Disclaimer: Adventure Time belongs to Pendleton Ward/Cartoon Network. This was NOT proof-read as I did not want to spoil the ending of Explore the Dungeon because I DON'T KNOW! for my betas, so apologies for any hideous grammatical errors.

A/N: I freaking LOVED the ending and revelation in Explore the Dungeon, since it meshes really well with my headcanon and plans for 'As The World Falls Down'. So I took a break from it and 'Phlogiston Theory' to write this. Parents really can be embarrassing sometimes...

"I cannot believe you never told us about the elevator," Marceline sighed as the car moved smoothly downwards. Although its interior had grown shabby over the centuries, the elevator's speakers were still working, much to the vampire's frustration as the jaunty electronic burble pretending to be music was setting her teeth on edge.

"Well, you'd hardly have been exploring the dungeon if I had, would you?" Bubblegum replied. "Besides, how do you think I kept getting ahead of you? Magic?" she added with a derisive snort.

"Fine, point taken I guess." Shifting her weight from one foot to the other uncomfortably, Marceline ran one hand through her hair as she continued. "So, uh, I kind of thought we sort of killed your parents. What with them separating into bubbles and floating right out of here into the sky…" Glancing at the candy princess from the corner of her eye, to Marceline's surprise she looked more embarrassed than upset by the memory.

"That was a bit of a hasty analysis on my part," the pink girl admitted. "Once they got to a few thousand feet the cold slowed their molecules down then solar energy from the sun merged them back together. And then gravity took an interest and, well, you can guess the rest."

"They just fell back to Ooo?" Marceline asked incredulously. "From several thousand feet? And they're fine? And definitely not holding a grudge?"

"Of course they were fine, they're made of gum. Like, entirely gum, no bones or organs or any of that junk. Besides, they stretched out so far during the fall that they barely noticed the impact. Uhm…" It was Bubblegum's turn to look awkward now. "Can't say the same for the Box Kingdom unfortunately. The kitties were all fine," she added quickly as she saw the look on Marceline's face. Just… pretty sticky and annoyed. And now I owe them approximately five hundred boxes of assorted shapes and sizes."

"Well it's good that they didn't declare war," the vampire said dryly. "I don't think you have enough yarn balls in the Candy Kingdom to fight them off."

Bubblegum rolled her eyes as the elevator came to a stop, the doors sliding open with a cheerful chime. "We're here. Remember, this time don't fight anything. Oh, and before I forget…" Rummaging in her pocket, the candy princess pulled out what looked like a piece of pink gum and handed it to Marceline. "Put this in one ear. Doesn't matter which."

"Excuse me?" Marceline's look and tone were equally skeptical. "Why the carp would I ever want to shove gum in my ear?"

"Because it's a translator dummy," Bubblegum explained. "Since you're not a gum-based lifeform, you won't understand them without it."

Staring down at the piece of gum resting in her palm, Marceline raised her eyes to look at the princess disbelievingly. "They talk?"

From Bubblegum's expression, it was clear that she thought the answer was blindingly obvious. "Of course they do. Duh. You just don't have the right physiological components to hear them. Because you're not made of gum. Again, duh."

"Ugh, fine. But this is totally gross and it better not get stuck in my hair. OR my ear." Experimentally rolling the wad of gum between her fingers, Marceline was slightly disgusted to find that it was already soft and pliable, as if it had been previously chewed. Shaping it into a rough cone, she pulled her hair out of the way with one hand, and gingerly inserted the gum into her right ear with the other. She listened carefully for a few moments, feeling ridiculous, then shook her head. "I don't think it's working. It's like I'm wearing one earplug."

"Uhh, maybe because they're not here?" Bubblegum had started heading off down the corridor and Marceline floated along behind her, taking note of the various dents and scratches in the once-white walls and wondering how many she was responsible for. "You'll hear them once we get there. They should understand you just fine, and don't mind them if they ask awkward questions. They've kinda wanted to meet you for… a really long time."

"They KNOW about us?" Marceline was surprised by that, mostly because less than a week ago she hadn't known that Bubblegum HAD parents. "You didn't tell me about them – for nearly a thousand years – but they know about me?"

"Well they're my parents," the candy princess replied. "And they kept asking if I'd met someone and if I was sure I wanted to stay humanoid. So I told them about you."

"How MUCH about me?" The vampire sounded suspicious. "That I was your friend, or…"

"Pretty much everything," Bubblegum said with a shrug, glancing backwards to see that Marceline was glaring at her. "What? I already told you, they're my PARENTS."

Marceline made an exasperated noise, exhaling heavily through her nose. "I can see this is going to be a whole lot of fun then," she grumbled to herself. "Oh, did I say 'fun'? I meant REALLY FREAKING AWKWARD." Glancing around at the corridor around and ahead of them, the vampire frowned. "Where the heck ARE they anyway? They were stretched out all over the place last time I was here."

"All the fighting took a lot out of them, plus they're still getting over the whole 'molecular structure breaking down, floating off into the sky then reforming and falling back to Ooo' thing." Bubblegum shot the vampire a reproachful look as she continued. "You'd be tired too after all that."

"And you're still sure this is a good idea?" The two girls were approaching a familiar set of double doors at the end of the corridor, and Marceline was starting to wonder whether accepting the invitation to meet Bonnie's parents had been a good idea, since she'd personally beat them in the face with her axe-bass and all.

Stopping at the doors, Bubblegum laid her palm against one of them and paused with a long sigh. "A good idea would have been doing this centuries ago," she said quietly. "And not keeping them a secret. Trust me, they're harmless, you'll see." She smiled reassuringly at the vampire, who grudgingly returned it. "Besides," the princess went on. "I'm sure they'll like you."

Then, with brutal suddenness, both of them were sent flying backwards along the corridor as the double doors were thrown open with such force that when they bounced back together they almost severed the gigantic pink tendril that had forced its way through them. Before Marceline could react, it had wrapped itself around Bubblegum's waist several times like a python then whipped the princess back through the doors before she had time for any more than a shocked gasp.

At that point, Marceline found herself wishing that she'd brought her axe.

o.o.o.o.o

The double doors leading to the old laboratory had withstood a lot of abuse over the centuries, particularly in the last week. But they didn't withstand Marceline as she tore through them in her monstrous bat form, tearing both of them off their hinges and throwing first one, then the other straight at the hulking, smiling pink shape ahead of her. Both doors struck the gum creature dead centre, but simply stuck in its gelatinous flesh without doing it any apparent harm.

"I don't care what you are," Marceline yelled, flexing her claws. "But if you don't give Bonnie back right now then I'll…"

"Wait!" The vampire's head snapped upwards at the sound of Bubblegum's breathless voice, and looked upwards to see her dangling overhead, still in the merciless grasp of the creature's tendril and struggling for breath. "Not harming…" she managed to gasp out. "Just happy to see me. Mom, Dad, RIBS!"

That seemed to make the creature realise it was hurting the candy princess, and the gum appendage set her down gently beside Marceline. Doubling over, Bubblegum wheezed and coughed as she got her breath back, then straightened up again. "They do that all the time," she explained to Marceline as the vampire shrank back to her normal form. "When you don't have bones, it can be hard to remember that other things do," she added defensively. "And they don't know their own strength."

"We're sorry Bonnie, we always make that mistake…" Marceline started sharply at the unearthly voice. In one ear all she could hear was odd squeaks and gurgles but through the gum in her other ear she could hear the words clearly. It sounded as if several dozen people were speaking at once, in a weird, echoing cadence.

"I know you don't mean it," Bubblegum replied warmly as she approached the hulking form of her parents. Unlike the last time Marceline had seen them, where strands of gum had been stretched everywhere, this time they were gathered neatly into a single large mass that took up nearly half of the chamber. It only had one face now, the same benign smile that Marceline remembered from before, its eyes fixed on Bonnie as she grew closer. The vampire tensed as another tendril of gum, smaller this time, emerged from the creature to coil around Bubblegum's neck, but instead of tightening it curled upwards to brush across her cheek as the princess stroked it gently.

"And this must be Marceline." The dark, beadlike eyes rose like bubbles in a pink sea to look towards the vampire as the creature's smile slowly widened. "Bonnie has told us a lot about you."

"Uhhh… yeaaaaaaah…" Rubbing the back of her neck awkwardly, Marceline looked away in embarrassment. She'd done a lot of things in the millennium she'd been alive and/or undead, but having to apologise to her girlfriend's parents for trying to murder them wasn't anything she'd planned for. "Sorry about before. With the beating on you with an axe and all. I didn't know you were Bonnie's parents."

"Oh, that's all right," It was weird how the creature's mouth hardly seemed to form the words, as if the speech came from elsewhere. "You didn't know. And it was really our fault for letting all those criminals loose while we were exercising. Maybe if a certain someone visited more often she'd have worked out what was going on…" There was reproach in the creature's voice, but it was fond.

"Well I didn't think I'd be able to come and visit before the escaping prisoners had been dealt with," Bubblegum explained, the gummy tendril still draped around her neck. "But yes, maybe I should have realised you might have something to do with it. Or told you to leave the cells alone."

"Or told us that your parents were a giant, sentient gumwad," Marceline pointed out as she moved to stand beside Bubblegum, now reasonably sure that the creature wasn't going to attack. "No offence," she added.

"None taken." The creature smiled down at her with serene benevolence. "That's what we are after all. But it's not Bonnie's fault," it continued. "It was our idea. Things kept trying to eat us on the surface, so we came down here to avoid them. Bonnie was born down here you know."

"So you were born in a lab," the vampire commented with a smirk. "Why am I totally not surprised? I can just see a little tiny you running around in an oversized labcoat…" Bubblegum's eyes widened at those words and she opened her mouth to say something, but her parents spoke first.

"Well, not to begin with. Originally she was the most adorable little blob, weren't you?" The princess didn't reply, her expression frozen in horror though her eyes flickered nervously towards Marceline to gauge her reaction. Her parents continued with oblivious nostalgia. "Crawling around on her little pseudopods, getting into everything and then wandering off. We used to get so worried that she'd come back with parts missing, but instead she'd come back with all sorts of strange things she'd found jammed into her cytoplasm…"

Marceline's face was stony as she listened, staring straight ahead although she could feel Bubblegum's anxious gaze. No doubt the princess hadn't wanted her to discover that little detail about her origin, and Marceline could practically taste the self-conscious fear she was exuding. Probably thinking that this would change things, that the vampire would never be able to look at her the same way. And if anything, Marceline's grim silence would only be making her anxiety worse. She let the princess stew a little longer, and then cracked a grin at the gum creature. "Please tell me you have baby pictures, because I would love to see those."

"Marceline!" Bubblegum's voice was a shrill squawk of indignation, then she blinked as she registered that those words hadn't been mocking. "Wait, are you serious? You're… okay with that?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" the vampire asked, quirking an eyebrow at the princess. "Geez Bonnie, I'm half demon and I lived in the Nightosphere for a long time. Plus you've seen what my dad turns into when he's working. So you weren't always humanoid, big whoop. I'd love you even if you were STILL a sentient gumwad."

"Oh, that's wonderful!" the gum creature enthused, its smile unmistakeably joyful. "Bonnie, if you went back to your protoplasmic state that would make it much easier for the two of you to merge your biomass into one entity and have babies!"

Marceline's mischievous grin froze at those words, her face twitching in shock. "…what?" she asked flatly. Bubblegum's parents still looked just as enthusiastic, but the princess herself had turned bright pink and looked distinctly flustered.

"Uhm… they've sort of been bugging me about grandchildren," Bubblegum muttered to her quickly, then turned towards the gum creature. "Mom, Dad, I already told you it doesn't work like that for humanoids, even if I was protoplasm we still wouldn't fuse together. So we wouldn't be able to bud off children like you did with me."

"Oh." The creature seemed to deflate slightly in disappointment. "Have you tried?"

Stepping on Marceline's foot to stop her replying first, Bubblegum swiftly cut in. "Yes, we tried, it doesn't work, can we please drop the subject now?"

The gum creature expanded then shrank with a sound that resembled a sigh. "Oh well," it said disappointedly. "I'm sure you'll find a way to make it work with that science you love so much."

"Yeaaaaaah…" Marceline's voice was sceptical as she glanced towards the princess. "I'm sure she's been working on that, right Bonnie?"

"Of course!" Bubblegum replied with an uneasy chuckle and a sharp glare towards the vampire. "And the minute I work something out, I'll let you know."

"That's wonderful." The creature seemed to brighten again, and then it stretched another couple of tendrils over to the far side of the chamber where there was still a bank of functioning computers that had miraculously escaped destruction during the battle. "Now, we don't have baby pictures I'm afraid, but we do have old security camera footage from when Bonnie was a baby. She was always setting off the motion sensors in the complex during her little explorations. Do you want to watch some?"

Blanching, Bubblegum started backing away. "Uhm, maybe next time Mom and Dad, we sorta have really important royal biz to attend to right now so we'd better be going!" She tugged at Marceline's arm, but the vampire didn't move.

"Well, you might have royal biz Bonnie, but I don't." Marceline grinned at the look on the princess' face. "And I know where the elevator is now, so I think I'll hang out down here with your folks for a while and chat. Maybe watch a couple of those videos." Her smile only widened as Bubblegum's expression darkened.

"Fine," the princess growled between her teeth. "I'll stay too then."

Oblivious to their conversation, Bubblegum's parents had turned its full attention to the computers, operating one of them with a slim, agile tendril. "Oh, here's the one from that time Bonnie found a library for the very first time! She stuffed herself so full of books that she could barely move, it was adorable!"

"Sounds great," Marceline replied as she headed over, Bubblegum following her with as much enthusiasm as she'd have shown walking to her own execution. "So Bonnie, uh, how exactly did you read back then anyway?"

"Osmosis," the princess replied shortly with a glower.

Marceline blinked, bewildered. "Uhhhh… you're not going to explain that any further, are you?"

"No." Bubblegum's response was just as curt as the last one had been. "Let's just get this over with…"