“YAHOO! Yeah-yeah-yeah!”
They zipped through the air, dauntless, at a breakneck speed. Finn felt the wind at his face flapping his lips and setting his eyes to water. Up ahead there was a cloud, and it didn’t look happy.
“Hey! Don’t you fly through -”
Too late. Bee Princess burst through the cloud’s torso, soaking all three of them, and emerged out the other side. Glancing behind him, past his best friend Jake, Finn spotted the angry cloud shouting and shaking his cloud-fist at them.
“Sorry dude!” the human boy shouted back.
He locked eyes with Jake, and they gave one another matching shrugs before turning their attention back ahead. They both sat astride Bee Princess, cramped a ride though it was, and they were moving at radical speeds across dizzying heights far above Sweetzerland - a wrong move and either one of them could plummet untold distances and, eventually, splatter across the sweet, delicious ground below. Good thing they’d done this before!
Bee Princess somersaulted in the air, giggling, and swung about in an impressive post-stall J-turn utilizing aviation strategies that might boggle the minds of even the most sophisticated off-world military tactician. The effect it had on Finn’s guts was both elating and horrifying; for a brief moment he was pretty sure his lunch had made popped by for a revisit in his mouth, but he’d swallowed it down just as quickly.
“Urp - BP! Caaaarefuuuuuuuuuu~” Jake yelled out, clutching Finn’s midsection tightly.
The words were lost to a zero gravity plummet. The thrill seekers closed their eyes and dug their knees into Bee Princess’ midsection as the ground came up to meet them faster than they would’ve guessed possible.
Then she pulled up incrementally in a roller-coaster esque sensation all while slowing down, and dragged her landing gear -- her heels -- across the ground. Finn and Jake lost any semblance of grip and flew through the air, bucked haphazardly, and screamed anew right up until they found their alarming parabola broken suddenly.
They’d landed on a Marshmallow.
“Well, hey guys!” the ‘mallow intoned in a deep rumble, prodding at the duo with fluffy fingers. “What’s going down!?”
“...hopefully my lunch,” Finn retorted queasily, still staring up at the sky.
They laid there momentarily collecting their bearings. Then, Jake started to laugh, a low chortling that struck a chord in Finn. He glanced over and met his buddy’s big good humored eyes, set right above his droopy jowls, and grinned widely.
“That was bizonkers! BP, you dropped the fear of Glob down on our domes, yo!” Finn exclaimed, popping up and bouncing once off of their new marshmallow pal. He landed on the ground deftly and threw his hands in the air, eyebrows raised high. “...I was totes poo-brained for a second there.”
Jake landed next to him a moment later, fist bumped his buddy, and chuckled again.
“Yeah, I thought your poo-brain had blooped right out your patoot!”
Finn flushed red momentarily, glancing at Bee Princess. Had he really farted in that endeavor? He wouldn’t have noticed - that was some seriously high-octane maneuvering that had gone down back there.
“I’m just joshin’ ya,” Jake murmured, patting Finn on the back.
His embarrassment gave way, momentarily, to another feeling. Something he was unfamiliar with...a new sensation came up from the back of his mind, and seemed to harken towards the boy. It was a feeling he couldn’t put into words that fell somewhere between a gut-punching boom-boom ready to drop out his aft-end and the heart-pounding thrill that came with locking eyes with a particularly pretty Princess.
“...Finn? Why are you looking at me like that?” Bee Princess asked, her sunshine yellow face curling up into a devious smile. Her cheeks rouged quickly. “You’re embarrassing me!”
It took a moment for the words to register, then the young hero realized that he was indeed gaping slack-jawed at the Bee maiden-fair. He shook his head to shoo away the poo brain and slapped himself once-twice quickly across each cheek.
“Sorry BP, I just -”
Once more, the feeling reared up, making him shaky in the stems. Finn sank to his knees in the ankle-high sweet grass, drawing looks of concern and confusion from those present. Jake knelt down beside him and put a furry anthropomorphic paw on his best bud’s back.
“You alright, buddy? You’re not looking too good.”
But Finn’s eyes were far off and vacant. Something was calling to him. Something or someone higher than himself seemed to be tugging his attention elsewhere - it felt like the hand of Glob himself come down from on high to steer him to parts unknown. The very sky seemed to open up for him -- he craned his neck and arched his back to behold it, and from its freshly hewn maw burst forth a radiant spotlight of sun that landed right on the young Finn. He could do nothing but kneel there, mouth open, and wait for its answer. All around him the others seemed to be frozen - Jake in his stooped comforting pat, Bee Princess in her confused and put-upon giggle, and Marshmallow-mound in his substantial bulk spread out across the nearby flat land.
“Finn,” echoed a voice. It was hard to place it’s gender. “Your planet needs you. Your planet needs a hero. It’s time for you and Jake to rise up and show Nos’Talgia your worth in the battle against the incoming corruption.”
“...corruption?” Finn repeated back, flabbergasted. “But how am I going to know what to-”
“You will know. The time approaches rapidly. Already, planets are succumbing to the corruption, and it is spreading. Quickly. Open your eyes, and your mind, and you will see…”
“But what am I supposed to be looking for?” the twelve year old asked, staring up into the light. “How will I know?”
“You will know,” the light repeated once more in its odd hollow. Finn realized, then, that he wasn’t hearing it with his ears. He was thinking the voice inside of his own mind. ...or was he? “You will know.”
It left as quickly as it appeared, and everything resumed real-time so abruptly that for the second time the boy in the white floof-hat was pretty sure he was going to lose his lunch.
“I...I think we need to...follow the voice’s directions.”
“Follow some whacked out voice?” asked Jake, raising an eyebrow.
Bee Princess snorted, and turned away from them. “HMPH!”
Seemed they’d ignored her for too long.
They hardly noticed as she stormed off in a huff, likely to return to her home in 8-Bitain. She lifted off the ground and buzzed off both literally and figuratively, bumbling through the air angrily.
“Jake, there’s some way cray beeswax afoot,” Finn said in a hushed tone, conspiratorially. “Scope this biz.”
And with that, he began to explain what he’d just experienced, little regard for the fact that Marshmallow-mound’s amorphous form was slumped right within earshot. Jake for his part listened and was equal parts enraptured, alarmed, and confused at all the right moments. Whatever his attentive short-comings most of the time, he could be a perfect audience when the situation called for it.
“Corruption, eh?” Jake asked, twirling his jowl thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger. “That’s pretty ba-nay-nay. Although...there are some pretty weird cats in Sweetzerland. Those ne’er-do-wells back in the Red Hot District...remember when they hosed down the streets with toffee-glue?”
Finn giggled. “Yeah - that was some pretty messed up biz. But not like this, Jake. I think this biz is some REALLY messed up biz. Like, some whole planet biz. Some...sinister biz.”
“Sinister biz…” Jake trailed off, now flicking his jowl absent-mindedly. “That does sound pretty bad. BUT - we were supposed to party with BMO this afternoon.”
Finn placed a single hand on Jake’s shoulder, looking him deep in the eyes.
“Something bookoo-spookoo is afoot, Jake. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
“Bookoo-spookoo~” added Marshmallow-mound, wiggling his white fingers in the air like eight big, fluffy worms.
“...alright,” grumbled Jake, surly but resigned to their duty. “Adventure now...party later.”
Finn hopped leap-frog style onto his magical dog brother’s back, and simultaneously Jake grew into a twenty foot behemoth. The twelve year old boy reclined lazily across his pal’s back, and felt Jake’s body shift into motion. The pendulum ambulation of the giant dog’s stride pounded a funny rhythm against the ground below, and set a smile across the young boy’s cheeks.
“Boom-boom-psh, boom-boom-psh,” Jake began to beat-box, opening up a tune in the previously hushed air. “Boom-boom-psh!”
“Me and Jake, Jake and me, crossing Sweetzerland underneath a bee,
We were given a tale, we were given a warning,
And we’d better not fail, or we won’t see the morning,
The corruption is coming, so we’d better start running,
Couple of heroes with their wit and cunning!
Yeah!”
Finn fell silent, and patted Jake on the back.
“...you know...that was pretty good!”
Far in the distance the settlement of Sweetzerland loomed, past hills and past forests. Maybe a day’s easy ride atop Jake’s back, if they were headed in that direction. But they weren’t. As it stood now, they were right on the margins of Sweetzerland’s borders and a stone’s throw away from 8-Bitain. When the two of them were looking to start a quest, 8-Bitain was the place to be. With regular city-folk marked clearly with exclamation points when they had some journey for an adventurer to embark on, it was a sure-fire place to start on a hunt for some unnamed corruption.
They zipped through the air, dauntless, at a breakneck speed. Finn felt the wind at his face flapping his lips and setting his eyes to water. Up ahead there was a cloud, and it didn’t look happy.
“Hey! Don’t you fly through -”
Too late. Bee Princess burst through the cloud’s torso, soaking all three of them, and emerged out the other side. Glancing behind him, past his best friend Jake, Finn spotted the angry cloud shouting and shaking his cloud-fist at them.
“Sorry dude!” the human boy shouted back.
He locked eyes with Jake, and they gave one another matching shrugs before turning their attention back ahead. They both sat astride Bee Princess, cramped a ride though it was, and they were moving at radical speeds across dizzying heights far above Sweetzerland - a wrong move and either one of them could plummet untold distances and, eventually, splatter across the sweet, delicious ground below. Good thing they’d done this before!
Bee Princess somersaulted in the air, giggling, and swung about in an impressive post-stall J-turn utilizing aviation strategies that might boggle the minds of even the most sophisticated off-world military tactician. The effect it had on Finn’s guts was both elating and horrifying; for a brief moment he was pretty sure his lunch had made popped by for a revisit in his mouth, but he’d swallowed it down just as quickly.
“Urp - BP! Caaaarefuuuuuuuuuu~” Jake yelled out, clutching Finn’s midsection tightly.
The words were lost to a zero gravity plummet. The thrill seekers closed their eyes and dug their knees into Bee Princess’ midsection as the ground came up to meet them faster than they would’ve guessed possible.
Then she pulled up incrementally in a roller-coaster esque sensation all while slowing down, and dragged her landing gear -- her heels -- across the ground. Finn and Jake lost any semblance of grip and flew through the air, bucked haphazardly, and screamed anew right up until they found their alarming parabola broken suddenly.
They’d landed on a Marshmallow.
“Well, hey guys!” the ‘mallow intoned in a deep rumble, prodding at the duo with fluffy fingers. “What’s going down!?”
“...hopefully my lunch,” Finn retorted queasily, still staring up at the sky.
They laid there momentarily collecting their bearings. Then, Jake started to laugh, a low chortling that struck a chord in Finn. He glanced over and met his buddy’s big good humored eyes, set right above his droopy jowls, and grinned widely.
“That was bizonkers! BP, you dropped the fear of Glob down on our domes, yo!” Finn exclaimed, popping up and bouncing once off of their new marshmallow pal. He landed on the ground deftly and threw his hands in the air, eyebrows raised high. “...I was totes poo-brained for a second there.”
Jake landed next to him a moment later, fist bumped his buddy, and chuckled again.
“Yeah, I thought your poo-brain had blooped right out your patoot!”
Finn flushed red momentarily, glancing at Bee Princess. Had he really farted in that endeavor? He wouldn’t have noticed - that was some seriously high-octane maneuvering that had gone down back there.
“I’m just joshin’ ya,” Jake murmured, patting Finn on the back.
His embarrassment gave way, momentarily, to another feeling. Something he was unfamiliar with...a new sensation came up from the back of his mind, and seemed to harken towards the boy. It was a feeling he couldn’t put into words that fell somewhere between a gut-punching boom-boom ready to drop out his aft-end and the heart-pounding thrill that came with locking eyes with a particularly pretty Princess.
“...Finn? Why are you looking at me like that?” Bee Princess asked, her sunshine yellow face curling up into a devious smile. Her cheeks rouged quickly. “You’re embarrassing me!”
It took a moment for the words to register, then the young hero realized that he was indeed gaping slack-jawed at the Bee maiden-fair. He shook his head to shoo away the poo brain and slapped himself once-twice quickly across each cheek.
“Sorry BP, I just -”
Once more, the feeling reared up, making him shaky in the stems. Finn sank to his knees in the ankle-high sweet grass, drawing looks of concern and confusion from those present. Jake knelt down beside him and put a furry anthropomorphic paw on his best bud’s back.
“You alright, buddy? You’re not looking too good.”
But Finn’s eyes were far off and vacant. Something was calling to him. Something or someone higher than himself seemed to be tugging his attention elsewhere - it felt like the hand of Glob himself come down from on high to steer him to parts unknown. The very sky seemed to open up for him -- he craned his neck and arched his back to behold it, and from its freshly hewn maw burst forth a radiant spotlight of sun that landed right on the young Finn. He could do nothing but kneel there, mouth open, and wait for its answer. All around him the others seemed to be frozen - Jake in his stooped comforting pat, Bee Princess in her confused and put-upon giggle, and Marshmallow-mound in his substantial bulk spread out across the nearby flat land.
“Finn,” echoed a voice. It was hard to place it’s gender. “Your planet needs you. Your planet needs a hero. It’s time for you and Jake to rise up and show Nos’Talgia your worth in the battle against the incoming corruption.”
“...corruption?” Finn repeated back, flabbergasted. “But how am I going to know what to-”
“You will know. The time approaches rapidly. Already, planets are succumbing to the corruption, and it is spreading. Quickly. Open your eyes, and your mind, and you will see…”
“But what am I supposed to be looking for?” the twelve year old asked, staring up into the light. “How will I know?”
“You will know,” the light repeated once more in its odd hollow. Finn realized, then, that he wasn’t hearing it with his ears. He was thinking the voice inside of his own mind. ...or was he? “You will know.”
It left as quickly as it appeared, and everything resumed real-time so abruptly that for the second time the boy in the white floof-hat was pretty sure he was going to lose his lunch.
“I...I think we need to...follow the voice’s directions.”
“Follow some whacked out voice?” asked Jake, raising an eyebrow.
Bee Princess snorted, and turned away from them. “HMPH!”
Seemed they’d ignored her for too long.
They hardly noticed as she stormed off in a huff, likely to return to her home in 8-Bitain. She lifted off the ground and buzzed off both literally and figuratively, bumbling through the air angrily.
“Jake, there’s some way cray beeswax afoot,” Finn said in a hushed tone, conspiratorially. “Scope this biz.”
And with that, he began to explain what he’d just experienced, little regard for the fact that Marshmallow-mound’s amorphous form was slumped right within earshot. Jake for his part listened and was equal parts enraptured, alarmed, and confused at all the right moments. Whatever his attentive short-comings most of the time, he could be a perfect audience when the situation called for it.
“Corruption, eh?” Jake asked, twirling his jowl thoughtfully between his thumb and forefinger. “That’s pretty ba-nay-nay. Although...there are some pretty weird cats in Sweetzerland. Those ne’er-do-wells back in the Red Hot District...remember when they hosed down the streets with toffee-glue?”
Finn giggled. “Yeah - that was some pretty messed up biz. But not like this, Jake. I think this biz is some REALLY messed up biz. Like, some whole planet biz. Some...sinister biz.”
“Sinister biz…” Jake trailed off, now flicking his jowl absent-mindedly. “That does sound pretty bad. BUT - we were supposed to party with BMO this afternoon.”
Finn placed a single hand on Jake’s shoulder, looking him deep in the eyes.
“Something bookoo-spookoo is afoot, Jake. We need to get to the bottom of this.”
“Bookoo-spookoo~” added Marshmallow-mound, wiggling his white fingers in the air like eight big, fluffy worms.
“...alright,” grumbled Jake, surly but resigned to their duty. “Adventure now...party later.”
Finn hopped leap-frog style onto his magical dog brother’s back, and simultaneously Jake grew into a twenty foot behemoth. The twelve year old boy reclined lazily across his pal’s back, and felt Jake’s body shift into motion. The pendulum ambulation of the giant dog’s stride pounded a funny rhythm against the ground below, and set a smile across the young boy’s cheeks.
“Boom-boom-psh, boom-boom-psh,” Jake began to beat-box, opening up a tune in the previously hushed air. “Boom-boom-psh!”
“Me and Jake, Jake and me, crossing Sweetzerland underneath a bee,
We were given a tale, we were given a warning,
And we’d better not fail, or we won’t see the morning,
The corruption is coming, so we’d better start running,
Couple of heroes with their wit and cunning!
Yeah!”
Finn fell silent, and patted Jake on the back.
“...you know...that was pretty good!”
Far in the distance the settlement of Sweetzerland loomed, past hills and past forests. Maybe a day’s easy ride atop Jake’s back, if they were headed in that direction. But they weren’t. As it stood now, they were right on the margins of Sweetzerland’s borders and a stone’s throw away from 8-Bitain. When the two of them were looking to start a quest, 8-Bitain was the place to be. With regular city-folk marked clearly with exclamation points when they had some journey for an adventurer to embark on, it was a sure-fire place to start on a hunt for some unnamed corruption.