Three: In Which Marceline Dies for a Few Minutes and then Totally Lives Forever
Contrary to mildly-popular belief, Marceline didn't want to become a vampire in order to live forever (and get into Ash's pants). She wanted to become a vampire in order to live past the age of eighteen (and also get into Ash's pants).
Marceline is seventeen, alone and starving, and still very much mortal. The small scattered groups of living sentient beings are too small and too scattered, and the few bars and diners that popped up from the slowly-receding rubble are getting sucked back into it for lack of paying customers. Nobody wants to hire a barefoot girl playing an ancient modified evil heirloom.
The few green notes of money she'd recovered from a burning house years ago are now slightly less valuable than play-doh, which might be used to plug various small leaks, or even be eaten by the very daring or the very desperate. And while her father might have once been depended on to provide multiple bananas and mysterious raw meat, no questions asked – well, he can't be depended on anymore.
Marceline had spent years living off of apples, mushrooms and extra radio-wolf legs, but now that the world is all out of those, she's almost regretting missing the chance to make use of the corpses; now all that's left are the bones. She's pretty sure she can't digest those, demon blood notwithstanding.
Walking through streets now littered with makeshift houses made of mud, cloth and straw and backyard barbecues comprising shaggily-dressed people grilling their shoe-soles, Marceline can't help contemplating chewing on one of those buggers. But that's not really her style, and their flesh is probably dry and stringy anyway.
When she was a kid everything seemed so much easier, even if she was hungry most of the time. Now she's still hungry, but also much more alone.
"Least I still got you, Hambo," she tells her teddy bear, but he doesn't respond. She's actually a little bit grateful for that.
She's loitering at a not-yet-bankrupt café, getting the stink-eye from the owner who hasn't had a paying customer in weeks, when she first encounters the Gang. They are a bunch of various immortals; a couple of witches, a wizard, a free-roaming ghost and a few cursed spirits. They only got away with calling themselves The Gang because no other group of people were so inclined to play adolescent turf games at the time; most were somewhat preoccupied with preserving their status as things that are, you know, alive.
One of the spirits spotted Marceline and immediately steered the Gang in her direction. Apparently he knew her father from the few centuries he spent in the Nightosphere before getting himself cursed and earthbound.
"We were pretty close, he and I," he tells her. "Downright chummy, we were."
"Really," Marceline says, sipping her tap water indifferently.
"Yes. He actually still owes me a little favor, only I never got the chance to cash it and now I'm slightly banned from ever getting in touch with him again."
"That's too bad," she says and adjusts the axe-bass strapped to her back. "Listen, I really gotta – "
"Look, don't be like that," he coaxes. "Just put in a good word for me, will you? All I need is maybe a decade, two tops, to wrap up my business, tie some loose ends, you know how it is."
"I really don't." She gets up and pushes past him. "Excuse me."
"I can see those bruises, you know," he calls after her. "And the ribs? They're poking out like old sofa springs. I know a guy. Immortality can be pretty damn easy for someone like you. Tickle my belly, I'll tickle yours and all that."
"Meh," says Marceline.
"Hey! Aren't you gonna pay for that?" shouts the angry café owner. Lumping scrooge. It's just tap water, dammit.
Marceline moves on to the next pseudo-town. She fixes up a lady's rusty bike, gives an old man a pedicure, babysits five two-headed kids and chops a guy's arm off with her bass in a DIY surgical amputation. That earns her about two weeks' worth of chow, if she economizes. The last one was a freebie.
Sitting cross-legged on a comfy pile of twisted mutant bones, Hambo seated on a four-eyed skull beside her, Marceline digs into her hard-earned ketchup-nettle-marshmallow sandwich. Scrubbing those ancient muck-encrusted toenails was absolutely worth it.
Who knows why so many marshmallows and cans of beans survived the wipeout. Same way the apple trees and giant squids did, possibly. Maybe not exactly the same way, though; those giant squids probably have some secret nuclear weapon-proof super-advanced civilization. They were probably the ones who instigated the War, even. Glubbing nautical supremacists. If Marceline wasn't a simply disgraceful swimmer, she might've organized an invasion force just to see the ink drain out of those smug invertebrate faces of theirs.
She's halfway through her KNM when she encounters the Gang for the second time.
It's the white-haired wizard guy who approaches her this time.
"What, are you guys following me or something?" she asks, clutching her sandwich protectively.
He ignores her completely. "Hey, so, I'm Ash," he says and twirls his hand in an elaborate flourish. The marshmallows slip out of Marceline's sandwich and float to his mouth. "You're kinda hot, for a mortal," he continues casually through a mouthful of her marshmallows.
"Those. Marshmallows," Marceline grinds out through clenched jaws, "Are. Mine!" She pounces on him and, fisting a hand in his fancy shirt, socks him square in the nose.
Immortal and wizardly though he might be, this Ash guy is still as vulnerable to socks in the nose as any other squishy meat-based life form Marceline has ever had the pleasure of punching. There is nothing particularly magical about the way he cries.
"Oww! Look whad you did to by dose!" He presses a hand to his nostrils to slow the flow of blood.
"Yeah? Well look what you did to my sandwich!" She waves the now M-less KNM in his face.
"Fide! Here, you cad have the whide odes." He levitates a few half-chewed white marshmallows toward her. "I odly like the pidk odes adyway." They slap her in the face, splattering her with wizard slobber.
"Rrrgh." Marceline's exasperat-o-meter is reaching critical levels. She should shoo this guy off before anyone (else) got hurt – or, glob forbid, she lost any more marshmallows. "Listen, guy, if you want your nose to only have one acute angle in it, better skedaddle. Go on, scoot. Beat it! Before I'm out of spunky ways to say get the lump outta here!"
The Ash fellow swiftly executes a hurried skedaddle, but doesn't forgo tossing a roguish wink her way in the process.
Glob, what a douche.
Kinda hot, though.
.
The third time Marceline bumps into the Gang is also her last as a proper living thing and, incidentally, her birthday.
Of course she knew that, demon blood or no, prolonged dehydration and deprivation of various nutrients were bound to get her in trouble with her leg muscles at some point. She'd just never anticipated the stubborn buggers choosing to disobey her right on the lip of a nice, scenic, ridiculously steep cliff of all place.
As she tumbles down she has just enough time for one final indulgent fantasy consisting of a bowl, a spork, a napkin, and an enormous, greasy, gravy-dripping all-you-can-eat buffet. The napkin is optional.
Then comes the BAM.
And let her tell you, BAMs are a nasty business. You're falling peaceably, dutifully obeying the laws of gravity, when all of a sudden they sneak up on you, and they really aren't subtle about it. They're loud and painful and disorienting, and not at all among Marceline's favorite things.
She's half conscious, or maybe less, when she notices the hazy brown stretch and the hazy blue stretch that comprised her vision are being rudely interrupted by a hazy gray lump.
"So," the hazy gray lump says, sounding much smugger than a hazy gray lump has any business being, "would you care to reconsider my offer?"
It must be the great irony gods (which in Marceline's mind always look somewhat squid-like and scholarly and very very punchable) that watch over her, she's certain. Nothing amusing ever happens to her that isn't at her own expense.
She gazes at the mildly-colorful haziness around her and tries to remembers if her legs have always felt this, well, feeling-less. She has a bit of an itching suspicion that no, they have not.
"Because, you know," continues the inappropriately smug lump, "as a general rule, I don't like to conduct my business in a rushed manner." The lump takes a step closer. "But seems to me rushing might be in your best interest right now."
Marceline tries her best to glare at him properly, but she's not sure how well she's doing, considering she has to squint to see anything anyway. It's really not her fault. It's her stupid eyes, suddenly deciding to become abstract painters and use her brain for a canvas.
"So I have this vampire friend." The blubbing lump is still talking. "He's a vampire king, actually. He's also a guy who owes me a little favor. I'm sure an impromptu blood-swapping session can be easily arranged."
It seems unlikely he is planning on shutting up any time soon. Seriously, you'd think gray lumps would be more sensitive of proper monologue-timing.
"As you know, vampires are somewhat immortal, and unlikely to die from a negligible occurrence like, say, falling off a cliff a little."
This is getting repetitive.
"Unlike some other creatures, such as humans or half-demons, who might find such an incident rather… inconvenient."
"Okay, okay!" she says through clenched teeth (she is actually rather impressed with herself for that). "I'll ask my dad for a nice half-pension organized tour in Hell for you, all right? Just go get the globdamn vampire already."
He laughs and drags her up, and after he passes a hazy gray hand over her eyes and kicks her (in a decidedly un-hazy fashion) in the shins things start looking slightly less abstract again and her legs seem to be more cooperative. "Hic veni, Lamia Rex!" he declares very dramatically. Marceline wonders how good his grammar is.
There's a loud whoosh, a flame Marceline hadn't noticed before flares theatrically, and she finds herself someplace else.
"I'm here," says a dreadfully melodious, bell-like voice.
When she turns around, she's completely alone save for a man with sharp teeth and the stink of blood.
The Vampire King is kinda pretty in an obnoxious babyface sort of way. He has the sort of nose that can be described with this word she forgot, and very nice eyebrows. Marceline's pretty sure she can take him in an arm-wrestling match, and when he smiles toothily at her and asks what grade she's in she thinks she'd probably really enjoy killing him. A few years later she'll find out she was right. For now, she kinda needs him to kill her if she doesn't want to die forever, so she plays nice.
"Uh, hey there. Nice… cape." It's all black and red and velvety, too.
He looks pleased with the compliment, though, if his ever-widening toothy grin is any indication. Seriously, he has really stretchy cheek muscles. "Thank you. I've had it sewn together from the abject misery of a thousand ridiculously cute critters."
Oh. Well, that she can appreciate. "That's… actually pretty cool," she says.
"I know." He flips it over one shoulder and pulls a quill out of his waistcoat pocket. "So, I understand my services are required."
"Well, yeah, I guess. I just need you to bite me."
"I know. I have already been informed by your liaisons. It was a rhetorical statement. Please sign here."
It's probably one of the most frivolous things she's done in a while, signing this crisp yellow parchment with that slick black feather quill in flowing blood-red ink, and she's done more than a few frivolous things in her life. They're practically her favorite things in the world to do. But really, in a post-apocalyptic world where cannibalism is looking less objectionable by the day, the use for paperwork is pretty much of negative value.
"So, are there any actual lawyers left in the world?" she asks the Vampire King, who's busy conjuring specks of dust to flick off of his starched sleeves.
"Hnmmnm," he says.
The Vampire King vanishes the paper in a plume of blue fire, and Marceline absently notes that she doesn't even know his name. She can't say she is terribly bothered, though.
After he tilts her head at a neck-cramping angle and sinks his fangs into her throat, she blacks out for a while. Dying, in her opinion, really isn't all it's cracked up to be; and neither is this blood-drinking business. She's never experienced anything less romantic in her entire life, she doesn't think – and she is a girl who spent her sweet sixteen riding a wolf over a cliff and into a leech-filled swamp, and who will spend her first date sucking the red right out of her boyfriend's pimples.
Not everyone can survive the transformation into a vampire. It's a pretty draining experience, pun intended. But Marceline's daddy is lord of the underworld and she isn't too brittle a lass herself, and like that spirit said, immortality can be pretty easy for someone like her.
When she blinks her eyes open again, she finds herself hovering horizontally above the ground, drool dripping out of the corner of her mouth and the blood trickling from the two puncture wounds in her neck staining her favorite shirt red. Hmm. Good thing this particular shirt was already red in the first place.
"All right then, a few quick rules," a very satisfied Vampire King says from behind her, wiping her blood off his mouth with a lacy handkerchief. "No direct sunshine, no monotheistic religious symbols, no wooden stakes or any facsimile thereof to the heart or surrounding area, and most importantly: no spicy foods," he tells her sternly. "Believe me, you will not enjoy bringing them back up afterwards."
"Mmm," Marceline says, rubbing her eyes and coming up bloody.
"You should stick to a diet of red for the next few days," he continues. "No blood, at least until you've mastered the whole creature-of-the-night routine and settled on a type. Mine is blondes, by the way," he says with a smirk. "What can I say, I'm an old-fashioned fellow."
Marceline tries to stand, with feet actually touching the ground and that whole shebang, but only manages to flop over in a sort of wobbly somersault and ends up with her feet above her head and her hair sweeping the floor. "Whoa," she mumbles woozily.
The Vampire King winces. "Please refrain from getting your blood all over my floor," he tells her. "My housekeeper just waxed it yesterday."
Marceline gathers up as much saliva and bile as she can and spits it onto his impeccably polished floor. He grimaces.
"That's nice," he says. "Your gratitude is greatly appreciated."
"I'm sorry," she tells him. "I'm not feeling it." She pushes against the floor with a finger and floats upside-down out the door. "Bye, VK. Say hi to your housekeeper for me," she calls behind her.
"You owe me at least three bloodbags," he calls back.
Yeah, right. He just got a free meal out of her. He should at least give her an I Got All My Blood Sucked Outta Me Today And Didn't Cry glitter sticker or something.
.
Marceline looks at herself in a shard of mirror and admires her non-reflection. She is a vampire now. Cool.
She thinks it's rather ironic that she undied on her birthday. Also economic; she can celebrate both her birthday and undeathday at the same time. That's half the amount of parties.
Oh, dammit. Well, maybe she can fib it and still get to have two separate parties anyway. After all, if the good in the world is ever to be restored, the number of parties for any given occasion must always be maximized. Especially if they're thrown on her account.
As she attempts to get the hang of this whole airborne thing, Marceline looks for something suitably red to practice her vamp-hood on, though she has no actual idea how to go about doing it. Maybe she should have stuck around and asked Vickers some questions.
Actually, no. No, she doesn't tolerate him nearly enough for that.
She glides haphazardly between carcasses of old buildings and the entrails of butchered cities, hoping to find a deflated beach ball or a pair of boxers with a Mickey Mouse print, and laments once more the demise of the glorious apple trees. She's sick of all this wreckage.
When the wolves left all those years ago, they talked about finding a place that's more sprout than decay. Marceline thinks they were really just bored. They weren't that much of wishful thinkers.
But then, Marceline knows the world used to be very big; the sort of big that doesn't mean anything to someone not the size of a sun, at the least. The war is unlikely to have made it significantly smaller. She looks over at the thick woods to the east. It would be pretty cool to just sort of… float above them.
Now then, how do you steer this thing?
She pulls upwards and, whaddaya know, it works. It's pretty nice, actually. Like drowning in reverse or something of an equal degree of grandiloquence.
Marceline stops somewhere below a few poofy-looking clouds and looks down, bobbing lightly with her legs bent leisurely at the knee like they've never even heard of this exceptional oddity known as walking, the lazy bums.
The ground beneath her is an unassumingly drab patch-quilt of greens and browns and grays, but somewhere in the distance there's a long stretch of red and black sprinkled in between some yellow, suspiciously resembling a field of poppies. The wind in her hair is very considerate, and only whips it behind her in a suitably badass fashion rather than splat it in her face. And off at the edge of the horizon, she swears she can see some dust rise behind something that's running very fast and is probably enjoying itself a lot.
There isn't yet a Land of Ooo and there isn't a Candy Kingdom (and no Princess Bubblegum, either), but through her newly (and awesomely) vampiric eyes, Marceline has to admit the world actually looks kinda… appetizing.
.
Note: So, this is it. Hope you've enjoyed, and thanks for reading. Also, thank you so much for the reviews. They mean a lot.
(This is my first attempt at something that actually has a chapter index. It's been fun, but exhausting. If you do this on a regular basis, I bow to you, sir/lady/other. You are much superior to my puny human self.)