A/N: Oh man, this was one of my favorite parts to write, though it was challenging. You'll see that there are actual lines from the manga within, but they won't be word for word because I'm living in Japan and only have the Japanese version which I am translating. Enjoy!


Maria had been reading when the power suddenly went out and the room went dark. She closed her book and stood up, her familiar looking about warily from its perch on her shoulder.

Alucard glided into the sitting room, his shadows dancing about wildly in their excitement. The fires of hell were dancing behind his crimson eyes as he said, "Now, it's time for war."

The brunette tossed her book to the side and fetched both her guns and her greatsword. She wasn't sure if it was her eagerness or his that was making her fingertips tremble. This was it. The beginning of the war that Alucard so craved. The beginning of uncertainty and fear.

"You'll come to revel in the massacre," the No Life King assured her, his grin feral.

"I don't mind killing if I have to, but I'd rather it not be anyone innocent."

"No one is innocent in this world."

She fixed him with a hard stare. "That's not what I mean, and you know it."

He ignored her, which was just as well because Seras' voice entered her head. She told Maria about the news and the squat team. When Seras didn't reply and their connection was severed, she assumed that she and Pip had encountered some of the opposition as well. No one was better at what they did than the two of them though, so she was unconcerned.

"Hide in that wardrobe," Alucard ordered.

"Planning to hog them all?" she teased.

He gave her a cold, almost challenging stare. "I can kill humans without an ounce of remorse. Can you?"

Maria bit down on her lip and wordlessly crawled into the tall wardrobe along the wall. She sat down with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her familiar sat daintily on her knees, looking through the wardrobe doors.

She could hear the men approaching. Six of them in heavy armor, by the sounds. Her third eye allowed her to see through the oaken door of the wardrobe and into the dark sitting room, which appeared empty except for the furniture and Alucard's coffin by the far window. The vampire himself wasn't visible but she could sense his dark, heavy presence in the air. He was lying in wait for the men, barely able to contain his glee. Maria couldn't recall the last time he'd killed something other than a ghoul or vampire, and she was fairly certain that he was elated to have an excuse to kill humans.

Maria pitied these fated men. They had no idea what they were getting themselves into and their superiors likely didn't either. Alucard would slaughter them without batting an eye. Their lives would end as effortlessly as a candle extinguished by a breeze, and with as much fanfare.

The six men burst into the room, guns at the ready. They spread through the room in search of of the two of them, but of course found neither. Maria watched with bated breath as they approached Alucard's coffin, nudging at the cloth covering it with the barrels of their guns. There was nothing in this world more precious to him than that, his last domain. They had been doomed the moment they entered this room, but they had sealed their fates when they dared touch what was his.

"Get away from my coffin," he commanded. Backlit by the moonlight, he loomed over them as a menacing, black shadow that positively reeked of malice.

The men wavered, their hearts pounding in their chests as they wondered where he had come from. When they didn't back away from the coffin Alucard issued the same command in a voice that promised retribution, but with a yell the men all opened fire at once on him. Maria could only watch as the bullets shredded him, reducing him to indistinguishable lumps of flesh.

They talked amongst themselves in Portuguese for a bit and then dispersed to search for her. Maria took her gun into her hand in preparation, but it was unnecessary.

"Dogs."

The men all swirled around in shock to Alucard's corpse. His blood was flowing back into him, bits of flesh and cloth reattaching and smoothing as he rose to his feet.

"A valiant attempt. But no dog can defeat me. It's always man that destroys a monster."

He tossed his head back, sending his wild mane of black hair out of his face, the moonlight behind him casting him in shadows but for his luminescent, hungry crimson eyes. The men were riveted to the ground in terror, and they were right to be. Maria herself couldn't stop the tremors in her hands.

He moved faster than the human eye could see, his jaws open wide and lined with nothing but sharp, vicious teeth. He seized a soldier by the neck and in a moment had beheaded him, throwing his corpse up into the air as blood rained down. A slash of his gloved hand and he had cut another soldier in half, and with another had ripped another two into shreds. They were paper dolls to him, and he grinned crazily as he stalked after the last remaining survivor, who was whimpering as he backed away towards the entrance. He desperately tried the door and let out a scream of panic when he realized that it was locked.

"It won't open," Alucard said, mirth dripping from his deep voice as he dropped a drained corpse to the ground. He grinned as the soldier slunk down side of the door, quivering like a rabbit before a wolf.

"Y-you're a monster!" the man cried.

"Yes," he smiled as ruby-red blood dripped down the corner of his mouth and he descended upon the man. "And what does that make you? A dog? A man? A monster?"

He watched in fascination as the man took a semi-auto into his hand, but then his expression turned to one of righteous disgust when the soldier pressed the barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger. So enraged was he that he threw a kick at the man, putting his foot clear through his skull as if it had been no more substantial than an eggshell.

"Alright. You can come out," he said, his animosity still bleeding into his voice.

But Maria was too petrified to move. All she could do was clutch her familiar to her in horror as she tried her hardest to keep the tears at bay. She had seen him tear into ghouls and vampires in a similar fashion. She had seen him take pleasure in the destruction and death. She herself had done the same. But she had never seen him treat humans like that. Like they were just as insignificant as trash. Once she reached his level of power, would she come to see humans as insects as well? Would she view them as callously as he? These people had families that would never see them again; he had exterminated them like roaches, and for what? His own fleeting amusement?

Alucard opened the wardrobe and she stared up at him with unbridled fear in her emerald eyes. He still looked wild, his hair long and clothes drenched in blood and entrails.

"You're frightened," he stated coolly, his expression blank.

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak without blubbering.

His shadows swarmed over him briefly and in their wake his body was ridden of all the bloody detritus. He reached for her with a gloved hand, but she involuntarily flinched away from him, her familiar hissing in her arms. A scowl crossed his face and he grabbed her roughly by the neck of her sweater to yank her out of the closet and to her feet. Her familiar yowled and scratched at his gloved hand but he ignored it.

"This is what war is," he bit out. "They came to destroy us, to murder us. They came to be destroyed and murdered by us. War is a gamble, and one side always draws a losing card. We had the stronger hand, and that's all there is to it. No one can change that-not God, not the Devil, not me, and not you."

"I get that, but...they were just humans," she whispered, trying to keep her voice even. "You didn't have to… You didn't have to do it like that."

He shoved her away from him, looking disgusted. Whether he was disgusted with her or with himself was unclear as he said quietly, "That's why you will become my queen."

Maria didn't understand what that had to do with anything of this. She could only stare up at him in confusion as he turned his back to her and readied his guns.

Shaking herself, she holstered her gun and picked up her familiar, which was staring hatefully at the vampire. She did her best not to look at the carnage as she waited for him and mulled it all over.

"Alucard," she said slowly, and he turned to look at her. It took courage to look him in the eyes after what she had just witnessed him commit. "You asked me earlier if I could kill humans without remorse. If I know that their death by my hands will be more merciful than by yours, I can and will do it."

He gave her a smile that was soft and genuine. "I know," he said, and then held out his hand. "Call Integra."

Perplexed, Maria took her phone out of her pocket and dialed the direct line to Sir Integra's desk before passing the smartphone to him. He abhorred any technology invented after 1900, so refused to carry one. Of course, what with his powers he had little need for one anyways. Maria listened as he worked Integra up into a righteous tempest and then hung up, laughing.

"Oh but she makes my blood boil," he grinned, tossing the phone back to Maria.

Maria just rolled her eyes as she pocketed the smartphone. She wondered why he had bothered to have Integra repeat her orders. Did he like testing her? Did he like implicating her?

"Tell the Police Girl and the Frenchman to steal a helicopter," he said suddenly.

"W-what? How are they going to do that?"

"They'll figure something out."

It was times like these that Maria remembered that this was a king she was speaking to. A man who was used to making demands and expecting the results regardless of what was possible and impossible.

How are you two doing? she asked them both.

Ma moitie, tres bien! We've stolen one of the military's jeeps and we're enroute to take out the dispatch station. ETA fifteen minutes. How are you and the vampire?

Oh, y'know. Blood-soaked and ready for more.

I can't tell whether you've just done the nasty or killed some poor bastards.

Maria laughed out loud while Seras chastised him. The latter, unfortunately. Listen, Alucard wants you to steal a helicopter. We're gonna have to get the coffins out of here somehow.

A helicopter? Seras exclaimed. How does he expect us to do that? He's insane!

Bernadotte was unfazed by the vampire's outlandish demand. Tell him not to worry. We'll get our hands on one.

Thanks. We're off to check out, I think. See you at the front doors.

Okay. It took a second for her words to fully register with the Frenchman and he exclaimed,Wait, what?! There's a sea of press and soldiers out front. Are you guys serious?

Integra's orders, Maria shrugged. See ya.

Seras was ever the voice of reason. Be careful, Maria. Your regeneration still isn't good enough to withstand bullets.

Yes'm, she said sweetly and then looked up to Alucard.

He had been listening in to their conversation and therefore needed no recap. "There are two elevators, one to the north and south. Squads of fifteen to twenty men are waiting on each floor. What would you do?"

He was asking her? She thought it over for a moment before saying, "If it were me, I'd spare half of the men and use only one elevator. But Sir Integra made it clear that we're to destroy any obstacle. So how about I take the south and you take the north, we rendezvous at the front desk?"

Alucard's eyes roved her face as though searching for something. Reluctance, perhaps? All she had to show him was resignation. Maria didn't like the idea of slaughtering these men in an unfair fight, but their orders were simple. Search and destroy. The soldiers had drawn a poor hand, and Hellsing had a flush.

The No Life King put a gloved hand to her cheek and kissed her passionately. When he nipped her tongue and sucked at the blood she let out a small sound of protest.

"Like you're not going to drown yourself on the way down," she said exasperatedly.

"Yours tastes better," he explained.

"You flatterer." Smiling, she backed away from him as she straightened his cravat, which had become a bit crooked at some point. "I'm only taking the south if I have your word that you're going to kill them in a reasonably humane way. No playing with your food."

He fixed her with an amused, challenging look. "And if I refused?"

She frowned. "Then you'll wait here while I take them all out. And I'll refuse to give you any of my blood for a month."

"You can't refuse me," he objected, encircling a strong hand around her wrist. "I'll take what I want. And you certainly can't confine me to this room."

Maria's face turned stony and there was an obstinate, dangerous fire burning in the depths of her emerald eyes. "You said you wanted me to rule beside you, not beneath you. Or is that only when it suits your fancy, my King?"

He gave a delighted chuckle. "If you were anyone else I'd rip the tongue out of your pretty little head. But very well." He inclined his head and put his hand to his heart in a sign of humility. "You have my word. I won't 'play with my food,' as you so eloquently put it."

"Mulțumesc," she thanked him and stood on her tiptoes to give him her own rough, hungry kiss. When she bit his lip and drew blood he hissed in pleasure as he entangled his fingers in her long curls.

"You're greedy yourself tonight," he teased when he pulled away. "I've given you more than your fair share of my blood since we've left on this mission."

"I'm just a growing girl," she said with an innocent giggle.

Deciding that they had wasted time long enough, Alucard swirled around to face the doors. Maria took his cue and summoned her shadows to cover her body from head to foot. Spread thin enough that they were invisible yet strong enough to stop bullets, it would serve as her armor. Her familiar leapt upon her shoulder and sat there primly, ready to assist its master. Though Maria wasn't looking forward to the long slog down fifteen floors and to the lobby, she was a bit eager to see exactly what her familiar could do. So far it had done nothing other than eat her lunch meat and offend Alucard.

The vampire opened the doors that led into the hallway and strode into the middle of the twenty men as though he were merely on a midnight stroll. His shadows seeped across the floor and walls, sucking the hope out of the air and leaving only the echo of despair. The mortals all trembled as Alucard stood before them with an amused smirk on his lips. One of the soldiers seemed to snap out of the nightmare and with a scream opened fire, but Alucard had already trained the Casull and Jackal on them and was squeezing the trigger. It was over in a matter of seconds, each man fallen with a fatal wound.

"Satisfied?" Alucard asked her.

"Keep it that way til the lobby, and yes," Maria answered. "See you soon."

He let out an eager "Hn," and the two of them headed toward the opposite ends of the long hallways. The group of men who had been waiting at each elevator were running towards them firing, but Maria was unalarmed. The bullets hit her shadows before falling to the ground as she reached behind her to unsheathe the greatsword at her back.

She didn't have a chance to use it, though, as her familiar bounded ahead toward the seventeen soldiers. Just before she reached the men she let out a yowl not unlike a cougar's scream and she transformed into a great cat the size of a pony. She no longer had the corporeal body of an animal; rather, she had become an undulating mass of black shadows and red eyes that assumed the rough shape of a cat, with lithe limbs and a long, slender tail.

The soldiers shrieked in terror and some forgot Maria in favor of firing at the the monster while others fled toward the elevator. It was all meaningless, however, because her familiar was much too fast and ferocious for their efforts to matter. With a powerful swipe of her paw she had cut four in half at the waist. Another she bit the head off of, and she had pounced on and shredded the runners in a matter of moments.

"Whoa," Maria whispered as her familiar turned back to her, blood dripping from its great, fanged maw. It changed back into an unassuming black kitten and Maria picked it up to place it back on her shoulder. "You're a force to reckon with. Thank you."

The cat purred its thanks and rubbed its face against her neck, smearing blood on her in the process as Maria got on the elevator. She nudged the arm of a dead soldier out of the way so the door would close and tried not to look at the scene of destruction. She had told Alucard to be humane, yet her familiar had massacred them. If he had seen that, she wouldn't hear the end of it.

"We've got to be a bit nicer next time," she told it. "Dismember all the freaks you want, but humans are different. Alright?"

The cat fixed her with a disappointed look, but she could feel through their bond that it was compliant.

The elevator gave an upbeat ding! to announce their arrival on the fourteenth floor and Maria could see with her third eye that there were another fifteen men waiting in a semi-circle with their guns trained on the door. Maria had her sword out and phased through the stainless steel doors before they could open. With a broad swing of the blade she lopped off seven of their heads before they even realized she had appeared. Following the momentum of her first swing, she twirled in a circle and finished off the other eight. They collapsed with dull thuds and Maria looked down at the headless corpses as their blood flowed in a river toward her. She took a step back to avoid it. One of the heads had come to a stop only a few inches from her, its eyes wide and mouth frozen in a grimace.

Killing ghouls and vampires never failed to fill her with satisfaction. But this-this gave her nothing but grief. She had a feeling that it would be a long time until the memories of this night faded.

You're falling behind, Alucard said shortly. I'm on the eleventh floor already. Hurry up.

Flinching as his deep voice kicked her out of her heavy thoughts, she stepped back into the elevator and headed down to the next floor.

"Just thirteen more," she whispered to herself, her knuckles bone white as she gripped the haft.

She cleared each floor just as quickly as the previous ones. By the time Maria finally reached the lobby she was soaked to the soul in the blood of the poor men. Alucard was waiting for her outside the elevator looking smug and none the worse for wear. If he noticed the pained crease of her brow, he said nothing of it.

"Come," he beckoned, and with a wave of his hand all evidence of her atrocities vanished. Her familiar still perched on her left shoulder, she followed him toward the main entrance. The tall double doors were shut, but through the massive windows on either side Maria could see the flashing of hundreds of camera lights and hear the chatter of a massive crowd.

Alucard looked from the bodies of the soldiers a few paces away to the flagpoles outside, an almost nostalgic smile growing on his lips. With lightning speed he picked up the bodies one by one as though they weighed no more than a feather and hurled them out the windows. Maria watched in horror as each one hit their mark, impaled on their own flagpoles.

"You promised," she hissed, absolutely repulsed.

"I promised to kill them in a humane way. There was no discussion of what I'd do after I've killed them. We need to show these fools exactly who they've declared war on."

He glided towards the great double doors and Maria walked alongside him, though she was still in disbelief that he would do such a despicable thing to the dead. The two massive doors swung open and they strode out. His shadow grew to encompass the roof of the hotel and then turned into an ocean of bats that screeched and took off into the night. The people in the crowd screamed and ducked for cover as Alucard grinned and beckoned to the masses, daring the enemy to make the next move.

"Come forward," he said. "I've had my fill of hors d'oeuvres. Or is everyone here going to die?"

Surely those were empty words. There were at least a hundred people in this crowd. Sir Integra would never stand for such a heinous thing.

A man in white emerged from the crowd, completely at ease despite the fact that he was walking towards a monster. He was tall, dressed in a fine suit and hat, with the dark complexion of a Brazilian but the oddest golden eyes Maria had ever seen. By the eyes and the confident air that seemed to come naturally with immortality, she knew that he was a vampire. Her fingers twitched on the trigger of her gun that she held at her side.

"What a splendid sight to behold," he said with an easy smile. "I could expect nothing less from the great Alucard."

Alucard's crimson eyes widened slightly as he took in this newcomer.

Find the Frenchman and Police Girl, he ordered her.

Okay, she agreed, though she wasn't sure that she wanted to leave him on his own. The fate of the onlookers was dubious at best.

She phased into the ground and reappeared outside the tent serving as central command several hundred yards to the east of the hotel. The entire fifteen-yard radius around the large tent was cordoned off with barriers and soldiers toting machine guns. She could see with her third eye that her two comrades were inside the tent shooting the men in control. Soldiers milled about warily, and the moment she appeared in the center of them they swore and began firing. Her shadows sheltered her from their bullets and she took out the great sword reluctantly. She had been hoping it wouldn't come to this. In a dance that she had mastered by necessity, she tore through the enclosure like a whirlwind until the only other survivors were her friends.

The two of them emerged from the tent and cast away their black ski masks, both looking shocked to see Maria before them covered in blood and surrounded by the dismembered bodies of fifty-some men.

"Jesus Christ but you guys are hard core," Pip muttered and grabbed both women by the arms to pull them away from the tent. It was just in time, too, because it exploded not a moment later. The heat of the inferno was a blessing to Maria, who felt colder than ever before.

The Frenchman lit a cigarette and unwrapped his braid from around his neck. He took a long drag as he looked up to the night sky.

"Maria, are you alright?" Seras demanded, staring into her friend's dull emerald eyes.

"Sure," the brunette said distantly, cleaning the blade off on her pants leg before sheathing it. "Sure."

Seras frowned and wiped away the blood on Maria's face with her palm. "What happened?"

Maria ignored her. She didn't know how to express the roaring static in her ears and the pressure in her chest. "Do we have anything figured out for the helicopter?"

The mercenary was giving her a probing look with his lone olive eye and she turned her gaze on the burning tent instead. "That's next on the agenda," he said as he tossed his spent cigarette to the ground. "We'll hijack one of the press copters."

Pip led the two women out of the enclosure and toward the cluster of press vans in the distance. There was one lonely chopper not far from there, and that was his target.

Seras was beside Maria, loud and insistent. "Are you hurt? What's happened?"

"Later," she pleaded. "We need to focus on getting the coffins loaded into the helicopter. They're the priority."

"Maria-"

"I said later," Maria snapped, and she was startled to feel that her fangs had sprouted in her rage as her usually angelic face contorted into a beastly snarl.

Shocked by her friend's ghastly outburst, Seras fell silent and looked away. Bernadotte wisely feigned ignorance.

Alucard's voice entered her mind abruptly with a simple order. Return to me, now.

"He's summoning me. Gotta go," she said curtly and then she vanished into her shadows. breathing a sigh of relief to have an excuse to get away from Seras and her prying. The No Life King was on the roof of the hotel and she appeared there to see him on his knees in a pool of his own blood, breathing heavily.

He gave her a grin. "He's got magic cards," he explained, sounding delighted despite the fact that he was bleeding out. "I can't stop the bleeding. This is just so terribly, terribly interesting."

Maria rushed to kneel down beside him and bared her neck to him. No sooner had she done that than he was biting down into her jugular, drinking much, much more of her blood than usual. When he pulled away she was woozy from the blood loss, but managed to stand with him. If this enemy could seriously wound Alucard, he was far out of Maria's league. She saw a large system of air conditioners and their ventilation shafts protruding from the roof in the distance and she dashed to take cover behind them until it was safe.

She just managed to crouch down there when the vampire in white appeared, and while she wanted to watch their battle, Alucard had drained her of too much blood. Black spots were blotting out her vision and her eyes grew heavy. Maria's last thought before slipping into the abyss was the prayer that Alucard would remember where she was and would make sure no harm would come to her during their fight.

Maria stirred when she felt a set of familiar arms pick her up. She opened her heavy eyes to see Alucard looking down at her, smiling.

"You missed the big finale," he teased.

"Sorry," she said. "Did you find out what you needed?"

Excitement gleamed in his crimson gaze. "Oh, yes."

A helicopter soared through the air toward them and landed several yards away. Bernadotte held his pistol to a terrified driver's temple, grinning and waving to Alucard and Maria. Seras emerged and greeted the two of them as well.

"Get the coffins," he ordered her.

She dashed off and Alucard looked to the full moon with an unreadable expression as he said quietly to himself, "Kill them all, your enemies, your allies, your countrymen, yourself, and it's still never enough. We're incorrigible warmongers, aren't we, Major?"

"What are you talking about?" she asked, but he seemed lost in his mind and didn't reply.

He stepped into the helicopter and sat down with Maria on his lap Bernadotte turned around to face them with a smile. "How was your evening, Alucard?"

"Fulfilling," he answered. "And yours?"

"Not bad. It's been awhile since I've hijacked a Hummer and stolen an aircraft in one night."

Seras returned before long, hefting both of the coffins wrapped in their protective drop cloths. She slid them onto the floor of the helicopter at Alucard's feet and then clambered in to sit beside him. Bernadotte had the pilot take them away and Maria rested her head tiredly against the vampire's chest.

You fought well tonight, he praised her. Did you enjoy it? The rush of power, the thrill of victory?

"Victory" implies that it was a hard-won battle, she said bitterly. What we did was simply slaughter. 287 men died tonight by my hands. How...how can I… She trailed off. How could she ever wash their blood from her heart? How could she ever atone?

Alucard sounded irritated. A paltry sum of paltry existences. Don't linger on it.

That was a command she couldn't obey even if she tried. She found herself asking, Did you ever care about human life? Did you ever hold it sacred?

Never, he said viciously. We'll speak no more of this.

He severed their connection and Maria curled in upon herself on his lap, drawing her knees up under chin and wrapping her arms around herself. The only thing she wanted right now was oblivion. A place so dark that she could no longer see their grimaces and entrails in her mind's eye, and so resoundingly quiet that the silence would drown out their echoing screams and the sound of metal tearing through flesh.

Normally Alucard's presence brought her comfort. Now, as he practically seethed with displeasure with her, she wished to be far away from him and everybody else.

It was a long flight with no conversation, as the blades of the chopper were too loud to allow regular speech. They traveled westward for about an hour and landed in a field where Pip shot the driver after thanking him. There was a small town a few miles away from the grassy plain and it was decided that the mercenary and Maria would go into the town to steal a vehicle suitable to transport them and the coffins while Alucard and Seras stayed at the helicopter.

Maria was happy to get away from Alucard, whose anger with her was still simmering, and Seras, whose brow was perpetually furrowed whenever she looked at Maria. She grabbed ahold of the captain's arm and her shadows swallowed them up to spit them out on the outskirts of the village. It was nearly three in the morning, so there were no people around to witness them appearing out of nowhere.

"Allons-y, ici," he said, striding ahead and into the town.

The brunette followed him, her hand on the grip of her gun in its holster.

"You've not been your usual cheerful self tonight," he said in a casual way.

She shrugged. "It hasn't been a usual night."

He chuckled as he lit a cigarette. "You've got that right. At the risk of sticking my nose where it doesn't belong, I'm gonna say a few things. You can tune me out if you want."

Maria looked up at him as they continued walking, honestly not sure whether she wanted to listen to what he had to say. She didn't want pretty words; you could put flowers over a corpse but it still wouldn't hide the smell of rot. She also didn't want pity. It was the men she had murdered that deserved pity. No, what she needed was commiseration. She couldn't get that from Alucard, who lacked sympathy. Nor could she find it in Seras, who hadn't done anything near the scale of what Maria had done that night.

From this angle, she could only see his profile. He stared straight ahead, his expression somewhat cloudy as he said, "I've seen that look in your eyes. Like the light in your soul has gone out and you don't know how to get it going again. I've seen it on my men and I've seen it on myself. Was what you did tonight wrong? Perhaps. Did you have an option? No. Both sides were simply following orders. At least you did it in a way that was quick and mostly painless."

Maria frowned down at her shoes. It was true that she had had no other option than to kill them and she had therefore tried to be as efficient as possible. But how many children had she made fatherless with her deeds? How many wives would never see their husbands again?

"I killed 287 men tonight," she told him quietly, "but I didn't just rob them of their lives. I robbed their children of their fathers, their wives of their husbands. How many lives did I destroy tonight?"

"One time, we were sent to Angola," the captain said. "We were hired by the government, who were trying to crush a diamond cartel who were waging civil war. When we engaged the enemy for the first time, we learned that they were using child soldiers. Kids who should have been at home in their mothers' arms were shooting machine guns at us. We were left with no choice but to mow them down. Not a day goes by where I don't think about them and what they could have been, or how their mothers must have wept to know that their babies would never come home to them."

Maria froze in her steps as she gaped at Bernadotte, who had stopped with her and was looking into the distance with a pained expression. His next words were full of bitter resignation.

"That's the thing about this line of work. The world exposes its filthy underbelly to you and it's your job to scrape off the shit so no one else realizes it's there. I've seen the most despicable acts you could imagine, and I've committed a handful of them myself. It's thankless and harrowing and you spend your life watching your friends and comrades die in your arms before it's your turn to die in theirs."

"H-how…" So stricken with grief was she that she could barely speak. "How do you keep doing it, then?"

"Most of the men cut themselves off from the reality of what it is they're doing and focus only on the pay. Others try to find the good in what we do. Others drink."

"And what should I do?"

He turned to her with a soft, genuine smile. It was like the day breaking over the hills, spilling its light and warmth over everything it touched. "Well, ma moitie, I can't tell you what's best for you. You've got to decide that on your own. But I think that so long as you've got the vampire, Seras, and me, you'll make it through."

Maria pulled Bernadotte to her in a fierce hug that he returned. She held him to her as the weight of the guilt and sorrow crashed over her. He patted her on the back as he embraced her, and when she had reined in her tears she pulled away with a tremulous smile.

"You're a good guy," she whispered.

"Don't ruin my reputation," he grinned and ruffled her curly hair affectionately. "Now let's get a car, already. I doubt the vampire will want to be kept waiting. The sun's going to be rising before long."

Maria nodded and the two of them continued walking down the empty streets in search of an appropriate vehicle in a comfortable silence. The burden of their deaths was still crushing, but Pip's words had made it bearable. What she had done was terrible, but it had been done out of necessity, and she wasn't the only person to have made those decisions and live with the consequences. He had been alright. She too would be alright.

They found an old brown van behind a dilapidated bodega and Maria elbowed through the driver side window to reach in and open the door. The mercenary hopped into the driver's seat, a hunting knife between his teeth. With practiced ease he set about hotwiring the van and in a few minutes the engine wheezed to life.

"You wanna drive?" he asked her.

"I haven't really done it before," she warned him.

He smiled. "No time like the present. Besides, it's not ours to worry about if you wreck it."

"You're a terrible influence," she giggled before switching seats with him.

Maria knew the basics of driving. Gas, brakes, forward and reverse. How hard could it be? She popped the van into drive and eased forward, jolting them once when she accidently gave it more gas than necessary. Pip laughed as he took a drag from his cigarette, and with the occasional outcry of "À gauche! À gauche!" or "Les freins!" they were on the way out of town and back toward the helicopter.

Once she was on the small highway and confident enough to do two things at once, she said with a sly smile, "So a little bird told me that you kissed our resident draculina."

"Ah, yes I did," he admitted, a satisfied twinkle in his eye. "All thanks to you and your nosiness."

"You'd have been screwed without my nosiness, and not in the good way," she reminded him.

"Yeah, yeah. Now to get to the actual screwing part."

Maria rolled her eyes at his crassness. "I doubt she's gonna want to take it that fast."

"I don't know. She was pretty eager when she woke up tonight."

"Pip." She fixed him with a stern look. "Don't undo our hard work."

"Look, if there really is a war coming it's now or never, isn't it? I've got needs."

"Your hand has got you by for this long. What's a bit longer?" she said plainly.

"Ma moitie!" He looked scandalized. "I can't believe you'd say something so dirty!"

Nonplussed, she explained, "I've been surrounded by soldiers my entire life. Why on earth wouldn't I know these things? Besides, you do know who I share a bed with, don't you?"

"You're even more terrifying than that vampire," he said as she shook his head with a bemused smile.

"What do you mean?"

"With him, one look and even the world's biggest idiot would know that he's evil. But you-you've got the face of an angel. You could be my little sister. Until you start impaling regenerators and talking about handjobs, and then I remember that you're his badass queen."

Maria grinned for a bit, but then the smile faded. She asked quietly, "Does it bother you?"

"Don't be stupid," he said dismissively. "You and Seras are heaven and hell rolled into one. That's what makes you both so alluring."

Her confidence bolstered, Maria's smile returned and she shot him a raised eyebrow as she teased, "I hope you're not hitting on me."

"What, and incur Alucard's wrath? I'm not dying until I've deflowered the Police Girl, thank you very much."

The two of them laughed as she sped down the highway.

They spent the remaining fifteen minutes of driving by singing with as much gusto as possible to the Guns 'n' Roses classic Appetite for Destruction cassette they happened to find in the glove box. Alucard hated any music that wasn't classical so she refrained from listening to it when he was around, but rock had always been her favorite genre.

When they rolled into the grassy field before the helicopter "Welcome to the Jungle" just ended and Maria came to a stop as the two of them headbanged out the final lyrics. The two vampires were leaning against the side of the helicopter watching them with mixed expressions as Maria and Pip laughed and high-fived each other, Alucard surly and Seras bewildered.

They both got out of the van and went to their companions.

What did you do while you were gone? Alucard demanded of her, sounding distrustful.

Had a bit of a heart-to-heart chat, stole a van, learned how to drive, sang some songs. You weren't watching?

I have better things to do than to watch your every inane moment, he answered, though Maria noticed that his tone had lightened considerably.

I'm sorry for my actions in the helicopter, she said to him. I let my emotions get the best of me and I was disrespectful.

Alucard was quiet for a moment before he said thoughtfully, The first time is difficult for anyone. See that it doesn't happen again.

She gave him a curious glance, but he was impassively watching Seras carry his coffin and load it carefully into the back of the van.


A/N: Well, what are your thoughts? I hope you guys don't mind that I skipped over the fight with Tubalcain. I just felt that words wouldn't do it justice and you all know how it goes anyways. Pip is such a great character. He rounds out this little group of weirdos perfectly. Review and favorite, pretty please!