Sweet Death: Fragility P2

Chapter 2: Salem

Deep in one of Ooo's innumerable forests, there lay a small pond.
Outwardly, there was nothing particularly special about it. It reflected the cloudy sky as well as any body of water would, and many of the forest's animals used it as their water supply. It was, for all intents and purposes, a completely average pond at the center of some particularly treacherous wilderness.
One of the aforementioned animals, a young doe with six identical heads perched in a circle on its neck, waddled up to the water's edge and stuck out one of its tongues. As it slowly and deliberately lapped up its fill of liquid nourishment, it uninterestedly observed a shadow floating just beneath the surface. It had always been there, and it had never drowned or eaten anyone, as far as the doe was aware.
Crrrck.
The doe sprung its neck up and looked back with its opposite head. Someone had managed to push through the shrubbery that surrounded the pond, and that someone was approaching at a leisurely pace. The doe returned to its drink, tensing its hind legs to escape at a moment's notice.
Then the new arrival started petting it.
It would normally object to any outside touch, but something about it felt soothing. The doe decided to keep focused on the water, wondering -- with as much thought as a barely-sentient animal could muster -- if the stranger would go away.
It heard the stranger's nearly silent footsteps slowly crunching off, and decided that all was well, relaxing its stance to a normal position.
As such, it was completely taken aback when the figure started sprinting toward the pond's edge, took a running leap, and disappeared below the surface, its black hood flapping all the while.
There was never a splash.

***

"... Alright. Thanks for telling me."
Marceline hung up before Finn could finish his panicky, half-screamed rant. Behind her, Bubblegum waited expectantly on the couch. "Sooo...?"
The vampire pivoted around in the air, facing her with an unreadable expression over her pale face. "You remember Ash, right?"
"Your old 'boyfriend?'" PB wrinkled her nose in disgust, a rare expression for someone so caring. "What's he up to now?"
"Finn and Jake found him hanging in a noose from your bedroom window, with most of his skin torn off and his eyes carved out."
There was a long, awkward silence, then -- "Blackbox?"
"Yep, looks that way. I don't really care about him; he was a major boingloing and I probably would've done the job myself if I'd stayed with him for a while longer. My issue is with the fact that Blackbox keeps getting up to your windows, even though your guards are supposed to be on constant alert. Oh, and Finn said the slippery little rat carved some kind of message in Ash's corpse for us. 'Failure to secure.' What do you make of it?"
The princess thought it over for several minutes, put all of her brainpower to the test, and shrugged. "No clue. But as long as he keeps targeting 'boingloings' and doesn't come after you, me, Finn, my citizens, or anyone else who doesn't deserve it, I don't care what else he does."
Sighing resignedly, Marceline floated across the room and nuzzled up to her lover. "Somehow, I don't think that's how it'll turn out, Bonnie."

***

Maja the Sky Witch knelt over her cauldron, stirring the fiery brew with her magically-protected finger. Years upon years of preparation, and her plan would finally be complete. That princess with the shirt had contributed wonderfully to her progress, which was ironic, considering that the magical effects would probably kill that princess in a heartbeat.
Something in the back of her mind tingled, letting her know that there was an arrival in her house. She brushed it off, as any plundering adventurers would have to brave the building's shifting geometry and best her Crabbit Familiar in a fight in order to find the goods. Before those eventualities hit, she would have time to paint her nails, zap a meal into existence, swallow said meal, and rehearse an over-exaggerated monologue for the intruders to hear, shortly before burning them alive with her lightning powers.
She couldn't help but giggle to herself. Nobody could challenge her in her own home. How many thieves and marauders would have to disappear before that got through peoples' collective heads?

***

Blackbox stared into the beady eyes of the strange crow-rabbit man in front of him, twisting his kukri knife curiously through the creature's leathery skin as he observed. It seemed to be trying to curse him out, a process significantly hindered by the fact that its tongue was shredded to ribbons and forced down its own esophagus.
Unconcerned with the thing's suffering, he tossed its twitching body aside and started to make his way up the nearby staircase. He could feel the house pressing in on him, trying to contort so that he would never reach his target. It took very little effort on his part to counteract this.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Thunk.
Blackbox noticed that he was stamping quite hard on the steps as he ascended. He noticed, but did not stop. He wouldn't identify himself as a sadist, but when there was no possible means of escape for his target, sometimes their fear could be so... intoxicating.
And with the sheer saturation of fear to come, I might have to hire a designated driver.
He chuckled noiselessly when he reached the landing, partly due to his rare comedic thought, but mostly because he could track the old witch's magical emanations right to her bedroom door.
Under normal circumstances, he would go about the task more stealthily, but a direct approach was all but necessary for dealing with the witch. He waited a brief, relished moment, then promptly kicked the door half-off its hinges and stepped through.
Maja whipped around to face him immediately, her jaundiced skin taking on an unnatural orange in the reflection of her cauldron's flames. "What?! How did you get up here so fast? Crabbit should be smashing your face into my floorboards right now! Where is that worthless son of a... CRABBIT! RETURN TO ME!"
"I sincerely doubt that he will be able to hear you, Maja, or answer your call if he could. He was losing quite a lot of blood when I last saw him." To emphasize his point, Blackbox spun his knife in a little semicircle that ended with the tip pointed at his target's throat.
Maja's eyes briefly widened in disbelief, though she quickly regained her composure. "Alright, what do you want? If you're here for any of my stuff, good luck getting through me!"
"All you have to do is answer some questions, Maja."
"Questions?" Irritated, the old witch pointed to her broiling cauldron. "I have important witch business filling up my schedule, and you come here with questions?!"
No sooner than she had finished speaking, Blackbox strode forward and pushed past her. Shocked at his bravado, Maja barely moved until she heard a tremendous clattering and felt a vast quantity of simmering liquid rushing over her heels.
Even the incomprehensible languages she used for her spell casting possessed no word for her unmatched rage.
Maja spun around and unsuccessfully motioned to pump Blackbox full of lightning, while he leaned on her upturned cauldron with an amused look in his eyes. "Your schedule is cleared now, Maja. I would very much appreciate it if you would answer my questions. And you should cease your attempts to use magic on me, as they'll only make this more difficult than it should be."
Her power seemingly robbed from her, Maja lost all air of menace and began backing away. "Fine... What do you want to know?"
The hooded man ran his gloved fingers along the edge of his blade. "You know the vampire Marceline, correct, Maja?"
She silently nodded, shivering in terror.
"Answer in words, please."
"Yes, I knew her. Her little monkey doll was supposed to go in my brew..." Maja cast a forlorn glance at her life's work spilling over the floor. "But then her and her princess friend showed up, and the princess exchanged the doll for her shirt. I never saw them again after that."
Blackbox paused, and though it could have been a trick of the dim light, Maja could swear he had moved an inch closer to her. "Then you are not aware that, shortly after the incident you recall, the relationship between Marceline and that princess deepened further and they became romantically attached to each other...?"
"And why should I care what they do? They gave me what I needed, I let them escape with their lives. I don't keep tabs on everyone I torment, you know."
"There is every reason for you to care, Maja." Another pause, another shift to approach her. "Now, you admit that you let them escape with their lives?"
"Sure, yeah. Now, can you leave me alone so I can try to fix up the damage you just did?"
Blackbox had vanished. It suddenly became clear to Maja that, without the cauldron for lighting, the room was filled with thickening shadows. One of them moved.
Maja barely cried out as the kukri knife's blade sank into the small of her back, angled so that it punctured her heart upon impact. She dropped to the moistened floor without a sound, and not a second passed before Blackbox descended on the body and started carving away.
Two down, he thought to himself. They will thank me for this.