Challenge #00260: Bubbles in History

Since you like Adventure Time (and I hope you’ve seen some of the more recent episodes, minor spoilers in prompt)

Bubblegum: Journey from Irradiated Pink Ooze to the founder of a Kingdom.

[AN: Warning - Rampant headcannon ahead]

See…

A wrecked city. It used to be called Cincinnati, before the bombs fell. The survivors braved its depths for supplies. Useful things. Food. Metals.

Feel…

It hurt to be alive. She was alive. She couldn’t leave. She was quite literally stuck here.

Fragmented memories of before the bomb. Candy store. An argument with someone. Someone special. Science. She had science to do…

Move…

She could move. She could see… but her body.

Her body wasn’t human any more.

She… had become…

Gum.

Pink, gooey, bubblegum.

But she could move. Spread. Shrink. Let things go. Coalesce. It took her days, but the world had just ended. It wasn’t as if anyone wanted gum.

*

He was here! The someone.

Simon!

She had no voice, but she could hear. He had a sick child. He needed chicken soup.

She spread tendrils of herself into the places that the survivors couldn’t go. Or wouldn’t go, because of the mutated goo-monsters still here.

Found… 

One can of soup. One can-opener.

Found…

Him in the alley. Defeating the evil crown through an effort of will.

Offered the prize to him. Managed a face. A smile.

“Euw…”

Right. She was gooey stretches of bubblegum. Nobody found that nice. She retreated. Left him alone.

He still had the crown.

She didn’t remember much, but as long as he had the crown, he could hurt her. He had hurt her.

She would have to devise a more efficient manner of communicating.

*

Simon’s storm had changed something. The goo and the cold and the high-fructose corn syrup and who knew what else had come together in a perfect storm.

Life sprang anew in the wreckage of Cincinnati.

Candy life.

She worked hard on making a body. A body she half-remembered from Before. There was too much ‘hair’, but she had a solution.

Cut it. Roll it into the new sugar compounds. Store it. Just in case.

They could hatch. They could become cogniscent clones of herself. She just didn’t know.

*

Candy life could be shaped. Could be trained. They called her a Princess. One even found an amulet in the old ruins under her realm. It had interesting properties, which she had to study in secret.

Candy was an interesting building material. Fruitcake walls were going to protect her sweet life forms. Her children.

Simon and I wanted to have children

No. She wasn’t that half-remembered woman, any more. Things had changed. The whole world had changed.

Cats and dogs both were walking upright and talking. They were building societies of their own.

Humans were anarchic gangs. Some had gone underground. Literally. Some were spawning new species.

Goblins and Orcs and Trolls. Giants and Minotaurs.

Practically the entire D&D compendium.

The mutagen had to be to blame. It was literally running through the entirety of the land. She had to do something to stop it. Contain it. Perhaps, stabilize the population.

And all she had to hand was candy.

“Princess! Princess!”

They were summoning her. Someone was in trouble. Someone outside the fruitcake walls.

*

The amulet was gone. She had to rely on other means to create things. At least the gumball guardians were doing their job.

Candy lasted.

The power of the mutagen turned everything in a limited area into candy, but at least it wasn’t toxic to other life.

There was a large area of cold, relatively close to her candy kingdom. She thought she knew what it was, but she was just too busy.

Other kingdoms demanded her time. Demanded her attention. Demanded negotiations.

She was just so busy.

She needed a hero. And candy folk weren’t so naturally inclined.

If the dogs weren’t so busy with that war in the crystal dimension…

If the cats weren’t mostly evil…

If ifs and ands were pots and pans… She rolled her eyes. First, forge peace. Then, get on with her discoveries.

If she could figure out the new rules to this messed-up world, then she could work to fix it.

*

He’d found her again. Just when she’d got comfortable.

He’d changed. He didn’t remember anything of Before and she wasn’t about to tell him, either.

She’d let herself get soft.

And all she could do was scream.

Wait. There in the snow. A boy and his dog. Or a dog and his boy. They were the only ones close to hand. The only ones within earshot.

They were her only hope.

*

They were brothers. Finn and Jake. They lived in a treehouse not far from her kingdom. Finn may well be the last true-human on Ooo.

She wanted to study him. Scientifically.

Analyse whether or not the human race deserved a second chance. Or let him live as a hero and let the humans who once ruined this world go out in a blaze of glory.

Time would tell.

And for a very young boy, Finn was kind of cute.

Stop.

She was far too old for him.

…far too old…

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