Three of a Kind
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, anyone, or any concept here-in
Chapter One:
The house was a relatively big one beside one of the main thoroughfares into London, and it was infested with ghouls. These cannibalistic once-human creatures had been wandering around attacking civilians, pets, and causing general mayhem. For this reason, the Hellsing organization had been called to deal with this problem directly at the source, the vampire or vampires that had created them...
As the APC rolled through the darkness towards the target, inside Seras Victoria sat thinking about her job, her un-life, the conflicts and complications thereof, and about whether or not the newbies would come through on first mission, or tank it, freak out and end the mission badly. The last she doubted, the rookies seemed fine. They certainly took to working with her well enough.
The APC coasted to a stop on the lawn just outside of the front door, Seras opened the hatch and jumped out followed by the rest of her detachment.
"Team one," she began, returning to the hatch to retrieve her rifle from its rack on the ceiling, "split into groups of two, set up a perimeter and if it isn't alive, and isn't me, kill it. Team two," she put the weapon down and reached back for a box of rounds, "go around and secure the rear. As for you team three, you follow me through the front."
Team three had her newest member and needed the shock effect of a ghoul filled room to put polish on their training. Seras waited while the teams got their positions, looking at the front door of the house and remembered the day in her police training when she had broken her foot. How the instructor had set up a door frame and asked for volunteers to kick it in. No-one had succeeded; they didn't think to look behind it at the rather effective barricade.
"NEVER try to kick in a door" he had said all those years ago. When the signal came over the radio that all was in readiness, she walked up to the door, kicked it in and ran into...
...an empty room. That is to say that there was furniture and some bloodstains and in place of the ghouls she had expected there were only piles of dust. The team behind her surged though and started its clockwork sweep of the first floor. As Seras walked through the room towards the stairs to clear the second floor, the sound of a struggle wafted down the stairs to her vampiric ears, just as an inhuman scream of terror rang out. Seras ran up the stairs and down the hall towards were she heard the sound of a calm male voice.
"...Sure to catch you sooner or later. Who's the next?" Then the sound of another in a quivery female tone.
"You killed him you just came in here and killed him!" The sound of soft slow footsteps and the male voice followed.
"You have drunk the blood of men, of women, and worst of all, children, you cannot be saved." While all of this was happening, Seras had been creeping up to the door. She soon reached it to see a female vampire cowering in a corner with a tall figure clothed in dark green battle camouflage walking towards her with a knife in his hand. She looked at him, his eyes glowing a faint red in the shadowy darkness.
"W-w-what are you?!" She whispered out in horror. He lunged forward and swung the knife. The vampire screamed as two small objects fell from her; however Seras didn't see what they were.
"But one of three who rid the world of monsters," was all he said and with one thrust of the knife he held turned the vampire into a pile of dust. He reached down, picked up the objects, and put them in his pocket. Seras watched as the man moved off to the side, and out of her line of sight. She walked in, looking in the direction he had gone and right into...
...an empty wall. She had a split second to register this before a hand grabbed her by the neck and shoulder and she was thrown bodily into the wall behind her, landing in a heap. She stood up in time to be grabbed by the neck again and feel the sharp point of a knife resting just to the right of her sternum. Seras looked at her attacker in the face and froze.
He had the face of a boy eighteen at most, handsome, if ordinary in every respect except for his eyes which were an almost unnaturally dark, translucent green. He spoke in a calm, almost flat voice.
"The blade is coated in silver and has been dipped in a pool of holy water just this afternoon. Now answer this question and you might live. Why shouldn't I kill you?" Seras tried to concentrate, but his expression seemed to say 'I'll know the truth when we hear it,' so Seras decided to pick the obvious and truthful answer
"I...haven't killed...anyone."
As if on cue, team three's rookies burst in saw their commander's state of affairs, aimed their weapons and yelled, "FREEZE!!"
"I haven't moved. If you want your CO back then you won't fire," said the boy without looking away from her face then he smiled and whispered, "you passed," to her while putting his knife away. "Sorry about this," his free hand grabbed her shoulder, and Seras's world went black...
... On the other hand, William was enjoying himself. It was his first mission and not a shot was flying at him, which was all the better. Since team three had cleared all of the rooms of the first floor and the building had no basement, he'd start the sweep of the second floor and so with hopes of earning points with the boss for initiative, he took Farkas with him to start clearing the upstairs. This resulted instead in intercepting the thrown body of that selfsame boss, with his face. His last thoughts before waking up later in the manor health ward were…
"The helmet-cam footage from this will be awesome…"
When Seras woke up, she was lying on top of the unlucky two, one was struggling to get out from underneath her while trying to spare her dignity and not look up the ridiculous skirt Hellsing had equipped her as combat uniform. The other was totally unconscious. Seras quickly stood up and helped the other to his feet.
"Who was that?" asked the conscious soldier.
"I have no idea, were did he go?"
"He ran down the hall and jumped out through the window, I heard gunshots." In the end, the perimeter team hadn't captured him.
The order for the clean-up was given and the mission was completed successfully, apart from pretty much most of the work being mysteriously done for them. Seras gave the men their remaining orders and all teams headed back to base.
On the hour long drive back Seras compiled all the data that she could from helmet cameras and from descriptions of all involved personnel. However, all of their descriptions were vague. The overall summarization from the men was the same.
"...It was almost like we couldn't see him." The only other thing in common with their descriptions was that his eyes that glowed like cat eyes.
Seras dreaded making her report to Integra and her fears were warranted. Seras recalled the cutting tone Integra made as she dismissed her.
"He is to be treated as an armed and dangerous curiosity. Make every attempt to capture which doesn't compromise your primary objective. Now leave, I have to write this up for a report for the next table meeting."
Seras slowly headed back down to the dungeons, went to her room took a shower, dressed for 'bed' and laid down in her coffin with the lights turned low and a book she was almost finished with...
The next evening she woke to her usual packet of blood. Although this morning there was a large envelope next to the ice bucket with a note card resting on it. She bit into the packet and picked up the card, in perfect handwriting were the words,
'This was delivered today by Air Mail and I assume it is addressed to you. Also, Sir Integra would like to speak with you after you open it -Walter C. Dolneaz'
On the envelope the address line held a description:
'To the young red eyed lady with the big gun, The Tourist.'
There was no return address anywhere on the envelope. She opened it and pulled out a single sheet of paper. On one side was a sketched portrait of her leaning against a wall smiling at the artist one fang exposed and on the other was a blurred sketch of the young man from last night and a short message.
'Sorry for the tossup yesterday, didn't know you hunted. A meeting under less hostile conditions would have been more pleasant, but if you could get your men to not shoot at me that would be nice too, sincerely The Tourist.'
Seras got dressed, folded the piece of paper up, put it into her pocket and left for her meeting with Integra. When she arrived at the office door she noticed a small trailing stain in the carpet leading down the hall. She knocked on the door and waited for permission to enter, it came almost immediately.
"Come in," answered Integra. Seras walked in the door and took in the sight of Integra's cigar lit, standing looking down at a sketch on her table with fury. So scary was this to Seras that she almost didn't notice the lawn-mower dripping petrol on the floor. It was dripping gas because it had a javelin with the engraved words 'Air Mail' stabbed solidly through it.
A/N: Hoped ya'll enjoyed it, so should I continue?