Chapter Text
Marceline has been alive a long time, a very long time. And she’s seen everything, from a nuclear apocalypse to a talking peppermint. But this? This was new.
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“Heeeeeeey Bonnie wacha work’n on?” Marceline was bored; don’t get her wrong she loves spending time with her girlfriend, but said girlfriend was also a massive nerd. Usually she worked on her own stuff to keep occupied, which today was a new song she was practicing her bass for, but she had already finished with that. And sitting here while her girlfriend was working on whatever new machine or experiment she was doing isn’t the most entertaining thing.
“Do you remember when Simon told us about how he traveled between multiple dimensions? Well, I’m trying to….see if I can re..cre-ate it. But it’s a lot more complex than I anticipated.” The princess’s attention split between answering her partner and tinkering on her new invention. “Mmmmmmhm… how much longer do ya think it’ll take?” the vampire whined, sitting themselves on top of the machine. “I’m not sure but I think I’m close. Why- WAIT! Mar-Marcy, I need you to very care-ca..very carefully lift yourself off of the pad.” Her partner’s voice wavered, a worried expression on her face.
“Worry wart,”she pouted. Then Marceline grinned “What if I just..” She said levitating herself until she was standing atop the mechanisms. “Mar-!”.
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She opened her eyes, flinging herself up into a sitting position. Marceline quickly scanned her surroundings to find that she was on a beach. ‘Where the hell….?’ She felt a dull ache in her ankle, then she remembered. She was in Bonnie’s lab with her, she stood on the machine, and then…. she felt her foot slip?, and then the pain of it hitting something, after that nothing came to mind. Except Bonnie had said something ‘What was it- Simon! Something to do with Simon and…. recreating something?’ She pondered, attempting to remember the rest of their conversation.
“Dimension hopping…..” She whispered, disbelief in her tone. “Motherfucking dimensional travel.”
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‘The sun’s almost up’ Marceline had absolutely no clue what she was supposed to do. She had been on this beach for hours sorting through her thoughts. And she’d come up with a plan 1. Find something she could use as shade while she explored 2.Leave the beach (these were interchangeable depending on what happens) 3. Find a source of information (hopefully a library or something similar) and 4. Find a way back.
Ok, sure, it was pretty optimistic, but hey she’s working with what she’s got. Which was currently the clothes off her back, her bass, some gold coins and a few red candies from PB.
And so she got to work.
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After walking down the beach for a bit Marceline had come across an absolutely giant mound of trash and scrap. And with nothing else to do she began to dig through it, which brought some success in the form of a tattered but workable black umbrella, some scraps of red fabric, and a piece of a newspaper.
From what she could tell it was written in Japanese, an old pre-mushroom bomb language. Learning languages was a hobby of PB’s, but most of Ooo spoke the same one so she turned to learning old ones. A couple being German, Korean, French, Spanish(the only one she actually knew a bit of), ect…, but her latest fixation was Japanese and she thought it would be ‘fun’ if she and Marceline had learned it together. Given that she wasn’t an fucking geneus she wasn’t near as fluent as her girlfriend but she had the basics down as well as some extra.
There’s an article under a picture of a castle sized lady kicking a guy, slightly smaller with rocky looking skin, in the face. It reads: “New up and coming hero Mt.Lady Quirk: Gigantification Description: allows its user to drastically increase their size to gigantic levels.
Mt.Lady makes her hero deb-” the passage is cut short at the ripped edge of the paper scrap. What really interested her was the date. Marceline wasn’t exactly sure what year it was, an apocalypse and immortality will do that to you, but she knew the 2100s were at the very least several thousands of years ago. There was also the ‘quirk’ thing, from what she could tell it was a power or ability. Given that they had to specify what it did means that it also isn’t the same for everybody or not everyone has one?
The sun was up now, she sat in the shadow of the junk pile. Facing the city before her, she didn’t have many memories of before the bomb, but it looked like she imagined the ruins looked like before if not better.
Marceline began to stand, gathering her meager possessions and opening her umbrella above her head “Well sitting here ain’t getting much done might as well go explore the city” she muttered to herself beginning to walk away.