(It's my birthday, but you all are getting a present. I promised I'd have this uploaded by today, and I'm a man of my word.)
Chapter 9 Lady, Peebles, Michal, and Eli
A blizzard roared across the frozen barren wasteland known as the Ice Kingdom. Through the blizzard two bodies walked slowly through it. Both were heavily clothed with winter jackets, one was dark brown and the other hot pink. The person in the brown had a sword in its sheath on his back. The person in brown held the hand of the person in pink, a duffle bag slung over the person's shoulder. They made their way toward a small metal igloo with weather instruments on top of it. As the two entered the igloo, the person in pink pressed a button on a panel next to the entrance, and then the blizzard and cold was cut off people inside. The two removed their hoods and Michal's and Princess Bubblegum's faces appeared. A heater gave off a faint red glow as it warmed the area. On the other side of the igloo, Lady Rainicorn, Jake's Girlfriend, was curled up in a coil, sobbing and mumbling something in Korean. Eli stood next to her, wearing a similar jacket that his father was wearing and tried to make her feel at ease by stroking her mane.
"Oh good you're ba…" Lady yelled out more Korean that stopped Eli from talking.
"I'm sorry Lady, we haven't found them yet. The blizzard is messing with my GPS's signal. The only logical thing to do is wait for the whole thing to blow over and continue the search then."
"It's just a little hard to believe that Finn and Jake have been captured by the Ice King and stayed like that for almost three weeks." Michal said, sitting down against the wall of the igloo. PB laid the duffle bag on the ground.
"Yeah, I know the Ice King isn't usually a serious of a threat but whatever he's got, we can handle it. Because we've both brain and brawn on our side."
"Are you calling me and my dad idiots, 'cause I passed Algebra with a B."
"No, no I was just saying that, that… Ugh never mind." PB said as she crossed her arms and sat down
Lady had kept her worried face throughout their little argument, she tried to make something of herself but couldn't do such a thing, no matter how hard she tried. Bubblegum noticed it right away. "What's wrong Lady?" She started to speak with glazed eyes, only the princess understood her and the two humans just felt awkward. "It's alright Lady, Jake knows you love him." The unicorn and rainbow hybrid spoke once more and the princess told her to try and relax. Lady talked for over a whole minute, making several grieving expressions on PB's face. Once she fell silent, so did the rest of the igloo.
"Okay without hurting any feelings, either translate or tell her to stop talking." Michal said. The princess slowly turned her head at the Captain with a small frown.
"It's a girl thing."
"Well that explains everything." Eli mumbled under his breath.
An awkward silence in the igloo, all of them just sat and listened to the screaming of the blizzard outside. With nothing else to do, PB tried to start a conversation with the two humans. But every attempt ended the same way, a long awkward silence.
"What, what was the world like before the Mushroom War?" Eli and Michal glanced over at each other and shrugged. Eli took several seconds to think before going first.
"Before the Mushroom War, the world was filled with humans, most of them were either psychopaths, assholes, or just plain idiots."
"Now there were some that came along that defined a generation like, Alexander the Great, Christopher Columbus, Ulysses S. Grant, Albert Einstein, Neil Armstrong, Charlie Sheen." Michal said, his head resting on the metal wall.
"That's not exactly answering anything. You see, I don't really know that much from the before the war, except for sciency stuff."
"So, you don't know anything from like, movies or history, or anything like that." PB shook her head at Eli's sentence, and a wicked smile crawled onto his face only after a single thought. "Dad, I've got an evil idea, join in when you get the idea."
Eli stood up, cleared his throat and began to speak once again in different accent with every sentence. "With great power, comes great responsibility. Say 'ello, to my little friend. Run Forrest, Run! Oh my God, they killed Kenney." Eli motioned for his father to start in, and Michal got the idea and stood up next to his son. "You bastards!" The two went back and forth with every famous quote they could think of, which made PB more annoyed with every single one.
"One ring to rule them all. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. Fish are friends not food. Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. It's a flesh wound. Luke, I am your father. D'oh. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Lions, tigers, and Bears. Oh my. Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'. Silence! I kel' you! A house divided cannot stand."
"Would you please stop that? I told you I don't know anything about before the Mushroom War." Eli's wicked smile returned.
"Oh we know, that's what makes it fun."
"Well I'm asking you to please stop. Because it's making me angry, and trust me, you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." Eli and Michal looked at each other and busted into laughter.
"I'm pretty, sure you're the wrong, color to be saying that, princess." Michal said in between his laughs.
"Okay okay, but just one more. It's from one of my favorite movies." The princess sighed and nodded. Michal sat back down and waited for Eli to do the same. He mealy took center stage, unzipped his jacket half way, grabbed both sides and spoke in a gravelly voice.
"Home, where I learned the truth about despair, as will you. There's a reason why this prison is the worst hell on earth... Hope. Every man who has ventured here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy... So simple... And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying. I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope. So, as I terrorize Gotham, I will feed its people hope to poison their souls. I will let them believe they can survive so that you can watch them clamoring over each other to stay in the sun. You can watch me torture an entire city and when you have truly understood the depth of your failure, we will fulfill Ra's al Ghul's destiny... We will destroy Gotham and then, when it is done and Gotham is ashes, then you have my permission to die" Eli finished and sat back down with a satisfied smile on his face. Lady and the princess stared at him as if he was an oddity, and in a way, he was.
"Okay then. Um, is there anything you miss from way back when?"
"Out of all the things I've lost, I'm pretty sure I miss my mind the most." Michal said wittingly.
"No, I mean like friends or family." She turned to Eli first for his response. He didn't give the idea much thought.
"I did have friends, but there was only one guy that was my best friend, Devin. We would make these…" he stopped in mid-sentence when he had a small epiphany. "Huh, if Devin was still alive today, I would owe him two grand." Michal rolled his eyes.
"What was the crazy bet this time?"
"Well we made this bet because we thought it would never happen. I said zombie apocalypse, but that poor bastard just had to be right." The silence came back and hung in the air for some time.
"So Eli." The princess said. "I here you're going out with Marceline."
"Uh, yeah. I kinda spilled my guts to her in the Night'O Sphere. But the whole thing is sort of unstable at the moment, because of the mortality thing. Do you have a prince or king in your life, princess?"
"No, the closest thing I've to anything like that is when Finn had a crush on me, but I assume he's moved on." PB looked at Michal. "What about you Michal?"
"I had the same problem with what Eli's got now, mortality and all." He said looking down at the slowly melting snow on the floor. The princess knew she had crossed a line and decided to change the subject, again.
"Um, what was the purpose of those, dog tags? That is what they're called, right?" Michal reached into his jacket and pulled out his dog tags.
"Yeah that's right. Dog tags were issued standard to everyone who was in the U.S. military, whether Marine, Navy S.E.A.L., or Army. Their purpose is that a person can identify whoever has been killed in battle if their body was too mangled to recognize."
"I'm a little sorry I asked now." She said with a look of surprise.
"Don't be, they're not even mine."
"Well whose are they." PB said, ignoring Eli who was motioning her to stop talking. Michal did not talk, he just stared at the name on one of the tags. He sighed as he removed the dog tags from his neck and tossed them at the princess. She picked them up slowly and examined the two small metal plates. They had the same thing on both, a name. Bates, Andrew, L.
"My parents always wanted kids, but no matter how hard they tried, they got nothing. And after a while they gave up and just adopted an infant child, ironically when my mom was pregnant with me. And so I was raised alongside Andrew, since I was only about seven months younger than him, we did almost everything together. From kicking ass on the varsity football team, asking the same girl to prom, to signing up at the Marines recruiting office. He was to me like what Finn is to Jake, closer than close gets. In fact some of the things I brought to Ooo, were those dog tags that was and the flag that lied over Andrew's coffin. The only real difference between us was that he was more into the arts, such as classic plays. But how a seven year old boy found poetry in Texas is beyond me. He would use any and every chance to quote some famous play. I kinda' hated it most of the time. But after he was killed, it was the thing I missed the most. A perfect example is when some of the guys from our platoon started taking about our dying words. Of course we were making them into jokes like, 'What landmines', or 'Sure I'll give you a hug random Arabian guy', my dying words were 'Tell my family, I left the millions of dollars in the, the…'" Michal simulated death by tilting his head and sticking out his tongue. He straightened is head back up with the same smile that he had when he started talking, but it slowly disappeared as he remembered Andrew. "But Andrew said something that whipped all the smiles off of our faces and made person think long and hard, something that I'll remember 'til the day I die." Princess Bubblegum was too curious to let him start again. Even Lady stopped worrying for several minutes a listen to the Captain.
"W-what did he say?" Michal swallowed the air in his throat and spoke in a quiet voice.
"On this dreadful date, a marine has met his fate. If for me you shed a tear of sorrow, it only means you live to fight tomorrow. But I will never truly die, for I have lived, fought and died by the words Semper Fi."
"Semper Fi?" PB asked, tilting her head.
"It's Latin, for always faithful." Eli said.
"And to me, it seems fitting since he died about three weeks later. But his death hurt more than my wife's, mainly because I didn't watch her die" PB's and Lady's eyes widened, Eli wasn't even looking at his father. Michal looked into the two's eyes and knew what they were thinking. "You really want to know?" The princess and Lady nodded very slowly, Michal looked down at the floor as he continued his story. "Me, Andrew, and three other Marines were heading to a small town in a Jeep just a few miles west of the base for a routine check. And when we were only half a mile away from the town, the jeep ran over an I.E.D., killing the driver and injuring the rest of us, and there are still small fragments of metal lodged into my bone."
"I.E.D?"
"The I.E.D. or improvised explosive device, was a trap laid by the terrorists. They dragged our bodies into underground caves, where they treated our wounds only so they could reopen them."
"What?"
"Torture, that's what. For any information they could get on the enemy, us. We were there for I think eight days and on maybe the sixth day those ragheads noticed the same names on our tags and, and they…" Michal choked on his words as the gruesome memory returned. He clenched his fist just before he slammed it against the metal wall, denting it slightly. Eli immediately stood up to comfort his father, who was breathing heavily.
"Dad, calm down. Remember what Doctor Green told you to do." Doctor Green, his old therapist had taught Michal multiple ways to calm himself down when thoughts of his brother crept back into his mind. Michal placed his fingers around his temple, closed his eyes, and slowed his breath. Bubblegum glanced at Michal as he laid himself down.
"Anything else you'd like to know, princess?"
"Um, no. I thought we could wait out this storm, but now I think it would be better if we sleep it out."
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea." Eli said nudging his father's foot. Michal looked at his son with almost vacant eyes. "We're going to go to sleep, Dad. Maybe you should do the same."
"I was going to do that anyway." Michal said as he lied down along with everyone else. Everyone used their hoods as pillows, except for Lady who remained curled up. Princess Bubblegum noticed that she still had Andrew's dog tags, she had been holding them so hard that an imprint of the tag was now on her hand. She got up and walked over to Michal to place the dog tags around his head. He opened his eyes when the tags hit his chest. Michal gave a nod and a smile to her as she walked back to her side of the igloo.
It didn't take long for everyone to fall asleep. Eli and the princess slept peacefully, Lady tightened in worry for Jake. Michal was tossing and turning like a worm. His dream was not a pleasant one.
Michal had one arm chained to the stone wall of a cave. The other felt numb as it was stained with blood. A rat scurried along the floor to the small dish filled with the crap the Taliban called food. He looked across the room and saw two other marines in the same position as him. Weakened from blood loss. At the entrance of the room were two insurgents in turbans speaking to each other in Arabic, pointing at him and person next to him. Michal's head and eyes began to drop, and then a voice woke him. "Come on Michal, fall asleep in front of them, you might not wake up." Michal looked to his right and saw Andrew chained to the wall as well. In the same attire he was in, the standard uniform handed out to every soldier, minus the helmet. He was a big boned man with a long face, chestnut colored hair on top of his head, and a big bloody scab on his right cheek. "Mamma didn't raise no quitters, now did she?" Andrew said just to keep him awake.
"No, but she sure as hell didn't raise no wolverine either." Michal's' remark made Andrew laugh and in turn made Michal laugh too. A terrorist welding one of the M-16's that was stolen from the marines entered the room and told the them to stop laughing or he'd shoot the both of them in their feet. Michal and Andrew took a few seconds to head the man seriousness and stopped. Andrew leaned toward Michal so he could whisper to his brother.
"Hell is empty and all the devils are here."
"Andrew, please. If we die tonight, I don't want the last thing I hear from you being off of a stupid play."
"But, if we are marked to die, we are enough to do our country loss. And if to live, the fewer men, the greater share of honor."
"I said stop. I don't want things like that going through my head right now." Michal screamed quietly.
"Then want do you want, Michal."
"I'm surprised you have to ask me that. All I want is to get back to Lindsey and Eli. I want to hold my wife's hand as she's giving birth to our second kid. Which should happen any day now." He said on the verge of tears. "But you just got to go your own way, with your God damn quotes." Michal said through his teeth. Andrew could tell he was angry and slowly turned his head away. Michal let out a sigh at his mistake and said. "Andrew I'm sorry. I'm just going a little crazy in this cave."
"That's an understatement." Andrew said turning his head back to Michal and gave him a wink.
"If you two were smart, you'd shut the hell up." Said one of the marines on the other side of the room.
"If anything, our talking is the only thing keeping us sane. Are you with me on that Andrew?"
"No, I will be the pattern of all patience. I will say nothing."
"Un-freaking believable." Michal said under his breath.
The next ten minutes were in complete silence, well other than the sound of the rat eating the scraps in the small dish on the floor. The terrorist that told the two to stop laughing had returned into the room to look at the prisoner's identifications. He started with the two marines on the other side of the room. Once he had written their last names on a pad of paper, he made his way over to Michal. And as he reached for the dog tags around his neck, Michal acted on instinct and gripped his hand, but in his weakened state, it didn't accomplish anything. The terrorist pulled his hand away from his grasp at came back as a fist. The fist made contact and slammed his head against the stone wall. Michal fell to one side, his chained arm was the only thing keeping him up. The terrorist reached for his tags again, this time with no resistance. He wrote down his name and walked over to look at Andrew's tags, he immediately looked back at the paper and then back at Michal. He wrote the name on the pad and ran out of the room. He returned again with three other men in turbans. They unchained Andrew and drug him in front of Michal by two feet. Michal had a bad feeling about this.
"One last time devil dog, tell us everything we would like to know." One of the terrorist said as he pulled out a knife.
"We told you, we don't know anything."
"Well perhaps this will change your mind." The terrorists placed the knife under Andrew's ear. But before he applied pressure, Michal fastened his eyelids shut. And after several seconds, he heard four sets of footsteps. One were his own.
He opened his eyes and went from being a captive in a cave, about to watch the person whom he had spent most of his life with be butchered like a pig. To being at the foot of a floating mountain in the middle of a red, barren wasteland carved into a castle that looked as menacing a Transylvanian castle. He recognized the red sand as the surface of the planet Mars. Around him stood three people, on his right were Finn and Jake. Finn was a couple inches taller than when he last seen him and he had a gauntlet on his right hand with a white eye on the back of the hand, with a large pearl just above it. On his left was a golden knight. His armor shined in the pale light, and he recognized the sword at his waist, a katana. Behind him a gigantic glass dome and in it a city that seemed to be on fire in several places, the small pillars of smoke rising up and filling the dome.
Michal blinked and then and when he opened his eyes again, and now he was lying on a hospital bed in the Candy Kingdom. It felt as if someone had poured hot magma onto his chest, he was surprised that he wasn't screaming out in pain. Anna was clinging to Finn for any kind of comfort, bawling to no content. Finn looked down at him, a single tear rolling down his cheek. Princess Bubblegum was on the other side of the bed, looking away from Michal with one hand on the side of side of the bed. In the door way of the hospital stood an Eli who looked as if he, his left eye was covered by a bloody bandage. He stood at attention and saluted his father. He saw that his lip was quivering.
"At ease, Son." Michal said and his words acted as a starting gun, because once Eli heard it he ran, he ran as fast as he possibly could down the hall. To where was a mystery. Michal rested his head on the pillow and slowly closed his eyes. His lips started to move, but couldn't tell what he was saying. He saw a bright white filled his closed eyes and the screeching of a brown and gold owl awoke Michal from his dream. He shot up, breathing heavily. Michal checked to see if he still had all of his limbs. 'All there, good.' The princess and Eli were still sound asleep, Lady however was awakened by the Captain. He couldn't understand what she was saying to him, but he just figured that a translation was something around the lines of "Are you alright?"
"Uh, yeah I-I'm fine. It was just a, a bad dream." Michal laid back down and tied to go back to sleep, but that didn't come easy. "At least one memory is out." He whispered to himself as he tried to return to sleep.
The blizzard had disappeared as morning light shone through the small window on the igloo. Eli was the first to awake. He stretched his arms and legs with a yawn. Eli's yawn actually woke up Lady and Princess Bubblegum. "Morning." Eli said. Lady greeted him in Korean, while the princess just gave a dignified grunt. "Not a morning person, are you?"
"Not really." PB glanced over at Michal, who was still asleep. "Wake him up while I make some coffee." She said. Eli nodded and walked toward his Dad.
"Come on Dad, wake up." He said, nudging Michal with his foot. The Captain only turned on his side. "I'm serious Dad, wake up." He said slightly louder, but still nothing. Eli stepped back and said. "Alright Dad, you forced me to do this." Eli hollered in a deep voice, making both Lady and the princess to jump out of their skins. "MARINE, ARE SLEEPING ON THE JOB!" Michal shot up on instinct and saluted. "SIR, NO S…" he stopped in mid-sentence when he realized he was tricked. "Eli, I told you to never do that to me."
"Well it was either that, or I pour hot coffee on you."
"Which by the way, is ready." The princess said, pouring coffee into four cups and passing them out. As everyone drank their coffee, the princess pulled out a GPS from her jacket and turned it on. "The secret tracking device located in Finn's ear lets me know exactly where they are. And it says that Finn and Jake are in, that black ice cave over there." She said, pointing to a small black mountain that had an opening in the top.
"Why is there a tracking device in Finn's ear?" Michal said, drinking the last of his coffee.
"For the rare occasion just as this one. I've had hours to think of every possible situation and am well prepared."
"Yeah, but it's the unexpected that always bites you in the ass." Eli said. "Say if we're attacked by beings made of pure ice water. What then?" The princess unzipped her duffle bag.
"Then I'll pull out my electro-gun." The Princess pulled out a purple cross bow, but instead of a bow it had a glass sphere filled with small lightning bolts inside it.
"What if we need to blow through a wall or two?" Michal said.
"Then I'll use my ballblamburblabur." She pulled out something that looked like a child's toy, a black painted grenade launcher. But instead of grenades, it would shoot out green balls that went in through an 'L' shaped tube that held the ammunition.
"I'm sorry, a what? Why would you name something like that? In my time, there were names of weapons that weren't silly. Like an R.P.G, a 50 cal., an A.K. 47, M-16, Metal Storm…" Michal unzipped his jacket and withdrew his pistol. "…Glock. All of 'em were well know and used."
"Personally, I don't care about your big guns. All I really want to do is get Finn and Jake out of the Ice Kingdom and back to safety." Bubblegum said getting up close to the Captain.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Eli said right before he chugged the rest of his coffee. "Let's go." Everyone agreed with a nod.
The princess, Eli, and Michal climbed onto Lady's back and she flew off into the opening on top of the black mountain. As she flew down deeper into the opening, it turned into more of a cave. "Ugh, I can't get a signal in this chamber." PB said looking at her GPS. "Let's see if they show up on my heart monitor." She pulled back her jacket sleeve to reveal a small box with a screen, wrapped around her wrist. She pressed a button on the side to activate the heart monitor. A single heart beat showed up on the screen. The princess hit the monitor a few times and found everyone's heartbeat, including Finn and Jake's. "There they are, through that sphincter." She said, pointing at something that looked very similar to a heart valve.
Lady flew through it with ease and all four were now in a very large room, filled with pipes that connected with one side of the room to the other. They crisscrossed in random lines. The only light in the room were the several beams that shone through the ceiling. As Lady maneuvered around the poles, a hand quickly came out of the shadows, slid across Eli's back and then quickly returned to the shadows. Eli never liked the dark, more of what was in the dark. So this sudden contact made him jump out of his skin.
"What happened?" Michal asked.
"Something just rubbed my back." Eli's words made Lady stop in mid-air. They all listened for something, anything that would make a noise. A second hand came out and touched the Princess's cheek. She flinched at the cold touch just like Eli did. Tired of all the darkness, Eli grabbed one of his sword hilts and raised it above his head. He made the flame come out of the end of the hilt, and also made it stop half way up the sword to double it as a torch. The flame lit up the area around them by about fifteen feet and it show that the poles were actually tentacles with a hand attached to the end. There were too many to count and they were all heading straight for them.
"Oh crap." Michal said, drawing his sword. The hands came at all angles which left no room for escape, that and they grabbed Lady's legs. Michal and Eli began to swing their blades to and fro for any damage they could bring to the tentacles. The princess reached into her duffle bag and pulled out her grenade launcher with the weird name.
"Ballblamburblabur." She said before pulling the trigger and sent a green ball flying through the air. It made contact with the wall of the room and created an explosion that lit up the entire place for a split second. The explosion mad the hands retract, but they came back immediately.
"These things won't stop anytime soon." Eli said.
After two minutes of this, they were able to escape by having Lady phase through a wall. During the battle, Bubblegum had lost her ballblamburblabur and her duffle bag. "Well, I take bake what I said about that thing of yours being silly, princess. It made that whole thing feel easier." Michal said.
"Speak for yourself." Eli said. The princess and Michal looked back at him and saw that he still had his legs wrapped around Lady's back, but he was upside down and still had both of his swords in hand. The sight made the princess snicker. They were in a hallway that was illuminated by florescent lights and looked as if it were covered in red foam. The princess looked around.
"Well, let's keep going. There's no turning back now." Lady began to glide down the hallway with Eli still upside down, until she stopped when she heard a voice echoing from an air duct.
"This is total bonk, you copier. You're only in love with her because I'm in love with her!"
"Ice King." Lady whispered loud enough for her three companions to hear.
"I've been playin' this game a lot longer than you pal. I've been working my moves, smooth talking her, showing her magic tricks. Don't ignore me, come back!" The princess checked her heart monitor to see where they were.
"I'm picking up three heart signatures; the Ice King must be talking to Finn and Jake."
Lady lifted herself up to the duct and Michal opened the hatch so they could enter the ducts. Being inside the ducts, strangely made them seem a lot bigger. Eli managed to get himself right side up before he was inside the duct.
They came to a fork in the ducts and the princess told Lady to go right. Just as she rounded the coroner a strange noise came from the left duct, they all looked and a giant tongue came directly at them.
"What is wrong with this guy?!" Eli yelled as Lady dodged the tongue flew down the right duct. The further she went in, the small the duct got. Small enough to the point to where Michal had to get off of Lady's back and crawl along side of the duct.
When lady reached an opening covered in the red foam, she looked down it uncertainly. And then she slowly put her head through the opening as Michal returned to the top of Lady's back. Lady spoke Korean and Bubblegum translated for the two humans.
"She said it's clear." Lady carried the princess, Michal, and Eli into a large room filled with the same red foam. Michal had to let go of her so he could get back on her further back and fit through the opening. Lady stopped in the center of the room, about seven feet in the air. The walls of the room were covered in enormous eyelids that concealed equally sized eyeballs. That opened up and stared at the four. The eyes started to glow a purplish-pink and hum, Eli knew exactly what they were doing. He wanted to scream out 'Move now', but he didn't. And right before laser beams shot out from the eyes, Eli grabbed to princess and flung her and himself off of Lady, to the ground below. Michal would have done the same, if he wasn't stuck with awe. Every laser made contact with either Lady or Michal. All of the eyes closed as the two fell to the ground. The princess crawled away from Eli and towards her dear friend, and Eli got up and ran to his father's side.
"Please don't be dead, please don't be dead." Eli said, checking Michal's pulse. "Oh thank God, Anna would have killed me." Eli strained himself to pick his father up and over his shoulder. He looked at the princess who had done the same with Lady. A door had opened and Eli and the Princess carried the unconscious bodies through a darkened hallway, only to be illuminated by the princess's heart monitor every few seconds.
"What are you playing at Ice King?" PB said, looking at the three heart signatures on her monitor. Eli was several steps behind her as she led the way. "Thee heart signatures, getting closer." Right after she said that she hit something with her foot, almost making her trip. The princess used her monitor as a flashlight to see what she hit and found it to be the Ice King. His chest opened, with blue cords coming out of the hole in his chest and stretched outward in various directions. The Ice King actually turned his head and greeted the princess. Bubblegum screamed and dropped the monitor. It light up the area around the Ice King.
"Princess, what a pleasant surprise." Came from the shadows and into the light came a bold face in the shape of a heart.
"Ricardio?"
"Yes, it is I. did you find my dungeons stimulating."
"Where's Finn and Jake?" Eli said, setting Michal down on the ground.
"Oh, don't worry. They're here both here. A boy…" Ricardio tossed Finn into the light and then Jake. "…and a dog." Both had buckets tied around their necks with the word zanoits written across them.
"They've been poisoned with zanoits."
"What do you see in those two, princess. You need more mature companions. You see princess, I though all I wanted was your heart, but I was wrong. I was unfair to you. I want the full package." Ricarido's face rose up several feet. Astonishing Eli and the princess. "Princess, I am, a man now." Ricarido stepped into the light with his new arms and legs that were connected to his heart shaped body with exposed veins that looked like rope. A paper face taped to what was supposed to be the base of a neck. The two stepped backward in disgust and fear. "I made myself for you this body for you, princess. Synthesized from the Ice King's living tissue. His bone's broken and reassembled, and it helped when I wasn't the one doing all of the breaking."
"I guess you can thank my Dad for that." The Ice King couldn't help but be himself and try and flirt with the princess.
"It hurt, oh boy. How 'bout a hug, come on I need it."
"Silence, Simon." Ricarido said as he stepped on the on the Ice King's open chest. "All for you, princess." Ricardio then took Lady off of the PB's shoulders and actually tied her in a knot. "Now marvel at these powerful, articulate limbs."
"STOP IT!" she screamed.
"Attached with supple and delicate sinuses." He then tossed Lady aside as if she were a piece of trash, and in Ricardio's eyes she was.
"Lady!" PB yelled as she ran to her side, but was cut off buy Ricardio who cornered her with one arm against the wall.
"Now my darling, we can finally be united as man and wife." Eli could see where this was leading to, so he slowly reached down and unzipped Michal's jacket. Once halfway unzipped he reached in, pulled out his father's Glock and stuffed it into his jacket pocket.
The princess looked carefully at Ricardio, for any kind of weak spot. And his sinuses' had a big target on them. She quickly thought of a plan. "Okay Ricardio, I'll do it. I'll be you wife. If you can beat me in hand to hand combat." She said, removing her jacket and standing in a fighting pose.
"Oh my, how valcariant. Princess, you are absolute…" Ricardio was interrupted by the princess, who had punched him in the face. Before the fight escalated quickly, Eli slid in between the two.
"Before you to duke it out, I'd like to say something to Ricardio. Over the past twenty-four hours, she…" Eli pointed at the princess while still facing Ricardio. "…has insulted me, my family, and my culture. And to top it off, she dragged me and my Dad into this dungeon where my Dad, has probably been turned into a vegetable. Family is one of the few things I have left in this world. So if you would please step down, so that I may take your place in this fight. I really want to hit her, my new king."
"What's your name, boy?"
"Eli."
"Well then Eli, do as you wish, just do not damage her face. I want our wedding pictures to be very adequate."
"Yes, my king." He said, turning to face Bubblegum.
"Eli, what are you doing? Have you lost your mind?"
"Oh, trust me. I know exactly what I'm doing." Eli gave a wink toward her and made sure Ricardio couldn't see it. Eli made the first swing. The princess dodged it by less than an inch. She returned a punch and it passed by Eli's head. Eli quickly grabbed her wrist and pulled her down as he brought up his knee to gut. Eli's knee made contact and when he let go of the princess's wrist, she fell to the ground writhing in pain.
Ricardio came up beside Eli and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Very good Eli. And when you called me king, does that mean you would serve under me, as my knight."
"Why of course. There is no one greater than anyone who can outsmart the princess of the Candy Kingdom, and I can see the future you can create and I can only think of it as the start of glorious reign."
"Oh, is that so?" Eli pulled out his father's Glock out of his pocket, pointed it at Ricardio's left sinuses.
"Bazinga!" Eli squeezed the trigger and the bullet tore through most of the sinuses, leaving his left arm dangling by two of them. Eli then took hold of the hot muzzle and swung the handle of the gun into Ricardio's face, sending him backwards.
Eli extended his hand for the princess. "Sorry, but I had to make that look convincing." He said as he helped PB up to her feet.
"Y-you tricked me." Ricardio said getting back on his feet.
"Oh, you're just figuring this out." Eli said sarcastically.
"You're going to rue the day you were ever born." Ricardio sent his one good had toward either of them, not caring which on he hit. Eli jumped out of the way to grab his left hand and tear off his bad arm. He then used Ricardio's arm to get him of balanced and back on the ground. The princess grabbed Ricardio's leg and lifted it into the air. She placed her boot on his face before she said.
"You think we're intellectual equals, you're nothing compared to me! And this body you designed is selbatory garbage! You see I know a thing or two about building a body out of bio-mass, and you don't leave your heart exposed!"
"I just wanted to impress you." Ricardio said sheepishly.
"You didn't."
"Princess, I think I can take to from here." Eli said. And as angry as PB was, she stepped aside to go help Lady. "Now, Ricardio. I'll give you two chooses. One, I could use every last bullet in this gun and put them in you. Or, I could just let you walk out of here with what shreds of dignity you have left. Pick your punishment."
"I think I'll walk." He said.
"Well, start walking!" Ricardio slowly stood up and started to walk away. "Oh, and I almost forgot." Eli said before Ricardio got too far away. He turned back around just in time to see Eli place a bullet in both of his knee caps. Ricardio screamed as fell he to the ground, unable to use his legs. "Keep going." Eli said in a harsh voice and he did. He dragged himself along until he was out of sight and mind.
"I'm actually still surprised you tricked Ricardio like that." The princess said as she finished untying Lady. "You almost had me going there for a moment."
"Well some of it was the truth. Family and friends are pretty much all we got left."
Three days had passed since then. Finn and Jake lay in separate hospital beds, surrounded by curtains. The princess checked the two's vitals as she walked around the room. As she came into Finn's curtained room, his eyes slowly slid open.
"Princess." He said quietly. Finn realized he wasn't dreaming and shot up. "Princess, Ricardio is back and in the…!" The princes stopped Finn's yelling with her hand over his mouth. She hushed him as she pointed to the end of Finn's bed. Anna was there with her head resting on her crossed arms, asleep.
"Let's go outside and talk, Finn." He nodded as the princess took her hand away from his lips. Finn walked behind the princess out of the room, but stopped and looked back at Anna. With a smile on his face, Finn picked Anna up slowly placed her on the bed. After that Finn walked out to talk to the princess. "The Ricardio problem has been taken care of. It took me and Eli two days to drag you all back here on Lady's back. And another day to make an antidote for you and Jake. But only fifteen minutes to make the Ice King a new heart. And Anna has been here ever since we got back." Out of a second curtained room Jake walked out.
"Well, looked who decided to wake up from their beauty sleep." Eli said loudly, standing in the doorway.
"Eli, please." Michal pulled back the curtain on his bed with one hand, and held his head with the other. "I'm having the biggest head ache of my life, could you please be quiet."
"Sorry Dad."
Seeing Michal made the princess remember her friend who was hurt. She walked over to Lady's bed and pull back the curtain to ask if she was all right. She asked if Jake was up in Korean, and PB nodded. Lady lifted part of her body out of the bed to see for herself.
"Oh Lady, I should have never put you in danger. I saw on the heart monitor, I didn't know." Lady told her friend a short Korean speech and left he side to see Jake.
"Lady, boy am I happy to see you." A single tear fell down Lady's face as she spoke. Jake smile fell down with her tear, as Lady spoke the words that send chills down any man's back.
"Jake, I-I'm pregnant!" the room was at a dead silence, you could have even heard a blink. Eli couldn't help be himself and whisper out a few words, but in the silence it sounded like a scream.
"What a twist."
(This episode blew my mind when I saw it.)
