AN:

RIGHT DOWN TO THE LINE. I promised you a chapter within a week. Today is exactly one week from when I said that. I made it. Just barely.

So this is it! The long-overdue return of my first fanfiction, Ooo… Aaa…, Chapter 9 in Marceline's POV!

Thank you so much for sticking through my absence from this story. It's been more than a year since I last updated. Yes, I'm a sucky person. I hope you'll find it in your heart to forgive me. I did just write you a new chapter, after all. I hope bribery works on you...

The things that I want from this story are very up in the air, given how long it's been since I thought about it. There are about a million different ways the next few installments could go, and the pairings are more uncertain than ever, for me. Input, as always, is welcome.

Oh, also. I changed my Pen Name from YouPeopleAreSoPettyAndTiny to TodayIsTuesdayToo. Sorry for any confusion. It's still me here. Same ol' Dawn.

Here we go!

Marceline's POV

"You know, you've kind of been a jerk about this whole Rift thing, Marcy..." Finn started as he messed with my sound equipment, trying to fix the balance. Inter-Dimensional Rift or no, we never canceled Jam Sesh. Ever.

"You know if you keep trying to talk about this I'm just going to ignore you, right?" I muttered, twisting the pegs on my base and strumming each string to make sure they were in tune.

Finn flopped on the ground at my feet and stared up and me with wide eyes and a pleading smile. "C'mon, just tell me why you brought PG here. Pretty please? Ooh, what about that showdown in the dungeons with Marshall Lee yesterday?" He batted his eyes and whimpered just a bit. Being raised by dogs had given him the gift of a very convincing puppy look.

Maybe his wide-eyed whining would have worked on me if I hadn't spent the last 1,000 years manipulating my way into or out of whatever I wanted. He might have been the closest thing I had to a best friend, but he still didn't know how to get me talk. I flashed him a fang-filled grin and squinted my eyes as they flamed red. No one questioned insanity, which made it the perfect disguise. Finn wasn't fazed, but I saw Jake drop his mug of tea. My human hero friend made a face at me and rolled away to help his brother clean up his mess. I cackled beneath my breath, delighting in the knowledge that, in spite of himself, the dog wasn't entirely over his fear of vampires.

I chose to ignore the two adventurers. It wasn't the first time they'd messed up my rug, and it wouldn't be the last. I'd given up punishing them for it, and they knew how lucky they were that I'd found that in myself. Shutting my eyes and picking up my base, I strummed out a few simple notes and hummed along with a new tune I was working on. It was dedicated to a vampire king.

Ever since Bonnie's dimensional-creation-whatever had brought Ice King's weirdo story-time girlfriend into existence or our universe or whatever it had done, life had been a lot different. And in more than just the obvious ways. Sure, it was strange to think that Simon's loopy-doopy, crown-crazed brain had invented a whole new reality, but that science-y stuff was more Bonnibel's thing. What really got to me was Marshall Lee.

At first I thought the idea of a guy-me was really funny and sorta weird, but after a while the idea of him started to get to me. I'd always been on my own, and nobody could quite get what I'd been through. As far as I knew, I was the only person alive or undead who remembered the Mushroom War. Simon had been there, too, but… Well, he wasn't exactly ideal for moral support. When I thought about Marshall Lee, though, I had to wonder what it'd be like to have someone around who understood. He was me, but not. I wanted to think he could be real. Maybe Aaa wasn't just Ice King's fault. Maybe I wanted an equal bad enough that I made one.

Except he wasn't what I'd expected. When you think about meeting yourself, you think that you'd get along, right? Besties forever. I suppose now though that I should have known he wouldn't like me. I don't always get along with myself, so it made sense my other self wouldn't want to see any more of himself than he already did, and his self was pretty much the same thing as myself.

Ugh, the whole thing was making my brain hurt.

"Marceline? You okay?"

I opened one eye to see Finn standing next to me with a tea-soaked towel. "What makes you think I'm not?" I challenged.

He shrugged. "I dunno. That song's kinda bums, and you only write that stuff when you're kinda bums."

I stopped strumming and slid my nails up the wound steel strings. A high pitched screeching sound shook the amp, forcing Finn and Jake to cover their ears. My hand stopped halfway down my bass's neck. "I think we're done jamming for the day." I picked the two of them up and flew them out the door, slamming it behind us. "Bye, Finn." I muttered as I flew out of my cave.

The sun was setting, so I had to stick to the shadows, but what light did hit me only felt like a mild burning. That was the kind of light I liked, the kind that made me feel like a kid again. At noon, though, it felt like my skin was melting off the bones. That didn't feel quite as comforting.

I wondered if Marshall liked sunset light, too.

Night had fallen by the time I reached the Candy Kingdom. I didn't come here very often any more, and wandering the halls sorta stung. I floated up through an open window at the top of one of the towers. Next to PB's bedroom door was an old end table with a crack running down the middle of its surface. I remembered throwing a fire wolf into it on the princess's 538th birthday. I'd thought she would like the excitement of vampire/fire creature at her party. Apparently I was wrong. Why can't you just behave at my parties? she'd said. There are visiting foreign dignitaries at this party, she'd said. You can't just pour lava on visiting foreign dignitaries when they complain about your roughhousing at my party, she'd said. I wondered why she'd kept the table.

I could hear movement in PB's room, so I landed and opened the door. The Bonnie was sitting on her bed cross-legged with papers and books spread out in front of her. She was chewing on the end of her pencil and her thick, round glasses were falling off her face.

Every time I saw her, I was reminded how much I missed her. We'd been best friends for over 500 years before we decided we couldn't stand each other anymore. That didn't mean I didn't care about her just because she annoyed me, though. We still looked out for one another when it came right down to it. Honestly, she was the closest friend I'd ever had, short of Simon. He'd been like a dad to me, though, so that was different.

When the portal had opened and I realized Ice King's loony bin world was real, I couldn't help myself. If Marshall Lee was so different from me, maybe Prince Gumball would be not-Bubblegum enough to be the things with me that she could never be. That was my second major-league screw-up of the week. He'd proved to be kinda… well, gummy. All he'd talked about on the way back to Ooo was his pie in the oven. If science was annoying, baking was worse.

Talk about a winnign week. I should know better than to expect anything to turn up Marcie. Ever.

"Glob, PB, when was the last time you got some sleep?"

She looked up at me and her glasses took the plunge, landing in the pages of the book on her lap. "Oh, hello, Marceline." She didn't sound upset to see me. She must've been really out of it. "I'm not sure. I lost count. A few days, I think." She locked back down at her work and scribbled a few notes on the edge of a paper.

I walked over and sat on the edge of her pink mattress. The pages around Bubblegum had about a million different equations on them, each with a new symbol or two throne in just to mess with me, I was sure. 1,003 years of life and I had lived long enough to be sure of just one thing: I would never understand math. Or science. I was an artist. That much was clear. "What are you doing, Princess?"

"The rift is terribly unstable at the moment. I didn't have time to adjust the calibration of the reactor appropriately before opening it. Our new acquaintances have been slightly less cooperative than I had hoped, though, particularly the Prince Gumball." She gave me her best stink-eye. "On the bright side, their obstinacy has given me some extra time to develop an inter-dimensional doorstop, so to speak. I hope to create some extra support for the portal until I find a permanent solution for travel regulation. The last thing we want is one of our own getting stuck on the other side. Or for one of them to become trapped here." A shudder visibly shook her as she lifted her glasses back to her eyes.

"By 'one of them' you mean Marshall Lee, don't you?" She may be tired, but I was in no mood for sugar coating. Not that I ever was.

She sighed. "My distaste for him is completely separate from my feelings about you. What's your deal with him, though? You've been acting up ever since he came through."

I bit back a growl. "You wouldn't want to hear it. It's complicated. And I know how much you just hate complicated."

Bonnie held my gaze for a moment and calmly set aside her book. "I don't want to fight with you, Marcie."

That made me mad. "I know you don't! You never have! That's your problem. Everything needs to be perfect and flawless around you! If you can't fix something, you throw it away, and you already know you can't fix me!"

I fumed. Her expression was defensive, but she took a little too long to think about her retort. It gave me time to find the chink in her armor. She always had flaws, just like the rest of us. It seemed like I was the only one who saw them, though. As see it, I did.

"You said Gumball isn't cooperating." I grunted, relaxing as I found my footing in the argument and saw that she was flailing for hers. "What are you planning, Bonnibel?"

Her face dropped into total, determined seriousness. "Nothing you'll fight me on when I get the Prince to move on his position."

I knew that look. It meant she needed saving from herself before someone else needed saving from her. And all too often, that responsibility fell onto my shoulders.

"Bonnie. Tell me."

AN:

Aaaaannnnd we're back!

So, if you're glad I picked this back up, please say something. If I want to keep going with this, I want to really invest in it, and I don't want to throw myself into it like that if y'all don't really care either way... So, yeah. Feedback is important right now! Also, if you notice something different about my new writing style that you don't like compared to the way I used to write this story, holla at me. I write for the reader in this instance.

Thank you, my dearest readers!

-Dawn