"What did you do to them?" Integra asked when Alucard got her on the phone.
"Killed them," Alucard answered with a smile. "The Police Girl shot most of them while they were shooting me, but she left a few for me to destroy, to completely annihilate. Not one is left alive. Now Integra," Alucard said with a dark, hungry growl lining his words. "Give me an order. They're probably controlling the police, the very same ones that were ordered to attack me, the ones that I killed, and the ones that I will keep killing! They're only humans, regular humans. I can kill them, and I can keep killing them without hesitation, and will not regret a moment of it. I can, because I am a monster," he said with a smile.
Seras smiled at him and shook her head, not that he saw. Alucard was looking out the window at the army of regular humans that had been brought forth to attack him.
"But what about you, Integra?" Alucard asked. "I'm the one who holds the gun, the one who aims it. The one who loads the magazine and cocks the slide. I am the one who releases the safety, but..." Alucard grinned. "You are the one who kills them," he said to his master. "So, what will you do? Give me an order, Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing."
There was silence from the other end of the line for a while, and then Integra's voice, loud and clear, yelled back at her servant.
"Don't mess with me! I already gave my order and it hasn't changed! Search and Destroy! You are to crush anything that gets in our way! Do not run, do not hide! Attack head on! Barrel through them and obliterate any obstacles!"
Alucard laughed with cooing delight. "Roger," he agreed with a thrilled grin. "Great, that's the final word," he said, and turned to Seras to make sure that she knew as well.
Seras nodded. She'd heard.
"Truly wonderful," Alucard said, and nodded back to Seras. "The one who gets hit will stand back up, and taller than before. Integra, we'll be leaving now. Be a dear and watch us on television," he requested, and hung up.
"Hopefully she'll record it," Seras said as she started to pack up the small secure satellite phone they'd brought with them.
Alucard chuckled, the sound coming from deep within his chest. Soon, everything was packed away that needed to be, and they both had their weapons ready for use. Any human that fired upon them would forfeit their lives.
Alucard opened the doors of the suite, well aware that there were more police with guns lined up on either side of the hall beyond.
Seras stepped out first. Steel-toed boots on her feet and sharply-pressed black trousers under her Hellsing uniform shirt, and she had her Glock in one gloved hand. She smiled at the assembled men, remembering a time when, back home, she'd been training to join the tactical unit in her off-time. Then she stepped aside and bent at the waist, just the way Walter did for Sir Integra, but Seras bowed a little deeper as her master stepped out of the suite and into the hall, and with a smile she straightened again and closed the doors, hiding herself back within the safety of the suite.
Her own ability to survive standard gunfire wasn't going to be tested until Seras drank some of her master's blood. He wanted that to happen as soon as possible, but respected that Seras wanted to wait on that until she felt within herself that she was ready to take that step as a vampire.
She listened in silence to the gunfire, and moved to the window to peek out through the drawn curtains at what awaited them beyond.
The gunfire stopped.
"Kitten!" Alucard called.
"Aye!" she answered, and collected up the weapons and extra ammunition. The hall was full of bloodied bodies, and Alucard was exiting the elevator, more bodies piled up within.
"I'm going down to declare war," Alucard informed her plainly as he accepted four new clips of ammunition from her. "You go to the roof and wait for me there. I'll draw out the Millennium pawn that has set the local police on us, if it really is Millennium."
Seras nodded. "Yes sir, my Master," she answered, and adjusted the way the Harkonen sat across her back.
~oOo~
"The bleeding won't stop," Alucard said when he pulled himself up onto the roof.
"Master!" Seras gasped, shocked by his state but still steadfast that she would not give away her position until she started shooting. She didn't move.
"How fascinating. How fun! It is them! Oh, how wonderfully fascinating," Alucard said as he pulled himself up and turned. His opponent, as he had hoped, had followed him to the roof.
"Are you ready, Alucard?" the new vampire asked. "To go back to your true home, back to Hell?"
Alucard laughed.
"What's so funny?" the vampire asked.
"I'm so very happy," Alucard answered with a grin. "To think that fearsome fools like you still exist! Millennium? The Last Battalion? I see, so that Kampf group of unhumans, run by that insane major... even now, the world is still brimming with madness," he said with dark delight, and his hair spontaneously grew out in sharp shadows. The shadows split off and flew away as bats, and Alucard was a fearsome sight to behold, silhouetted in black and red against the black sky and the red-tinted moon.
"Come! Sing, dance! Alhambra!" Alucard ordered gleefully. "And squeal like a pig," he added lowly, grinning darkly as his coat and hair flew around his form in a wind that touched no one but the No-Life-King.
"Squeal like a pig? Me?" the vampire asked. "Not going to happen. You still don't grasp the situation Alucard, and aren't doing anything but talking bullshit!" he said, and threw... a playing card that carved a furrow in the roof and exploded.
Seras glimpsed her master standing tall through the smoke, just for a moment. His outline was clear, his white gloves highly visible, but the rest of his form was shrouded in glowing, fiery shadows.
"Dodged again?" the vampire asked, and raised more playing cards.
Seras shot them out of his hand, drawing his attention away from her master for the moment. She switched her Glock for her rifle, and fired at him with exploding rounds until she'd used up all the ammunition that had been loaded in that magazine.
"Don't underestimate me!" the vampire yelled at her.
Seras had been about to reach for her Glock once again, but with a demand like that, well. Seras pulled out her Harkonen and loaded another explosive round.
The vampire sliced it in half with one of his cards, and the two halves exploded when they hit the roof behind and on either side of him, a couple of feet out, rather than in his chest where she'd intended the round to land.
A hand touched her shoulder, and Seras looked up at her master. Alucard was dressed differently now than he had been before, but Seras didn't let that throw her. He'd been in a refined black suit when they arrived in the suite, had re-formed after being shot in his usual grey suit, red coat, and red cravat, and now after hauling himself out of a pool of his own blood on the roof, he was dressed in a black leather body suit with straps of the same material all over, as though restraining him.
He smiled down at her with something that looked like approval, and then headed for the slowly dispersing smoke around their adversary.
In the smoke caused by the explosion of the round she'd spent from the Harkonen, Seras spotted silhouettes that looked like her master appearing and disappearing around the vampire, but he waited just beyond the smoke until the vampire finally spotted him.
Naturally, the vampire attempted to attack, but as he brought around his hand full of cards, Alucard took crushing hold of his wrist, and slammed his heel into one of the vampire's knees, breaking it and bending the limb at very much the wrong angle. Very much the wrong angle.
"Now squeal like a pig," Alucard ordered with a manic grin.
He brought back his arm, clearly intending to strike. Some of the leather straps around that arm popped free, unable to restrain the incredible muscles that were held within.
The vampire made one last try, had one card left, but Alucard simply drove his hand, held perfectly flat and straight, just as he had held it when piercing the heart of the vampire that had attempted, once, to use her as a bargaining chip – the last survivor of the town of Cheddar.
The card was split in two, and so was the rest of the vampire's arm. Alucard caught the vampire by the face and held him aloft, the conquered foe, helpless in his grasp.
"Checkmate, Tubalcain," Alucard said happily. "Now," he continued as he tightly cupped the vampire's head in his hands, the motion looking almost tender except for the way Alucards fingers dug so harshly in, and brought the face of his defeated foe close to his own face. "Fulfil your arrangement with me. Allow me to complete my mission," he bid, his eyes glowing red in his face that had fallen into lines of near-boredom once again. "I'll have you tell me everything," he whispered.
Then he was grinning terribly again.
"With your blood," he finished, still whispering, breathing delight. With gleeful violence, Alucard opened his fanged jaws wide and clamped his teeth down on the vampire's neck.
Just like the bastard that had invaded the Hellsing mansion with ghouls, that had turned the soldiers of Hellsing into ghouls, this vampire also burst into blue flames. Alucard didn't pull away as Seras had done though, he simply kept drinking the blood of his victim until there was not enough of him left to drink from. Alucard finally discarded the still-burning remains and his red coat formed around his body once more as he laughed and clapped in delight.
"Master?" Seras asked curiously as she ran up to him, her weapons strapped to her back for now, just in case.
The noise of a helicopter interrupted them before Alucard could answer her, not that it looked like he'd been about to.
"Alucard! Seras!" Pip called from the helicopter, a gun held absently to the head of the pilot. "We gotta get going!"
"Kill your enemies, kill your friends... your country, your people, even yourself..." Alucard mused as he stared up at the night sky. "But no matter how many you slaughter, it's never enough. We're both nothing but warmongers, aren't we?" he asked. "Major..."
"Hurry up! What are you doing?" Pip demanded from the chopper. "Please hurry up!"
"Master," Seras called, and lay a gentle hand on his arm. "You are more than a warmonger," she said softly. "If you were nothing but a warmonger, you wouldn't have claimed me the way you did."
"Kitten," Alucard acknowledged, and looked down to her almost tenderly. "You do have claws."
"The captain wants us to move," she said. "We need to get the coffins from the suite."
Alucard nodded.
~oOo~
Pip had gone to the shops, goodness knows what for, while Seras had elected to take a nap in her coffin while her master called Sir Integra. Except that she didn't sleep that well straight away, and was able to hear essentially their entire conversation through the panelling.
They had orders to return post-haste, and her master enjoyed riling up Sir Integra perhaps a little too much.
Seras pushed up her coffin-lid just enough to peek out at her laughing master. "If we go by boat, it will take a week," she said flatly. "And I don't see how we're going to be able to get on a plane with two coffins. We didn't keep the Hellsing private jet in Rio airport after we landed, so it would be a public plane."
"Regardless, Sir Integra has given orders," Alucard told her. "So, Kitten, are you ready to drink my blood yet?"
Seras bit her lip thoughtfully. "I think... I think I should take the blood of someone else first," she answered. "Perhaps..." she hesitated.
"Perhaps?" Alucard prompted.
"I'm not sure I really want the filthy blood of our enemy, but perhaps I could eat the next one we are told to kill?" Seras suggested. "I think if I can handle that first, I should be able to withstand the potency of your blood Master. A chance to drain a human completely would probably be better, but... I don't think Sir Integra would allow that."
Alucard smiled with dark pleasure. "That would depend on a few things," he told his fledgeling. "Such as who the human was, and if my master ever found out about it." Alucard's smile stretched into a mad grin. "And who would know if you consumed someone all the way out here?" he pointed out.
Seras smiled a little in answer, then climbed out of her coffin when Pip opened the door, returned from his errand.
Alucard relayed the latest orders from England.
Pip frowned and slurped at the drink he'd bought for himself while he was out. "Not possible," he said when he had at last finished his drink. "Completely out of the question, even. You need to take this thing with you as well, don't you?" he asked with a pointed glance at the coffins.
"This is my last fief," Alucard said as he moved to sit on top of his coffin.
Then the door of the room was kicked open, violently and with inarticulate yelling, by a familiar foe.
A familiar foe that had completely terrified Seras in their previous encounter, but she wasn't going to be scared this time! She'd just been talking with her master not long ago about draining the next one of their enemies to cross their path. What luck for her it was the Judas Priest, rather than one of the filthy Nazi nut-cases.
Though, her master might be unhappy with her for taking away his opponent...
Well, while the two imposing men pulled back their fists and bared their teeth, threw blows at each other, Seras circled around behind Anderson.
When her master drew his guns, Seras took action. God, but those standard police tackles were useful. Anderson drove his bayonets into her even with her crushing hold, but she forced herself to ignore the pain. She had an objective, and not even his starched collar and the awkward angle would get in her way!
"No!" Anderson choked out as he was drained.
Alucard laughed. "Be honoured, Judas Priest!" he declared. "My oldest, most tenderly held foe. My beloved Nemesis. You are defeated by my Childe, and you are Seras Victoria's first meal. Before you, she has had not one drop of blood. Seras, drink deeply. Don't waste a drop. Alexander Anderson is your Master, your Master as he once was, a long, long time ago."
Seras bit down a little harder on Anderson's jugular and swallowed down more of that red fluid, so vital to life. Vital to Anderson's life, as it flowed through his veins. Vital to Seras' life, as it sustained her even past death.
Pip yelped in an unmanly fashion and fell back as he back-pedalled, getting away from the spectacle that was Seras feeding, no, gorging herself on the screaming catholic, even while his bayonets were stuck right through her body and the blood from her wounds was slowly staining her uniform a dark red.
Anderson started to seize after some fifteen minutes of this draining, and Seras reached into his coat. She withdrew the thing that she suddenly knew he had tucked away in there. Knew from his memories, rather than her own. Knew that it would be useful to them.
Satisfied that she had completely drained Anderson, Seras stood up at last and with one hand she withdrew the blessed bayonets from her own body, and stuck them all into Anderson's heart, save the last, which she used to chop off his head before it too was rammed through his heart. He had been still twitching beneath her after all, and for the sin of being a vampire would probably have killed himself anyway. Regenerating, virgin, Judas Priest. Now he was just a pile of dust, banished by his own blessed bayonets.
Still, he'd been quite tasty.
"There's a jet," Seras announced, and with her other hand lifted the paper she had taken from Father Anderson. "Belonging to the Vatican. It's about thirteen kilometres north of here. These papers will get us on that plane and to England in the same time it took us to get here on the Hellsing private jet," Seras said with a smile. "The Catholics are expecting us, and are in full co-operation with the idea of us getting out of one of their countries."
Alucard smiled back, actually smiled. It wasn't a mean smirk or a mad grin, but a true and gentle smile. "Well done Seras," he said, and lay a large hand on top of her head. "My Seras Victoria."
Seras smiled back.
"This little Mignionette really is a monster... just like him," Pip said under his breath in quiet terror as his single remaining eye bugged at the sight of her wounds closing up, and then the fabric of her uniform closing over the wounds as well.
~oOo~
Seras had consumed an entire human's worth of blood, but she still could not travel across great oceans without the protection her coffin provided to her. Until she took her master's blood, she would continue to have that weakness – and Alucard suggested that Seras get the blood of the Judas Priest settled properly within herself before sampling his blood.
Before they entered the presence of Her Majesty the Queen of England, Seras changed into a clean (yellow) uniform. No need to give the game away too soon after all, and it wasn't like Pip was about to tell anybody. Alucard had removed the memory of the incident from the mercenary captain on the flight over.
"You do not want to declare your strength to the world?" Alucard had asked Seras as they packed, when she had asked him to remove the captain's memory of her drinking Anderson's blood, to keep that she had done so a complete secret.
Seras shook her head. "We're facing an enemy that doesn't know what I'm capable of," she pointed out, her voice echoing slightly, with the resonance of having consumed a soul. "I'll make my own declaration of war in time. I'll... keep my mouth shut until then, I think."
Alucard had nodded, and that had been that.
Seras had slipped into her coffin once she'd secured it on the plane, and then they were on their way to the meeting of the Round Table that Her Majesty the Queen of England had called.
"I have returned, my master," Alucard announced as he flung open the doors.
"Well done, my servant," Integra answered. "You are in her Majesty's presence. Remove your sunglasses."
Alucard obeyed without a word, and then started walking up to the Queen with that rare quiet smile on his face.
Seras waited by the door, flanking it on one side while the captain stood on the other – he looked utterly ridiculous out of uniform, in that pink top, but he was still armed. Walter hovered by Integra's shoulder where she sat at the head of the table, and while the other knights were lined up down one side of the table and Maxwell from the Vatican's Section XIII, Iscariot, and a couple of his people hanging about him like flies on a turd.
From the expression on the man's face as he watched Alucard cross the room, as well as the way he had talked to Sir Integra the last time, Seras was more than willing to relegate him to the status of 'turd'.
A pair of her Majesty's bodyguards stepped between the great vampire and the Queen as he approached, but the No-Life-King simply threw them aside, then ascended the steps to stand before the elderly woman who sat upon the nation's throne.
"It's been a long time, Vampire," she said. "Come closer, let me look at you."
Alucard knelt down before her, bringing his face to be on level with the Queen's with that action. A sigh, almost purring, escaped his lips as those weathered hands cupped his face.
"All these years, and you haven't aged a day, Alucard," the Queen remarked. "Whereas I have grown old, and so quickly I can scarce believe. See how wrinkled I am now?"
Alucard smiled tenderly at her. "I still see the same spirited tomboy of fifty years ago, my Lady," he answered. "Time has been kind to you, however you see it. To me, you have grown even more beautiful."
The Queen chuckled softly, and smiled. Amused, flattered, maybe a little of both, and withdrew her hands from his face.
"Proceed with your report, Vampire," she instructed fondly.
Alucard bowed his head, then stood and turned to face the rest of the room and descended from before her Majesty's throne.
"Fifty-five years ago," Alucard began, "an insane Nazi major tried to make an army of vampires. Walter and I laid waste to their operation, however, it seems that they simply refuse to die. They continued on in the shadows for the last fifty-five years, researching, experimenting, but now they are ready to complete their original mission. Millennium's true identity are these people, the Third Reich's last remaining soldiers: the Last Battalion."
"I see you found out through Tubalcain's blood," a new voice said from the doors. The closed doors. "The major sure blew that one!"
Seras did a double-take. That kid hadn't been there a second ago.
One of the Catholics pulled a pair of guns, and the captain drew his revolver as well.
"Woah there, I'm just the messenger!" the... person protested. This person in uniform did look like a child, but if all of the enemy had been members of the Last Battalion from fifty-five years ago, then this person was no child. "I'm not here to fight anyone," he said simply as he approached the table, careless of the firearms trained on his person.
"Walter," Integra growled.
"I really don't know how he got past security," Walter answered. "My deepest apologies."
"Your security measures are useless against me," the boy said happily as he produced a device from nowhere and set it on the table. "I'm everywhere, and nowhere."
Seras watched him silently and intently from where she stood, now blocking the door.
"To the gathered representatives of the Vatican and Great Britain, my commanding officer, the glorious major, has a message for all of you. Please attend carefully," the boy said, and pulled a remote control from his pocket. He had a bit of trouble getting a picture up, but it came.
So did his name. "Warrant Officer Schrödinger," the major called the boy.
Seras noted the cat-like ears on top of the boy's head, recalled his statement that he was everywhere and nowhere, and recalled a brief skip-over on the philosophical discussion of Schrödinger's cat from when she'd taken philosophy as an elective in school. The cat was placed in a box, the lid closed, and as the animal could not be observed, it was impossible to know if it was alive, dead, or even still in the box at all.
The next words to penetrate Seras' thought process was an order from Sir Integra to kill 'him'. She immediately shot out at Schrödinger and wrapped her jaws around his neck, eyes glowing red as she claimed her second ever soul.
Alucard grinned in mad approval as he brought his own gun to bear against the communication set that showed the major's face.
"Seras!" Integra snapped.
"Forgive me," Seras mumbled out around the throat between her teeth. "I'll take my meal outside."
"Alucard," Integra said, the frown audible in her voice as Seras dragged the twitching Schrödinger out the large doors.
"You told us to kill him," Alucard said lazily, defending the actions of his Childe. "He will be incomparably dead very shortly."
The door closed between Seras and those still assembled around the table, and she continued to consume the Schrödinger. She continued to consume him until nothing was left but a withered husk. All of the blood of this creature was consumed by the young draculina, his will totally absorbed by herself. His memories of the process of his creation, and the knowledge of his own part in the plan for her master.
"You will not be the poison to take down this great king," Seras informed him as she conjured one of Anderson's bayonets and removed the corpse's head from its shoulders. She smiled with satisfaction as the remains became dust.
"What did you do?" begged the voice of Schrödinger from within her head.
"The Schrödinger no longer exists in and of itself," she answered. "You are now a part of me. You are dead."
The desperate voice, the panicking conciousness, faded almost completely at that answer, but did not vanish completely. Seras held him now, and he wasn't going anywhere without her say-so.
The doors opened.
"Master?" Seras enquired.
"We have our orders, from her Majesty herself," Alucard answered, and grinned with that dark, manic glee that only looked right on his face. "We are to destroy them. Your own declaration of war in return to his was quite nice by the way. Eating the messenger."
Seras blushed a little at the strange praise.
"Seras," Integra said shortly. "What did you get from Schrödinger?"
"You won't like it, Sir Integra," Seras warned. "You won't like it one bit."
"This is war, Seras," Integra said sharply. "Damn well tell me anyway."
"Yes Sir," Seras answered softly. "The Schrödinger was mostly just what he was to us today: a messenger. His task is to carry that little box around, allowing the major to communicate with his underlings."
"That's not too bad," Integra said. "Not very useful, admittedly, but not too bad."
"He did have one other role though," Seras said, and looked over at her master. "The Schrödinger was to be the instrument of my master's downfall."
"That scrap of a thing?" Integra demanded with a scoff. "How?"
"To exist, the Schrödinger must observe himself," Seras answered. "Be conscious and aware of himself. If he were absorbed by my master..."
"He'd become one among a million other voices," Alucard finished. "He would cease to be self-aware, and so cease to be. Possibly, such a thing could take me with it," he allowed. "An ingenious poison, designed specifically to be my downfall."
"Can the Schrödinger execute this plan despite being devoured?" Integra asked.
Seras shook her head. "No, Sir Integra," she answered, and smirked, pleased with herself.
Integra smiled. "Then that is good news," she decided. "Little was learned, but the potential danger is defeated before it got its chance."
Alucard smiled at Seras and lay a large hand on her head fondly.
Seras smiled happily back at him.
"So, Seras, you finally drank blood," Integra noted with careful blandness as they walked.
"Y-yes, Sir Integra," Seras answered with a sheepish smile, aware of the resonance of her voice from now having consumed another soul.
"You've finally become a proper vampire," Integra said.
"Not quite, Sir Integra," Seras demurred. "I'm still..." she glanced up at her master, "just a little kitten draculina. Though, I am getting stronger, and I don't think I'll ever be afraid of anything ever again."
Alucard laughed. "Well said, my Seras Victoria," he declared. "Yes, you must still drink from me, your master, to become a true Nosferatu. Still, you are doing very well on your own so far."
"Thank you, Master."
~oOo~
Alucard gave Seras a significant look when they arrived back at the Hellsing mansion, and then vanished.
Seras followed after him, down to his room in the basement, where there was only one chair in the middle of the great empty room, a small table, and two wine glasses, waiting to be drunk from.
Alucard was already casually bleeding into one of them, his potent crimson stain flowing from his wrist, which he had sliced open with his own teeth, when Seras politely knocked on his door and pushed it open.
"Seras," Alucard said, but did not turn. "My Seras," he said.
"My Master," she answered and entered the room, closing the door behind me. "Why did you turn me into a vampire?" she asked. "I'm grateful, but... if you were just the monster you told everybody you were, then you wouldn't have."
"You chose and decided on your own path," Alucard answered, his back still to her. "You really are far more interesting than you seem from the outside."
"And my outside has fascinated a lot of men," Seras chipped in dryly.
Alucard chuckled darkly. "Yes," he agreed. "Yet you were still a virgin in that village of death where your comrades and superiors were turned into ghouls, where another vampire would have raped and killed you as well. A hell like the bottom of a witch's pot, and what did you do in that situation? You survived. Giving up kills a man," Alucard said, and finally turned to her.
He closed the wound on his wrist, and picked up the glass he had just been bleeding into.
"When a man refuses to give up, he becomes worthy to rise above humanity," Alucard said. "You refused to give up," he said with an approving smile as he held out the glass to Seras. "It wasn't that you wanted to be a vampire, if you had wanted to become a vampire, I would have refused you. It was that you refused to die. That is why I claimed you Seras."
He held out the glass to her.
Seras knelt at his feet to accept the cup as though it were the communion grail at church.
"My Seras," he said tenderly, and pressed the glass to her plump lower lip.
"Master," Seras breathed. She raised her hands around the glass, raising it up as she tilted her head back. She drank. Not one drop of her master's blood was left in that glass before she lowered it once more. "My Master," she purred possessively, and her voice echoed even deeper than it had before as a new shadow lit in her red eyes.
"No," Alucard said softly, a little sadly. "No Seras Victoria. You are Nosferatu, and servant to no one."
Seras shook her head. "I will always be your servant. You will always be my Master. My Master," she repeated with fervent reverence as she set the glass back on the table and took Alucards hands in her own.
"Seras," Alucard whispered as he looked down at her.
"Master, I know a secret," Seras confided. "Every angel in heaven, and every devil in hell, is jealous of us."
Alucard scoffed softly, and smiled wryly. "Oh?" he asked, willing to humour her. "Why is that?"
"Because we are like them. We are monsters who can only act in accordance with the will of others, but unlike them, we also know what it is to be human," Seras answered, and reached up to her Master's face.
He obligingly knelt down so that she could cup one cheek with her gloved hand.
"No one on this earth values humanity more than you do, Master," Seras said. "You kill them when they are dogs instead of men, you kill them when they are monsters instead of men, and are so resolved not to die by anyone who is not, through and through, human."
Alucard closed his eyes and sighed, leaning into Seras' touch. "Seras," he said softly. "My Seras. I pray to God that you will never leave me, but would He hear the prayer of a monster?"
"Even Lucifer is heard by God, and his petitions answered as they deserve," Seras answered gently. "I will not leave you."
~oOo~
"The HMS 'Eagle' has been at a standstill three-hundred kilometres off Aulington for eighteen hours. The Nazi standard has been painted, large and in red, on the deck," Integra informed her two vampires over the phone. She was at a communications headquarters elsewhere, away from the estate. "It cannot be ignored, but we have no craft that will be able to reach the ship. It is too well-armed, and there is an issue of 'magic bullets' as well."
"There is one craft," Walter corrected, also over the phone. He was at his mistress' side, as he always was, acting as bodyguard as well as butler. "Just one in existence, that would be able to get Alucard onto the ship despite all the munitions."
"We don't need it," Seras answered, cutting the butler off with a shake of her head that neither of the humans could see. "I can get there."
"The ocean is the bottom of Hell's pot for a vampire," Integra pointed out. "They can't escape, but you wouldn't be able to either, once you got there."
"You're forgetting, my master," Alucard said with wicked pleasure and a manic grin on his face, the expression well conveyed by the tone of his voice.
"The Schrödinger's blood?" Integra guessed.
Seras nodded, which they didn't see. "Yes," she said. "I've had some time to practice, and I'm confident that I've mastered the Schrödinger's abilities," she continued. "I can get on, and off, the 'Eagle' without any difficulties."
"Very well. Deal with the matter, and return to the mansion post-haste," Integra instructed. "Your orders, Seras Victoria, are Search and Destroy. Do not leave so much as one of the enemy on that boat alive."
"Yes Sir, Sir Integra," Seras answered, and gave a salute that, again, went unseen.
Then, without any fanfare, she vanished from Sir Integra's office in the Hellsing Manor, and reappeared on the deck of the 'Eagle', two feet in front of the vampire who was there, dancing across the deck, twirling her musket like a baton, and singing from a German opera.
The vampire stopped and stared, shocked.
Seras smiled, brought up her Glock, loaded with modified rounds, and fired straight through the vampire's heart.
"Master would have made a spectacle of some sort out of it all," Seras said as she took the weapon from the now dying vampire. "But I am not my Master, and Sir Integra ordered that I return post-haste, so you will have a relatively quick death at the end of my gun."
"I... a-am Rip van... W-Wrinkle," the dying vampire choked and wheezed out. "My bullet will..."
"There there," Seras soothed, and bent to pat her cheek. "Your bullet is mine now," she said, and drank the other vampire's blood down quickly, and then all the faster as Rip van Wrinkle caught flame.
With the musket-wielding vampire on deck gone, Seras only had to go up to the control room and dispatch ten other vampires. Weak, lesser vampires made from weak, lesser people. It was not worth drinking their filthy blood as it had been to drink the blood of the child that was everywhere, anywhere, and nowhere all at once. Not like it had been worth it to drink the blood of a hunter that had such impossible skill with her gun.
No, these vampires simply crumbled to ash as her bullets tore through them.
Seras closed her eyes vanished, reappearing elsewhere. Specifically, reappearing at Sir Integra's side.
"Seras?" Integra asked, mildly surprised.
"Mission accomplished, Sir Integra," Seras answered. "I caught them too much by surprise for them to put up any fight worth mentioning. The Navy can now safely reclaim their ship," she added with a nod to the men seated at the table with Sir Integra, and around the room at various consoles.
"Well done Seras," Integra said with approval. "Well done."
"Thank you Sir. I feel a little guilty though. The major made this war for the purpose of fighting my Master, " Seras said, a cheeky, childish smile on her face. "And I seem to be the one going out instead."
Integra chuckled. "Alucard will get his own opponents to fight, in due time," she said, and waved a dismissal.
Seras bowed and disappeared away again, to the basement of the manor this time. Having just used her guns, she now had to clean them. It wouldn't do for her weapons to jam at a vital moment because she'd been lazy with gun maintenance. There were the mercenaries to keep alive as well after all, not just the mansion to defend.
Her master was asleep when she entered his room, resting before the inevitable battle. She crept over and carefully reached into his coat, intending to do maintenance on his guns right along with her own.
"Seras," Alucard scolded, opening his eyes.
"Sorry Master," she said with a smile. "I was just going to clean your guns for you."
"Hm," he hummed, amused and pleased. "Alright," he allowed. "If you want to so much."
Seras beamed happily. "I'll do a good job, I promise."
Alucard smiled back, patted her on the head, and then reclined once more in his dark throne.
For a while, all in the Hellsing basement was silent, save the perfunctory clickings and scrapings of proper gun maintenance. Neither vampire spoke a word until...
"They intend to divide our forces," Seras said quietly when she finished cleaning her master's guns, and returned them to him. "The point of the taking of the 'Eagle' was to draw you away from Hellsing and London. Sir Integra is already in London, that would have left only me and the mercenaries to defend Hellsing, if the ploy had worked."
"But it didn't," Alucard noted as he assessed how well Seras had gone over his guns. With a smile, he returned them to their places.
"They'll attack London before they attack the mansion," Seras said. "Or, that is what the major intends. He's having a slightly harder time of things since he doesn't have the Schrödinger's to be his little spy all over the world. Not much, but a bit. He doesn't know exactly where we all are, or where his young warrant officer has disappeared to."
Alucard grinned. "You should be able to defend the mansion well enough on your own. Though the mercenaries are something of a handicap, I dare say they'll have their uses as well."
Seras blinked. "You're going to go to Sir Integra, aren't you?" she asked softly.
Alucard nodded. "She has Walter, but he isn't as spry as he used to be, besides which..." he smiled. "Besides which, that is where the war will be."
Seras smiled and shook her head fondly at her master.