High-Grade Red

Chapter 9: New Beginnings

Rising to her feet, Bonnibel's tears and laughter both continue, her shock and despair giving way to relief, but also fear. She wipes away her tears once more and replaces her helmet on her head, making sure that the suit seals properly. The princess takes breaths to still her beating heart, but she has difficulty calming down. Her helmet's UI blinks to life and confirms her suit's safe status, and although she is barely any calmer than before, she decides to return to the small cave where the pod was being repaired.

As she walks across the grey dust, her mind replays the kiss over and over again. With every repeat, though, new questions arise in her mind. Is Marceline really in love with her? Why didn't she say anything about it sooner? Was she afraid? What is she afraid of? Did she think it would end like the last time? Were they even ready for a second chance being together?

As she reaches the top of the hill, she finds Marceline alongside several tuffbones, working diligently to repair the orbital capsule. She takes a few steps in their direction and considers saying something to the Vampire Queen, but her nerve breaks before she can, bringing her to a stop as she silently watches the work continue.

Marceline, after a moment, feels her eyes on her back and glances over her shoulder. Their eyes meet for a moment, before both bashfully avert their gazes, blushing slightly.

By the next day, the capsule is nearly complete. "Well, it's no Banana Man's rocket," Bonnibel comments, "but it'll get us in the right direction.

"The main thing will be shielding it for reentry," one of the tuffbone engineers says. The capsule had been designed for bringing things—primarily explosives, to be used on the leaflan asteroid insults—out of the atmosphere, not for bringing anything back in. And certainly not after being torn apart and practically glued back together again.

The princess, wearing a thin, leafy new tuffbone-made suit, leans over the table and looks at the schematics. "Right. What do you have?"

"Not much. I can throw in a few mints to prevent space breath."

She crosses her arms and walks up next to the capsule, looking over the cracks in its thin membranous exterior, which is reinforced by less than a millimeter of an iron-based alloy the tuffbones cobbled together. "This'll be dangerous..."

Marceline walks next to her friend and places a hand on the capsule's wall, wearing a thin spacesuit of her own, although without a helmet and far more aesthetically-based than the princess'. "We have to try, right?" she asks. "For your kingdom."

Bonnibel nods, then sits down and begins helping to reattach the pieces to the main body of the capsule. Marro and Brisket enter the cave, the former apologizing to PB. "Sorry for the trouble our distress signal caused, Princess. We didn't know how strong the magnetic force would be."

"No, it's actually really neat! We can follow its path straight back to Earth." She stands up and smiles at the tuffbones. "This was a pain in the butt, but that's the price of having neighbors, I guess." Bonnibel inspects the exterior, making sure she's covered as much as she can and that there isn't any more bits of capsule left to attach.

Meanwhile, Marro and Brisket walk just outside the cave, still in clear view of the orbital capsule, to find Marceline staring at Earth. When she notices them, she drops to her knees in order to get on their level. "Ambassador Marro... will we ever meet again?" she asks sadly.

"It's natural to drift apart, my friend. We've come and gone from places of supreme beauty. But sometimes, miraculously, we drift back together again." Marceline smiles and begins heading into the capsule alongside Bubblegum, as Marro finishes his comforting words. "Until then, we'll let time do its thing."