Man Bites Vampire

"Lucian is pretty scary sometimes." - Kay

There were a number of events that led to the awkward reintroduction of Django to the world at large. Events conspired to make things even more awkward than they should have been. The Twin Butterfly shop getting a vending machine was one of the events.

Lisbeth was an adorable little girl of nine years running a shop by herself. This led to a number of people coordinating to ensure this little girl would have the most successful small general store in the Old Culiacan area.

The common everyday citizens of the area quietly changed their shopping habits to visit the store. Normally with a store, people would put things back into the wrong places on shelves and track mud in. This store stayed clean far longer than any other. Sloppy Woman came in one rainy day with dirty shoes and got stopped for small talk by Hot-Headed Guildsman who pointed out the muddy footwear. A man shouting at the little girl about not having his favorite brand of soda got told off by Careless Guildswoman. Although exquisite torture could not have made Lucian admit it to Alice, he even lent a hand by scaring off a shoplifter. Several shoplifters. Gleefully. (He justified it to himself by saying it would be inconvenient to have the item shop that supplied their gear go out of business. Nero sighed.)

After the Vambery fell, there was still a lot of work and rebuilding which were happening. People worried about the Immortals' next move against the planet, but society had a tendency to look around and say, "This town is a dump and I am missing part of my roof. I'm miserable here, now." Lisbeth opened her shop at all hours of the day to accommodate night shift guild members. The Info Broker and Bea conferred about what to do. They pressured a number of people for donations to a vending machine.

This particular morning, Retired Man and Info Broker had teamed up to deliver the solution. They, and a few other friends, helped haul a box to the store and see Lisbeth's reaction.

Lisbeth's eyes went wide as the box came in. Aaron handed her the signed card while it was being set up. She was thrilled to keep people supplied in the middle of the night. The limited selection in the small machine was limited to bottles and cans but it was enough.

Two weeks had not even passed before there was a problem.

Irritable Guildsman looked at the vending machine in disbelief. This machine was just stocked yesterday. How in the world was it already out of his favorite tomato juice? Not only that, but the other brand of tomato beverage was completely cleaned out for the second morning in a row. This had been going on for one day too many.

First, Irritable Guildsman waited for opening time. He went inside the store to talk to Lisbeth, who found cans of juice for him in the back room. She was sympathetic, but did not share his outrage about her vending machine being empty of tomato products. Irritable Guildsman complained to other people too, yet no one else was worried about his brand of juice being hijacked. He checked the security footage. (The guild members had installed the cameras early on as part of the 'support Lisbeth' project.) The cameras were not on the vending machine, but with how they were set it should have caught any humans going around the side where the machine was. He changed the position of one camera.

This was how the Guild found out about the existence of the vampire. There had been no attacks, no announcements, and no dungeons being made. There was footage of a person at a vending machine buying tomato juice. While wearing half-plate armor. The crimson wings gave the vampirism away.

Duke Dumas had been at large since Perrault brought him back at the Vambery and, wisely, had decided to lay low for a while. Rumors kept placing him in different locations and he had hideouts somewhere. Him and Perrault were quietly organizing things and taking stock of the assets they had for war against the Immortals. Perhaps it was risky being this close to a known Gunslinger Guild area, but they were not planning to stay very long. Lucian and Bea were checking out a rumor that placed them in the Old Culiacan streets near the river which meant they were probably better off leaving this area.

The morning after Django had been filmed, he crept around quiet as a mouse. He was, in fact, a mouse at the moment. Everybody looked for bats and no one had seen a mouse-transforming vampire in ages. It was slow traveling but he would take the lack of conflict.

When he sensed the dark energy, he stopped and sniffed the air. It did smell strange, not like a vampire should smell. It tugged at the corners of his memory. He'd only spent a brief time as a half-vampire and scarcely remembered it but there was something that called to him about this dark aura. Django ducked into a building that looked abandoned and transformed back to look out of a taller window.

He saw a teenager. The teenager had purple hair and it smelled like Sabata. Before Django's brain caught up and asked what he thought he was doing, Django stuck his head out the window and called to his brother.

"Sabata!"

The guy turned around and it was definitely not Sabata. The blond woman with him turned around at the same time Not-Sabata did and she had a gun.

Django had the same sudden feeling that people get when they step into an empty elevator shaft because they were not paying attention.

Let us take a moment to look away from the rooftop chase.

There were ten people about to be horribly inconvenienced by a vampire. The scene inside the pub was a happy and peaceful one.

First person was the Friendly Bartender polishing glassware. He was making a good deal of revenue today. People were in a great mood after the sun came back and the vampires had become a non-issue. The Solar Gunners were cleaning up towns and roads of monsters, so travel was safer than ever. More people were repeat customers and visitors from out of town bolstered revenue. He'd invested in a new set of wineglasses.

Second person was at the other end of the counter. A vulpid was celebrating a new job with a shot of the best whiskey he could buy. He was delicately preparing to savor every last drop. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing and the whiskey cost more than a week of his usual fare.

Third and fourth were at a table furthest from the window. This table was the most private in the room. A young man and his longtime girlfriend were sitting down together to a meal. He was acting like it was the usual lunch date, but she was picking up on his nervous behavior. He had a ring in his pocket and a cheesy, sweet, romantic speech planned out. It was adorable. It was about to be ruined.

There was a bathroom occupied and the Blue Dog shopkeeper was washing his hands inside. The door, when opened, would swing outwards from the bathroom. This is important to his fate.

Numbers six through nine sat around a table at the window. Three guild members were grabbing a bite to eat after their shift had ended. The goggles and guns clearly showed their affiliation to the Gunslinger Guild. They had ordered the new pie on the menu, with ice cream.

From upstairs there was a distant yell of a boy apologizing. Then a woman shouted "It's the VAMPIRE! Shoot the mouse!," and a mouse rocketed down the stair railing. The mouse pushed off the edge of the railing and leaped to the counter. It scampered behind the bottles and glasses as the gunners were pulling their solar guns out and the bartender spun around. He dove to catch a wineglass which the mouse accidentally had knocked down. The click of weaponry powering on was accompanied by the pubmaster yelling, "If you break stuff without hitting the vampire, you'll be paying for it!" The gunners' hesitation saved the mouse for only a split second.

The vulpid ducked under the counter, leaving the shot glass behind as the mouse leaped forward into the dining room floor. Django lost whiskers to a sol bullet that struck the whiskey and left a spray of liquid and glass.

He realized that being cornered would force him to fight and took a gamble. He leaped forward and into the sea of table, chair, and human legs on the pub floor. A volley of bullets from the three gunners sent salt-shakers flying as well as chairs and tables. The couple at the isolated table drew back. The two clung to each other, engagement ring completely forgotten. Django transformed back momentarily, flung a table aside, and shot a blast from the Luna Lens at the Guildswoman, Bea, from upstairs. "Sorry!"

The table had been unintentional, it had simply been a cover he was hiding under as a mouse, and Django was considerably taller in humanoid form. The table made good cover to transform again and slip under some furniture as the gunners opened fire again. Bea was down the stairs but didn't want to explode missiles in the faces of civilians. Concussive blasts were no joke. Chairs and a table blocked the bathroom door thanks to Django, so the poor canid inside was trapped for the time being. Amidst the smoke, noise, panicked civilians, and panicking gunners, one mouse ran between feet and through the door. The gunners had thought the mouse would stay away from the bright sunlight and didn't see the mouse leaving through the sunniest point of the building.

Django had an exit strategy here and would endure the burning on the way to a rat-hole he'd seen the night before. It was mere feet away from the front of the pub. This made it all the more infuriating when the first thing he saw outside the door was a maliciously grinning Lucian with Ezra on his shoulder. Vanargand was gleaming with frost. "Last chance to tell me where Dumas is."

The noise inside the bar was nothing compared to Django's frustrated internal screaming. "I don't know him! I don't want to hurt anyone!"

"I doubt that." Lucian said as he attacked.

There was a difficult battle. Django fared better than most would because he'd been training in the Azure Sky Mound. Lucian had just done the entire Vambery and was backed up by four Solar Gunners. They were aiming to kill, Django was aiming to avoid casualties. Plus they were outside on a bright and sunny morning. Django almost got to the hole. Lucian snarled and activated his dark trance.

Django, when chomped on, snapped and finally fought back.

About a block away, a man on the way home from grocery shopping turned the corner. The man saw a vampire and the tranced vampire form engaged in combat. He looked down at his bags of produce and pasta and sighed before taking the loooong detour home. This added another person to the tally of horribly inconvenienced people that morning.