Bad Little Girl 2

So here it is, as requested. Bad Little Girl 2. Wasn't my favourite fanfic, but it was yours, and what can I say? I love you guys. Anyway, enjoy!

Chapter One

"Are you done yet?" Marceline asked, testily.

Marceline stood, with one foot elevated, resting on a small pile of rubble. In her hands, she held a rusty, bronze, semi-circular axe in an action pose. It had been almost 200 years since she had made herself a vampire in order to survive, and her campaign to destroy all other vampires still wasn't done. It seemed like every vampire she slew had stories of other vampires they'd sired or been sired by. Her most recent target had off-handidly mentioned that he was a painter, shortly before Marceline was about to kill him, and Marceline had seen a rare opportunity to find out what she looked like, seeing as she didn't have a reflection.

The other vampire sat cross-legged, floating on the other side of an easel, making careful brushstrokes, with his tongue between his teeth in concentration. Like a true cliché artist, he was in his mid twenties, wore a beret and had a brown goatee.

"Almost… Almost…" The vampire said quietly, then he floated backwards and beamed. "I'm done!"

Marceline floated over to look at the painting. Her mouth hung open in shock. She was not pleased. In the painting, Marceline's fingers ended with long claws and her hair seemed to morph into black fire half way down. Her face looked more like it did when she transformed.

"You didn't tell me you were an IMPRESSIONIST!" Marceline bellowed.

"I told you that at least three times!" The vampire argued defensively.

"What use would this be to me? I want to know what I look like! If I wanted to know how you saw me, I would have just asked!" Marceline spat.

She heaved the painting off the easel and hurled it at the ground, it caught fire and incinerated as it fell. Marceline rounded on the artist, he was gaping speechlessly at the smouldering remains of his painting. Once she stopped fuming, she placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.

"I just want you to know… I would have killed you, even if I liked the painting. So don't take this too personally." She said, softly. The artist vampire looked confused. Before he could process what she meant, she picked up the easel and drove it through his chest. With a ghostly wail, he turned into smoke and drifted away.

Marceline sighed, picked up the axe and floated into the air. She had been in a forest on the outskirts of a large city. The forests had dwindled dramatically under the effect of the radiation from the bombs, but they were beginning to flourish again. On the flipside, the cities were beginning to crumble. Nowadays, the tallest buildings were only around ten to fifteen stories high.

Marceline floated high into the sky. She had encountered the painter on her way towards the city, and hadn't actually set foot there yet. It was hard to tell by the dim light of the moon, but the city seemed more or less typical, a layer of broken and shattered buildings with remnants of the more intact ones poking through, with a few parks and some larger structures, like stadiums and museums, which had done a better job of standing the test of time.

Suddenly, Marceline squinted down at the city, she had noticed something. It was hard to see in the dark… but it couldn't be… Marceline nosedived towards the city as fast as she could. As she approached, she realised her suspicion was correct. Covering the entire city, was a massive web of gelatinous, pink strands. They stuck to the rubble and the buildings and then stretched across great distances, to other places.

"Bubblegum… Is that you?" Marceline asked in disbelief.

The pink goo had changed since the last time Marceline had seen it, which was 200 years ago, shortly after she had become a vampire. Back that it was shapeless and runny, and there seemed to be a very limited amount of it. Marceline pulled back one of the strands and it sprung back into place like an elastic band. She stood there, waiting for the smiling face on Bubblegum to swim into view, like it usually did, but it didn't come.

Marceline frowned. She had no idea what Bubblegum was, so she had no idea what had happened to it. Maybe it had died? Maybe it had grown up? Then again, it may have simply been something else entirely. Marceline also had no idea if she was in the same city where she had last seen Bubblegum, that had been a long time ago and the city had been more or less intact back then.

Marceline sighed. Bubblegum, or whatever it was, was certainly interesting, but for the time being, it didn't seem like it affected her. It was getting late though, and the sun would be up soon. Marceline repositioned her backpack on her shoulders and floated off to find an intact building to sleep in.

The next morning, Marceline looked out onto the street. The sun was beaming down and glistening off Bubblegum. Nothing much seemed to have changed overnight. Usually, Marceline would just stay indoors all day, since she didn't like having to rely on a hat or umbrella to keep her from dying, but that day, her curiosity compelled her to leave her temporary home. She shrugged off her backpack and fished around in it until she found a collapsible, black umbrella, then she slid the handle of her axe through a loop in the back. She opened the umbrella and flew into the sunlight.

As Marceline swept low, over the city, she was forcefully reminded of when she was ten, and she and Simon had read one of the Sherlock Holmes books together, and for the next couple of weeks, Marceline had kept making Simon hide things for her to find using deductive skills of her own. Marceline sighed and pushed those thoughts to the back of her mind so she could focus. Bubblegum was spread over the entire city, in the same, web-like form, with no clear pattern, or purpose. She landed in a small garden square and looked around. The vampires she had killed a few days ago had given her reason to believe that there were more vampires there, besides the artist, maybe they knew something. Marceline sighed and threw caution to the wind.

"Hello?" She called, at the top of her voice. "Is there anyone there?"

Not five seconds later, a mighty explosion sent tremors through the ground Marceline was standing on. She frantically spun around and noticed a column of smoke rising, about half a mile away. She flew towards it as fast as she could. Deciding to make up for her lack of caution earlier, Marceline turned herself invisible, a little trick she had figured out just a few decades ago. If she held her umbrella closely enough, it vanished too.

She rounded a corner and saw a large scorch mark, covering another small square. Marceline immediately noticed two things. Firstly, several chunks of Bubblegum had been blasted loose by the explosion, and were writhing around on the ground like fish out of water. The other thing Marceline noticed was a figure, lying face down at the centre of the scorch mark. Very rarely, Marceline had encountered… 'people' who weren't vampires, most of them had extraordinary powers which Marceline couldn't, for the life of her, explain. Then again, she could turn into a giant bat monster at will, so who was she to criticise?

Assuming this to be one of those individuals, Marceline flew forwards, maintaining her camouflage. The person was an adult man, with shaggy, black hair. She shook his shoulder gently.

"Hey. You ok, dude?" She whispered.

The man made no response. Marceline rolled him over and jumped. It wasn't a man at all, but a crudely made dummy. The clothes were stuffed with bits of rubble and plants, and the head was a balloon with a wig. Someone had drawn on a grinning, spectacled face, with a tiny speech bubble that said, "Gotcha!"

Immediately, there was a searing pain up Marceline's back that made her drop her invisibility, like someone was shooting a flamethrower at her. She screamed and huddled under her umbrella, but then the same sensation came at her from the other side. Marceline frantically writhed around trying to shelter herself with the umbrella, but there was no escape. All around her, people were emerging on the rooftops, from under the rubble or from hiding places within the buildings. Almost a hundred people appeared, all of them wearing radiation suits and holding full-length mirrors, which they used to reflect the sunlight directly at her.

Marceline couldn't muster the energy to fly away, she could barely hold up the umbrella anymore. Her skin began to boil and smoke, and she could feel her very life force begin to slip away from her.

"Stop."

It all stopped. The mirrors were redirected with pinpoint precision, so now the beams of light surrounded Marceline like the bars of a cage. Whoever they were, they had clearly spent a great deal of time rehearsing for this. Desperately trying to regain her strength, Marceline trembled as she pushed herself onto her right hand and knees, still holding the umbrella over her.

The person who had ordered her assailants to stop walked across the square towards her. She was a woman, around 25 years old. She had dark skin and bushy, black hair. Her clothes were the trendy, impractical kind that only a vampire could afford to wear in the post-apocalyptic world. Further supporting this theory was the oversized sunhat she wore. Marceline suddenly realized that all of her attackers must have been vampires, hence the radiation suits. She had seen this coming since the very moment she declared war on vampires. She even said it to Archie. She just hadn't expected to fall into their trap so easily.

"Marceline the Vampire Queen…" The woman said, a mixture of smugness and patronizing pity in her voice. "It's an honour to finally meet you. The name's Kendra, I'm the new Vampire Queen. Sure, I may not be able to morph into all manner of fancy monsters, but I don't plan on making the whole world my enemy, so I think I'll do ok."

Marceline looked up at Kendra in contempt, and struggled to her feet. She scowled at her silently. She had nothing to say to her.

"Light her up." Kendra said, with a grin.