A/N: Okay, so the reviews I have received to be relatively positive, so thank you for all of the reviews I got back. This chapter does focus more on Alucard and Seras, and I meant to do that. I've talked to some of the reviewers to see what I could do better, and one said that I should expand on the whole Alucard/Seras relationship, so Filius, this one is for you lovey. And I have changed the rating to M for this chapter. Gory goodness. Enjoy!
There was a shout followed by a large crash on this particular night. Maribelle awoke to Alucard, once again, hovering over her. She picked up her lamp and threw it at him. He merely moved out of the way just in time, angering the young heiress to her wits' ends. She stood up fuming and threw another fairly heavy object, which she found out was her father ashtray. This time, the flying object hit its target, right square in the monster's forehead; he, in turn, fell back into the chair behind him, blood running down his face. He chuckled at her attempt to harm him and looked straight into her eyes.
"I swear if you ever do that again, I'll lock you back in your room," the young woman shouted at her servant, only for him to laugh harder at her. She started to pick up something else but stopped to look at it this time. It was a picture frame with a picture of two toddlers playing with each others dolls and the dolls clothing. She stopped and stared at the picture, realized that this picture was taken fourteen years earlier.
In the picture was a three-year-old Maribelle holding her doll tightly to her and laughing at the other girl in the picture, who was making a funny face at the younger girl. The older girl had chocolate brown hair, curled into large ringlet, and olive skin that seemed to shine in the sun that was setting in the back ground. It was then that Maribelle finally realized who the other girl in the picture was.
"Master, would this be you when you were a small child?" The sudden sound in her ear made the heiress jump and drop the picture from her hands. But a gloved hand caught the picture just an inch from the ground. Alucard placed the picture into Maribelle's hand and bowed low in front of her. "My sincerest apologies, Miss Maribelle. I did not mean to startle you," the tall man said looking up from his bow to see her looking back down at the picture.
"Gabby. It's been over eleven years since I last saw you," she spoke aloud to herself as she turned around to walk to her closet. "Alucard," she said, getting his attention, "you may leave. I need to get dressed and you need to get ready for your first mission. You will be working with Seras tonight." With that, she gently placed the picture on the table where the shattered remains of the lamp sat after they fell from the wall. She slid the door shut and began to change into her daily clothing.
• • • • • • •
Maribelle walked into her office to see a grinning Alucard standing by her desk and a terrified Seras Victoria hiding in the farthest corner of the room. "You woke him up? I told you not to do that! Do you realize what he'll put you through?" her general almost squeaked from the corner when Alucard looked over at her. The young heiress saw Alucard's grin widen as she passed him. He watched Maribelle sit down her chair as she started to explain.
"I got curious. I'm sorry," the woman said as she shrugged and looked to her general, whom only complained more and more. "Seras, it's time to grow up now. You will be accompanied by Alucard tonight on your mission. You will be going to Saint Phillips Village in southern England tonight. There are reports of FREAK activity going on in this town. You are to save as many civilians as possible, but do not leave a FREAK standing." The girl sat back in the chair and crossed her legs and intertwined her fingers together. "Any questions?"
Seras knew that her question was rhetorical, so she bowed to the girl. "No, ma'am. May I go prepare?" the general asked with respect. Maribelle nodded and watched as Seras left, leaving her with Alucard. The Draculina was obviously not happy with the commander's choice to wake Alucard up, but she didn't really want to piss Alucard off by lecturing young Maribelle's mistake.
"Master, you look just like her. When you sit there, you know you hold the final word in anything. You know you're well respected, you know that your enemies will cower in fear of your image one day," he said, grinning and showing off his pearly fangs to her. Her eyes widened as he disappear and jumped when she felt a cold hand brush against her neck. "The only thing that doesn't scare me is your beauty. Your beauty rivals that of the Queen's herself," he whispered into her ear, causing her shiver and bite her lip.
"Alucard, I believe you have a mission. Go prepare. And if I catch you snooping around my room like tonight again, I'll personally put a bullet through your skull," she threatened, walking towards the large cedar door of the office. He laughed at her threat but stopped when she spoke again. "And if I were beautiful, as you put it, why do you seem to fear me so much?" she asked sarcastically and walked out of the office, leaving a cackling Alucard to look at the moon through her large window.
• • • • • • •
Seras jumped when she felt her Master's presence right behind her. "You know, she's only a teenager," she said slowly, crossing her arms and staring forward so she wouldn't have to look at him. Alucard simply laughed and sat down next to Seras on the bench. "If you even think of harming her..."
"Are you threatening me, Police Girl? What makes you think you're not my servant anymore?" His voice chilled Seras to the bone and sent a chill down her back. He laughed and dissolved into the shadows. But he was still in the moving vehicle, Seras still felt his presence. Shaking her head and looked down at her uniform; in the last thirty years, she hasn't worn the same yellow uniform she had worn when she first became part of Hellsing.
'Master, may I ask you a question?' she asked him through her power of telekinesis, knowing that he would hear her. She heard a grunt behind her, acting as the answer to her question. 'What do you want with Miss Maribelle? She's still very young and so naïve and innocent. I realize she bears a striking resemblance to our former master, but she's still very much a child. I'm asking—no, begging—you master that you do not harm her.' Seras seemed to be like a mother hen. And technically for the last five years, she had been the mother figure in Maribelle's life. The elder vampire remained quite for a while but his answer didn't surprise her one bit.
'That young girl is my master. It's my duty in this life to protect her with my life. Just like it's your duty to protect her. It seems you haven't changed one bit while I was asleep. You're the same overly emotional Police Girl,' he replied, his voice edging closer and closer towards the point of insanity. She felt her boiling point raise. She felt her fist clench and unclench. And she felt the urge to punch the No-Life King.
'And you're still the same ass!' she retorted quickly and crossed her arms. She felt the vehicle pull to a stop and heard the driver and the passenger gagging. Was the scene outside really that bad? She slowly opened the military truck's door and hopped out, Harkonnen on her back. When she was able to see the carnage in front of the truck, she had to turn around and look the other way.
There in the middle of the road was numerous body parts, man, woman, and child alike. Some of the parts were sewn together in a very sick fashion, and some of the humans were still very much alive; Seras could hear the screams of terror and pain clear as night. The shadows of figures, most likely ghouls, walked through the streets to eat away at the rotting flesh. On the walls of the buildings was blood, some very fresh, some that appeared to be rather old. The general noticed one thing that all the ghouls had in common; they were all women that seemed to be in their mid- to late thirties.
"All of the ghouls... they're all female!" she exclaimed, feeling the urge to vomit her last meal as her boot touched a twitching hand. She felt Alucard's presence but didn't bother to turn around. She carefully maneuvered around the body parts to get a better look at the reanimated. "Where's their ring leader?" she asked Alucard, knowing that he would be able to sense the vampire better than she would be able to.
Alucard simply walked through the body parts as if they were nothing. "A daycare for children? How odd. Perhaps our vampire will surprise us," Alucard thought aloud, his cheshire grin seemed to come straight from the deepest corner of Hell. He kicked body parts out of the way so the Seras could easily follow behind him. He shot at a large group of the ghouls, killing every single one of the miserable beings, turning them to dust that blew away with the wind. "Whatever did this either really likes children or doesn't want to grow up," Alucard stated sarcastically as they walked up to the daycare's door.
Seras could hear a baby crying as she neared the daycare that was located on the corner of Rose Lane and Kinder Street. But when Alucard kicked the door open, the crying ceased and had been replaced with a sickening slurp. The General jumped as she saw a blood covered girl, wearing a once-white, now crimson button up school shirt and a black, pleated skirt that reached her knees. Her feet were protected from the glass from the door by black Mary-Janes, made glossy with blood. Her arms, legs, and face was covered with blood, her brown hair was matted with tangles and blood. In her small hand, she held a dirt-and-blood covered doll that looked just like her. Seras began to think that the girl standing in front of her was a survivor until she saw her eyes; the same eyes that Alucard and herself had, but slightly blackened by blood lust.
Alucard laughed as the girl stood before them, her expression blank. "My, my. It has been a long time, hasn't it Tatyana?" his deep voice echoed in the hallway. The girl before them simply smiled back at him and nodded, taking a step towards the duo. Alucard raised his gun and shot, hitting the girl straight in the forehead; the girl then fell back to the ground and blood seeped from her wound. She screeched and seemed in cry in pain, but only when she sat back up did Seras see that she was actually laughing. There in the middle of her forehead was fairly large bullet wound, but it obviously wasn't the reason she had been laughing.
"Alucard," the child's chilling voice, thick with a heavy Russian accent, shrill and somewhat raspy, echoed just like Alucard's, "it truly has been a long time. Almost one hundred years, wouldn't you say?" The young girl stood up, the insanity in her eyes seemed to mirror the No-Life King's. She whistled softly and not a moment later, these horrible looking creatures tore down the wall closest to the girl and stared directly at Alucard and Seras. If Seras was still human, she'd run in terror of the monsters; they were made of different human body parts, all sewn together, just like they were outside. "Since you kill some of my mommies, it seems only fair to kill you." The monsters, growling and hungry, ran at the duo, clawing the air as they went.
'What a sick demented child! I'm so happy that this wasn't the mission that Maribelle chose to accompany us on,' Seras said as she aimed her cannon at the monsters and shot at them, killing them all with the single large blast, leaving the small, demonic child standing in the hallway. She aimed the cannon at the girl and was about ready to shut when a dark shadow covered her. One moment she was there, the next she wasn't. 'What just happened? Where did she go?' she thought to herself and looked around for the little girl.
Alucard started to cackle and threw his head back as he laughed. "I killed Tatyana once before and now she's back. This will prove to be interesting. Now, Police Girl, I do believe we will need to tell our Master that the vampire has escaped," he laughed as he turned around and walked back out to the streets, taking he time as he walked through the carnage and blood. "But right now, we must clean."
'Maribelle is going to be pissed,' Seras thought to herself as she followed her master, carefully avoiding a twitching leg that was inching closer and closer. She nudged it the other way with her Harkonnen. She once again maneuvered out of the building and onto the street where Alucard was shooting at all of the sewn-together monsters and ghouls were.
"Wait... won't we have to have to report to the Queen as well?"
A/N: You know the drill, review and you get the next chapter. I want five more reviews, so get to it and you'll get the third chapter. And as a warning, the next chapter will have a lot of cursing in it, so be warned if you don't really enjoy that. I had her help me write a good bit of this chapter, so I'm having my editor help me write the third chapter also, and she seems to have a lot of ideas. She's helping me by playing the part of the Queen when I don't know what to write. She'll be my main muse for the next chapter.
