Wanted
Marceline's Debt to Society
In the backstreets of the lower, dirtier part of Candy Kingdom, where the streets were too rotten for anyone to eat, there was one little guy to help the problem.
The little Pear person had a belt of colorful frosting around his pear belly and a small goatee out of cotton candy.
His eyes were really happy for a grumpy faced ex-criminal who was sweeping the street in the worst part of town.
"heeeeeyyyyy…." He heard a hiss behind him in one of the many dark alleys of the lower streets. The hiss interrupted his singing, which was especially funny due to his high pitched yet coarse voice.
"Who is there?" he asked with his funny voice, moving closer to the alley, still sweeping and whistling.
"Frosted Perry…" the hiss said,
"That's my name." Frosted Perry said as he got to the edge of the alley between a familiar bar and the outer wall of the Kingdom.
"Come closer…" the hiss said, Perry saw a shadow of a thing crawl behind the bar, it was too late before he realized what it was and a large black tentacle grabbed him and dragged him into the alley.
"Hello…" said the hiss with the tentacle, Frosted Perry shivered as the shadow of an ominous creature was casted upon him and the wall behind him.
"Hello, Frosted Perry." Said a much more familiar and friendly voice, it was a young female voice.
"Oh Hi, Marceline." Frosted Perry said and brushed his frosting belt clean.
The young Vampire Queen floated in front of him, wearing casual clothes, no gloves or sun hat since it was evening and the sun has already set.
"Remember our deal?" she asked and floated around nationality.
"Of course." He said and buried his hands in his small bag on his broom, looking for something.
"One infrared Ruby Ring for you to eat." He offered the shapely gem ring up to her.
"and one strip of vampire hair for your collection." She said and took out a pair of old looking traditional scissors, she cut out a big chunk of her with a loud cringing sound as her hair seemed to protest. Her hair wiggled a bit and eventually shaped itself, a large rectangle gap was in her hair from her left shoulder all the way.
"Why thanks!" Frosted Perry checked out his outcome of the deal.
Marceline pulled a bit of red out of her outcome, a white spot appeared on the ruby.
"Delicious!" she said, but not before the red inside began to swirl and fill the missing white with red spot again.
"Wow, impressive." She said and hung around the alley, spinning in the air as she checked out her new ring.
"Well, I have to go. I've got work to do." Frosted Perry said and began to sweep his way out of the alley.
"Wait, Frosted Perry." She said and reached for him across the alley. "What are you doing? What about your 'Apple' trading business?"
"I have been caught; this is my social service, my debt to society." He said and began sweeping and singing.
"Oh, so the prissy princess finally decided to get off her pink butt and do something about this neighborhood?" Marceline chuckled and took another bite out of her ring.
"What? No, I have been caught by a headhunter and brought to The Sheriff." He said and fiddled around in his bag a bit.
"But you still have you head." Marceline said and tapped the top of his pear with her finger twice, looking confused.
"Haha!" Perry chuckled and took out a piece of paper out of his bag, the corners of the paper were torn.
He handed the paper to Marceline and she grabbed in interest, getting down and standing on the ground to read.
"WANTED!" was written in large bold letter on the top.
Just below that there was a pretty good picture of Perry handling some "apples" with a silhouette in an alley.
"Frosted Perry" it said below the picture, which took most of the page.
"For the illegal trade of gems"
"REWARD 540" after that number was a little symbol Marceline didn't recognize, like an O with two "Xs" for eyes.
"What it means?" Marceline asked.
"Well you see." A smart looking frosted apple person popped out of nowhere and surprised them both. He had glasses and a detective coat, a Scientific Parasite hanging from his front pocket.
"A while ago a bunch of Sheriff Offices appeared all over The Land of Ooo, with them appeared a lot of Wanted Posters like this everywhere, if a person or group brings a criminal specified in a wanted poster to a Sheriff Office, they'll get a reward of Wantsy-Dollar in the amount written on the poster." The smart looking Apple nodded some.
"I remember dollars, they were nice." Marceline said to no one in specific.
"Why, thank you, Detective Sweetapple!" Frosted Perry said and winked, Marceline noticed that.
"Do you think I have one as well?" she asked the two, eyeing the apple suspiciously.
"But of course, such a dangerous rebel like you must have a reputation in the criminal world." The Apple smartie said, his words were very crafty.
Marceline's cheeks turned crimson as she mumbled him to stop.
"Look!" Frosted Perry shouted and pointed towards a pole next to another alley, away from the wall.
Marceline got off the ground and floated towards the pole slowly.
When she got there she saw a Wanted Poster just like Perry's posted on the pole, but this one was hers.
"WANTED!"
"Marceline"
Her poster had an old picture, from at least ten years ago, the edge of a pink sugary haircut that was not hers appeared at the lower edge of the picture.
"For the haunting and assaulting of innocent people and territory theft and destruction"
"65,000 Wantsy-Dollars."
Marceline's eyes opened in surprise, she knew she was a badass criminal, but she never expected such a high bounty.
"Well do you like your poster?" said the apple, he messed with his apples.
"Yeah, it's pretty cool."
"Good." Said the apple, his crafty words getting an evil sounding tone.
"Because by sunrise it will be off the walls and poles of Ooo." He said, Frosted Perry was walking slowly to sneak by them, but Marceline spotted him.
"How come?" she asked, floating a bit higher.
"A poster is removed when the criminal is brought to The Sheriff." The smart apple said, "Dead or Alive!" He shouted.
At that moment Marceline saw a flash in front of her eyes, and her sharp vampire sense of smell detected a scent of sticky candy flashing along it.
She expected the worst, but when it was over a second later, she remained unharmed.
She looked back and then realized what happen.
As the apple shouted a sticky marshmallow flew by her from an ambush, likely aiming for her bounty reward. But they just missed as their marshmallow attack passed through the new missing gap in her hair and kept flying until they got stuck in Frosted Perry's hair sample, where it caught fire. The attack was aimed for this specific spot next to the pole. It was certain the apple, and maybe Perry as well, planned that attack for her bounty.
The apple and Perry seemed very concerned now and began to run away, more so Perry, who didn't look like he was part of this scheme willingly.
"You're not going anywhere!" she yelled with her regular teen anger.
She immediately transformed into a large beast with two strong and long reaching arms and sharp teeth in the size of tree trunks.
She reached her long arms towards Perry who was the closest, but after seeing after seeing terrified he is she decided to spare him and went for the apple guy instead.
Reaching him wasn't hard; she grabbed him with twelve sharp huge fingers and cracked his hard frosting on the way.
She pulled her hand back and watched the lowly scum wriggling in her arms.
But then she felt a sharp pain in her back and then another, and another.
The millennia old vampire was being bombarded by a rain of marshmallows, she tried to avoid them but she just dropped the apple guy, who ran away.
Even without the annoying prick in her hand she couldn't avoid the hits, she was too big of a target, so she shrunk herself down to normal form, and the back of her shirts was filled with charred holes.
She floated up into the sky as quickly she could. But the reach of the ambushers was far and many marshmallows flung around her and exploded into flames next to her. But in normal form she was agile and small enough to dodge all of them, even with the pain in her back, which insisted to resist her magical vampire healing.
Eventually she reached high enough for the marshmallows to explode beneath her. From other parts of the Kingdom it looked like a lovely fireworks display.
She looked down and thought about what to do, the pain prevented her from concentrating, and she was still very angry for the ambush, more now that the pesky apple has escaped.
So she just did what natural and turned into a rock, falling down into the earth from an astonishing height and crashed down on the old abandoned bar.
The shock wave from such falling collision knocked all of the ambushers from their hideouts around the neighborhood. Strawberries and Frosted Bananas and Candy Corns popped out their little corners to either fall unconscious or run away screaming from the bar wreckage and the cracked wall.
"Few, so this is over." Marceline said after everything got calmer, though she detected the distant sound of guards coming from the palace.
She walked to back to the pole with her wanted poster, it was knocked aback in a weird angle, but the poster remained intact.
She looked at her poster, at first she was proud of it, but after realizing that with bounty on her head there will be the people who will want to take it.
Marceline heard small whooshing noise and then she saw the poster change. Everything in the poster remained the same expect the amount of Wantsy-Dollars on her head.
"66,000 Wantsy-Dollar." It now said, as if it, or its master, saw the events that unfolded.
"Grr…." Marceline grouled and tore the poster off in a sweeping move, just to get even angrier as the tore corners that remained on the pole grew back into a new poster.
She decided to fly off to the one in charge. The so called Sheriff.
The Sheriff Office of the Candy Kingdom was in the other side of town, in a much nicer and cleaner neighborhood.
She landed in front, and step-by-step walked inside.
It was surprisingly clean inside; it looked like the Candy Kingdom hospital: tile floors, long hallways, waiting halls and a counter with a lovely employee smiling at it.
She walked slowly to the counter, passing by a row of waiting seat filled with people and their catch of confounded criminals.
She blushed a bit as she walked to the slim and cheery candy cane lady at the counter.
"How may I help you?" the lady asked.
"Yeah…" Marceline fiddled in her charred pocket for the poster she tore.
"I want to talk to some higher up about this." She showed the poster to the lady, who seemed pleasantly surprised. Marceline blushed, though she was like forty times older than the lady, Marceline still felt like a child. Probably because of the order and authority the place held, which Marceline was stumped by.
"Please sit over there; we will call you to this room in a few minutes." The lady handed a small note to Marceline.
After those minutes have passed she got up, and to the protest of other people, who likely had to wait much longer, got inside the room through one of the rooms in the hallway.
"Hello." Said a friendly manly voice in the room, which was dark and empty besides some fluffy seats.
"Hello." Marceline said, blushing from the formality of all of this.
Immediately after she answered she heard a clashing sound behind her, the door from which she entered closed shut and sealed with metal.
She felt magical defenses rise up in action and indeed after trying to escape even her supernatural vampire strength wasn't enough to get out.
"Marceline," said the authoritive voice again, now the vampire girl blushed from anger.
"What?!" she screamed in rage, the pain in her back hasn't passed yet as well.
"Welcome to the Sheriff's Sentencing Chamber, we're all very glad you have decided to turn yourself in."