Disclaimer: I own little used within. Pfft, I say! Pfft!
Here's the second chapter. Yet another new character is introduced, and get this: there are still more to come! However, I can justify this... I kill off some people to cut down on the cast list! Like... right now! And I actually feel a tad guilty about it, but hey, my cowriter was the one who wrote the first two scenes, so I can stop fretting and you can read.
I don't think the scene warrants an M rating, do you? Just making sure.
I also need to say a couple things regarding a couple of mistakes I made in plot elements. It has come to my attention that most fics of this canon I have read, here and elsewhere, state that in order to become a vampire, the who who is going to be turned must drink the blood of their sire as well as having their sire feed on him or her. It also has come to my attention that Travis McCoy was in the video. I think as a vampire... not as an ally.
To explain these mistakes, here are my well-thought out excuses:
1. Oops.
And, 2. Oops.
Chapter 2: We Walk the Plank on a Sinking Ship
"What the hell?" Andrew stopped the RV. Two figures were standing in the road in front of the vehicle, toting weapons. One was a huge guy dressed in torn military fatigues and waving around a massive sword like it was made of toilet paper. The other man was skinny and medium height, wearing loose black clothing and a grinning silver mask. He was twirling a blood-spattered shepherd's crook. Motorcycles were parked next to the road where they stood. "Looks like some leftovers from Sorel, guys."
"Hey bitches! Get out here!" the swordsman barked. "Sorel sent us and some friends to take on your junkyard buddies a while back, and they killed our pals! Then we find Sorel's turned tail and ran thanks to you punks, and left us stranded in this crappy ghost town! We've got no money and no gas, and the gas stations are all closed!"
"You want our gas?" Joe asked, confused.
"NO!" The swordvamp snarled. "We want to kill you guys for revenge! Then we'll take your gas at our leisure."
"If you idiots couldn't beat our friends with help, and we beat Sorel and his best, what makes you think you can take us on?" Patrick asked.
"Shut up and get out here!"
"They need some convincing…" The masked vampire calmly walked up to the RV and kicked in a headlight, destroying it.
"Hey! This is new!" Pete jumped out of the car. "Let me handle this, guys, I haven't had the chance to kill anybody who deserved it in a while!"
"You've got some nerve!" The military vampire swung his sword horizontally, and Pete fell onto his back to avoid the massive piece of steel. Pete then kicked out with both feet, hitting the swordsman's shins and knocking him down onto Pete. Finally, Pete got up, pushing the swordsman up and back, and grabbed his collar and drove his face into the pavement.
Pete was so busy fighting the pair of lost Barons that he didn't notice he was being watched. In the foliage not far off the road sat a black van. The pair of bounty hunters who had staked Hana earlier sat atop the van, wearing night vision goggles. "There he is," the small man with gelled hair whispered. "Pete is a real big haul. Quite a bounty."
"Well, Ryan, this guy's made quite a name for himself fighting with the other vampires in town. That guy Sorel's got a huge bounty, and this guy is supposed to have beaten him and sent him packing." The larger man shifted, getting into a lower position. "Study the way he fights. I don't want any surprises except the ones we have for him."
"Roger that, Shadows," Ryan said. "We'll take Pete down, and vampire hunting will suddenly be a much more comfortable profession."
"Right," the man known as Shadows agreed. Except you'll still be doing it with me.
Pete blocked a downward crack with the cane, and kicked the man in the chest. He then backflip-kicked the man in the face, and knocked the mask off. Underneath, the vampire's face was covered in scars, and one eye was an empty socket. However, he was grinning like a Jack-o-lantern, and the mask absorbed the force of the kick. As Pete came down from the kick, he drove the flat end of the cane into Pete's Adams apple. Pete coughed and saw double, and the vampire laughed with glee as he used the crook to pull Pete down onto his back. "Now," the thin man said merrily, "Finish him!"
"Gladly." The swordsman brought his sword down, intending to drive Pete into the road, but Pete rolled back under his foe's legs. He came up behind the large vampire as he was pulling his sword up angrily, and grabbed the shoulder of his right arm. Pete concentrated and squeezed, causing dark flames to coat his hands. He kept squeezing until he felt bone, and the vampire yelled and dropped his sword. "You little pusbag!" The swordsman pulled himself away, clutching at his disabled arm.
"Ugh… I'll do it myself!" The scarred vampire jumped forward and stabbed his cane forward, but Pete caught the cane and burned through it, taking off the flat end. The vampire responded by sidestepping around Pete and hooking the cane on Pete's arm as he moved, pulling Pete back and off-balance. He got a stake out from his pocket, but Pete grabbed the stake with his free hand, and they struggled over it.
"I'll finish the maggot!" The swordsman grabbed the sword in his functioning arm and bore down on Pete and the other vampire. Both of Pete's arms were busy, so he kicked out with both legs and scissored them onto his opponent's meaty forearm as he brought the sword forward. There was a satisfying sound of bone snapping, and the sword went flying wildly off, missing Pete by a hair's breadth. Pete roared and swung the smaller vampire over his head and into the larger vampire, holding onto the stake.
"He's a good fighter…" Ryan mumbled with a grin. "A fun challenge… hey, what's that?" His grin was frozen on his face as the rogue sword cleanly beheaded him before embedding in a nearby tree branch.
Shadows looked unflinchingly at Ryan's headless body slumping off the hood of his van. "No great loss, but he got blood on the car. Screw it, no more partnerships for a while. At least I don't have to pay him." As he took off the night vision goggles, revealing sunglasses underneath, the tree limb the sword had encountered fell away. On the way down, it slammed the goggles out of his hand and crushed them, and the handle of the sword broke a front window as it fell. "Shit."
"EAT SHIT!" The huge vampire charged Pete, but his arms were now useless, and Pete easily staked him. Pete sighed and walked through the disintegrating vampire to get at the other one.
"Come now, we can talk about this, can't we?" The remaining Baron asked, still grinning his horrible grin. Pete angrily punched his foe in the jaw, knocking out most of his teeth and further ruining his grin. The vampiric vigilante followed up by driving the stake up into his opponent's chest as hard as he could. The cane-wielding Baron was knocked ten feet into the air and was dust before he hit the ground.
Pete turned back to the RV. "If you want to grab parts from the motorcycles, Patrick, feel free. Otherwise, let's scram."
"This is such crap," Matt muttered as he walked into the shack, where Disashi, Travis, and Eric were already hanging out. "It'll take at least a week for their 'Vigilante-Mobile' to work again!"
"A whole week?" Eric asked, looking up from his book.
"Yeah, unless you guys help me."
"We were helping you," Disashi pointed out. "We just don't like to work after dark because it's harder to see and the day is vampire-free."
Somebody knocked on the door. "One minute… and stuff," Travis said as he walked to the peephole.
"Who is it?" Eric asked Travis.
"Some girl… dark hair… cute… dressed kinda weird, some kinda black and red short gown… angry…"
"Where's Pete?" The girl's voice called through the door.
"Vampiric…" Travis added. "We don't know any Pete. Go away." As he walked away from the door, it split in half horizontally, and each half was hurled outward and thrown away. The girl was standing about ten feet from the frame.
"I'll ask again," she said, barely contained rage present in her voice. "Where's Pete?"
"Do you have ANY idea how long it'll take to fix that door?" Travis asked. "That door was steel-plated! How'd you do that? Never mind, we don't know WHAT Pete ever did to you, but it's got nothing to do with us. Go away!" He drew a stake and pointed it at her.
She laughed derisively. "I invite you to try that."
"Fine!" Travis threw the stake at her, but she simply stepped to the side and it missed. He drew another stake and charged forward with a yell, but she ducked under his thrust and came up behind him. A dark, shifting substance covered her right hand, forming a long blade, and she slashed Travis across the back with it. "Ahh!" Travis dropped the stake and collapsed.
"Behold the power of shadow," she muttered.
"Travis!" Matt yelled. "Die, bitch!" He pulled a pistol out of his jacket and shot the woman three times. "There we go."
The woman stumbled back, then growled and stared at Matt. "You ruined my dress."
"Oh, right, vampire. Well, crap," Matt said. "I'm sure I have a stake somewhere-" before he could finish his thought, another tendril of darkness extended from her other hand. This one curled as it lengthened, then lashed out, punching all the way through Matt's chest and out the other side. "Gurggh…" Matt gasped as he was lifted high into the air. He tried to shoot her again, but the bullet didn't even come close, and he dropped the pistol.
"He's still alive," the woman observed, her movements slow and calm. "Let's fix that. She waved her hand, and a wave of thorns rippled up the tendril, punching out of its sides and then melting back in. When the thorns reached Matt, he jerked, then went limp. "Better." She let the tendril fade away, causing Matt's body to drop to the roof of the shack.
"You crazy little fucker!" Disashi ran at the woman, a titanium baseball bat in one hand, a long, silver stake in the other, leading with the bat. At the same time, Eric looked at where Matt had landed, screamed and ran off.
"You'll all die," the girl laughed as Disashi swung his bat at her. She blocked with her forearm, and Disashi grinned as he heard bones snap. However, before he could stake her, she sliced upward with the shadow blade still emanating from her hand. Disashi frowned and blinked, then fell apart, split in half vertically. "Where's the little nerd?" She called angrily as she stepped over the gore and began to follow Eric. "Come out, come out," she sang.
"I'm r-right here!" Eric was at the side of the shack as she turned, leveling a rocket-propelled grenade at her face. "Luckily I kept this nearby!"
The vampiress frowned in confusion. "You think you'll even be able to touch me with that?"
Eric gulped and nodded. "GO TO HELL!" he cried out. The girl gestured, and just as Eric pulled the trigger, a tendril erupted from the ground in front of him. It wrapped around the weapon's tip, and pulled it down, causing Eric to fire at his own feet. He had no time to scream. The woman grinned coldly and turned around as burnt body parts dropped around her. "And then there was one."
She walked over to one of the work tables. Travis, panting heavily, blood dripping from his mouth, had hauled himself up, and was working on a cylindrical device roughly two feet in diameter. "Whatever you're planning, it won't work." The blade of shadow on her arm changed into a tendril tipped with a clawed, three-fingered hand, and she used it to spin him around by the shoulder and grab him by the neck. "Tell me where Pete is, and your death will be quick, like your friends'."
Travis's face, streaked with sweat, tears, and blood, gazed at her. "Pete's gone. He won't be back for a long time, and if you do find him, he'll kill you like he did The Baron."
The girl's face contorted with rage at the mention of The Baron, and she lifted him into the air by the neck. "You're lying! He's still here!"
"I'm really not," Travis muttered. "Of course, you'll have to live long enough to meet up with Pete." He gestured weakly to the device. "That's packed with thirty pounds of high explosives." Now that the woman was close, she could see it was covered in stakes (all pointing outward) and shards of silver. "There's no way anything close to here is going to survive that blast, and I don't think vampirism will help against this explosive." He grimaced. "What did Pete ever do to you that warrants you massacring people like this?"
The girl snarled and began constricting Travis's neck. "The same thing I just did to you. He killed those closest to me." She clenched her hands, and was rewarded by the satisfying sight of his head separating from his shoulders. She turned, and looked at the bomb, which had begun to beep rapidly. "Let's try this." She waved, and a bubble of shifting shadows encompassed the device. The table began to shake. Better play it safe. She formed a secondary shield of shadow between her and the table, just as the bomb went off.
It was every bit as powerful as Travis had advertised. Even with the double shield, the danger was undeniable. A pair of stakes went most of the way through the secondary shield, stopping inches from the woman's gut and heart. Close one. She let the shields drop, and large chunks of shrapnel clattered to the ground. The table it had been resting on was all over the place, and there was a circular burn where it had been. The first shield had been reduced to Swiss cheese… or whatever the solid-shadow equivalent of Swiss cheese was. She frowned, looking at her arm, and winced as she poked it. She had definitely broken her forearm, and she shouldn't stay there, she could be found out. She jumped over the fence easily, heading for the various shelters she could find in a mostly-abandoned town.
After stopping at their warehouse, the vigilantes were in the RV, inspecting it for vermin, molds, and stuff that might help them along the way, such as weapons, medical supplies, and beer.
"Well, they have paper plates…" Andrew held out about five white paper plates out from the cupboard, where his head and other arm were still inside.
"Oh good… Disashi stocked up on a good First-Aid kit," Patrick was inspecting the kit, which was about the size of a large briefcase.
"A TV!" Joe shouted. "Hum hallelujah!"
"But does it work?" Andrew asked.
Joe tried to turn it on, but it resisted. He proceeded to whack it a few times and it finally obeyed him and turned on.
"What's in the fridge?" Pete asked before opening the refrigerator.
"What's in this cupboard?" Joe climbed onto a sofa that was across from a plastic-topped table and another couch just like it. The red, glittery seats and metal-rimmed table appeared to come from an old fifties'-style diner. Actually, the four in the RV knew it came from a diner, because they remember when "Jay and Silent Bob's 50's Diner" was rampaged and shut down earlier that year.
Joe began pulling things out of the cupboard. "Old Playboy… napkins… a cell phone charger… pot… oh, pot!" Joe took out a little bag full of finely sliced, light green herbs.
"You don't need pot," Pete crossed his arms. In his opinion, pot would only cloud their brains if they were to come across a time when they would need their normally sharp reflexes.
"Whoa, and more pot…" Joe smiled deviously as he took out an identical bag. "And more! ... uh… and more…" Joe was getting less entertained and more weirded out. "Uh… and more… and more...and more… and more…" Soon, the table was covered in little bags.
"Whooooaaaa…" Andrew cocked his head to the side.
"Okay, we don't need this crap. We should return it to the guys before we get going." Pete picked up a bag and then threw it back down.
Patrick looked disgusted as he walked over to the closet behind the driver's seat. "Ugh, where did they go with this RV? Amsterdam? Uh, they must've, uh, AHHH! RACCOONS! RACCOONS!" Patrick reeled back from the closet as a small raccoon jumped on his head, then went down his blue T-shirt, traveled through his pants and came out the left pant leg. It ran back into the closet and Patrick slammed it shut. Andrew and Joe were laughing.
Pete made a face. "How many were in there?"
"TONS! They must've nested or something and had a litter!" Patrick was breathing hard from his little raccoon episode. "Okay… we're taking this thing back and telling them what's up with it."
"We give them back the weed and the raccoons…" Pete continued.
"But we can keep the magazine, right?" Joe asked.
"Oh yeah, definitely!" Pete answered.
Andrew beeped the horn as he turned the large vehicle into the junkyard. "Guys! TravisMattDisashiEric! We need to talk to youuu!"
"Where are they?" Pete looked out the window. The shed's lights weren't turned on. "Did they leave or something?"
"I told you before, they never leave!" Andrew answered. He opened the door and sprinted off the steps.
"It's about 10:30 P.M…. they should be up and about, at least in their little house…" Patrick followed, then Joe, then Pete. Patrick walked towards the shed, Joe and Pete looked around the pile for something that could aid them in their trip.
Pete picked up a shiny, new-looking wrench he spotted, nestled among a few stakes that had wound up stuck point-down in a junkpile. Then he searched his tight blue jeans for money and came up empty. "Hey, Patrick, do you have two dollars?" He ran around the truck to find Patrick. When he did, Patrick was standing perfectly still. "Patrick, I need to borrow two bucks. Why are you standing like… what are you looking at? I'll pay you back tomorrow, I just- what are you pointing at?"
Patrick was pointing at Travis's severed head.
Pete jumped back. "OH JEEZ! Travis! What THE-"
Andrew and Joe had arrived also and stopped dead in their tracks.
Andrew swallowed. "Is that… Travis's head… there… and his body…" Andrew pointed to a headless body a few feet away. "…over there?"
"We… we should get out of here! Now!" Joe backed away.
"NO! The others!" Pete dashed to the shack's door, but tripped. "Huh what?" he looked down to see what he tripped over… a perfectly cut half of Disashi, with the other half right next to it. "AH, ah, ah-" Pete scooted away from it and towards the door, using the rusted handle to pull himself up. He pounded on the door. "Matt? Eric? Are you okay? Let me in, it's Pete!" As he pounded, something from the roof dripped onto the ground, just a couple drops.
Patrick ran towards the RV. "I'll get some weapons!"
"Don't go alone!" Joe nervously followed him.
Andrew whipped out his rapier and held it out in a defensive stance as he moved towards where Pete was.
Pete tried to unlock the door, shaking it. The more he shook, the more liquid from the roof came down. Pete jumped away from the door, getting ready to run and kick it in. When he did, something from the roof dripped on his shoulder. "Ugh... what the hell…?!" He rubbed his now wet shoulder and his hand came off with blood. Pete looked up at the roof and saw Matt's dead body up there. "Ohhh no… ohhh my God…"
Andrew saw it, too. "Where's Eric?!"
Joe came back with a crossbow and Patrick close behind with a net gun. Joe stopped short and picked up a burnt, severed human arm. Then he dropped it. "Um… I think… that's Eric…"
Pete's eyes widened. "Let's get back to the RV. Now! We have to get out of here!"
The four all ran towards the vehicle in a panic.
No more panic. Now silence.
It was silence, except for the car going (courtesy of Patrick in the driver's seat) and the occasional awkward sigh. No one dared ask a question about what they saw or where to go next.
And so they sat, wondering if they had permission to speak or cry, to do what they wanted to do. And did they have permission? Of course not! Of course you didn't get permission to cry, you're in front of the others, don't let them see you freak. Or they'll freak next. If you all freak, then you'll end up freaking in front of the enemy, and then you'll die. Thus, it was against the unspoken yet known vigilante code to freak, to show fear or cry. Freak and be killed.
Or that's what they thought what happen.
So, it's time to follow another vigilante code. What is that vigilante code? One of the most practiced: push your feelings back! Duh! The four vigilantes haven't sat down and 'talked' about anything since they were kids.
But wait! Hideous, awkward silence interrupted.
"Anyone want cupcakes?" Patrick asked shakily.
"I want cupcakes!" Andrew was, as usual, ready to jump at the idea of peace and something to interrupt tension.
And so, the RV pulled into 'Cakes of Cup'.
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"I've never seen so many cupcake types!" Andrew pretended to hide behind Joe in shock. "You even have blue raspberry! That's disgusting!"
"Watch it," The clerk warned. "I made those myself."
"How many are we getting?" Patrick asked Pete.
"Tons,"
"…Tons?"
"Tons," Pete looked at Patrick. "LOTS of chocolate. Tons."
"Relationship problems?" The clerk asked.
"…No." Pete glared at him.
"We get those." The clerk gestured to the other clerk. "But it's mostly him."
"I don't care," Pete snapped. These two were a far cry from the two teen girls who used to give him free cupcakes if he smiled back in town.
"Uh, we'll take a dozen of the chocolate iced ones." Patrick took out his wallet.
"More," Joe said to Patrick in a spooky, sci-fi-movie-robot-alien-possessed sort of way.
"Yeah, more," Andrew said in a similar way.
"More," Pete joined in.
"More, yes!" The clerks joined in.
"Fine, fine, jeez. Give me twelve of the, uh, variety pack."
"Variety pack?" The other clerk asked. "Boy, do I feel sorry for you."
Patrick grimaced at the price on the receipt. "Hey, guys… are we sure we need this many cupcakes?"
"YES!" Pete said to Patrick. "We need cupcakes."
"We need cupcakes?" Patrick repeated.
"Exactly. Cupcakes are what we need!"
"Are you sure that's what it is?"
"…What?" Pete shook his head in disbelief.
"Cupcakes. Are they really-"
"YES!" Pete grabbed the bag that Patrick had just paid for. "For crying out FUCKING loud, Patrick."
As they walked out, Andrew and Joe stayed behind and stared at each other for a minute.
"Lace their cupcakes with antidepressants?" Andrew asked Joe.
"I was thinking exactly the same!" Joe exclaimed.