Chapter 2
The room was large and cavernous, housing a single desk near the big bay windows at the back of the chamber with a comfortable-looking old Victorian-style chair behind it. On the desk was a phone, a neat stack of papers, a pen-holder filled to the brim with writing utensils of all sorts, a pad of ink, a rubber stamp, some sealing wax and the candle and mold to go with it, and a box of fine cigars on which sat their respective cutter.
Before the desk stood a woman wearing a man's suit, tall and authoritive with long platinum-blond hair and pale blue eyes hidden behind a pair of round glasses. Her arms were crossed and between the pointer and middle fingers of her right hand, she held a smoking cigar, presumably taken from the polished wood box on the back left corner of the desk (assuming you sat in the chair and looked at them). Her body from the waist up was silhouetted against the blaring white light coming in from the wall of windows behind the desk.
To her left stood Walter, the butler, holding onto the afternoon tea things. He had been ordered not to serve her until this particular moment was over. He had only to hold on to them a short while longer. Before her were two people, one standing and one kneeling before her on the checkerboard black-and-white tiled floor.
The one standing was tall and thin, slightly disproportionate with pale skin, red eyes, and ebony hair that fell in almost romantic waves and coils about his face and shoulders. He was wearing a fine black double-breasted suit, a long red duster with a matching red necktie about his throat, and a pair of white gloves with the most peculiar pentagram symbols etched into their backs in black. His red gaze flickered with a calm psychosis and was set on the one on the floor.
The one kneeling was considerably shorter than this first and not because he was not standing. Even when standing straight, he barely passed five and a half feet. His skin was pale, but not deathly pale; he had a slight tan to his toned frame. His hair was naturally shocking red (though it seemed unnatural to most people), cut unevenly and a general mess on top of his head, but it flowed into a sweeping ponytail from the nape of his neck to just above his waist. His eyes were brilliant white-blue, a pair of gouged scars he was known to compulsively touch from time to time running just along the outer and lower curves of his eye sockets. His eyes were lowered from the one in front of him, watching the floor tiles just before her feet. He couldn't help but notice that the well-cared-for loafers she wore were named after him and he found this frighteningly amusing at such a serious point in time as this. His lithe body was clad in a fading grey tank that hung loosely about his chest and stomach, a pair of black fading jeans, and a pair of worn combat boots that might have been black at one point but were faded grey and brown now. These last were very incredibly worn, though the soles around the balls of his feet were really thin compared to the rest of the sole and then the fraying leather of the rest of the footwear. Around his neck hung a black leather collar, the simple circular chrome tag hanging from the front reading 'Reno Sinclair' on one side and 'Red Shadow' on the other. Of course, you had to be up close to really be able to read these through the frequent gleams in light, but the tag was there and performed its purpose well.
There was a pause in the words spoken by the werwolf, watching with his head still bowed as Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing took a drag on her cigar. A cloud of sweet-smelling smoke escaped her mouth before she nodded to him.
"Go on…"
A deep breath entered then left Reno as he continued the last bit. Almost done… "I so do solemnly swear to put myself and any in my current pack into your service to do with as you see fit. Give us the word and we will annihilate all who oppose you, for they oppose us as well. Of this, you have my honor and word as a wolf. You have the alliance of the Pack Sinclair."
Of course, as far as he was aware, his pack really consisted of only two members – namely himself and his Beta Female, Rosalind – but she would follow him to the ends of the earth if he so commanded her to do it. He had spoken to the Spanish white wolf before making the vow. She spoke of her distaste of Integra and really held nothing back (something Reno prized of his comrade wolf was her ability to express herself without fear of consequences), but told him that if he swore to her loyalty in order to keep protected the Seer Naquza, Rosalind would follow his orders. Even if those orders he gave her actually came from the mouth and mind of Integra instead, so long as it was he who told them to her in the end. He realized, sad yet proud, that she would be willing to die for him if it came to that, if he gave her the order to do so.
Integra seemed to take a while, thinking on the vow given her by this scraggly red-haired abomination Alucard had brought to her. She really hated the idea of any more such creatures in her army (and they all tended to follow her vampire home), but it seemed that it was necessary to fight fire with fire, so to speak. Finally, after a long deliberation, she gave a solemn nod.
"You swear all this to me without hesitation. Have you spoken to your fellow wolves on this matter, Reno Sinclair?" She added with a small almost sadistic chuckle, "We can't have an uprising if they don't agree with your choice in this matter…"
"Only one wolf opposed the thought." he answered. It was true, even if there really was only one other. "But she relented and agreed to follow me, wherever I may go and whomever I may work for. We are at your disposal."
A slow deliberate nod was given from Integra at this answer. "Very well. You are dismissed." After a heavy pause in which Reno lifted his head up to watch her walk around her desk toward her chair, she added, "Welcome to the Hellsing Organization, Pack Sinclair."
Reno stood up, gave a small nod of his head, and turned about to proceed walking out the door with his strange slouched gait, his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He would have to get himself a cell phone with his first paycheck from this place; it would at least give Integra something to contact him with. Well, mostly it was for Tsuri and Naquza, in case something happened he needed to be present for. It was much more inconspicuous than Tsuri's pet dragonet -- Zuki -- flying after him, that was for sure.
Shortly after swearing his loyalty and allegiance to Hellsing, he did just as he promised himself and bought a cell phone.
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Almost a week and a half had passed since Reno had been pulled from the interrogation by Rip Van and he was just now stirring awake and relatively alert. The rest of the time since he was pulled to recover, he could not remember much about when he had woken up, if he had woken up.
Every once in a while during that time, he had tossed fitfully in his sleep and half-consciousness, only to be soothed by a softly singing voice. It calmed him when he heard it and caused him to stop moving about, his tired mind registering it as his late mother helping him get to sleep at night.
He was vaguely aware of the three days of the full moon rising, feeling the shift and bristle of extra hair and a change in body structure through his sleep. The wolf had tried to help clean his wounds, even though his human mind could barely register it; it had run its tongue over the wounds of its fore-legs and its ribs. Naturally, it was a different body and didn't have the physical injuries Reno himself had sustained. However, because it shared his life with him as something of a soul-bond, it felt every blow that had been dealt him and so thought that it too had received the cuts and bruises. The last night of the full moon had passed and brought the human form back until the one night of the new moon that was yet to come. Hence the cycle and curse of a werwolf; added strength and speed were given plus the unlimited access to the wolf throughout the rest of the month. It was a blessing in exchange for those four days to pay, a good deal considering.
Now, his mind was fuzzing awake and everything still hurt. Even the speed-healing werwolves were born with couldn't seem to help him fully heal his current wounds as fast as he wanted them to. It hurt to move and to breathe and (he was almost certain) to think, but he still managed to at least prop himself up on his shaky elbows. Somewhere in the room, there was a small melody playing; humming or quiet singing. One of the two.
Blessedly, the light was low in the room he was in now; if it wasn't, the headache that came at even this small amount of light would have risen from its current intensity to something that could feel like it was killing him. It still made him groan slightly and close his eyes again.
This action procured a small sound of movement from across the room, the music stopping abruptly for a moment then starting up again as softly as it had carried on earlier. Slowly, cautiously, he allowed one eye to open again, as he had in the previous chamber. He was lying in a small bed, the linens soft to the touch and plain white. Next to the head of the bed on the left side was an equally small night-stand housing a single book of unknown origin, a bedside lamp that was emitting the pleasantly dim orange light that lit the corner of the room and hardly anything else, and a strange little pinkish alarm clock with indeterminable characters for the numbers (this was concluded only because his vision was so blurry at the moment). A pair of old-fashioned bells was set on the top and a terrifyingly cute smiley face adorned the center of the face under the crystal. It still worked; he could hear its monotonous headache-enlarging ticking from where he was. Not much else could be seen of the room passed the extent of the light save a rather tall lanky figure that was moving toward him slowly from the shadows on the other end of the room.
Out of reflex from his past recent experiences, he tried to flinch away from it or at least was readying to be brutally beaten in some way, shape, or form. He ended up not able to do anything; tensing up at all made his entire body shake and his stomach clenched around itself at the feeling, inadvertently making him want to pass out and uncontrollably vomit simultaneously. In order to relieve the stress of the past week or so, he also wanted to reach up and gently rub one of his eye scars. He tried and failed miserably, loosing his balance and falling over on to the side with the broken rib as soon as he raised a hand to try. This jerked a small cry out of him, his eyes shutting tight against the pain that knifed through every atom of every bone in his body.
Sure, he'd had worse, but this felt like it really was the worst in all aspects. Thinking back, he determined he had made it through worse only because there were a lot of painkillers in his system and because said painkillers tended to make him sleep for days. At this point, there were obviously none, else he'd still have been asleep or so high off his rocker that he would incoherently babble endlessly until he had fallen asleep.
Reno's entire body was brought to calmness again by the touch of soft fingertips running gently along the scar he had previously been going for, the sound of singing closer now. The voice behind it was very good at it. At the feeling of the scar being rubbed, every muscle seemed to relax, relieving the tenseness that in turn caused agony to course his entire system. Slowly, his eyes opened again and looked as best they could toward the one who was graciously rubbing the scar for him. He didn't see much, just the lightly smirking lips of a feminine face down as the song died away. Any further up and his eyeballs began to hurt in their sockets and it caused searing pain to turn his head even a little at this point.
"Zere, zere." The voice was soothing, German. "Just rest for now. I von't let ze Major get his hands on you just yet und he knows it as vell as I."
The mentioning of the Major seemed to shoot memories of recent events back into the fore of the wolf's mind. It all came through his thoughts so fast that he barely had time to catch all of it. Damn. Right when he had finally forgotten most of it, too…
The hand at his scar was lifted and set to one shoulder, its twin moving carefully under his front to his other shoulder. A gentle push from the woman was given and soon, he found himself resting comfortably on his back again. His white-blue eyes met with her darker blue, just now picking up a small cloud of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. They looked … pleasant on her face and fit with the fact that she did look fairly young. But what was her name again? His mind raced again to find it. Should be one of the last things he vaguely remembered from the recent past.
Ah!
Rip Van. Of course; he'd made a joke about eating shorts should her last name be 'Winkle'. Lo and behold … and no shorts in sight at the time.
A fast glance at what he could see easily of her produced thoughts of how pretty she really was when not being a Nazi. Without the suit jacket, she actually had a figure … and breasts! Good Gods, he thought he'd faint at that. Not that he'd point that out just now. He'd rather be in peak physical condition when flirting or being a jackass. Being injured had its own perks with female attention, though, and he was going to use that to his advantage. For now, it was good to just take in her appearance in the soft light of the nearby lamp. She was thin, but well shaped if a little gangly, framed by a curtain of obsessively straight black hair that pooled around her as she went to sit on the edge of the mattress. There was always that one lock of hair that stuck straight out in front of her face and curled; against her pale skin and dark blue eyes behind thin-wire glasses, it was aesthetically pleasing. He remembered a straight black tie that had been at her neck; that was gone too, though the white dress shirt still remained. It hugged her form and tucked into a pair of straight pressed black slacks. Below her mid-thigh, he couldn't see any more, but what caught his attention was centered in the middle of her torso; a silver swastika charm. That unnerved him slightly, along with her strange mixed scent of vampire and werwolf. What was she, really?
He was pulled away from his silent observations as he felt the slightly uncomfortable sensation of splints and bandages covering his form when he settled into the mattress. It seemed Rip Van really did have some medical skills. He searched his thoughts to find something – anything – to say, fuzzy though his mind was, and finally came up with something. Even through a puffed-up face though it was almost to its normal shape, he could talk fairly well, enough that he could be understood.
"I'm not in danger of infection here, am I?" His voice was low and very hoarse, muffled a little bit. It sounded a little foreign to him, like it wasn't coming from his mouth at all. The pain in his face confirmed that it was his, though.
She gave a small laugh and (whether it was in his current mental state or if he just felt that way) he found it … musical in itself. "Nein. I used to be a qualified medic, you know. Vas considered very gute at it, too." she told him. "Back in Vorld Var Two. Germans vere not as stingy vith zeir vomen fighting like Americans vere. If you vere able, you vere velcome to fight."
Reno's brow furrowed comically in that it hurt to crease it too much for too long. This was more at how she had ended up in Millennium than the era she had come out of (he himself was probably not in his youthful years any longer by most standards, though he looked it) and he voiced his opinion as such. "How…how'd you end up here, then? You could have left the war, become a successful doctor, and had a good husband, kids…"
She grew silent for a long while. "Ze battalion I vas vorking vith vas bombed." she finally said. "I vas in ze middle of it. I vas dying from being hit by shrapnel; I remember lying in un infirmary, vaiting und vanting death to come for me even zough at ze time I vas afraid, vhen ze Fuhrer came zrough my vard. He stopped in front of mein bed und chose me. Zat vas ze last zing I saw before passing out again. Turns out he had chosen me to join ze ranks for his 'secret' project. Und so, I am here." She paused a moment longer before turning to him. "I … don't like talking about my past much. Vhat about zese?"
Again, a couple of her bare fingertips ran along one of his scars, genuinely curious about them. They were, after all, not the normal surface scars but deep gouges that made the scar tissue sort of cave in a bit along their length and yet made the healed skin soft and smooth to the touch, if a bit darker in color than minor scars. She was trying to change the subject, but the tone she asked let him know that if he did not want to talk about his memories either, he could disregard it. He understood the want to not speak about the past and actually respected that kind of thing. Everyone had something they weren't proud of. Personally, most of Reno's life he wasn't really proud of, but he decided to humor her a little. After all, she had shared something with him even if she hadn't wanted to, small though it might be. Might as well return the favor…
"My family life wasn't the greatest while I was growing up." he began, pausing a second to recollect the memory. "Lived with a foster family, actually. My foster mother was a good woman and did everything she could to help me cope with my difficult life and tried to see to it that I grew up proper. My foster father, on the other hand… He was a drunk and an abusive son of a bitch, to boot. Would normally beat on my mother. Hated his guts and he hated mine, but we had a mutual kind of relationship where he didn't touch me and I ignored him to the best of my abilities."
He paused. The next bit, he had to admit, was still emotional to him and for good reason; someone didn't walk away from it without feeling some form of emotion, positive or negative. "One night, he came home, deep in the drink as usual. Started beating up Mom again for whatever reason, I don't know. I couldn't stand it anymore and came out of my room, a mere boy of seven. I don't know or remember what went through my mind at that time. It's still all muddled when I think about it. All I do remember is stabbing him in the back right next to the base of the spine with a fork and yelling at him to leave Mom alone. He turned around, pulled out an old dull Swiss Army knife he always carried in his pocket, and began cutting into my skin around my eyes, all the while saying, 'Have some of your own medicine, boy!'. This entire time, my mother's beating on him as best she can, telling him to stop, that I'm only a child…" He stopped.
The room was leaden under a heavy silence at that. Reno could see it flicker across Rip Van's face as she looked around with an almost nervous twitch; she could easily see the entire scene play across her imagination and was thus trying to find something to change the subject. Preferably now. It appeared she found it, her eyes lighting up, grateful for a chance to talk about something else.
She stood up and walked across the room into the shadows again, shuffling before coming back, holding something small and dark blue in one hand. Reno recognized it as his cell phone and it only confirmed his suspicions when it lit up in Rip's hand and beeped quietly. He had a missed call. She sat down on the edge of the bed again, picking up his nearest hand and curled the fingers around it. Sure, it hurt to even have someone else move him, but he was grateful. Unexpectedly, her touch was warm. Now he was really curious about what she had been made into.
"I vent to retrieve your clothes und zings und found a pair of soldiers from ze earlier experiments trying to eat it ven it rang." she said with a small laugh. "I figured zat since you vere coherent enough right now, you could haf it back."
The pain was dulled in his arm the longer he held it up, flicking the little cover up. He damn near jumped straight up. "Forty-six missed calls?" he exclaimed so loudly, it actually hurt afterward. He winced a little at it and hit the 'OK' button to leaf through the missed calls list. "Integra … Integra … Integra … Integra … Tsuri … " His expression and tone of voice changed mildly at the change in names before looking bored again. "… Integra … Integra … Integra … "
Figuring it was mostly her with the occasional interruption of Tsuri trying, he flipped the phone closed again, feeling a little better that the Oh Holy Director was worried enough about him to call and check in. He laid it and the arm holding it on his chest before he realized his mistake of saying Integra's name in front of a Millennium groupie. "Fuck…"
Rip seemed to see what he was thinking through that one word. "Ze Major doesn't know who you vork for. But don't vorry. I von't tell him." A small smile crossed her face at that. "I … kind of figured it out ven I found ze patch on your pants. It still baffles me zat no vone noticed it."
He found that last line a bit confusing as well; the damn shield took up an entire pocket on his pants. They must all be blind … save Rip here. He relinquished the grip on the cell phone on his chest and moved that hand gingerly to rest on her hand nearest him. "Thank you, Miss Rip Van. I have a funny feeling that's going to do me some good in the long run."
He felt her start a little and saw her cheeks flush brightly, even in the dim light, as his hand came in contact with hers. "Y…you don't haf to be so polite. You could just call me 'Rip'…"
A small laugh left him at that. "Well, truthfully, I wasn't being polite. I was being flirtatious." He still had a little spark, even in his current condition. "But at least I'm honorable enough to admit it."
She was about to answer back (snidely by the way her left eyebrow darted upward) when a knock at the door drew her away. She stood up suddenly, went for the door, turned around again to tuck Reno back in and whispered, "Play asleep. Do not, under any circumstance, open your eyes until I tell you ozervise."
He did just that and closed his eyes, listening to a bit of fabric shuffling and the light clack of her shoes on the floor. It was going to be hard for him to keep awake and 'asleep' at the same time; fatigue was starting to set in and that dreamy fuzz was beginning to filter back into his thoughts. The door clicked open and he saw the brighter change in the light of the room through his eyelids. He concentrated hard on that in the hopes it would keep him awake.
"Ja?"
"Ze Major vants ze volf to be dressed und ready for ein public appearance in half un hour in order to determine his loyalties. Ze Major himself vill be returning from his flight shortly." The new voice was deep and rough, but the scent that flew in through the wolf's nostrils told him that it was just another one of the FREAKs that frequented the old air base.
"I zought I made it clear he vas not to be moved until he vas fully recovered, vhich he is not." Rip sounded stern, protective, and Reno was drifting from consciousness again. He tensed one arm, letting the pain jet through his system and wake him back up again.
Ow…
There was the sound of nervous shuffling. "Ze Major radioed in und said you vould be like zis. He said it vill be brief, zen you can take him back und let him finish recovering."
A low growl ensued from Rip and Reno remembered that sound as the one she emitted coming from the tree that night not too long ago. It was animalistic, which brought him back once more to the confusing subject of her scent; could they have managed to mix the blood of a vampire and a werwolf successfully to create Rip Van? Or maybe she thought she was one, but really the other. That could be true and it would fit her name; a sleeping werwolf behind the guise of a vampire. He would have to ask her about it later, definitely…
"Fine. But no more damage vill be done to him."
"He vanted you to handle ze dog, Lieutenant." The soldier sounded amused by the thought, a light laugh hinting at every syllable that passed his lips.
Rip, on the other hand, did not find this amusing. Her voice was still stern, protective, and had that hint of authority on it that Reno normally hated to hear. This time, however, he didn't seem to mind it. "He vill be out in a half un hour."
A pause. "Danke, Lieutenant."
Then the door shut, loudly. This was accompanied by a low grumbling in German which faded away as soon as she came into range again of Reno. "Alright. Ze coast is clear…" She didn't sound happy, and as Reno opened his eyes again to spot her barely outlined figure hunched over something at waist height just outside the range of the light into the black side of the room, he could feel it. Something was horrendously wrong…
She turned back around, his pants hung over one arm and a glass of water in the same hand and something in the palm of the other. "Tongue…"
He pushed to brace himself again on his elbows before he did as he was told and stuck his tongue out, watching as she picked up a wafer-like white-ish pill from her palm with the pointer and middle fingers and set it on his tongue. It was about the size of a quarter, but he could feel it dissolving almost instantly. It tasted incredibly bitter and sour at the same time, mixed with a chalky residue sensation. She handed him the glass of water next and he carefully took it and drank from it before setting it aside, grateful that he was getting rid of the disgusting taste of the pill. Almost immediately, his entire body began to tingle then go numb.
"The hell was that?"
"It is a very potent painkiller." A devious smile crossed her face, his pants handed to him. "It vill make you feel nozhing, plus it also makes you a little … strange in ze head. It vill keep you relatively safe from answering questions since one of its side-effects is actually making you babble on about ze most idiotic zings. Now put zese on before it kicks in entirely. It should already haf started to make you feel numb…"
Reno nodded. Indeed, it felt like he was flying and not even the sensation of the blankets across his lower half could be felt. He grabbed the pants from her and the rough denim was even no longer there. It was such a weird sensation that he dropped the clothing in surprise and went after them again. He snatched them up, knowing that he was holding them, even if he couldn't feel them on his hands.
Already, he could feel his hold on things slipping, mentally. However, the wolf was grateful he could move around without the soreness. That was an undeniable blessing. It didn't even hurt to stand, though he had issues staying straight up and in one place when he did. He ended up stumbling across the room to rest his chin lightly on her shoulder, muttering into her ear, "I can't get the button. Could you please help?"
She started at him being there and (he suspected) what he had asked her, but she turned around to get the button for him. Right before his mind completely fell to the effects of the drug in his system, he just about asked whether they wanted him to freshen up or not then remembered where he was and that it didn't matter; he still smelled a lot better than the FREAKs that inhabited the place even without having showered for almost two weeks. Then he fell into a blubbering mess due to the drug reaching its full effect and went babbling on about a bunch of white bubbles that apparently had taken residence near the ceiling.
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Rip was a little nervous about giving the drug to him in the first place; as soon as it would begin to wear off, it had another side effect that included violent outbursts and, with someone who had access to something like what Reno had, that could turn into a mess. But … by this point in time, she was unable to see him in any pain and knew that even the slightest of movement caused his stiff and sore joints and muscles to shriek. This was the only thing she had that could stop the pain and also keep his identity safe, since he obviously seemed loathe to reveal it to anyone outside those observant enough to find the obvious clues on his body.
She had gone to retrieve his clothes and effects when he had fallen into her care and had been moved to her room in order for her to help him recover. She snatched the clothing from the officers in charge of holding them and, when she was heading back, came across two of the vampires from the earlier experiments fighting over something small and blue that was singing something that sounded like it belonged in an old video game. Those earlier soldiers suffered from a sort of degenerative mentality (that Doc had finally fixed a several generations back); while they still had something akin to rational thought, they thought like they were at least three and with that age came the idea of exploration. Particularly the idea of putting things they didn't understand in their mouth. This included the cell phone they were both trying to eat.
Rip had grabbed that too; partially because she pitied the poor creatures and partially because if they did bite down on it, the battery acid was going to cause hell. As she walked down the hall, she checked the phone, which had stopped ringing. Across the top of the screen on the inside was written 'Reno's phone. Touch and I'll piss on your shoe' in bold legible font. After knowing a little about the werwolf's attitude, she determined it sounded just like him.
She had returned to her room, put the collar back around his neck carefully (it seemed to have some big significance and she thought he would be grateful for it being back in its place), and waited patiently for the following week, sleeping in the chair she had taken temporary residence in until her bed was free again. Every time Reno began moving around in a sleeping fit, she had gotten nervous and started singing to calm her nerves. It was surprising to discover it calmed him as well; as soon as her voice came within range of his hearing, he settled down and stopped moving around, falling into a peaceful rest after she shifted him onto his back once more. She couldn't help touching the scars that ran along the outside of his eyes. They were smooth and pink around the outer edges, but practically caved into a deep red center. Not the typical scars.
The jacket she had used to cover him before had been washed and was returned to her, pristine as the day she had received it. Good. She had quickly replaced his boxers for him; she might have been a medic and so knew about male anatomy and normally didn't squirm when around it. So what was her nervousness around the wolf's? That was her question…
Once he was made decent once more, she had gone through his clothes, trying to find clues about him since she couldn't very well ask him at the time. That was when she found it sewn onto the front right corner of his jeans with petite professional black stitches. A patch in the shape of a shield, black and red, the name across the very top in black bold block font speaking quite plainly his alliance and loyalty; Hellsing. How in the hell no one else had found it was beyond baffling. Did she work with a bunch of blind idiots? Considering the question on everyone's mind was the loyalty of the captured spy, she had determined that yes. Yes, she did. She had convinced herself that no one but herself would know his alliance until that very end.
The full moon came around and she had gone out to fetch something to eat for herself … and come back to find a massive red dog where Reno had once been. It was definitely bigger than what the reports had said. The report for the mission to capture Reno before had stated it was a red wolf about half the size of a man. They were wrong, of course; it was only half the size of a man when lying down. It had to be at least as tall as the average man when standing up.
At the time, she was leery of it; she had only seen the Captain transform once and, for one, he looked nothing like the animal here. Captain looked more anthropomorphic, a stereotypical werwolf whereas Reno (she knew who it was not just by the coppery red fur, but the white-blue eyes and the strange markings where the scars normally were on his human form) was quite obviously a feral wolf. Big, but feral nonetheless. On top of that, Captain had gotten particularly vicious and had to be locked up during the one night of the full moon. Reno stayed as the wolf for three full nights and he was docile during the full moon. Never once did he snap or snarl, just whimpered and continually licked his fore-legs and wagged his tail happily when she came to pet him.
When she walked over to scratch behind the wolf's ears, Rip had seen a chance to get some sustenance to the human form. The wolf was licking at non-existent wounds on its body. That meant that, though the cuts and bruises probably didn't show up physically on it, it could still feel them. If she fed the wolf, Reno would, in turn, be fed as well. During those three days the animal was present, she made sure it ate and drank what it could. It went away as all werwolves do, but Reno looked much better when he came back and she suspected it was because he had finally gotten food and water into his system.
A few days after the full moon, he woke up and was actually somewhat coherent and responsive to his surroundings. She saw him look around while she stood and walked toward him. He was scared of her at first and flinched away, but she had used the same tactic with him as she had used throughout the past week or so, singing to calm him down and lightly petting the scar under his right eye. It worked; he relaxed and allowed her to move him onto his back. After that was done, she just … couldn't seem to pull herself away from him and sat on the edge of the bed next to him. He had been watching her all this time and it was like his eyes held her rooted to her spot, those haunting white-blue eyes.
The conversation that had followed shed light not only on her own past but a part of his as well. She had thought her memories were terrible; at least her family was as normal as a German family in early World-War era was. Her father had been an officer in the Nazi Third Reich and had wanted only the best for his family. Her mother had opened their doors to the orphans of war-torn Germany and, while uptight and always very authoritive in her household, had told her only daughter that she could be anything she wanted to be. Seeing the children who came in all beaten up and bruised from places that sustained bombings and the fighting in general, Rip had decided to become a doctor to see that the children later would at least have a chance.
She had only told Reno about the products of the many years of hard work and studying that had preceded her later job as a field medic. It was something that never left the system and that had been the main reason the Major had chosen her to take care of the red-headed werwolf; after all, she had treated the Major himself when he had been human still on the fields of war. He knew her skill first hand.
She did not like talking about her past, of course not. But when she asked Reno about his scars and had settled in for the point behind them, she got a horror story. She never could imagine a life as a child and watching helplessly as the mother was beaten up by a drunken father. Or staying absolutely still while the father cut into the skin, knowing that struggling or pulling away would only make the marks deeper or longer than intended, listening to a mother who retaliated as best she could but knew the same would happen if she tried to pull the knife away. So she had begun looking for a way off the subject, blessing the silence when he stopped.
A little light blinked from the table and she found a different subject to dwell on; the ringing phone. It was obviously his since it had his name on it. He seemed grateful that she had brought the phone to him, though the amount of missed calls over the past week and a half surprised him to the point where he hurt himself. She knew his alliance already, so it didn't shock her to hear him using the director's name out loud. It did worry him until she had assured him that no one was going to know his loyalties to Hellsing by her mouth.
He put his hand on hers then. It startled her so much that he had made physical contact with her so willingly when she had kicked his ass just as willingly before, she almost didn't feel the slight jolt that happened at the touch. He felt … electrified, and the sensation caused her to automatically turn her head away from him to try and hide her flushing face.
"Thank you, Miss Rip Van. I have a funny feeling that's going to do me some good in the long run." He had said it quietly and slightly muffled; it was to be expected with a banged-up face.
That made her jump a bit and not because she hadn't been expecting him to speak at all. Hell, he had been speaking clearly and coherently enough since he had woke up. It was mostly because not many people paid her a compliment. About the same amount of people actually thanked her for anything and meant it. She searched her mind only to answer back with, "Y…you don't haf to be so polite. You could just call me 'Rip'…"
She felt it was a stupid thing to say, really, but it wasn't like anything else she thought up was any better. What else did someone say to that? His light laugh brought her attention back to him.
"Well, truthfully, I wasn't being polite. I was being flirtatious." She was going to retort with something playfully rude when he added, "But at least I'm honorable enough to admit it."
An eyebrow shot up on her face at that and her mind was quickly forming something along the lines of 'You had honor to begin with?' but the thought passed almost immediately with a sharp loud knocking on her door. She was loathe to have to leave the contact Reno gave her, but it had to be done.
Rip had gotten halfway to the door when it occurred to her who might be on the other side of that door … and what her charge had to do with everything happening on the base for the time being. She turned back around, also noting her current appearance in her mind; she had removed her suit jacket for comfort (it was a bit snug around the chest area and she could only stand to be in it for so long) and her tie was hung off the back of the chair she had been sitting on. Quickly she walked back over to Reno, tucked him in, and told him to pretend to be asleep. If he looked like he was out for a good long while, they would probably let him be until he was awake and coherent again.
He did as told and closed his eyes. She nodded her approval and fetched the suit jacket, putting it back on and buttoning it up. The tie was a minor detail; it could be left behind. She shot a glance back to the werwolf and turned to the door, opening it. On the other side of it was one of the lower-ranking officers. He struck a stance and saluted, as she held a higher rank than he did, then reported that the Major had wanted the wolf for a 'public' appearance later. She had forgotten that the Major wanted to address the conference between the Church of England and the Vatican later that day. Which meant that he would use the captive to find out where his loyalties lied without the wolf having to say a word.
Rip found herself getting extremely defensive of the wolf, denying the exploiting of him in any way, shape, or form. She wanted Reno to stay in bed until he recovered fully. Unfortunately, she was beat down in her attempts and that made her angry. With the ending of the talk with the other officer, she did not even wait for him to salute his parting, slamming the door in his face and cursing after him through the door in German. When she was certain he was gone from the door, she made her way back to the bed to let Reno know everything was fine.
At the sound of the news, she noticed that the arm nearest the wall relaxed as he opened his eyes; he had been accessing the soreness in tensed muscles to keep himself awake and yet 'asleep'. Seeing him alert again and well (as well as a guy who was recovering from being smacked around as brutally as he had), she headed for where she had placed the old first-aid bag she kept, digging around in the crumbling black leather of the thing before pulling out the bottle of pills she needed.
They had been experimental painkillers; extremely potent in one dose, but also dangerous in that the side effects were unpredictable. There were only two she knew of. The first was a very 'loopy' effect on the mind that made the patient see things that weren't there and talk about said non-existent things until they started to come off the high. That was when the second one kicked in. It was reputed that anyone who took the pill would experience a euphoric high for up to an hour to an hour and a half from when it fully took effect in the system. Then, they would turn violent as hell and try to hurt or kill those around them … or themselves, though the latter was only if there was no one else around.
The doctors in charge of producing it had tried to filter out that last effect, but only succeeded in making the intensity of the anger even worse, eventually being able to have the Jews they tested it on in the concentration camps kill themselves in less than a minute. Leave it to the sick minds who thought up injecting boiling peanut butter into the veins of the innocent people they captured… Despite their apparent amusement at watching the 'scourge of the earth' murder themselves one by one, they stopped making it and fiddling with it and gave it up as a lost cause.
Rip herself had never used the drug on anyone for fear of that second issue, but thankfully, she had some of the first batch, so the second effect was not as strong as the later 'generations' of the drug. But it was the only thing she had on hand that would both take away the pain Reno was experiencing right now and keep him from thinking straight enough to answer anything asked him correctly.
She took out one of the pills, filled a short glass halfway with water from a sink on the opposite wall as her bed, draped his pants over her arm on the way passed the little table they sat on, and headed for the wolf. Upon arriving, she had ordered his tongue to stick out, which he did easily enough to allow her to put the pill on it. With that done, she handed him the glass of water to wash down whatever vomit-worthy taste the thing gave him. He drank down most of the water and while he did so, she had to try to ignore the want to run her eyes across his boyish face and the long unbound red hair that made up his ponytail. It didn't work; she ended up looking at him anyway.
As soon as he had set the water aside and asked her what she had given him, she knew already that the drug was working. She was grateful for the distraction, explaining what it was to him then handing him his pants and demanding that he put them on. She could take care of the rest of his clothing if need be. But pants were like something private that she wouldn't touch unless she absolutely had to.
Which was something she ended up doing. His fingers had gone completely numb and he couldn't get a grip on the button above the zipper and had come to find her help by tripping over himself to put his head on her shoulder, a strange little smirk crossing his lips.
The fact that he had managed this was what scared her, his request for help buttoning his pants simply adding to the shock. It took a moment to register what he was saying before she turned around and focused on keeping her head down to avoid letting him see the blush that tinted her cheeks. He was decently built with fairly defined abs and a chiseled aerodynamic frame, pale skin, and that shock of red hair here and there that framed it, either behind him or where it fell over his shoulders to the front.
She got the button done, turning about to retrieve the shirt while she tried to ignore the pictures that flew across her mind. It was about this point in time Reno lost it, the drug taking full effect. Rip turned about with the shirt in hand to find him looking up at the ceiling with a furrowed brow, weaving dangerously back and forth, yet miraculously still keeping his feet. She looked a bit bewildered at this and looked up to see what he was seeing that had him so … intently staring at the ceiling. All she saw was the metal sheet that made her roof and ceiling, turning back to look at him.
"Vat are you looking at?"
He looked down at her, his eyes having gone completely blank like he was under some kind of spell, the pupils having contracted so far they almost completely swallowed the blue. Even his voice sounded trance-like when he replied, "The bubbles are watching me…"
She was unaware of her expression changing from bewildered to slightly disturbed. "Ze … bubbles?"
Reno had returned to watching the bubbles that weren't there. "Yes … the bubbles. There's one right there…" He pointed directly above his head. "…And there…" He pointed a little to his front. "…And there…" Here, he pointed to the next one, floating practically on top of Rip in his own eyes.
She wasn't going to stop him as he pointed out every single bubble he possibly could. He went on to tell her every detail about them. Apparently, they were all the same size (about baseball-sized) and made of something like Mother-of-Pearl; he said they were all silver-white and shimmered with a myriad of iridescent colors. Then he got all excited and said one of them turned bright orange.
"Zat's … lovely, Reno…" she sighed, helping him into the shirt. He fought for a second against it as he wanted to keep an eye on the bubbles so 'they didn't try anything', but he dealt with his situation and continued watching the bubbles as soon as the shirt (which was actually a tank top in dark grey) was put into its place. She sat him down in the chair she had been sitting in before, noting the shirt actually covered most of his patch and so solved the mystery of everyone being blind, and began to help him with his socks and boots. Once the footwear was placed appropriately and tied, she went about brushing his hair.
That was harder for her to do; she continually had to stop and walk away to gather less perverted thoughts that flew through her head concerning the way the contrast between his pale skin and white-blue eyes acted with the shocking red of his hair looked. The expression on his face didn't help her in the matter at all. He was looking straight up, which naturally caused his bottom lip to part just barely from the top, his eyes glazed over as he watched his bubbles float about above his head.
Finally, she managed to peel her mind from the wolf and the thoughts that she seemed to be procuring around the soft silken red hair that cascaded from his head… There she went again! Damn him!
Rip thought of something else to occupy her mind, snatching the small leather thong that normally held Reno's ponytail. She thought about being a little girl, laying on her back on the hill behind the house her parents owned and watching the clouds pass by, or picking dandelions to give to her mother just because, playing with the family dog, and the snowball fights she had with her father when he would come home. Before she knew it, she had the ponytail tied up and back. It made him look sleeker than usual and realized that was what made his look so lithe normally; his hair made all the difference between tied up or let loose.
Of course, he looked a lot better with it down…
She scoffed at her own thought and clipped a stout dog chain she had taken from the Doberman trainers a couple of days ago, figuring she would need it eventually, and she was right. Reno was talking about (and to) a multi-colored squirrel that had jumped on the table and was apparently talking back to him when Rip helped him to stand up.
"Ze squirrel vill still be here vhen you get back." she assured him when he told her rather stoutly he was having a perfectly logical conversation with the squirrel on the matters of life, the universe, and everything. He also made a point that it had said something about the number '42'; that was all she caught, the rest of the sentence pertaining to it was a completely jumbled mess. "Right now, ve haf un appointment ve need to keep."
He looked crest-fallen, leaned dangerously to one side before righting himself again, and followed her out of her living quarters as soon as she snatched her musket from its resting place across the table where it was always in reach. The bright florescent light in the hall outside the room made him squint and shy a bit until he had gotten used to it. When she began again, he zigzagged lazily down the hall behind her, occasionally tipping violently to one side. He smacked into a corner at one point after having tried to follow something that was quite obviously not Rip and she turned around with a small start to face him when she heard him hit. He was lying on the white floor, bleeding out his nose (and not feeling it at all, she was sure), blinking dazedly toward the ceiling.
"…The bubbles are back…" he announced when she came into his field of vision.
She lifted an eyebrow. "Really? Vell, tell ze bubbles to go avay und zat you vill be seeing zem later."
Thankfully, she always carried a handkerchief in one of her jacket pockets and used it to wipe his nose clean for him before helping him up. He was going to be a handful until the drug wore off. As they began down the hall again, he called forlornly over his shoulder, "Bye-bye, bubbles…"
She shook her head. It was going to be a long couple of hours…
She was grateful when they reached the room in which everything was supposed to take place in. Besides the two of them, there was no one in the room. She had stopped near the wall to her left upon entering to wait for the rest of her comrades, watching Reno wander around at the extent of the chain attached to his collar, no doubt chasing his bubbles. She really had used the thing more as a guide for him, lest he would get lost trying to follow her through the halls otherwise. That and it kept him in range of her watchful eye…
She spaced off for a second, thinking on how things would go and hoping this would be over with soon so she could properly restrain the red-head for when he started to come off the high … when he bumped into her back. The sudden contact caused her to stumble forward and she made a high-pitched squeak noise when his arms wrapped around her, effectively binding her musket to her and her arms to her sides. He seemed fairly steady to stand against her when she had managed to hold her ground again, a strange intelligible shimmer flickering across his eyes when she looked over her shoulder at his face. She didn't like that feeling that she had no leverage; she was the one holding his tether, yet he held her in such a fashion that not even the strongest amount of force was able to pry his arms off her, even using the musket. That and he was shorter than she was; only by one or two inches, but still shorter.
The moment held for what felt like eternity, Reno inhaling and burying his face in her hair. "Hmmmm … Your hair smells nice…" he muttered to her, his voice suavely and very coherently (a little too coherently, actually) passing his smirking lips.
Rip had no idea how to answer to that. She only managed to procure a series of unintelligible stutters while wondering if the drug actually worked on him or if he was just playing like it did. She still hadn't managed to speak at all in response, when he let her go and leaned on her left shoulder using his arm, watching something that only he could see flutter around like a butterfly on speed; up, down, left, right, there was a corkscrew here and there... She dropped the subject when he did this, watching him out of the corner of her eye as he batted at the thing all the while trying to keep himself stabilized by leaning on her.
"Your pet is a little fucked in ze head, First Lieutenant."
Rip looked up to find the first arrival of her normal group show up; Zorin stood in the doorway with her sickle over her shoulder, watching with a raised brow as Reno half-stumbled half-swiped at his invisible plaything, whatever it was. He stopped suddenly, looking down at the floor, loosing his balance and falling after whatever he was looking at. It was a strangely graceful fall, but a fall nonetheless, and he began trapping whatever it was under his hand, lifting the hand up, looking disappointed and doing it all over again.
"Don't mind him. He's high on painkillers." Rip answered, waving a hand dismissively at Zorin as the other came to join her. "He just came out of his recovery coma today, so he'll be a little out of it."
"I see…" was the answer. "Und ze leash?"
"Keep him from hurting himself und ozers. I can't haf him going crazy und attacking people vhile he is in my care, can I? He might hurt someone und no doubt, zere vould be retaliation und he vould get himself hurt." There was a short pause before the dark-haired continued. "Also to keep him from getting lost in zis drugged state. He … has a bad habit of chasing zings zat aren't zere as of late."
Zorin just nodded, took a threateningly nonchalant stance with her sickle across her shoulders, and watched the red-haired wolf start watching the non-existent bubbles above his head again. She didn't say anything more on the actions or condition of the werwolf, occasionally moving her gaze to Rip, who had begun to think again.
She thought it odd that Reno had switched back to watching the bubbles float around right before Zorin had walked in. There had been something in the way he held on to her right before that – coupled with the glint in his eyes – that said there was something else going on just behind the veil of childish ignorance that the drug seemed to instill in him…
"He has a nice ass…"
Zorin's calmly amused comment had snapped her out of her thoughts in time to realize that sure enough, she was looking directly at the werwolf's bottom end wiggling around as he crouched down like a dog playing, smacking at his invisible thing still. That was an interesting call back to reality, needless to say. But she still managed to get something out that sounded calm and collected, even if her inner self was squeeing (it was the only word that fit the sound she mentally heard) uncontrollably at the sight of it.
"Ja… ja it is…" Alright, so it came out sounding a little surprised.
Zorin had a cigarette in her mouth and was pleasantly smoking away, chuckling. "Ze vay you react, it makes vone zink you never zought to look in ze first place…"
Rip grimaced a little. "Actually, nein. I vas more interested in getting him healed enough to see him valking."
Another small laugh erupted from the light-haired tattooed woman, but she didn't reply. Rip glanced around to see her surroundings now and she noticed that the rest of her compatriots had joined them. It seemed only Zorin had really taken an interest in their strange visitor though, as the rest kept their distance from any other person in the room, save a pair sharing company here and there. The last one to come had shut and locked the double doors on one side of the room, leaving the pair on the opposite wall unlocked since they lead out to the nearby hangar.
They were all together in the room for less than ten minutes when the hangar doors burst open to reveal one of the lower officers. He looked frazzled and a little scared, which was odd for a vampire. "Quickly! Ze Major is back und he is in trouble!"
Another thing that people around here didn't normally hear... "Ze doors are locked over zere, ja?" Rip called over to someone located near the doors she had come through not too long ago.
She received a sharp nod in return before the one asked had taken off with the surge of the rest of the Werewolves. That meant Reno would have nowhere to run if he was acting the drug's effects; the doors there were locked with one of those huge deadbolts that would take six tons of explosives to blow apart without the key, and the doors to the hangar … well, the room beyond was full of vampire troops ready to kill him on sight if they saw him without his normal escort. She sent him a fast 'be good', dropped the lead, and took off with the other Werewolves through the doors into the hangar.
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A/N – One of our longest chapters at 27 full pages on Word. Wow! In other news, things are going to get interesting, of that we can guarantee. Also, the comment earlier about the Nazis using peanut butter as a torture device … true story. We know; it's frightening what people have come up with in this last century. We are also aware that 'be good' and 'Reno' don't belong in the same sentence, and see if you can pick out the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
-- Black 13 --
