The lights flickered in the long metal halls of the zeppelin, the generator failing under the fires that had broken out from the earlier strikes by the Vatican.
Heavy booted footsteps echoed throughout the halls.
Another hat had been found. A replacement coat had been found. All these things were at hand, well prepared.
The young vampire's broken body lay on the floor, reunited with her lover. All was going as planned.
Somewhere in the control room, Sir Hellsing was opening a door, with the thought of impaling the Major on the sword. She did not realize that the Doctor's preparations for the master of the monster were more than adequate. She was once the master, now to become the monster. All was going as planned.
The heavy booted footsteps continued to echo down the hallway.
The Butler was in the locker room, idly picking tidying up someone's personal effects. Beside him, the nun in the vestments of the priest lay, her head bandaged clumsily. The Butler looked up.
The vampire? The silence seemed to ask.
"He's outside," the Butler responded. "Cringing and doubled over under the weight of poison of the soul, his very being exposed to the world. Like that, he's not worth finishing off. There's no fun in it."
The nun? The silence seemed to ask.
The Butler grinned as he glanced down at her. "Do you like her?" he asked, kneeling down and moving a stray lock of hair out of place. "My new pet. I think I'll have the Doctor do his magic. I could use someone to play with. Speaking of which…"
The silence seemed to say nothing.
"Half then, half now," the Butler said. "Where's my payment? "
The silence said nothing. It just stared at him with an emotionless, uninterested, unremarkable stare.
"…I don't like being played with, Captain," the Butler said. "I'm the puppeteer. You're just a lapdog of the fat man. And I want the tall man to fix me."
The silence seemed to say nothing.
"You beat me once, didn't you? No, you beat me twice. Both times I was so far out of your league as to be laughable. As to be… absolutely ludicrous. You were in another class. Another world entirely," the Butler said, standing up. The flickering light glinted off of lines that danced in the air between them, patterns of chaos, representations of force and planning and time and place and war and blood.
"…Alucard has lost his spark, his fire. He cried over Anderson. He em cried /em over that pathetic excuse for a traitor, that horrific excuse for a monster." The Butler took a step forward, twitching his fingers slightly to shift the paradigm. "But not you, eh? You wouldn't cry for anything. Your tears are all dried up. I think I was wrong. As monsters go, you are the genuine article. There's not an ounce of regret left in you. How delightfully… wicked."
The silence didn't respond.
To any other, the Butler would appear to be moving faster than the eye could ever hope to follow. The Butler would appear to be a raging whirlwind of death that was simply invisible by virtue of impossible speed.
To the Captain, the Butler leapt up and over, coming down with a wire running through his teeth and his strands danced and sang.
The Captain stared up at him as the Butler descended. The lights flickered one last time before the generator gave up the ghost.
Literally.
And all was going as planned.