HELLSING: ERADICATION

CHAPTER I

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Seras Victoria was not happy.

It had been a depressing day already, what with the mass of paperwork, unenthusiastic coworkers and the psychotic murderer on the loose across the countryside. But these things were not making Seras unhappy. Well, much.

Nor was it the fact that she and an overly flirtatious coworker had been sent by their idiot of a police chief to find said murderer in a small and barely populated village in a rural backwater area.

No, it had been that it was raining that made Seras unhappy.

For most people, rain was just a natural thing of the weather, similar to sunshine or the winds. To others, rain was good, fertilizing crops and watering a beautiful landscape, or what have you.

To others still, rain was an immense annoyance: probing an area that had been rained on was a frustrating toil, or investigating a crime scene where all feasible evidence had been washed away was nigh-on impossible.

However, Seras, of course, hated rain for an entirely different reason altogether. A reason that had plagued her forever and then some. A reason that was so terribly ancient in her mind while horribly fresh that she had yet to tell anyone of it, though she relived the nightmares every time she went to sleep.

Six years ago, at her own humble homestead, a tragic event she would ever remember had occurred that threatened to warp all her future. It had been raining then; a cloudy night in the small village of Cheddar had normally meant nothing to her. As usual, Seras had curled up in her bed to go to sleep; trying to clear her head from her parents' raised voices downstairs. Normally, her beloved mother and father never argued, at least, no that Seras could remember.

But more recently, she noticed that yelling amongst her family was becoming more and more commonplace. It had come unexpectedly, of course. A strange letter had arrived in the mail at their doorstep one afternoon, leaving her parents livid, though Seras had not the faintest idea why.

This had also led to an increasingly odd series of arguments in which Seras heard her own name come up quite a bit. But as she had mediated on this that night, a sound interrupted her reverie. It was a hybrid of a yell of fury and a dog's call reverberating in her skull, a low, bass noise that would forever haunt her memory of that event.

This was followed by screams of horror, a door cracking open, and a peculiar swiping noise that Seras could not identify at the time, though hindsight could fill in the gaps. The rest had happened in a flash: a horrible thumping noise as the thing that had entered her house ran upstairs, the sounds of a police siren, and the blurred questions of the paramedics. But Seras did not register any of this, nor anything else, until she was plopped unceremoniously into an orphanage some time later.

That was the moment where everything had begun to fit into place. Seras had realized that the traumatic event had been the murder of her own parents, she had realized that she had no family left, and that her life had no idea where to go or what to do.

But as she realized this, she was overcome with anger, regret, and despair all at once. How could she survive? She was just a kid! And she didn't have anything to call her own, save a locket of her parents (that she had somehow saved in the chaos), and the clothes on her back. She didn't even know who had killed her parents, which effectively staved off her need for revenge.

Though, perhaps… it ultimately was a fool's errand, even to her childish mind, but really, what other option had she left? She had requested when one of the social workers had arrived a few months later that she wanted to leave the orphanage.

To everyone's surprise, the initial shock of letting a girl barely out of Junior High join the police force was incredibly strange. Though many wondered why she had wanted to join at all, more still wondered why the police would admit her.

Granted, she did not see any missions, or dangerous ones anyway, and they had merely trained her in the police compound until all too recently, but she had shown remarkable resilience, so they had finally elected to letting her prove herself.

Among all of these events, the thought that made the record suggested Seras had enlisted in the police department as a result of her traumatic childhood (which it partly was), and that her quest against evil with justice for the innocent had driven her to become and enforcer of the law.

This had almost (almost being the key word) made Seras burst into laughter when she had first seen it. Ultimately, she decided to let them think that she had no ulterior motives for joining. It was probably for the best that they knew not of her intentions. Truth be told, justice indeed was a reason. However, her call of revenge had only been diminished in the orphanage.

And if she could help it, the blood of her parents would not go unanswered for.

All of this went through Seras' mind as the police car sped on down the gloomy winding road. She was nine teen now; not nearly the naïve and innocent little girl she had been when her parents had been murdered.

And now, returning to the lonely village of Cheddar six years later… all of her memories of that night and come flooding back.

"Are we there yet?" Seras was growing more impatient. The prospect of searching her old home after all this time – and better yet with a gun in her hand – was growing steadily, however delusional, making her irate. Thankfully, her coworker did not notice.

"Just a few minutes now Seras." Her partner chuckled. She thought that her whining probably reminded him of one of the myriad of female friends he imagined her to be, despite her continuous protests to the contrary.

"Fine." She answered, returning to staring out at the window. She knew this road too well anyway. Constant drives to her house from the city had been ingrained in her mind's eye.

As the car further drove on, Seras went through the mission briefing in her head. A suspected killer (ha) had been last seen in the small village and no one from the local law enforcement office had reported suspicious activity. In fact, they had reported nothing at all, which, rather ironically, was suspicious activity.

After seemingly futile arguments that a mere two police officers who obviously couldn't co-operate with each other was not an adequate solution, the chief had consented to sending backup if they hadn't returned within the hour. This had not helped Seras' mood at all.

The car stopped abruptly, interrupted her thoughts.

"We're here. Ready?" Seras nodded. She was born ready for this moment. Checking her pistol, she opened the side door and stepped out of the cruiser.

She was quite unprepared for the wave of utter silence that crashed on them as they walked to the clearing of the village. Either Cheddar had dramatically changed since her childhood, or no one in the entire area had cared that a police cruiser had shown up in the middle of the night.

No, something was wrong. Very wrong. Seras looked around for her partner, squinted to see his name tag and remembering his name was Arnold, and motioned for him to follow her.

They moved into the middle of the clearing, between the rural houses. Seeing not one light in any of the buildings, Seras felt an intense sense of ominous dread. This was only multiplied when her eyes spotted that place.

"Let's… split up." She called to Arnold, who had apparently been shamelessly wasting time staring at her rather than their surroundings. He looked up at her words. "Huh? Oh, yeah, OK." He gestured to a nearby shack, even more run down than Seras had remembered it being, and headed for it. "I'll search this one." Ignoring him, Seras marched towards the building that had once been her home.

Upon reaching the threshold, she also ignored the feeling of sick curiosity in her stomach, and pushed open the frighteningly unlocked door.

The living room presented itself to her just as she remembered it. The modest room boasted a small couch, coffee table, and a television set always revealing her parents' obsession with retro style. Seras noticed that other than the thick covering of dust over everything, the sight was eerily reminiscent of that relaxing summer day.

Seras walked through the room where her parents had died. She looked away for a light switch, flicked it, and to her surprise it turned on. What was more surprising, more in the raw shock value than anything else, was the fact that the blood spattering she could now see was in fact over almost everything.

Focusing on this previously unidentifiable detail, Seras wondered if the police had even bothered to clean the investigation site years ago.

But as soon as she thought this, another question became apparent. The police did clean it, and this blood was actually dripping from the walls, as though it had just been… spilled…

Seras spun around, drawing her pistol. Her heart pounding, she ran to the clearing, her mind screaming at her to run away. "Arnold! Arnold?!" She called out, fearing an expected response.

She was unbelievably relieved to find his voice call back, though under any other circumstances she would have been horrified. "Seras? Is that you? What is it?" But her good feeling was quickly cut short.

As Arnold came running from the house he had occupied, Seras beheld a sight that her eyes did not recognize. A shape, most hideous in its form, was perched on the rooftop. Behind that, in the rows of shrubbery, dozens upon dozens of bright red eyes blinked into existence.

Seras cried out in fear. They were the same eyes she had seen in her nightmares.

Arnold, comically in hindsight, seemed to realize that something deadly was behind him, turning, he glimpsed the horde of red eyes just only before something tackled him.

Seras screamed, realizing the thing on the rooftops had jumped onto Arnold, and began firing her pistol at the creature, which apparently had little to no effect in impeding its damage, until it looked up, and Seras screamed again.

Though the red eyes were quite unnerving, the way they dilated with Arnold's blood splattered on its teeth, but the rest of the creature was worse. It looked humanoid, but terribly deformed, scars and other gruesome wounds pitting on its tattered skin.

As she noticed this, Seras stepped back from it, yet her horror only increased as the horde of red eyes all transformed into similarly maimed figures stepping out of the bush. However, something stranger and oddly more menacing caught her attention.

A tall, black figure emerged from the darkness behind the horde. As it entered the moonlight, Seras discovered it to be what evidently used to be a man, though he too had crimson eyes, his mouth already giving away his cannibalism. Upon seeing Seras however, the figure's eyes blinked, and transformed from the ominous red to be replaced by a more human blue colour.

The man then smiled, a remotely passing qualification with the bloodied teeth, but still a smile nonetheless.

"Welcome, little girl." Seras was surprised that the thing-that-used-to-be-human could speak coherent English, much less with the thick and halting accent that she could not place.

"It seems that you have stumbled out here. And why would you do that? It is dangerous for women in the dark." The man edged closer, uncomfortably close to Seras now, and she could now smell him, a disgusting odor akin to a corpse pile. She winced.

"Especially with vampires out in the night." Seras' breath hitched. The accent, blood, everything fit together. Of course she had heard of vampires; hell, everyone in the whole bloody country had heard of them, but she hadn't thought they were real. Surely, she told herself, that they're just stories to scare off kids, whenever she thought of it.

But now, face to face with a real one…

The vampire stepped even closer. Seras realized he was wearing a suit, stained, but otherwise respectable, for a vampire anyway. She did not ponder the cause of such a choice of attire, however, for an even more ominous thing shot through the air.

It was a sound not unlike a gunshot, though much more audible and reverberating as it flew, and though Seras thought she was hearing things, it seemed to be screaming.

A nearby monster's head exploded tremendously, viscera and blood shooting out of the cavity as the mutilated body collapsed. More shots, and more of the monsters perished in similar fashion, slumping to the ground as though dolls without their puppeteer.

The vampire visibly lost his nerve.

"What the hell is-?" He was cut off as his arm suddenly flew from his shoulder. He staggered, but just as suddenly, his blood stopped spilling, and his arm began to regrow in front of Seras' eyes, first a mere stump, then an elbow, and into a full arm.

Seras grimaced, and peered into the direction that the gunshots had come from. What she was as almost as startling as the event itself.

Another tall figure approached them, though it was much different than the vampire. The newcomer was clad in a red fedora, and adorned in an equally red coat and suit. The figure also wore paled white gloves with words scrawled on them that Seras could not see.

As the figure came closer still, Seras attempted to look at its face, which was mostly obscured by the looming fedora, when the vampire grabbed her across the middle.

Ignoring her almost entirely henceforth, the vampire procured a pistol from his suit pocket, and leveled it at her head, only to hear another ripping sound, and the arm of the vampire holding the pistol was again blow off.

Hissing, the vampire gripped Seras harder, while she struggled to look at the approaching figure. Realization hit her as the spotted two over sized handguns present in the figure's hands, one of which was smoking lightly. Then the vampire spoke.

"Who are you?" The walking figure stopped abruptly, before letting forth a deep rumble, which Seras assumed was a laugh. Then, it responded in a booming and low voice.

"Who I am is not the question. The only question worth asking now is who you are and your purpose in being here." The figure leveled the gun in its left hand at the vampire. "And were I you, I would begin talking swiftly."

The vampire hissed again, before adopting a smirk similar to his previous one as some of the monsters Seras had seen earlier arrived from the forest background into the clearing.

"I am the local vampire around here, and I have to say, the resistance I have found is quite…" He paused, and his tone dropped menacingly. "…pathetic."

"As you can undoubtedly tell, mostly everyone around here is dead." At this, the figure made a sound similar to a snarl.

"You killed them? All of them? For…" The word seemed to escape the figure. "…fun?" The vampire chuckled. "All but this one." He gestured to Seras.

"But I plan to kill her too." Seras gulped. "But first, I'm going to rape her." Seras felt the sweat fall down her back at his words, shuddering. "It will be delicious."

"But before I can do any of that, I'm going to kill you!" He sneered at the figure, who scoffed, lowering his weapons.

"Ah. I knew we were going to encounter that little snag." The vampire hissed for the umpteenth time.

"Snag? What kind of snag?" The figure raised his head, allowing Seras to finally glimpse his face. She saw now that the figure's skin was as pale as his gloved hands, and were his eyes should have been were googles with brilliant orange lenses.

The figure seemed to grin. Evilly. "Yes. You see, I came here to kill a vampire, not a wanton cannibal. Would you know of any vampires around here?"

"Are you mocking me?" The figure grinned wider.

"No. Why on earth would I do that?"

And then there was a flash of light, a blare of sound, and Seras fell backwards to the ground, pain searing in her chest. Pain that the likes of which she had never felt before.

She struggled to remain conscious. The agony was unbearable. What had happened?

She opened her eyes to an unpleasant. The red figure was looming over her, though with an odd expression on his features.

"Sorry about that." Seras was confused, but more alarmed than anything else. She tried to crawl away, but collapsed against the pain. "Get... away…" She gasped for breath against the pain. "You… monster…"

The figure remained still, unreadable, but when he spoke, he sounded sad. "I can help you, little police girl. You can still live." Seras could not believe what she heard.

"Either you can die as a human…" The figure grimaced. "Or you can live… as a vampire."

Seras looked away, her mind struggling to think despite the anvil of pain crushing her. If she lived, her parents could be avenged. But…

"Why…me…?" She wondered, fighting desperately to stay awake. She needed to know, needed to know why, or what-

"You have a spirit, little girl. A fighting spirit that few of your kind possess. That is why I ask you if you want this." Seras felt an impulse. "N-no… I… can't… just… do it! Do it!"

The figure remained impassive. "Very well. Forgive me, but this will hurt rather substantially."

Then, all Seras could register was a blinding pain in her neck before everything became darkness.

Seras was in a dream.

She was surrounded by her family. They all had the same loving expressions that she always remembered them having.

But then they all disappeared. The dream fell into blackness, save for one lone light shining in the abyss, just a little ways from Seras. She felt an intense urge, a need to get to the light. She started to crawl, immense pain ripping through her again, but crawled.

Inch by inch, she reached it! She touched the light, and the pain worsened. What had happened? Weren't lights supposed to be good?

But then she heard a voice, distinctly female, whisper into the darkness.

"Welcome to Hellsing, little Draculina."

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