's just me, Gumball! Marcy?"

'Yeah. Just you.' I thought bitterly, forcing my legs to go even faster, hearing him start to chase after me. He, probably from all his training, hardwired into his brain from when he was young, and from a couple slightly more recent sessions, was actually quite fast, closing the gap between us at a decent pace.

My foot caught at a root, and I face planted. I gasped painfully, feeling the air rush out of my lungs. I coughed, pushing against the ground to push myself up into a sitting position. I shook my head, fluttering my wings a little and getting up, taking off again and trying to keep ahead of G-

"Hey, Marcy!" I felt his hand slip around my wrist. "Calm down! It's just me!"

I opened my mouth, about to say something along the lines of that's the problem, but realised that it would probably hurt his feelings. "Oh, oopsie. I thought you were someone else." I grinned sheepishly, thinking, 'Oh, god, I'm lying through my teeth, he's gonna see right through me!'

"Oh, okay." He smiled.

I gently pulled my wrist from his grip. "Um... so, yeah... what did you want?"

A confused expression crossed his face. "I... actually can't remember." He chuckled. "What a scatterbrain, huh?"

"Oh, yeah, I guess." I smiled. "Hey, do you wanna see something?"

"Oh, alright. What?" He looked intrigued.

"C'mon, I'll show you. Follow me. If you can keep up." I teased, stepping away from him and turning, taking off towards a clearing I sometimes hung out in on cloudy days back when I was a vamp, or sometimes I'd lie on the grass, feeling the blades prick lightly at my skin, and look up at the stars.

I sighed at the memory, then my eye twitched slightly as I remembered hanging out there with Ash, way back when.

"What's wrong?" Gumball asked.

"Oh, nothing." I said lightly, skipping ahead of him, laughing as he drew back slightly in surprise.

He grinned, showing a cheeky display of cute buck teeth. "Oh, that's how it is, is it?"

"Yep. But it's kinda hard to race when only one of us knows where we're going." I pointed out.

He shrugged. "True, true." I led him through a few small paths, coming to a stop at the edge of the clearing.

He stepped forward, awe crossing his face. I couldn't blame him, though. The trees provided a thin canopy across most of the space, leaving a small hole in the top, where sunshine pooled on the ground. The golden light dappled across the small rolls of ground, making a small moat-like pond in a half-circle around the far side of the clearing sparkle, tiny fish dancing in the water, mirrored in the air by a cluster of sparkling butterflies, their wings shining like spiderwebs with dew on them. Speaking of spiderwebs, there was several large, shiny ones spread on the tops of the trees, making a large net across the clearing. It was, all in all, a pretty impressive place.

"Wow..." He blinked, trying to look at everything at once. He looked like a kid in a candy store. I snickered, suddenly realising what thought had just crossed my mind.

He glanced at me. "You okay there?"

I nodded. "Just a funny thought."

"Okay... wow... beautiful." He mused, flicking another look at me.

"I know." I considered my options. 'Oh, what the hell. It can only kill me,' I thought. "Hey, I think I left my bass around here a few days ago, near that tree. Can you get it? My ankle kinda hurts after my fall." I smiled, sitting on a log near the pool of water.

"Oh, sure." He walked over to the tree. "Behind the tree?"

"Yeah." I replied, thinking, 'Damn, this better work..