Celestial Shadow Gatekeeper HELLSING: The TV

by Herrmitts

An unfinished foray into short fukus, mystic wands-of-power, twinkly-hearts, familiars, and the emo-drama of High School teen-angst. Originally, anyway. It lacks all of those AND MORE! Including a plot or even a chapter ending. Woe betide, reader! Woe!

Another disaster from the depths of a fevered imagination; this extract was found in a spiral-bound notebook, bound in what was determinably the flesh of the screaming martyr who saw it, and liberally spattered with what can only be variously described as tomato sauce and blood-specked semen.

You have, naturally, been warned:

AVANTE!

--0--

CELESTIAL SHADOW
GATEKEEPER HELLSING: THE TV

--0--

(OPENING CREDITS: A bizarre hallucinatory scene where silhouettes of cute teenage schoolgirls dance before the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and a Soho strip-joint to the tune of some obscure J-Pop band's newest cartoon theme release "Pretty Girl Hellsing no Tema". It ends with a large zeppelin flying over the Thames and eating the BT Tower.)

Episode One:
Engrish Roses

The problem with Uncle Richard's manners at the breakfast table were, quite simply put, that he failed to have any. He carried an air of haughty indifference as he smeared great, thick, black strokes of Marmite over his toast with what appeared to be a steak-knife. Only half of it managing to adhere to the bread. Yeast extract stained the tablecloth, crumbs jutting from the sea of tarry black like icebergs breaking waves - or, more accurately - to Integra's somewhat maladjusted eye - like severed limbs on some half-chequered, ichor-spattered battlefield. Sometimes she had to admit her imagination verged on the morbid.

He was doing his very best not to look at her, which in his own special way was more disturbing than those times when he turned the full head-beams of interest upon something. Eyes carefully fixed on spraying more foul-smelling Marmite on his toast, he slapped on another load for good measure and then, finally seeming to have decided half-an-inch of the plebeian's version of gentleman's relish both on his breakfast and across his table was more than enough, jammed the entire thing into his mouth.

He chewed it reproachfully and then finally looked at her. It was a withering glare; the sort that could be bottled and labelled Agent Orange, and about as hard to miss.

Integra countered it by stirring her cereal.

"I hope you're all ready," he said, still chewing. "Because I don't want you making a fool of me. We've had enough of that in this family."

"I rather think people make fools of themselves," replied Integra. Richard watched her some more, and then swallowed.

"You demonstrate all the vices of a public school upbringing, and none of its benefits, Integra." He picked up his incredibly sharp and incredibly not-made-for-smearing-Marmite knife and waved it in her direction. "Just because my brother thought it was good for a Wingate girl to get an education doesn't mean that I do. And I don't think a spoilt little brat like you should be getting ideas above your station - girl or not." With the eleventy-oneth contemptible look since his niece had got up an hour before, Uncle Richard glowered from inside sunken eye sockets. Finally he gave up and dragged his soft-boiled egg towards him, little bread-soldiers already buttered and waiting at the side of the dish.

"I'd rather not be here either, you know," Integra said. She sat back in her chair and gave him a mirror-image of what he'd just given her. "Father would have preferred if I'd gone with the estate, rather than being sent off here to London. The idea of living with you, Uncle Richard -" she tried to make the word 'uncle' sound like it was a type of toilet-cleaner - "isn't exactly something that keeps me happy."

"Well, maybe Arthur shouldn't have gone and died then." He dipped the first soldier into the yolk and then jammed the entire thing, fingertips included, into his maw.

Integra's eye twitched behind the vast expanse of spectacle perched on her nose. "Ooooh," she said. She thought of something else to say; something that would take into full account the sheer audacity of his statement. Something that would display the vast gulf of human emotion that was lurking behind the veneer of cold, upper-class teenage cynicism. She found it. "Oooooooh!" she said again. Putting her spoon down on the table, she raised her finger. "Ooooooooooooh! That-" She sought for the next word. She closed her mouth and thought a bit harder. Then started again. "Ooooooooooh..."

"Oh yes. 'Oooooh'... 'oooooh'... is this going to be like living with an owl?" Richard asked, staring at her again.

"My father hasn't been dead two weeks and you..." The fist that had been holding the spoon quivered. "And you're already insulting him."

Richard, moustache speckled with egg, chewed on that for a fraction of a thought. "Aren't you meant to be at school?"

"Yes!" Integra cried. She stood up and shook her fist in his face. "I am! And I'm going to sodding school, you bloody rotten scum-bag! And if I come back and find you still alive, it'll be a century too soon!"

In normal circumstances, Integra had found that standing and waving one's fist in someone's face generally did the trick of being somewhat intimidating. It rather irked her that, in this situation, it appeared Uncle Richard hadn't been briefed on what to do when your incredibly angry teenage niece just jumped up and insulted you at the breakfast table. In normal circumstances, Integra knew, people were taken aback, or got annoyed, or started shouting - or did something that otherwise demonstrated some form of emotional interest. In the case of Uncle Richard it appeared that the only emotional attachment he could muster was with his current object of nutritional affection. That and the fact she was about a foot and a half shorter than him probably served to alleviate the indescribable fear that any normal person might feel. If by normal, of course, one meant easily startled, probably lesbian, public-school girls; and dwarfs. "Right," he said, with little feeling. "And don't forget your lunch money. Because I'm not giving you any."

-0-0-0-

Titus Square wasn't the nicest, or quietest, or cleanest little slice of south-of-the-river inner-city housing you could find. It was, by one of those exceedingly ironic twists of fate, not actually square but sort of rhomboid, with its not always perpendicular roads framing a bit of black iron fenced parkland. It wasn't really a park, either; it was only twenty feet square, or rhomboid, or whatever, with a lot of nettles and gorse cut through by a gritty path, and in the middle was a statue's plinth. It had been called Titus' Park after some local dignitary whose statue had resided on said plinth, but no one know who he was because the statue had either been stolen, or melted down to made into fighter planes during the war, or had otherwise got sick of a life standing on a big podium that got covered in vomit and piss every Friday night and had eventually buggered off.

Otherwise, however, Titus Square was a pretty average, run-of-the-mill place. The Victorian terraces that formed it weren't boarded up, and nor were all the windows broken (just some of them). There was a general gritty feeling of lower-middle-class optimism and buoyancy that hung over the place like a workman's fug - and it had surprised Integra to find that the next-door neighbours were a well-paid Harley Street gynaecologist (post-graduate trainee, 27, probably gay) and an overweight, early-60s mortuary owner called Frank who smiled too much for Integra to think he was telling the truth about his job and who, every evening, jogged off into the twilight where, she presumed, he jumped out screaming at old ladies in a bid to boost his trade.

School wasn't far. By going down through Waterworks Street (named for its complete absence of waterworks or aqua-vitae based industry), then round the roundabout down towards Havelock Close, you could cut through the alley between the Pakistani-owned corner-shop, which smelt of foreign spices and dog shit, and the Italian restaurant that was called MARIO'S PISSERIA (somebody had turned the Z's back to front, leaving it with a dutifully hilarious name that didn't make Integra laugh) and land slap bang at the canal.

Canals had been the lifeblood of London during the 19th century. Nowadays, interesting and prickly flora grew from the cracks in their concrete sides and paths, and the sorry detritus of the city clogged their pulse. It was said that when the canal that backed onto Havelcock Street froze, and the water actually went almost - but not quite - brown enough to see through, one could pick out the abandoned bikes and shopping trolleys that littered the six or seven feet of silt and shit that had piled up. If you were light enough, and had wide enough feet, you could probably walk across the water without getting your ankles wet. Integra wasn't too sure she wanted to try, and instead found one of footbridges over to Lupin Road.

Lupin Road was the main high street of the south of Canley Borough, and had not - as many people were wont to believe - been named after the plant, nor, in fact, as many younger people thought, after that Harry Potter book thing. It had actually been named for the Monty Python skit, "Dennis Moore, The Lupin Thief", a few days before Michael Palin did a walkabout publicity tour there for one of his incredibly boring factual books. He never returned.

And yes, Lupin Road does have a cheese shop.

But it also has a Starbucks Coffee and a River Island.

The flat, commercialised length of Lupin Road, with its moddish restaurants and smart chic style seemed rather at odds to the reality that it had been lain right down in the middle of an area where 'gentrification' was another term for wearing a tie. Canley had been hammered during the war by the Luftwaffe (which, considering the area's lack of strategic value, had probably been for shits and giggles), and nothing showed this better than the waste-ground which led the final leg towards school. A vast stretch of dirt and litter swept alongside the road, the only building standing being The Matthew Hopkins, - an 18th century pub named for the dreaded witch-finder general of the Civil War - quite possibly the rowdiest and most dangerous drinking establishment north of Crocodile Dundee's water-hole.

Its survival through the Blitz, which its surrounding buildings had failed at, was attributed to a dark and mystical aura that hung over the place, and which was claimed to survive to this day. The more likely reason was that the bombs didn't want to fuck about with a place that chewed up the local chapter of the Hell's Angels and spat them out, and where the police didn't go without dog-handlers and a riot squad. In the end the area had been put forward as the site for Britain's 1984 Olympics bid, but as The Matthew Hopkins wouldn't sell up and was disliked and distrusted by everyone except the East German women's shot-put team, the bid had collapsed.

And so, having passed through this last furlough, Integra skirted Hendleson Park and stepped out into the chilly early-morning sunshine opposite Wilmarth Secondary Comprehensive. It had a sturdy looking brick wall surrounding it, made sturdier by a handful of pupils acting as buttresses and chain-smoking hand-rolled cigarettes in the sort of brutally cavalier fashion that truly cool and well-hard people do. A few stragglers shifted lazily through the gate in clumps or individually; their ties crooked, their shirts untucked and looks of grim resignation written across their faces in bold and indelible swathes.

Integra hitched her schoolbag onto her shoulder, rolled her socks up, cleared her throat, and marched briskly through the entrance into the front grounds and into the bustle of a new school life.

Instead, it was empty, apart from a boy fiddling with a padlock over by the bike sheds.

This Integra hadn't been expecting, and for a moment she stopped to collect her thoughts and wonder what to do. In the end she decided to do a quick check to make sure they were the only two people. She did a quick circumnavigation of the front of the school, and when she got back to where she'd started, she found the boy fiddling with his bike had vanished as well. This didn't really bode well, and after another pause she walked back out of the gate and checked to make sure the smokers were still there.

They were.

"Right," she said under her breath and to no one really in particular and walked along the street for a bit until she came to the school car park, which helpfully had a sign saying "SCHOOL CAR PARK AND VISITORS' RECEPTION" with the school crest underneath. The emblem was a blue circle, inside which seemed to be the offspring of a bike and an octopus. It seemed to be grinning.

Inside was the Visitors' Reception. It was a middlish-sized room which looked like the booking-in office from an American cop show, all tastefully painted in pale pus crème and with a wooden desk so solid it would have needed a woodworm the size of Arnold Schwarzenagger and a few months to spare to knock any sort of hole in it. Integra rang the bell and then waited in a nearby chair.

The receptionist who finally appeared from one of the doors behind the desk was young and blonde and somewhat short, both in hair and stature, and had a sort of vaguely lost appearance that didn't seem to be helped by Integra's sitting there. She put the stack of books she was carrying down on the desk and offered a greeting.

"Hello," replied Integra. "I'm new and I was meant to see the Deputy Head-Master about starting here."

The receptionist nodded and smiled, then sat down at the desk, took a loose-leaf file from some nook and, wielding a pen, began: "Have you been here before?"

"No."

"And do you have an appointment?"

"No," said Integra. "Well, yes. My uncle set it up. I'm meant to be meeting Mr. Penward."

"Penwood." The woman wrote something down. "And your name?"

"Wingates. Integra Wingates."

There was another flourish of the pen and the receptionist looked back up and smiled. "Okay then, Integra. If you just take a seat and wait, Mr. Penwood's in a staff meeting at the moment, but he should be finished in ten minutes or so. Would you like a cup of tea?"

It was another twenty minutes of waiting and two cups of lukewarm dishwater before a telephone on the desk rang, and Ms. Earhart led Integra to Deputy Head-Master Sir Penwood's office.

-0-0-0-

Sir Penwood was a fat man with the curious manner of the self-aggrandisement and the trapped about him, which coupled with his moustache gave him the impression of an ivory-robbed walrus. He also had a habit of blowing upwards through his moustache when he was thinking heavily, making a particularly impressive whistling - shushing noise that sounded like a half-plugged kettle boiling. Integra knew that he and Uncle Richard were friends, if only because Richard had made much of getting "Shelby to take on an over-conceited little snot like his niece" - but she hadn't anticipated the deputy head as being so...

Pudgy.

"After talking to the rest of the staff on the matter," he began, "along with the school governors, we've decided you can complete your GCSE's here. It is rather unorthodox, allowing a new pupil to start halfway through the term - especially at such a crucial time in their education. But considering the circumstances..." He blew at his moustache.

Integra nodded, suddenly overtaken by the emotion of the situation.

"Yes," said Penwood, "considering you are Richard's niece, I suppose we have to allow some liberties."

"Er?" Integra said.

"I have to admit I was surprised that Richard asked for you to come to Wilmarth. He and your father weren't on the closest terms after the falling-out: Arthur always was a bit of a rogue. So asking to have you run through the old family haunt..."

"Father went to Eton."

"Only after he was kicked out of here." Penwood's face clouded and his mouth tightened. "Richard said there was a lot of old Arthur in you. I hope I'm doing the right thing vouching for you. Personal recommendations count for a lot around here."

If there was a way of being any less subtle, Integra couldn't think of any - and she couldn't think of any reply that wasn't barbed or laced in acid, so she bit her tongue. And the thought of father having come here of all places... Well, it just didn't bear thinking about.

"But," continued Penwood, "we'll just have to go along with it now. Wilmarth has prided itself on taking on not only the best and brightest, but anyone in need -" (Integra put on her best poker face) "- and if there's someone in need right now, I should imagine it's you, Integra. Richard isn't outside, is he?"

"No, sir."

Penwood nodded. "Ah well, I suppose it's for the best. You have to take English, maths, science, physical education and religious education - naturally. You're taking history, geography and business studies as your choices?"

"Yes, sir."

Penwood rose. He didn't have much of a neck, Integra noticed. His head just seemed to join his suit at the chin. With the walked over to the Venetian blinds that covered the window and spread a slit in them for a moment, looking out. "Ahem," he said. It wasn't a noise - it was an actual 'ahem' - said perfectly and with absolute clarity. "We at Wilmarth pride ourselves on excellence through versatility. One of the main means of this is that Canley has been a centre of European immigration for centuries. We take satisfaction in having the highest percentage of German pupils outside of Germany. Even though I served as an Admiral in the Falklands, and my father served as the captain of HMS Tyneside, I have never had a problem with the bastards. Not once. And that is versatility, Integra - the stiff-upper-lip, living onwards, and serving the best interests of the people." He turned to look at her. "I suppose it'd be best to explain the school -"

-0-0-0-

Canley-Wilmarth Secondary Comprehensive (or, as is generally called, Wilmarth High School) is a huge brick pile sprawling in multiple wings south of the Thames, extraordinarily old, extraordinarily grimy, and crowned with a domed bell tower. Some say this was because the school was originally built out of the church that stood there prior. Others say something similar, but that the school actually ate the church. Dating from the 1830s the building has many of the features that have evolved into modern schools (like windows) while lacking others that are now common (such as central heating, or fire exits). Being much larger than it needs to be, several wings are locked and disused. Even the main portion is labyrinthine, and starting students have been found wandering three floors away from their classrooms, crying "I'm sure it's just around this corner!"

The staff and curriculum are a mixed lot, ranging from the timelessly sadistic, and seemingly nameless, PE instructor to the ultramodern Miss Katonic and her surprisingly popular computer class to Mr. Alucard, a foreign exchange teacher of dubious origin who lectures in history almost as if he'd been there. The school is run by Deputy Head-Teacher Sir Penwood, the overweight and overburdened bearer of the troublesome and, in many cases, downright dangerous student population; the Headmaster, referred to familiarly as Mr C by the oldest of the teachers, is never seen to leave his office. Students sent to him invariably repress the memory.

In addition to the locked-off wings, the building boasts a complicated network of sub-basements and steam tunnels (some of which connect to the third and fourth floors, by some curious and alien logic). All of these troglodytic locales are of course utterly barred to the students. A voluminous body of mythology has grown up around these forbidden areas, much of it describing what happened to people caught there - either by the staff or by something else.

Naturally, Penwood didn't say that exactly, nor would he have particularly wanted to. Not to a girl like Integra Fairbrook Wingates, the last heir of the Wingates family. The idea of actually coming to Wilmarth was about as alien to her as a fish stumbling into a lecture on flying, and was about as enjoyable. She'd been born and raised nicely, at a nice all-girl public school, with a nice house and nice surroundings, in a nice part of south Cambridge where a nice, quiet half-hour drive to the hunting-grounds could be made for a nice bit of shooting or riding, followed by a nice dinner at a pub and another nice drive home. By comparison, it seemed, Nice in Canley was a type of biscuit you ate with a cup of tea. It wasn't exactly that Integra felt superior to the place. Not in the sense that people assumed superiority was felt. It was just that two weeks ago she'd had a father, and a green blazer uniform with a straw-boater and ruffled skirt and although she didn't have many friends at Otaley Academy for Girls and most of them had been rather queer it was still HER life, and now, suddenly, she was sitting in a London borough famed for its German immigration, without a father, having just walked from her hated uncle's house, and was now talking to a fat man in a shabbily painted office.

And - damn it! - if that wasn't enough to put a crimp on your day, she couldn't think of much else.

"History starts in five minutes," said Penwood bluntly. "Room 316B. Do you want me to walk you down there?"

Integra got up. "No, sir, I think I can manage it." And she did. "Thank you for your help."

The deputy head-master walked back to his chair and sat down with another squeak. "We look forward to having you here, Integra. I'll have my eye on you."

-0-0-0-

History didn't start in five minutes. In fact, it didn't start for another fifteen, but Integra didn't know this so she ran through the warren of stone-and-paint walls and grim tiled floors, upstairs, downstairs, roundaways. Although she was wearing her Academy blazer, which stood out from the so-black-they-were-blue of the school's official uniform, nobody seemed to pay her much attention. Whatever failed to be the norm in Wilmarth, blonde, out of breath girls in the wrong uniform didn't classify as being so.

316B was a long room with a high ceiling, Victorian style windows on parallel walls - one side looking out onto the street below, the other side allowing the inhabitants to look into the corridor... or vice versa - and a very large roll-up blackboard. The class were already inside, although the term 'seated' would probably be a stretch too far, as most were wandering about, or throwing things at each other, or shouting, or - in one case - dancing on the table. Integra's red-faced appearance at the door didn't raise anything more than a few eyebrows, and so a little deflated, she sidled to an empty table at the back of the room and sat down.

The raucousness continued. Above the hubbub went to the drill of the bell, and the noise ebbed away for a bit before everyone realised the teacher wasn't here yet, and so went back to whatever they were doing.

"Hello," said a voice.

It was a very soft voice, with a cockney tint, and something else underlying it that Integra would have noticed if it weren't for the fact she was more interested in that it happened to be from right next to her. She span around to face a pair of sad, pale blue eyes set into the face of a red-headed girl, which in turn was pressed a little too far into Integra's zone of personal space. It wasn't the face that was really the problem, but rather the fact that other, more pointy, parts of this girl seemed to be acting as a fifth-column invasion.

Integra looked down at the pair of breasts pressed against her arm. They were very large breasts; the sort of breasts that Integra assumed were a particular nuisance at P.E., although not necessarily for the males of the class. They strained the shirt that covered them in an arching curve that architects would have given their limbs for, and for a moment Integra thought she heard the shirt's buttons creaking in protest.

"Sorry," said the girl, shuffling backwards a bit.

Integra blinked behind her glasses. "Where did you come from?"

"I was sitting here all the time," said the girl. She smiled. "My name's Seras, by the way."

Somehow Integra thought it was unlikely that Seras had been at the table when she'd chosen it. She liked to think she'd probably notice someone who appeared to be attempting to smuggle beach-balls under their apparel. She looked at the girl again. Pale. Soft; in all senses of the word by the look of it. The aforementioned sad eyes. Uniform skirt two inches above the knee, which, coupled with the fact she looked a good head shorter than Integra, was practically indecent. Nope; Integra would have noticed.

"Integra," said Integra. There was a moment of embarrassed silence and finally Seras swung around so she was facing the front of the class like everyone else.

There was a longer silence, interspaced only by the rest of the class throwing thumb-tacks at each other.

"Would you like anyone to show you about?" asked Seras, fiddling with her class folder. It was black and white chequered, like a policeman's cap-band. It had a cheerful looking bat sellotaped to it. The bat was carrying a heart.

Integra opened her bag and laid her pencil case out on the table. "Well," she said. "I could do with a little help, I suppose."

"Oh that's good. When we get new students usually they get shown around by one of the class prefects. Not that we call them prefects here. They'd all get beaten up if they did." She thought about what to say next; then her eyes lit up. "You see those two over there?" She pointed at a pair of boys. "They're brothers."

"They don't look like it," said Integra.

Seras stared at her. "Well don't tell them that!" She gave a little embarrassed sigh. "The one with the woolly hat and the metal through him, he's Jan. The one with the glasses is Luke."

"Are they German?"

"No." Seras shook her head. "American. Jan's really James - it's just that back in Year 7 he went through a phase of calling himself DJ Jam-T, except everyone called him DJ Jonty. So in the end he said he wanted to be called DJ Jan, and it stuck."

"Oh," Integra said, "I see."

Except she didn't.

"Luke's pretty smart. They just have this habit of egging each other on." Her gaze roved again. "That girl over there, sitting next to the door - no, her - the one with the black hair. The skinny one. She's Rip."

"Rip?"

"Rip Van Winkle."

"She's German though. Right?"

"No. South End. Ripanella Van Winkle. Her dad owns a haulage firm. Parents thought they were making her the next Minnie Driver when they gave her her middle name. She's head of the choir - and a bit stuck-up... all opera and things." She looked at Integra's blazer. "Erm... if you know what I mean."

"Not a problem."

"Schroedinger's the German." She pointed at another boy. There was something a little odd about him. He was sitting on the floor, back against the table-leg, cross-legged and playing with a yo-yo. The odd thing wasn't any of that. It was the pair of furry ears sticking from his head. Sera noticed Integra's look and continued. "He wears those stupid cat ears for a laugh. He thinks it's funny. And you see those two seats just off from him? They're Bonnie & Clyde's." She leant across to the table opposite; "Chris, where's Lief and Jessica?"

"Last I heard they'd got nicked for joy-riding a scooter," said Chris, who was sharpening his pencils and tipping the shavings onto the floor.

"Scooter?" someone else piped up. "I heard it was a car."

"Naw; Volvos aren't cars. They're tanks."

"You sure it wasn't a scooter?"

"I heard it was a bus."

"It," said a voice, "was a police car."

For a moment all the noise in that corner of the room suddenly stopped as that clipped voice spoke. Its owner was sitting on a table by himself and Integra decided it was for a good reason. Tucked behind his ear, beneath the fringe of lank dark hair, was a cigarette. Not that it was so surprising. Most everyone in the room was probably 20 a day, double on weekends. It was just the aura he displayed; shirt neatly pressed but tie half undone, hands folded neatly on the table. And the fact he was wearing a waistcoat. It was all rather showy, but without becoming overly pretentious even though, really, going to school in a waistcoat was pretty pretentious no matter how you did it - but even so, he did it, and he managed it. It impressed Integra a smidge. The silence dissipated after a moment or two for composure, and the boy went back to reading Moon & Sixpence.

"Who's that?" asked Integra, suddenly feeling interested in this curiosity.

"Oh..." Seras shrugged, although it seemed forced. "That's Walter. You don't need to worry about him."

Whatever else needed to be said wasn't going to come from Seras, so Integra scanned the class again. Out of the rest of the history group only one other person caught her eye - and really by the lack of that person's own. A boy, athletic if gaunt, cheerfully chucking paper-clips and odds-and-ends at someone else across the room, with a black eye-patch. It looked, in fact, like medical gauze painted black - a lacklustre blot on an otherwise tanned face.

"What about the one with the eye patch?"

For a moment Seras seemed to blanch, which was hard considering her pallor, and then she seemed to lose track of who Integra was talking about. Then she stammered. "Erm... er... w-w-well, that's -"

"PIP BERNADOTTE."

No one had seen Mr. Alucard enter. It was a common fact that very rarely did anyone see Mr. Alucard enter. Like a bad penny or the Comte de Saint Germain, he was just there. And much like usual, he simply was there. A hushed peace fell over the class and they swept back to their chairs as quickly and as non-obviously as possible.

Alucard was creepy in the way only tall, dark and handsome people could be. A thin face with slim, bloodless lips set beneath a sharp aquiline nose. Long hair; trim figure; slight eyes, half-closed in a permanent half-amused scowl. Much like all history teachers his choice of clothing bordered on the arcane; all crimson, cravat and white gloves. The perfect devilish grin. Practically designed to set female hearts aflutter, even if they really should have known better.

He closed the gap between his desk and the door like he hadn't moved, and his hand stretched out towards the back of the room - towards Integra. "It does a heart good to see fresh blood in the ranks." The hand closed to a fist. "Come to the front."

He stood her before him and turned her to the class. Placed his hands on her shoulders. "Integra Wingates." His fingers tightened, and he inhaled deeply through his nose. "Integra will be learning with us on the folly of humans and all the beautiful bloodstains it's left on the world." He grinned and released her back to her seat. "Be good to her, class. She has a lot to learn.

"Today's lesson we move on to Eastern Europe. 1900 to 1945 - the Balkans, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia... Romania... The rule of King Carol, the fires of the Iron Guard, Reinhard Heydrich, Admiral Horthy." His grin widened. "Monsters, each and every one."

But even though he seemed to be enjoying himself in his talking, his eyes were gazing somewhere else entirely - like he was thinking of something - or remembering something. And even as he did the lesson, every so often Integra felt he was looking at her. Eventually, if only to escape that uneasy feeling, she looked out the window down onto the road.

The dog was looking up from the road at her.

It was black and sitting on the kerb, quite imperious. Integra looked away and looked back again. It was still there. She looked away again, and then back. It was scratching its ear now, although it still seemed to be watching her. It was the way it was watching her though - as if it had a purpose rather different from that which dogs normally have. Then it got up and walked away.

She couldn't get it out of her head for the rest of the lesson.

Although, to be fair, there wasn't much else of interest to get put in to her head for the rest of the lesson.

-0-0-0-

Alucard made her stay behind after everyone had gone, sitting there with his feet propped up on his desk, chair tilted back at a dangerous angle. He watched her impassively; then, with the crack of the chair's legs on the tiles, he leapt to his feet.

"What is your bidding, my master?"

"What?" Integra stared at him.

He cocked his head. "Nothing." He sat back down. "Nothing." The corners of the mouth curled down a shade. "I must talk to you. This afternoon, in the staff-room."

"I can't. Not this afternoon... Sir."

The last word had came out like a tooth being pulled. Like it wasn't meant to be uttered, and she felt a queer turning in her stomach when she did, but she pressed it back down.

"Call me Alucard," he said with a tilt of the hand. "Would tomorrow suffice?"

"Tomorrow's good. I can make tomorrow."

Call-Me-Alucard's mouth creased into a grin once again. He walked over to the window and stared out, but not before pulling a pair of fancy looking orange-tinted lenses from his breast-pocket. "What was so interesting out there?" he asked. Before Integra could lie, he grimaced. "So disgustingly sunny."

It was grey and overcast and, as far as Integra was concerned, not particularly sunny at all. "Don't you like it?"

"I'll live... I think." He glanced over his shoulder at her. "Enjoy your next lesson."

Well, thought Integra, as she went to do what she was told: what a positively odd man. She unfolded the bit of paper the receptionist had given her at the beginning of the day. Neatly written in tiny copperplate font, were the words - Tuesday: History, French, Break, R.E., Science, Dinner, P.E. She folded it back up and put it in her pocket.

French it was then.

It wasn't really so hard finding the classroom either; Seras materialised by her shoulder with another softly spoken 'hello', and - thankfully or thanklessly, Integra didn't know which - informed her she was doing all the same lessons. Waiting outside the classroom, it seemed that now she'd actually been acknowledged by the staff, Integra had become open game for the usual poking and prodding new pupils garner. The boys just watched; the girls were mixed.

With a new school - or more technically, the inclusion of a new pupil to a school (because really the school is actually quite old) - there's generally a certain order as to how one goes about entering it. First, the parents or guardians would turn up and walk around with the aid of a senior teacher, hmm-ing and hrrr-ing about the proclivities of the pupils and style of the amenities. Then the soon-to-be pupil would get to walk around the school and complain to their parents or guardians that they didn't like the place, or the pupils, or the teachers, or the decor, or that they'd be losing their old friends, or that the corridors were too long, and other equally important acts of contrition at the school's failings. Finally, the child would be thrown kicking and screaming into their new abode of education, perhaps with a pep-talk, sometimes with a guide (either pupil or teacher) and then consigned to get on with things as much as they could.

Apart from the second phase, Integra's introduction had been rather fitting to form.

Yet, in most circumstances the pupils of Wilmarth would have rallied around their new member whether it be for the multitude of reasons that fifteen and sixteen year old school-children do, which is generally greeting them, insulting them or throwing bits of rolled up tissue-paper into their hair. However, Integra proved to be decisively out of this action for a number of reasons:

1) having turned up looking like the Aryan from St. Trinians, complete with crinkly skirt and felt cravat, she put across an aura of total and terrifying self-confidence and power;
2) she was posh. And she spoke posh too.

So they waited, all of the French class lingering around, idly chatting amongst themselves with semi-casual glances at their new classmate, and Integra, finding it all a little bit off-putting, standing there straight-backed and imperious and feeling like a bit of a tit.

Written 20th of September 2005
NOT OPEN TO NEGOTIATRATIONISATION

I should really learn how to tighten up my verbage.
ESCHEW OBFUSCATION AND UTILISE VERBATIM TEUTONICA.
FORGO THE ROMANCE.
DROPKICK THE EMO.

THE WEAKNESS
OF OVERUSED
WORDPATHS
FAILETH
ENG.