Vamp!

Vamp! III - Chapter 3 G

A port town in northern Germany.
The port town from which the ferry to Growerth departed was home to many other ships and boats; most were fishing ships, each vessel clearly lived-in and filled with a sense of daily life.
Daily life, naturally, was intertwined with work. And sometimes conversations like this could be heard on the docks:
"What're we going to do with all this leftover fish, Dad?"
"...How am I supposed to know?! Shit! We finally get a big haul for once, but everyone's off at the festival! The market's deserted!"
An irritated father-son pair was standing face-to-face on the pier. The sun had already set on them.
From the sound of things, they were fishermen; and the vessel beside them was full of their catch from early that morning.
But at this point, the fish market had already closed. And the men did not seem to be particularly inclined to preserve the fish for later.
"Damn it! If only we had some connections with a canned food factory..."
"Sure, it's a big haul; but all we caught were small fry. Anyway, we have to make a decision soon or we'll end up having to waste all this fish."
They looked up at the container on their ship, powerless to do a thing. Inside was their catch; a veritable mountain of fish that they could not even take to market. The flames of life had given way to a dank, clammy odor and was now filling the air around them.
Perhaps they should just dump the fish in the nearby waters, the men began to think.
But at that moment, a stranger approached them. A mysterious person wrapped up in black bandages.
"How much for those fish? How much?"
As the fishermen wondered if the stranger was a man or a woman, the mummy in black plainly made their business clear.
"Could you sell them to me? Sell them to me right now?"
The fishermen hesitated at the sudden offer, but the figure in black quickly reached into their bandages and drew a wad of bills, tossing it at the men.
"Is this enough to buy all the fish? Is this enough?"
"Huh? Wha...? This is too sudden... Uh... It's too mu-"
"Sold!"
The father hesitated at the clearly overpriced bid, but the son instantly validated the transaction.
"H-hey..."
"Stay quiet, Dad! From the looks of this guy, he's probably going to Growerth. Maybe there's going to be a fish party there."
"But this is too much!"
"We're not ripping him off, Dad! He's the one who made the offer first!"
As the fishermen whispered to one another, the figure in black grinned at the massive quantity of fish they now possessed.
"I was worried! I was! The last ferry was gone. The last ferry to Growerth. Thanks a lot! Thanks!" They said, excitedly hopping on the spot.
The fishermen nervously put on forced smiles, but a moment later, their faces--and the rest of their bodies--froze.
The figure in black leapt up with unthinkable power and landed on the container atop the ship with ease. They then picked up a small fish from the pile and brought it to their bandage-covered lips.
"Huh...?"
How had this person leapt so high into the air?
What were they planning to do with these stale fish that were still alive?
And how did they plan to transport all these fish alone?
These questions they had were erased in an instant.
A scene so bizarre that everything else seemed natural soon unfolded before their eyes.
With their free hand, the black figure pulled back the bandages around their lips, exposing a pair of glinting incisors.
The incisors were so long, in fact, that the younger fisherman frowned.
'Are those... Fangs?'
Was it a part of their costume, he wondered, even after bearing witness to the figure's incredible jump. But perhaps this was because they had never once come into contact with inhuman individuals like this character.
As father and son looked on in confusion, the mummy sunk their fangs into the fish's belly.
But this unusual act was little but the bell that signaled the raising of the curtains. The beginning of an incredible scene the father and son would never forget.
The moment it was bitten by the black figure, the prone fish began flailing as though it had just left the water. It left the figure's bandaged hand and fell into the container.
The figure in black looked down at the fish, and with their mouth once more covered by bandages, spoke.
This time, their repetitive manner of speech was nowhere to be found. There was an authoritative force and power in their voice--like a proud emperor commanding his servants, as though questioning was forbidden.
"...Propagate."
The moment they gave their command, the splashing fish leapt up.
Then, there was a moment of silence. Followed by the sound of many more flailing fins.
Splish splash smack slap
Another moment of silence.
Smack smack splash thud slap splash
Silence and noise came and went in turn. Eventually, the silence grew shorter and shorter as one moment of noise blended into the next, creating one massive uproar.
Slap. Splash. Thud. Thud. Smack.
Splash. Smack. Smack. Slap. Thud. Splash. Slap. Thud.
Thud. Slosh. Splat. Smack. Thud. Splosh. Squelch. Slosh.
Thud. Splash. Slosh. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud thud thud thud thud thud splash slosh slosh splash smack slosh smack slap splish slosh ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
It was the sound of waves.
Though there was nothing but fish inside the container, the fish themselves became a little sea, creating currents and waves in the closed space as though in a desperate bid for recognition.
They had been limp and still until just moments earlier. But with the first fish in the lead, the rest followed in twisting and flailing as though they had been set back into the water.
But the fishermen sensed no life from the fish.
The eyes of the fish were dead and grey, clearly different from their catch early that morning. It was as though they were being electrocuted, moving by reflex alone.
As the chilling movement continued, the bandaged figure narrowed their eyes in ecstasy and commanded:
"Mix together."
Silence returned to the harbor.
The fish jostling in the container stopped as though they had lost all their strength.
But the silence soon came to an end, and the ears of the fishermen and the figure in black were assaulted by a new noise.
Father and son cringed and covered their ears at the sound. The figure in black gleefully watched with their exposed right eye.
Something resembling the sound of pieces of expanded polystyrene smashing against one another, and the sound of something soft being beaten with a stick.
It was as though the fish, in spite of having no voices, were screaming.
They mashed their bodies against one another in physically impossible ways as they pushed and pulled towards the center of the container, not caring that their bodies were being ground to pulp.
Pieces of flesh and scales were peeled off their bodies. Bones and innards mixed together as though they were separate creatures, sometimes defying gravity as they gathered.
The fishermen could not see what was happening from their vantage point on the pier. But the sound alone was enough to tell them what was going on.
So specific was the noise inside that though the phenomenon was humanly impossible, their imagination could fill in the gaps. The sound filled the harbor, creaking and smacking.
The diced pieces of flesh soon gathered together. Muscle with muscle, bone with bone. They wove together with no set pattern, creating new masses of flesh and bone.
"This is going to take a while. It is! About an hour. It would be faster if I used human corpses. It would be super-duper fast." The figure in black said to themselves from beside the fishermen, once more returning to their repetitive self.
'Wha...?'
The bandaged person had been atop the ship until just moments ago. When had they descended?
Instead of answering the fishermen's silent question, the figure in black beamed like a little child and asked of them a question utterly irrelevant to the commotion taking place inside the container.
"Is there an internet cafe around here? Is there an internet cafe with all the popular games? Underground Gun Mania would be the best. That would be the super bestest."
The fishermen could feel their legs turn to jelly.
Though they could not see what was taking place inside the container, they knew without a doubt that something unnatural and grotesque was occurring there.
"...Never mind. I'll find it myself. Never mind. I'll come back for the fish. I'll come back for them in an hour."
Leaving behind the awestruck father and son, the figure in black walked away with a crack of the neck.
They then stopped just as they passed by the pair, looking straight at the fishermen with their eye wide open.
"You didn't see anything, get it? You saw nothing. You have to forget about it, okay? You have to forget."
The bandaged figure turned away from the frozen fishermen, apparently having lost interest. But they left a single command as they departed:
"Accept."
It was a simple but normally unpalatable command. But the men could not defy the order. No amount of struggling would allow simple humans to go against this instruction.
The moment the figure in black disappeared, the father and son took the money they received and sped away without turning back.
Left in the harbor was the sound of something stirring.
A strange 'something', no longer a mountain of fish.
Creak creak
Creak creak
Creak creak
<=>
[It is not the act of drinking blood that qualifies one to be a vampire.] The viscount wrote proudly, recalling the abilities of his old friend and party member.
[Humanity figures little into the matter. After all, it is because we transcend the laws of nature that we are called monsters.]