Reverseworld Stories

by Shwoo

Adventure Time in the land of Uuu, with Simon the Human and Gunter the Penguin.

4. Simon the Human&Gunter the Penguin

The far side of the portal opened into a dim, starry void, filled with floating rocks that looked like they'd come off the wall of a giant's castle. Not too far ahead, the Lich jumped from rock to rock towards a yellow cube, barely even slowed by the chain of Gunter clones clinging to its ankle.

Simon still couldn't believe he'd let the Lich trick them like that. He should have interpreted that dream better. He should have been more suspicious when it had refused to touch the crown gems. He should have thought. And now Billy was... he didn't know what Billy was. Maybe he was just possessed, but how had he ripped apart like that to reveal the Lich underneath? Magic? Was there any magic that even worked that way?

Gunter smacked into a rock, and his clones lost their grip and fell into the void.

"Gunter, quick!" said Simon, pointing at the Lich, which was already climbing into the yellow cube. "It's heading for Prismo's time room!" He was pretty sure that was what that thing was. He wondered what the Lich wanted with an almighty being, and none of the possibilities he came up with were good.

Gunter sat up, groggy from the pain of losing his clones. "Oh, right." He grew, scooped up Simon, and jumped from rock to rock, much faster than Simon could have on his own.

They arrived at the cube just in time to see the Lich laugh and disappear completely. The only thing inside was some sort of pink humanoid, which was confined to the walls and floor like a projection, or a shadow.

"Hey," said the projection, which Simon assumed was Prismo. "Hey! Did you guys see that? You know that was a ghost wearing a dead guy."

Simon sat on the ledge leading inside and put his head in his hands. A dead guy. The Lich was wearing a dead guy.

The dead guy was Billy. Billy was dead.

Prismo calling the Lich a ghost was interesting, but Billy was dead.

"That might be the nastiest thing I've ever seen," Prismo continued. He pointed his hands. "Na-na-na-na-nasty! Nasty jazz! Nasty-" He stopped abruptly, like someone had cut him off.

Simon looked around, but he couldn't see why Prismo had stopped. Nothing seemed to have changed.

And Billy was dead.

"Ooh, wait," said Prismo. "That was your friend Billy, wasn't it." He averted his eyes. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean nothing by it. I mean, I have a lot of nasty friends. My uncle is nasty. I'm basically honorary nasty."

Simon jumped down to the floor of the cube. "How did you know that?" He was some sort of god, so maybe he was omniscient. But then why would he say something so insensitive in the first place? He was either a Magic Man-level trickster, or...

"Huh?" Prismo looked away again. "Uh. No reason. It's just... this thing I have. Don't worry about it."

According to Booko, the time room and Prismo were eternal and constant, but because of the theory of infinitely branching timelines, there were multiple iterations of the room layered on top of each other, so that everyone who entered didn't have to contend with every possible alternate version of themselves. But Prismo could see, and individually interact with, every timeline at once.

"I bet someone from another timeline told you!" said Simon. Despite the situation, it was still fascinating to speak to a being who existed on multiple planes at once.

"No... Actually, yes," said Prismo. He pointed at Simon. "There's this other human boy standing right where you are, and his... You know, I shouldn't be talking about it."

Gunter walked around the room and waved his arms around. "You mean to say that there's another version of us right here, on some other plane of reality?"

"Well..." said Prismo. He looked around. "I just granted his wish, so he's gone now. I mean, the human I was talking about."

"Wish?" said Simon. Prismo granted wishes? Just to anyone who walked in? Could that be why the Lich had been so determined to get here?

"See, that's just he said," said Prismo. "That right there is what they call circums... Circumstanti..." He frowned. "Oh, I can never remember how to say that."

That didn't explain anything. "What about the Lich? What did he wish for?" Simon was afraid to find out, but he had to ask.

"Oh yeah," said Prismo. "He wished for the extinction of all life and I did it. Guess it changed his timeline or something?"

"What?!" said Simon. "E-Extinction?!" That couldn't be possible. Everyone couldn't be dead when they'd all probably been alive a couple of minutes ago. Things didn't work like that. Adventuring didn't work like that.

Gunter felt his face, and said "We're not dead, are we Simon? I don't feel dead." He checked his pulse. "No. We're not."

Oh yeah. The two of them counted as life.

"Oh," said Prismo, "that's because you're still safe in my time room until you make your wish."

"Our wish..." said Simon. They could still fix this, if they were smart. "What did the other me wish for?"

Maybe they could get some help from this other timeline. He had a few ideas, but his head was still swimming from shock and lack of sleep. It sounded like the other him was a bit more level-headed, if he'd already made a wish.

"Huh?" said Prismo.

"You know, that other human you mentioned," said Gunter. "What was his wish?"

"Oh, him?" said Prismo. He hesitated. "He wished the Lich never even ever existed."

That was a good one. No Lich, no extinction of all life. And no dead Billy. Simon could see a couple of holes, though. The Lich had existed since at least the Mushroom War. Wishing it out of existence might have unforeseen effects on the timeline. Maybe it was better to wish for it to disappear just before it killed Billy. Or even right after they exorcised it from Marceline. Or before it escaped from the tar lake.

The Lich had done a lot of damage over the course of its existence, however long that had been. Eliminating it might be worth the change to the timeline. The fact that his double had settled on that wish in particular had to mean something. Maybe he knew something about time alteration that this Simon didn't.

"That's my wish, too," said Simon.

.

Simon didn't even have time to take another breath before he began to disappear, just like the Lich. Gunter watched with his mouth open, until he was completely gone.

Gunter looked around frantically. "What just happened? Where'd Simon go?" All this disappearing was making him nervous. What was it about wishes that made people disappear?

The shadow guy didn't seem worried. The shadow of a mug fell down the wall from someplace, and into his hand. "Oh, when he wished for the Lich to have never existed-" He took a sip from the mug and it fell back up and out of sight- "Simon left my time room and entered his wish altered reality. We can watch him on my TV wall."

A real, three-dimensional remote control materialised from a beam of light, and the shadow guy pressed a button, transforming an entire wall into a television.

"Ooh!" Gunter wanted a TV like that.

On the TV was Simon, lying on a bed and playing with a ball and paddle. The bed had the same leopard print cover as Simon's, but there were no animal pelts. Just a cover and white sheets. The floor was green and looked carpeted, not like the wood floor of their bedroom at home.

They watched for a few minutes. At one point, Simon missed with the paddle, muttered "Clamballs," and shook out his hand before hitting the ball back and forth again.

"So..." said Gunter eventually. "I uh, I didn't get your name."

"Oh, me?" said the shadow guy. "It's Prismo. I'm sorry, usually you get here, you already know who I am." He gave an embarrassed laugh.

"Ah, I can see that, I can see that," said Gunter. "I suppose you'd really have to try to get all the way out here. My name's Gunter. Gunter the Penguin. Goon-ter, Gun-ther, any pronunciation's good. Gon-ter..."

Prismo nodded. On the screen, Simon continued to play with the ball and paddle.

"He... He ever gonna stop with that thing?" said Gunter. He'd seen more interesting movies. Airplanes Taking Off was a more interesting movie.

"Not for like, twelve hours or something," said Prismo, after a second's thought. "Hang on a second, I'll fast forward to the interesting part." He pressed a couple of buttons on the remote, and the image sped up to a blur.

When it stopped, Simon was sitting in a horse drawn cart in a dry-looking landscape that Gunter didn't recognise, and he looked older. His waistcoat had sleeves on it. It was more like just... a coat. The formal kind. He was also wearing a scarf, but that was probably just because he was cold.

He still didn't have a beard.

There was a woman driving the cart who looked a lot like Betty, but she had legs and no gills, so it couldn't be her. She looked older too, so maybe it was just something that happened to mermaids that nobody knew about yet.

"How- How far did you fast forward?" said Gunter, touching the screen.

Prismo shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. Five years... thirty years... something like that."

Either of those could be true for all Gunter knew. He was no good at judging the ages of humans.

.

The sun was going down by the time they arrived at the little town they'd be staying at. It got cold quickly out here in the wilderness, and Simon was glad he'd dressed warmly.

Betty put the reins of the horse into one hand, and yawned with the other. "Is this the place?" she said, looking ahead at the row of stalls, which were mostly empty at this time of day. "Are you sure it's even a town?"

Simon laughed. "Don't let any of the locals hear you say that." This area was dry and poor in soil, and had been sparsely populated ever since the world had thawed out. He was almost certain that they'd be the first to really examine the place.

There was a long haired man with a burn scar over one eye lounging against one of the stalls, watching a group of kids pack away a towering pile of spoons. He turned around as the cart approached, and grinned unpleasantly. "Outsiders!"

Simon kept his eyes on him. "Yes?" Nobody out here was that happy to see a stranger unless they wanted something from them. He wore a silly outfit that looked too small on him, but there was a very serious looking sword slung over his back. He was probably in a gang, but Simon had dealt with gangs before. As long as he didn't think they had any treasure on them, they'd be fine.

The man stared into Simon's face for an uncomfortably long time, then said "This is Destiny Gang turf. Mr and Mrs Noseless gotta pay the toll."

Simon covered his face self-consciously. "And what's the toll?" He knew gang logic. They couldn't just take every traveller's money and then kill them. It tended to upset the travellers' home countries, and provoke them into sending militia or mercenaries to wipe the gang out. Nobody cared enough to actually defend somewhere so isolated, and another gang would probably spring up in its place, but the original thugs would still be dead.

"You're not actually thinking of paying, are you?" said Betty, who'd never been this far from the city before.

"Toll is five flames. Pay up." The man held out his hand impatiently.

Simon reached into his coat pocket and counted out the coins. "It's cheaper than hiring a bodyguard," he told Betty. "And safer." He'd been in a couple of expeditions with bodyguards who'd decided to rob them on the way back. His partner at the time had been good with energy guns, which was lucky, because Simon was not much of a fighter himself. Betty was, but it was still safer to just pay the gangs.

"Yeah, give it here," said the man, snatching the coins from Simon's hand. He squinted at Simon again, then made a dismissive gesture and walked away.

When he was sure nobody was close by, Simon got out of the cab, unfolded a map, and oriented it to the north. If he was right, they should start looking about half a mile north north east from here. He got back in, pointed west and said "Let's make camp over that way." There was no need to tip anyone off, especially in gang territory.

Betty urged the horse on. "Do you usually have to pay people off? Is that what you do out here?"

"Uh... Yeah, sometimes," said Simon. "I told you it might be dangerous." He was glad she was there, though. He didn't like going on expeditions alone, and as she'd said, he'd been helping with so much of her research that it was only fair she help him with his.

He could still barely believe they were going to be married in a few months. It was the kind of thing that only happened to people who didn't wake up at their desks with pieces of partially translated printer paper stuck to their cheeks. He deserved one of those stereotypical nagging wives from stand-up routines, not someone like her.

They set up camp in a small clearing near a decrepit farmhouse. Betty checked the interior, but she said it was only inhabited by rats now. They couldn't stay inside, though. As outsiders, it would take months for the house to truly accept them, and they would not be here for months.

Later, as Simon transcribed an old novella and Betty drew detailed diagrams of the local flora in her notebook, Betty said "Do you feel like we're being watched?"

"Yeah, I do," said Simon, unconcerned. "It's probably just the gangs." He lowered his voice. "Don't tell them why we're really here, and everything will be... fine." Probably. There was always a bit of uncertainty.

Betty put the notebook down and leaned back, looking at the stars. There were more here than in the city, and Simon couldn't help associating it with the cold air. "Why are we really here, Simon?" she whispered. "All you ever say we're looking for is 'something' and 'it'."

"I do?" said Simon. It was hard to shake the habit of secrecy, even with his fiancee. He spoke as quietly as he could. "This area was a strike site in the Great Freezing War. It was supposed to be a new, special kind of bomb. All sources listed it as deployed, but there's no signs of a crater here." He indicated the area where the bomb should have landed, which was almost invisible in the dark. "Or any radiation." They hadn't brought a Geiger counter, but six hundred years of continuous habitation was a pretty good indicator that nothing had happened. "I think the bomb missed, but there must have been something up here." You didn't test your bombs on inhabited areas in foreign countries, and you didn't waste your special, one-of-a-kind bomb on boring stretches of farmland.

"Mmm." Betty sounded skeptical, but she'd never really acknowledged the importance of Simon's work. She was more interested in the way things were now, while Simon believed that the best way to understand the world was through the past. The ancients had had almost everything figured out, and if they could just recover that knowledge, there'd be no need to reinvent the fireplace.

For him, the way his career had started almost made it an obligation. As long as he could recover at least as much knowledge as he'd destroyed, he'd be happy.

.

They started out early the next morning. Simon began by mapping the contours of the hilly land, trying to find the lowest points, where the eroded signs of ancient civilisation would be most apparent. There didn't seem to be anyone around, but he didn't want to bring out the shovels during daylight hours if they could avoid it. If they didn't find anything by the afternoon, they'd have to risk it, for archaeology.

Betty was looking at the trees, obviously more interested in whatever they could tell her than finding the intended target of the strike. "Simon!" she called suddenly, from a stand of trees at the bottom of a hill. "I think you should see this!"

Simon ran over, and at first, he couldn't figure out what Betty wanted him to look at, until she pointed at the big space between the tree roots. "A cave..." There was probably something down there, unless it had already been picked clean by the locals.

"You first," said Betty, with a sweeping arm gesture.

Simon crawled between the roots, into a dim, cold cave that smelled of rot and sharpness.

Betty followed behind. "See anything?"

Simon waited for his eyes to adjust from the bright outdoor light. "Not yet..." There was something yellow, glinting in the light from the entrance. "Look!" He moved towards it cautiously.

"Stop..."

Simon hesitated and looked around, but he couldn't see the source of the voice, or if what he'd heard was a voice at all. He could just about see what the glint was coming from, though. There was a golden, jeweled crown, sitting on the head of a skeleton that had been caught under a large chunk of ice. The skeleton was wearing faded pre-freeze clothing, and was the size of a child or a young teenager. It wore a strange hat with two ear-like protusions sticking up from the top, which prevented Simon from judging its age at death through the fusion of its skull bones.

He didn't see the pink goo spread around the cavern floor until it squelched into a heap about as tall as he was. "Candy... Do you have any... candy?" Its voice had a tinny, bubbly quality, that made it sound like it was speaking through an ancient microphone from under a swamp.

Simon wasn't sure he'd heard it correctly. "Candy?" What was this thing? Some sort of pre-freeze relic, obviously, but he'd never heard of the ancients developing... pink goo golems or whatever.

"Candy!" the figure repeated. "I need sugar to metabolise... to metabolise my..." Talking was obviously an effort for it. It didn't even seem to have a mouth.

Betty tossed it a wrapped square of toffee. "Here."

Lucky for them that Betty had a sweet tooth. Whatever this thing was, it blew apart his wildest expectations. It represented potential lifetimes of research, and might even repay his debt to humankind all on its own.

They couldn't get too excited yet. Something could still go wrong.

The toffee landed on top of the goo heap and sank down, out of sight. After a second, the heap rippled violently, and differentiated into a more humanoid form, with a defined head, torso and limbs.

It had a flap of hair hanging down from the back of its head, and a distinct bump on its chest. It was probably supposed to be a woman, Simon thought. It was still hard to tell.

"Listen," said the pink, gooey woman, in a somewhat clearer voice. "Thanks for the candy, but you've got to leave, now. This place is... dangerous."

It was some sort of guard, then, that didn't know what had happened since its activation. From a financial standpoint, the most valuable thing in here seemed to be the crown, so that was probably what it was guarding. It looked like an ordinary crown, from very early in European history. It wasn't unknown for European items to end up on another continent like this, but why was a skeleton from just before the freeze wearing it? Maybe it was just a prop, or a costume? He bent over the skeleton to examine it more closely.

"Aren't you listening to me?" said the woman, so forcefully that Simon jerked back. "I said it's dangerous!"

"What are you?" said Betty. Simon could tell that she wanted to touch the woman and see what she was made of, but she held back.

The poorly defined lines on the woman's face shifted until she almost looked confused. "I... I don't remember." She shook her head violently. "That's not important. I remember what happened here."

Simon could almost feel his eyes light up. A skeleton from the Freezing War trapped under a chunk of ice, wearing what looked like a much older crown. There had to be an interesting story there. "Okay, what happened here?"

The woman indicated the skeleton. "This is..." She frowned. "He's... His name is... Finn. Finn Mertens. A thousand years ago, he saved the world from... that." She pointed at the ice.

"From ice?" said Simon. That was the opposite of what had happened.

"Simon, that's a bomb, said Betty impatiently. "It's just covered with ice."

Simon looked at it with his head on his side. Now that she mentioned it... "Oh yeah, you're right! It must have frozen in the Freezing War." Most of the ice had gone back to pre-freeze levels centuries ago, but there were still scattered pockets of frost around.

"Not... exactly," said the woman. "If that bomb had exploded, it would have destroyed the entire world. Finn had been cursed with the power to control ice and snow, so he set out to freeze it before it hit the ground."

"Control ice and snow?" said Betty, frowning at the skeleton.

"You mean, by magic?" said Simon. The story was obviously some sort of myth, probably one that the woman had created herself to explain the things in this cavern, but most myths had a kernel of truth to them.

"No, just through cryokinesis," said the woman, looking at him like he was the crazy one. "I said he was cursed because the power was janking up his brain. He succeeded in freezing the bomb, but... you can see what happened."

"He got trapped underneath," said Betty.

"Yeah," said the woman. She rubbed the crown gingerly. "The crown was really attached to Finn, mentally and emotionally. When he died, it unleashed so much cryogenic power that the whole earth got covered in ice for four hundred years."

Interesting. Simon wondered how close it was to the truth. Was the skeleton even of this Finn person, or did the name have other significance?

"That's how you think it happened?" said Betty. She had a lot of talents, but tact was not among them.

"It's the truth!" the woman insisted. "How do you think the world got covered in ice?"

"Well there's a lot of theories," said Simon, counting off on his fingers. "Changes in the planet's orbit, some kind of secret superweapon, reverse greenhouse gasses..." Those were the three most commonly accepted theories. He liked the greenhouse gas the one the most, because it was tidy. The planet had been getting hotter, so people had tried desperately to cool it back down, and succeeded too well. It made sense, and fit in with what was known of the politics of the time.

"Yes, it was a secret superweapon!" said the woman in exasperation. "The crown!"

She obviously believed what she was saying. They'd need to do some careful questioning to get the real truth. "Betty," said Simon. "This is big! We gotta get back and get an expedition together so we can study this place."

Betty nodded. "And hire some guards." She looked at the woman. "Do you want to come back with us? We could get you more candy."

"Thanks for offering, but no," the woman replied. "I have to stay here and guard this place, and you have to go home and never come back. I just got done telling you about how this crown nearly destroyed the world!"

The crown. Simon looked down at it, gleaming on the skeleton's head. They wouldn't have any trouble drumming up interest if they showed that off. And the longer they left it, the higher the chance that someone else would come along and take it, especially if they'd been seen entering the cave. Simon leaned over the skeleton and reached down.

"What did I just say?" the woman exploded. "Have you been listening to a word I've been saying? What did you say your name was? Simon?"

Simon picked the crown up, inspecting the skeleton's mouth as he did. It was missing a lot of teeth, but its wisdom teeth were still high above the gum line. So, a child or a teenager. "I know you think it's got magical powers, but we need to take this thing back to the city with us." The crown was surprisingly cold, even compared to the rest of the cave. It must have been closer to the ice than it looked.

"Put that down," said the woman, in a failed attempt to sound threatening. Her voice was just too distorted and weak.

"I'm sorry," said Simon. He put the crown in his bag so they wouldn't attract thieves on the way home.

"Yeah," said the woman. "I'm sorry too." She pulled an old, 3rd century gun from behind the frozen bomb. "I'm gonna count to three, and if you don't put down-"

Betty tackled her and wrestled the gun away. "Give me that!"

"You... You tried to..." Simon took a deep breath. She'd seemed so harmless and eccentric. She was still a guard, he reminded himself. Guards had to use force sometimes. Especially when they truly believed that the world would end if they didn't.

The woman picked herself up off the ground. Interestingly, she was so soft that the force of Betty's tackle had actually deformed her a bit. "Fine. Take the crown. Destroy the world all over again. But don't say I didn't warn you!"

"Let's get out of here," said Betty. She inspected the gun closely, pulled the trigger a couple of times, then dropped it. "This thing doesn't even work."

They crawled back out of the hole. There was just enough time to get back to the city before sundown, if they hurried.

.

The woman watched the two humans crawl out of the small opening that she really should have got around to filling, then sat next to the skeleton. "Sorry, Finn," she told it. "I couldn't stop them from taking the crown."

"You can't let them have it," said Finn.

The woman sighed. "Finn, quit talking. You're dead. This isn't real."

"Yeah, but you still have to stop them," said Finn. Without the crown, his head looked bald and incomplete. "You promised when the world froze over, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember," said the woman softly. All her important memories were still with her. "It's nice to talk to you again, Finn."

"Oh, in that case," said Finn. He put on a spooky voice. "Oooo... Get the croooown... Get the croooooooooown... Get it back from those guuuuuuuys..."

"If I do it, will you quit talking that?" said the woman. She might be crazy enough to think a dead boy was talking to her, but she wasn't stupid. She knew what he was doing. What her brain pretended he was doing.

Finn lay on the ground and said nothing.

.

As they walked back to the camp, Simon imagined that he could feel the cold of the crown seeping through the bag, into his skin. He could definitely feel its weight. He'd handled gold a few times in the past, but the weight never stopped surprising him.

"Do you think-" Betty began.

Simon put a finger to his lips and mouthed "later". Once they were back on the road. He hoped the horse they'd hired could go faster than a trot. Rental horses were often not well treated.

Someone grabbed his ankles from behind, and he went down. "What-?" He tried to push himself up, to the sound of yells and running footsteps.

"You again?" said Betty.

Something hit Simon hard in the back of the head, and he slid face first over a rock, pulling off his glasses.

"Simon!" said Betty, over the thumps and groans of a fistfight.

Betty sounded like she had her hands full. Simon tried to get up to a kneeling position, and felt something crack under his foot.

"Oh... butt." It was his glasses. He put them on anyway - the right lense was still okay - and stood, tensing up for another attack.

The first thing he saw was Betty fighting a group of thugs in tacky clothing, including the one from the day before.

"Betty!" Simon ran forwards, and something hit him in the back, nearly knocking him down again. At first he thought someone had kicked him, until he recognised the tingle of a low level energy projectile.

Energy guns were hard to get out here. He turned.

"Morning," said his old partner, keeping his weapon trained on him. He looked a bit older than Simon remembered, but he still had that white coat and hat he always wore. His eyes hadn't changed, either.

"O'Malley," said Simon. He didn't move.

"O'Malley...?" said Betty. She seemed to have stopped fighting, but Simon didn't want to turn around to check. "Isn't he that... Didn't he go to jail?"

That was what Simon had thought as well.

O'Malley signaled the thugs, and said "Thing about jail is, eventually you get out of jail."

"Why are you talking like that?" said Simon. Like that was the most surprising thing that had happened today. He sounded like he was mimicking the way people spoke up here, but for all Simon knew, the eastern accent he'd had when he knew him was the fake one.

The poorly dressed thugs walked Betty into Simon's view. Simon couldn't tell if she'd lost, or just pretended to lose, but she looked all right. She didn't have any visible cuts or bruises on her, which was more than he could say for the man wearing a domino mask and what looked like an off the shoulder dress.

"Come to make more money off Simon's hard work?" said Betty, looking at O'Malley with an anger that Simon rarely saw from her. He'd never realised how strongly she felt about this. He'd caught onto O'Malley's scheme years before they'd even met.

"Sure, if he agree," said O'Malley, without taking his eyes off Simon. "For starters, he can hand over whatever he found in that hole. You know, show of good faith."

Oh. He'd seen that. "W-We didn't find anything," said Simon. "I thought there was something here, but I was mistaken. We were going home." He was so much better at lying by omission than just lying. Even to someone who'd lied to him so often and so easily.

The man with the burn scar snorted derisively.

"I never thought I would see the great Simon Petrikov wrong about anything," said O'Malley. "Mind if we look inside your bag?" He flashed a disarming smile, as though they really were just having a friendly talk.

Simon took a bit too long to come up with an answer. He wasn't a criminal, and he didn't know how to begin calculating the monetary value of the crown. But gold was always worth a lot.

"What?" said O'Malley. "We won't murder you for it," he added with a chuckle. "Why kill the goose that lays the golden eggs? Remember that?"

Simon did. They'd found an only slightly water damaged library once, and that story had been in the first book he'd opened. It was also one of the few books from that library that still existed, because he'd decided to take it home with him. He'd never really understood logistics, so he'd usually left the large-scale transportation to O'Malley.

"Do you remember the bird catcher and the viper?" muttered Betty.

"Quiet!" O'Malley snapped, his mask falling for a second. "I'm ta- I talk to your boyfriend. Butt out." He turned back to Simon. "How would you like to work together again? I take care of business side, and you do your research, just like old times. I bet whatever you have in that bag will pay the finder's fee, easy."

Simon looked over at Betty. Of course there was no way he was willingly going to set humanity back any further than he had already, but there was something wrong. O'Malley was too confident. He was always like that, but he wouldn't go to these lengths just to bluff without something up his sleeve.

"No?" said O'Malley. "Okay." He glanced at the thugs.

The man with the burn scar unslung his sword, but he didn't point it at Simon. He pointed it in the opposite direction, at Betty.

He really thought he could take her hostage? Simon began to think that maybe they'd get out of this.

Betty broke out of the men's grip and kicked backwards. "I've had enough of this!" She elbowed the man with the burn scar in the stomach and yanked the sword from his hand, before transferring her attention to the man in the domino mask, who'd taken a large hammer off his back.

Simon noticed O'Malley lining up a shot, and yelled "Betty, look out!"

Betty threw herself to the ground, and the shot went over her head, narrowly missing the thug in the domino mask. "Simon! Try to get that gun off him!"

That was easier said than done. Simon turned to face O'Malley, and O'Malley shot him in the stomach. Simon doubled over in pain, his eyes filled with tears.

"Simon!"

Simon couldn't see through the tears, but he recognised the voice. It was the pink, gooey woman from the cave.

"Uh..." The woman sounded confused. "Simon, I hope you still have the crown, because you need to put it back. Now."

"Crown, huh?" said O'Malley.

The vague shapes in front of Simon resolved into the sight of O'Malley holding his pistol to the pink woman's temple. "No!" Energy weapons became unreliable at high power, but seeing what Betty's tackle had done to her, even middling power would be enough.

"I don't know who you are, lady, but I bet you have lots of stories to tell, that nobody else will ever know. It would be a real blow to the sum total of human knowledge if you died right now."

"Don't..." Simon took the crown out his bag. It still felt cold, and he wondered if he was imagining it. How well did gold absorb heat, anyway? Betty probably knew.

He had to give up the crown. Betty could take care of herself, but unless he did something, the woman would definitely die. The thought of anyone dying because of him made him shudder, unique knowledge or no unique knowledge.

And it was just one artifact. It wasn't like he was actually agreeing to help O'Malley annihilate every trace of the pre-freeze world.

Except he was. He'd give away any amount of ancient treasures to save a life, especially a life like the strange goo woman's.

But what else could he do? He took a step forwards, then hesitated. The woman had claimed that the crown was a superweapon, and obviously that was an exaggeration, but it was strange that it had ended up on the head of a skeleton trapped under a bomb. Maybe there was some power to it. It was a stupid idea, but he didn't have any good ones left.

Most myths had a kernel of truth to them.

He held the crown above his head.

.

For a second, the pink woman thought Simon was going to give the crown to the white-clothed man holding her at gunpoint, but it was even worse than that. He lowered it onto himself.

"No!" yelled the woman, too late. "Stop!"

The crown touched Simon's head, and he began to scream. He collapsed to the ground, and coughed up what looked like snow, or possibly some sort of semi-frozen bodily fluid.

Despite what was happening, the woman was fascinated. So this was what happened when a human put the crown on for the first time. She'd asked Finn a couple of times, but he'd never been able to remember. If only she had... If she... What did she wish she had? Was this the kind of thing she was into? What was she?

"What in the junk...?" The man in the white coat lowered his gun and walked over to where Simon was lying. He knelt down, and reached for the crown.

Simon jerked backwards and into the air, his hair flapping like wings. "You!" he screamed, shooting ice from his hands. The man barely had time to stand up before he was frozen.

Betty glanced around. "Simon?" she said, as she pulled one of the other men to the ground by the hair. "What are you...?

Simon rotated to face her and shot more ice in her direction, freezing two of the men, and barely missing the third.

Wisely, the third man ran.

"Hey, I'm not done with you!" Simon yelled. "Come back here!" He created a frozen lightning bolt and flung it at the man. He missed, but the ground shook with the impact. He threw another one.

He reminded the woman more of Finn with each passing second.

"Finn!" she said aloud. The third thug was running right towards the cavern. She didn't think she had the energy to dig Finn out if the cavern collapsed, without at least enough candy to remember her name. "Be careful!" she called.

Simon didn't seem to hear.

The woman began to run, putting the last of her energy into moving as fast as she could, even as her legs began to melt and lose definition.

"Hey- wait!" Betty chased her. "What's happening? What's wrong with Simon? He's just messing around, right?"

The woman tried to answer, but her tongue had melded with the roof of her mouth. What kind of a stupid question was that? She'd seen him put the crown on. What did she think was wrong with him?

She reached the cavern and dove inside. Finn was still okay. Apart from being dead and a skeleton and missing the crown. He wasn't buried. Yet.

Betty crawled in and said "Wait! You have to tell me how to help Simon!"

The woman managed to unstick her tongue. "If I knew that, Finn wouldn't be stuck under that bomb," she snapped. Everything would have been fine if these two hadn't shown up and brought all their outside world problems with them.

The whole cavern rumbled from the impact of another lightning bolt, and a crack formed in the ice encasing the bomb.

"That... That bomb's dead, right?" said Betty nervously.

The woman shrugged. "I never got the chance to do any tests on it." She'd never had both enough sugar to function and the equipment to conduct any serious experiments. She didn't even know how long a normal atomic warhead lasted, and the bomb was unique.

Betty backed towards the exit. "Maybe we should-"

Another impact shook the cavern.

.

Gunter was jerked out of sleep by a loud explosion. "Argh! What?"

On the screen, Simon was wearing Finn-Ice's crown and hovering in the sky. Behind him, a horrible green mushroom cloud spread across the sky. Simon looked around, saw the cloud, and said "Oh Grob!"

He dove at the ground, and a thick, protective layer of ice formed around his body.

"What is this?" said Gunter. "This wasn't happening when I went to sleep!"

"It's your friend's wish," said Prismo. "Wait. You were asleep?"

"I... I was tired!" said Gunter. "I'm running on two hours of sleep here!" They'd spent most of the night collecting gems for Billy. For the Lich. Tricking them and wearing Billy's skin as a coat was horrible enough, but depriving him of a full night's sleep was salt on their wounds. "I'm fairly certain that Simon didn't wish to become the prince of ice and re-enact the Great Mushroom War!"

"Well... no, he didn't," said Prismo. "We're seeing the consequences of his wish. Sometimes this is what just happens."

"Ooh," said Gunter. As long as there was no Lich and never had been, it was still in the bounds of what Simon had asked for. "Maybe a king?" he said to himself. "S- He looks old enough to be a king..." He wasn't sure what the distinction was. Marceline had a kingdom, and she was a queen, but so did Finn-Ice, and he was just a prince. It was confusing. Did it depend on the amount of thinking subjects, maybe?

On the screen, Simon broke open the ice and surveyed the area. He was breathing hard, and there was something crazed about his expression.

"But you know..." said Prismo. "You get a wish too."

"I do?" said Gunter. Oh yeah! He did! This was so exciting. All life wasn't extinct, and he got a wish of his own! "Then I wish for... yeah, I wish for a smoothie." He was getting hungry. Last night's dinner seemed like weeks ago.

"A smoothie?" repeated Prismo. "You're gonna waste your one wish on a smoothie?"

"Yeah, with a little honey, and banana, oh, and some fish, of course," said Gunter. He was easy to please. He could have wished for something like a good life fo his unhatched chicks, or the ability to fly, but he didn't want to accidentally make any more bombs go off. Simon was literally a genius, if they could believe the IQ test they'd dug up a few years ago, and his wish had still got him insanity and explosions.

"You don't want anything else...?" said Prismo, looking at the screen.

Gunter looked at the screen too. Simon was sitting with his head in his hands. He was still wearing the crown. "Yeah, just a smoothie." Or maybe two, but he didn't want to get greedy.

"Dude," said Prismo. "I'll just make you a smoothie. You should use your wish on something important."

"What's not important about smoothies?" said Gunter. He could just taste that refreshing, fishy taste already.

Prismo looked at the screen again, and when Gunter didn't say anything, added "You know. On someone who might need it...?"

Gunter couldn't think of anyone who needed it. Maybe he could wish for peace on Uuu, but then they wouldn't have any more adventures.

"I'm talking about him!" Prismo burst out. He pointed at Simon. "Over there."

"Oh," said Gunter softly.

.

Simon returned to the town. He couldn't think of anywhere else to go. He could barely think at all. People were going to be upset about the bomb exploding their nice farmland. Maybe nobody had noticed yet. He could blame it on... someone. Not him. Whoever had put the bomb there in the first place. It was an obvious occupational health and safety hazard. Didn't anyone read ancient corporate pamphlets anymore?

He'd started seeing visions as soon as he'd put the crown on, and they hadn't gone away. They were everywhere. He charged up some ice and shot at a cluster of strange, multicoloured... things. "Leave me alone!" he yelled. Something slimy-looking climbed up his leg, though he couldn't feel it. He shook it off. "Go! Go, get outta here!"

The town looked a bit different to the way it had earlier in the day. He thought. He could barely remember. He didn't think all the trailers and stalls had been flat like that before. The whole thing had definitely been a lot more... intact.

He walked through a tall blue creature that resembled a stick with four legs jutting out of the bottom. He barely noticed.

"You're not real," he whispered at the town. It was the crown. It was fogging up his mind and making him see things that weren't real, like monsters and bombs and ruined towns.

He reached up, hesitated, and took it off.

At first there was no change, but then the monsters disappeared, and his mind came back into focus. He waited for the town and the sky to go back to normal, but it didn't.

He peeked into the nearest trailer, which was easy because the near wall was blown in, and stumbled backwards, barely preventing himself from throwing up. The people in there were already dead, he hoped.

The monsters weren't real, but the bomb was. It definitely was. It was real and he'd set it off. What had he even been trying to do? The memory was already fading, like a horrible dream.

Simon held the crown in his hands, and wondered if its mind dampening effects would work on what he'd seen in the trailer. He also wondered if he could survive without wearing it. He felt like it was telling that he couldn't, like it was whispering to him just below his hearing.

He held it up to his ear, then put it back on, and forgot what he was doing.

.

Prismo hit the mute button, and said "Looks like your friend's having a pretty rough time."

Gunter took a sip of the smoothie Prismo had made him. "Yeah, but he'll get out of it." He always did. "Any world's better than one with the Lich. And look at him! He's all grown up. He'll be fine, I can tell you that." He took another sip. "Hey. There fresh anchovies in this?" They tasted different to the canned ones.

Prismo laughed nervously. "I've never made a fish smoothie before. I figured, penguins, anchovies..."

"No, it's okay," said Gunter. "I love it. It's really hard to get anchovies where I live, the water's too cold for them. I mean, yeah, you could hike down to the south and catch them by the bucketload, but it's not very convenient, having to go through the Desert of Doom... You're a good host, Prismo. It can't be easy, with people coming in asking for wishes at all hours..."

"Actually it doesn't happen very often," said Prismo. "I mean, in your world, you have to... what? Find all nine gems of power, and the Enchiridion... sounds like a hassle."

"Yeah yeah, but didn't you say there was another human boy in here at the same time as me and Simon?" said Gunter. If the timelines were infinite, and every possibility was happening at the same time the way Simon kept telling him, he didn't see how Prismo ever got any rest.

Prismo avoided his eyes. "Oh, there were a lot of human teenagers in here. But they're all gone now."

"You're not telling me something," said Gunter, jabbing a flipper at Prismo. "They all brought their brothers with them too, didn't they?" Simon had said that the human boy who'd told Prismo about Billy was another version of him, so it stood to reason that he'd come in with another Gunter. Prismo hadn't said anything about how many penguins were in the room.

"And sisters," said Prismo. He counted on his fingers. "Cats, dogs, rats, flames, polar bears... You know. The works."

"And you're hosting all of them in your time room," said Gunter. "Impressive, very impressive. I couldn't do it." Especially not if Simon was home. They kept away from the Fire Kingdom for a reason. The others he could probably handle, as long as they alerted him to any special dietary requirements beforehand.

"Listen, Gunter, thanks for being cool about this," said Prismo. "Most singular beings are weirded out when they find out about it all. It's like-" He put on a high pitched voice "-'you're talking to how many other people? Are you even paying attention to me? I'm out of here.' You know, it's not really easy to meet many people in my line of work."

Gunter gulped down more smoothie. "Well, it's not like you can help it, is it? If they wanted to talk to you alone, they shouldn't have shown up at the same time as a thousand other blokes."

Prismo nodded thoughtfully.

.

Simon remembered the dead people ten minutes later, as he floated around trying to freeze as many of the green clouds as he could. He also remembered the thugs he'd frozen. No, the thugs he'd preserved. They were still alive, the crown could tell. So was that other guy. P... His name had started with P. Or maybe some other letter. They'd had some sort of quarrel, but whatever it had been, it didn't matter anymore. Nothing did.

He found the two thugs, frozen in running positions, and sat on the chunk of ice, trying to think how to free them. He could blow it up, but that would kill them. He had to get them out in some way that wouldn't render preserving them pointless.

He picked a rock up from the ground, and hacked at the ice with it until the man with the burn scar fell out. He left his head for last, so that he wasn't squirm or make Simon injure him. Simon was a conservationist. He'd seen that word in a couple of old books. Conservationist. It sounded good on him.

Simon smashed the ice encasing the man's head. "Hey! You! Get out of here, quick! No one can survive out here!" Except him, but he had the crown.

Burn scar frowned at him. "You're that treasure hunter from the city! You did this!" He looked around and saw the other thug, still frozen. He grabbed the rock off Simon and used to expertly crack the ice. "Trami! Let's get out of here! We gotta tell the boss about this!"

"Huh?" said the man in the domino mask. He looked around. "What happened? Tromo, get me out of this!"

Tromo tugged him out of the ice, and they ran away as fast as they could.

"Yeah, that's right!" said Simon. "Get outta here!" They'd be okay, he hoped. Gang life was already about as hard as end-of-the-world life.

He found the ice containing O'Malley a few feet away. There was something very satisfying about his shocked expression, but Simon couldn't remember what it was.

Remembering how Tromo or Trami had used the rock, he formed a giant chunk of ice out of the air, and brought it down on the ice on the ground. The crown assured him that it would work, unless it was just the echoes of the thoughts he didn't remember having. He couldn't tell anymore.

The ice cracked from top to bottom, and fell into two almost equal halves, with O'Malley at the centre. He stirred. "Huh? What did you do this time?"

"Do? I just saved you! I protected you from the bomb!" Simon gestured at the area where the bomb had been. "And I got you out of the ice."

O'Malley narrowed his eyes for a second, then said. "If I remember right, you're the one who froze me in the first place. In fact, I bet you're the one who set that bomb off. You did, didn't you?"

"I... I don't know," Simon admitted. He grabbed his head. "Why can't I remember?!" He didn't want to destroy the world. He just wanted to... freeze it.

O'Malley shook his head solemnly. "I always figured something like this would happen. You always knew how to make things worse. If you'd just handed over the crown like I told you, none of this would have happened. What did you think you were going to do with it?"

He was right, but he was wrong, and Simon couldn't remember why. He didn't want to think about this now. He wanted to preserve everyone. In ice. He should freeze everything, in case there were more bombs. The crown agreed. But then there'd be no one to talk to. Except for the crown and the visions.

Maybe eternal loneliness would be worth it, if nobody would steal and smash and melt down anything ever again. Everything would just exist, forever. The way it should.

He had to freeze the world.

"You're not even listening to me, are you?" said O'Malley. "That's okay. I'd be torn up too if I'd killed my girlfriend."

"Girlfriend?" repeated Simon blankly. That sounded vaguely familiar. "Betty!" His fiancee! How could he have forgotten? His last memory of her was her running away. Not from him. She was following that pink woman. Following her towards the bomb.

But she wasn't dead. He couldn't accept that. She'd found shelter, and she was fine. He just had to find her.

"It's okay, don't worry," said O'Malley soothingly. Simon glanced around sharply. He'd forgotten that he was there. "You can still make it right. Just give me that crown like you should have done in the first place. Then..." He looked searchingly into Simon's eyes. "Then the bomb won't have exploded, you see?"

Simon put both hands on the crown. "My... crown?" he said. Everything would go back to normal? If he just undid his mistake? That was what he wanted more than anything.

No. It wasn't. He wanted to preserve the world, and for that he needed his crown. He was the only one he could trust to do this right.

But first he had to find Betty.

He ran towards the bomb site, barely hearing the yells from behind.

.

Gunter relaxed in the warm water of the spa. "Couldn't you just put the TV on the opposite side of the bed?" he suggested. "Then you can watch TV it getting up." He wasn't completely sure where this bedroom Prismo was talking about was. He lived in a single room cube. It was probably in one of those many alternate dimensions.

"What, and ruin the feng shui?" said Prismo. "You don't even wanna know how bad my luck's been lately. It's the equivalent of walking under thirteen ladders."

"Hm..." Gunter put a flipper to his beak. Feng shui was fake, but he didn't want to bring that up an almighty wish-granting being from outside time. "T... TV ceiling?"

Prismo looked up. "That could work. I'll get a quote from-"

"Hello, hello!"

Gunter looked up to see the Cosmic Owl of all people enter the room, holding a couple of board games under one wing.

"Hey, so I brought over the-" the Cosmic Owl noticed Gunter, and gasped. "What is this singular doing in this realm?"

Gunter pulled at a stomach feather to make sure he wasn't having a very long, prophetic dream. It hurt, so it seemed that he was awake this time.

"He's just here making a wish, Cosmic Owl," said Prismo.

Oh yeah, that was what he was there for. Gunter had nearly forgotten. He glanced at the screen, but Simon was just running towards something. He was still wearing the crown, though. Gunter wished he'd take it off. Did he want to lose his mind and start kidnapping dogs? Or... books, maybe? Whatever thing tragically ran away when he first put it on.

"But I brought games!" said the Comic Owl. He sounded disappointed. "We were gonna hang..."

"After," said Prismo firmly. "Come on, get in here."

"Okay." The Cosmic Owl flapped down to join them in the hot tub.

Gunter held out a flipper, and said "Er, hello. I'm-"

"Gunter the Penguin," said the Cosmic Owl, gripping it with it with his wing and shaking it. "I know who you are."

"Cosmic Owl knows everyone," said Prismo. "It's like, his job."

Gunter thought about all the people in all the alternate versions of this room. "That's a lot of people," he said.

"Yeah," said Prismo, taking another sip from his mug. His projection was under the water, but it didn't seem to bother him, or affect whatever was in the mug. "Me, I can't even keep track of my ex-girlfriends. Cosmic Owl is a social genius."

"Oh, stop it, guys," said the Cosmic Owl, putting his head in his wing. He turned away and pretended to be fascinated by the floor. "Hey, did you know you left the remote down here?" He tried to pick it up, but he just flipped it over. "Oops." He fumbled it with both wings until he finally lifted it above the hot tub. "Got it."

"No... No, not again..."

The voice was so hoarse that Gunter almost didn't recognise it as Simon's. He looked around at the screen to see the volume up and Simon still wearing the crown. Simon was kneeling at the edge of a bubbling green pool that reminded Gunter of the Lich's well of power, trying to pull out the human woman who looked like Betty. Further from the edge, something pink slowly sank under the surface.

"Simon?" said Gunter.

"I'm sorry, Gunter," said Simon. He pulled Betty out of the liquid, sobbing. "This is the only way to protect everything."

"Me?" said Gunter, looking around. He couldn't see anyone else in the frame, penguin or otherwise.

If Betty was a human in the wish world, did that mean he was as well?

Simon held Betty close. "It's okay. It... It's okay. I'll just go freeze the world, and..." He gave a laugh that Gunter had never heard from him before. "And we can live forever! We'll live in a big castle made of ice, and... and... I'll the be king, and you'll be the princess. Sounds great, right?" Gunter could hear a bit of Finn-Ice in the way Simon spoke, and it scared him.

Betty began to stir. "Simon...? Is that you?"

Simon didn't seem to notice that she'd woken up. He hugged her harder.

"Simon, what happened?" said Betty. "What-" Suddenly she growled and pushed him away.

Simon fell back. "Gunter!"

"I'm here!" said Gunter. He climbed out of the tub and pressed himself against the screen. "Simon, I'm right here!"

Betty struggled to stand up, then gave up and crawled. Her eyes looked different, somehow. Had they been that unsettling shade of green earlier in the wish? He'd thought he'd seen eyes like that before, but it wasn't on Betty. Where was it?

"K... Keep away from me, Gunter," said Simon, backing away. "Don't come any closer! I command you!"

"Are you talking to Betty?" said Gunter. "I'm Gunter! She's Betty! Remember?" Of course Simon couldn't hear him.

Betty stood up unsteadily, and suddenly she was huge and her head was the Lich's head and Simon was flying into the air with ice magic around his hands and the picture cut out into static.

Prismo slid over the wall of the tub. "Maybe now you'd like to use your wish?"

Gunter nodded frantically. "Yeah, yeah yeah! I wish Simon was okay and Betty wasn't the Lich and Simon wasn't Finn-Ice and-"

"Wait!" Prismo interrupted. "Dude, look, I like you, so you should know my wishes always got an ironic twist to them. It's like a Monkey's Paw kind of thing."

"Monkey's Paw?" said Gunter. What did monkeys have to do with anything?

"You just gotta be really specific," continued Prismo. "Say your wish is 'I wish for a backrub.' Who's gonna give it to you? A dirty man? A bear?"

Gunter didn't see the problem. Bears gave great backrubs, as long as you were their size.

"And where does this masseuse come from?" Prismo continued. "Do I zap some guy away from his family dinner? Leave some kid traumatised?"

Gunter couldn't see an upside to that one. He twiddled his flippers, and the Cosmic Owl hooted softly.

Prismo put on some voices. "'Mom, where did dad go?' 'I don't know, son, he just disappeared from the table. Sorry.'"

Gunter tried to imagine being responsible for something like that. Then he tried to imagine Simon's wish resulting in something like that, and hoped that if it had, Simon never found out. It would probably destroy the poor kid.

"You see, Gunter, there's rules to this stuff," Prismo sounded upset himself now. "Wishing an event to be changes elements before and after it, memories will be destroyed, babies will not be born, potential worlds could be evaporated by. Your. Wish."

And Gunter had to decide all that? Sometimes he didn't even think he was ready for parenthood. He had to get out of there. He looked up at the exit and tried tp calculate how many clones he'd need to get up there.

He looked back at the static on the screen, and wondered if Simon was even still alive.

He wasn't thinking straight. He couldn't just abandon his best friend. "Okay," he said. "I'll just... okay. I can do it. I can make a wish."

Prismo looked at him expectantly.

Gunter tried to think what Simon would wish for, once he saw how his first wish turned out. His alternate self's wish for the Lich to disappear had been a good one, so what had gone wrong? Some sort of... butterfly, probably. They went around changing things in unpredictable ways whenever you went back in time. Butterflies were jerks. Turning Betty into a human and making Simon wear cursed crowns.

There were more butterflies the further back you changed things. That was how it worked in Football's video games, and it made sense for it to work that way in real life. Gunter vaguely remembered Simon telling him that the Lich had existed either since the Great Mushroom War, or since the beginning of time. That was a lot of time for butterflies to change things.

You didn't normally go back a thousand years to fix something that had happened five minutes ago, but Simon must have had some sort of reason. Unless Gunter could understand what that reason was, he couldn't fix the wish, and he had no hope of ever figuring that out. Simon was the smart one, not him.

Gunter pressed his flippers to his head. He couldn't fix Simon's wish, but he couldn't just go home and pretend nothing had happened. He wasn't sure there was even a home to go to anymore. He'd just have to make the best wish he could, and hope that it didn't attract too many butterflies.

Could he even make things any worse for Simon than they already were?

"How about," he began. "How about, I wish for the Lich to just pop out of existence, right before he makes his wish?" That was as late in the timeline as he could get it.

Prismo rubbed his chin. "Okay, okay, but what happens to you and your friend? What do you use your wishes on?"

"Oh," said Gunter. "Er..." Simon might make another bad wish before Gunter could stop him. Or Gunter might make a bad wish. He wasn't clear on whether he'd remember this. He hoped so. He liked Prismo. "Okay, instead of making a wish... the Lich grabs... No, he does make a wish. He wishes for us to go back home." He couldn't destroy all life if he'd already used his wish up.

Prismo looked thoughtful. "That could work. Is that your wish?"

Gunter nodded, feeling more confident by the second. "Yeah! I wish that the Lich's wish was for me and Simon to go back home." And not to wherever Ice Simon lived. "To Uuu."

"I can work with that," said Prismo. "All right. This has been nice." He hesitated. "See you."

The room faded away.

.

Gunter smacked into a rock, and his clones lost their grip and fell into the void.

"Gunter, quick!" said Simon, pointing at the Lich, which was already climbing into the yellow cube. "It's heading for Prismo's time room!" He was pretty sure that was what that thing was. He wondered what the Lich wanted with an almighty being, and none of the possibilities he came up with were good.

"Huh?" said Gunter. He shook his head violently. "Oh, right! Come on!" He grew, picked up Simon, and rushed to the cube.

They got to the entrance to see the Lich standing in front of the almighty Prismo, laughing.

The Lich composed itself and said "I wish for the extinction of all lif-" It seemed to have some kind of seizure. Possibly a result of its possession of Billy. "-For Simon and Gunter to go back home to Uuu."

Simon furrowed his brow. Why would its change its mind like that? The Lich could execute its plans better if they weren't around to stop him, but its original wish was more the Lich's style. Did it get unlimited wishes, or...?

The Lich gasped. "No, wait! That's not what I wish for-"

Prismo cut it off. "Sorry guy. You only get one wish." He looked up at Simon and Gunter. "Hey Gunter. Did you see that? Monkey's paw."

Simon and Gunter fell to the frosty ground back outside the Monster Kingdom, right where they'd left. There was no sign of the portal.

"What?" said Simon. He sat up and rubbed his head. "Why did he say that? Why did Prismo say that? Do you know him? What happened?"

"Nothing!" said Gunter joyously. "Nothing happened at all!" He grew to Simon's size and hugged him hard.

Simon let him hug him, despite his confusion. "Gunter, what are you doing? You're acting like you haven't seen-" Then it hit him. "We already went in there once, didn't we? Did I make a wish?"

Gunter nodded happily. "It was horrible, but I saved you. I saved everyone!"

He didn't seem to want to let go any time soon, so Simon stood up with some difficulty. He'd have to spend more planning time on scenarios like this, if he'd messed up his wish that badly.

Simon didn't see the jewels in the grass until they began to vibrate and rise into the air. They shot off in different directions. Back to their owners, he hoped. They'd have to go check on them in the morning, and apologise and do some community service. He didn't know what most of the jewels did, but he was a bit worried that Finn-Ice couldn't live long without his. Some time away from the power of the crown would probably be good for him, but... They'd also need to make sure Marceline was okay.

Something bright flashed at the corner of Simon's vision. He turned. "What was that?"

Gunter jumped off him to look. "Anchovies!" he said, holding up a pile of plastic bags and ice that hadn't been on the ground a minute ago. "He gave me fresh anchovies! Thanks, Prismo!"

It sounded like Gunter had really endeared himself to Prismo during... whatever.

Gunter read the note that had come with the fish, and frowned. "He's a nice guy, that Prismo, but he's, he's a tad clingy."

Simon couldn't help feeling like he'd missed out on something, but as long as all life wasn't extinct, he couldn't complain too much.