Author's Notes: I must admit I'm a little over this fic. I worked so hard on it for so long that now I'm ready to move onto other ones.
Disclaimer: I'll add a tie-in lemon shot on reader demand, but after this, I wash my hands of this fic. It's a baby bird that's finally taken wing.
The following night, the Grave Robber stood before a group of scalpel sluts warming their hands before a trash fire again. He held a copy of the evening paper. On the front page was a picture of the Mignonette, looking over her shoulder at the camera. She was smiling confidently. The headlines read "Last Night's Opera!" On a slightly smaller caption on the bottom: "Under New Management."
"Goth Opera…" he said, "Blood saga. Sometimes I wonder how we ever got here…"
As he flipped it open to see the content of the stories.
"Old grudges… Scorned lovers…"
The tag to the main article read: "Last Night's Blood Feud: A Century Old?"
The Grave Robber smirked contemptuously, and tossed the paper into the fire. "Sometimes I wonder why we all don't move on! Cause we all end up in a tiny pine box. A mighty small drop in a mighty dark plot. And the mighty fine print hastens the trip to our epilogue."
"Epilogue!" someone cried in the distance.
He smirked, "But the little girl agreed and the king reneged. And the castle is left for the taking. But MillenniCo may survive if it undergoes surgery. Surgery…"
"Surgery…" a scalpel slut moaned.
"Surgery…" he agreed, and they faded into the night.
In case you've wondered what became of MillenniCo…
"Our heroes will not be forgotten," Rip Van Winkle declared the following night.
After Seras accepted leadership MillenniCo, the lieutenants immediately pledged loyalty to her. Seras distrusted their showy displays of devotion, and Integra and Walter advised her to get rid of them before they had a chance to double-cross her. Seras hated them to the depths of her souls thanks to her memories of Integra's torture and Walter's enslavement, but could not bring herself to do it. The public didn't know what they did, and technically had not done anything to her yet. She would be no better than their previous tyrant if she killed without due cause. She would give them one chance to make things right.
It didn't take long for the lieutenants to show their true colors. While they preached devotion on the morning of the opera, when Seras stood before a crowd of cameras, microphones and photographers, the following night they decided to use the very same press to ensure their new positions in the opera. They held a press conference discussing MillenniCo's new change in management, and claimed it was on Seras' behalf. They assumed she wouldn't do anything because they figured she was a slave to PR, just as they had been.
Rip Van Winkle strutted forward out of the opera, well-dressed and well-spoken. Her face was impeccable.
"Seras Victoria may haf taken the helm, but the works of MillenniCo will live on, under new management," she smirked, "Me."
The crowd clapped lightly. Their new Fuhrer, Seras Victoria, did not declare this change in management herself, and so they secretly questioned the validity of this statement, or Seras' true authority as head of MillenniCo, or both. Were the lieutenants subtly trying to usurp her, or was she a puppet ruler? At the same time, the audience was too well-conditioned by the previous regime to question their leaders, and so they merely clapped politely.
"WOO! FUCK YEAH! Rip Van Winkle, everyone! Rip Van Winkle!" Jan cried, clapping encouragingly at the audience. When they didn't pick up, he said, "… I can't hear you…" they still didn't pick up, "I CAN'T FUCKING HEAR YOU, YOU FUCKING PISSANTS! IF YOU DON'T START APPLAUDING—"
The television cameras censored the next part.
As the two talked, Luke caressed Rip's face fondly. She swatted his hand away.
Rip Van Winkle soon auctioned her face to charity, as a symbol of change.
At the auction hall, Jan murdered the top three winners.
Luke won the auction. He wore Rip Van Winkle's face with pride.
Then, Seras Victoria slaughtered them all for insubordination and attempted usurpation.
No sooner did Luke don the face that Jan had shot up three people to obtain did Seras burst into the auction hall, her eyes glowing with rage.
"I gave you one chance…" she finally said to them, seething with rage and glaring with all the hatred of Hell, "One… bloody chance to make things right and help this nation recover. Instead you turn on me; turn on them!" She gestured to the murdered auctioneers, all sprawled out on the floor directly in front of the stage.
"I don't know what you're on about, Fraulein," Rip laughed gaily, "We're just trying to continue MillenniCo's noble work…"
Seras lashed out a long, thin strand of her shadowy tendril and snapped Rip like a whip.
"MillenniCo's 'noble work' is exactly what needs to change!" Seras said firmly, "We cannot keep selling people products just to take it back."
"Oh, so, what? You're saying people shouldn't have new organs?" Jan cried, addressing the audience.
"No," Seras said firmly, "that's not what I'm saying…"
"So you're saying people shouldn't undergo surgery even if they need it?!"
"That's not what I'm saying at all!" Seras shouted, angrily.
"So you're saying we shouldn't retrieve organs if other people desperately need it?"
"If by 'retrieve' you mean murder the people with them in cold blood…"
Outside the auction house, scalpel sluts from all over the crumbling city paused in their daily routines to look at the screens.
"Well, clearly you don't believe in the ideals of Millennium!"
"It seems you want people with organ failure to die!"
"You took the helm of MillenniCo but don't believe in its ideals?"
"You're a mother-fucking traitor to MillenniCo, bitch!" Jan shouted, bulling out two machine guns. "Don't believe in Millennium's policy? Don't fucking grab the cockpit, bitch!"
Rip Van Winkle pulled out her flint-lock musket. "Indeed! If you will not serve Millennium loyally, then all you have to do, you bloody traitor, die. Dirty limey!"
And they fired. The audience screamed and gasped as the auditorium exploded with rapid gunfire from Jan, and the wide dome ceiling with the zig-zagging bullet of Rip Van Winkle. However, none of the bullets hit their marks, or anyone else. Before they could reach Seras, they all seemed to explode into clouds of fine silver powder; like fireworks.
When the smoke cleared, they found Seras Victoria standing there, smirking and unscathed. She was partially surrounded by an inner layer of writhing shadow-blood tendrils… and an outer layer of glimmering wires. The lieutenants and the audience alike gasped to find Walter C. Dornez standing beside Seras, poised for battle and his wires flexed protectively around her.
The lieutenants panicked for a moment, then figured that Walter wasn't that tough anyway, and tried to shoot at them. Between Seras' prowess as a Draculina and Walter's prowess as an expert Vampire Hunter, with her bloody tendrils and his razor wires, the two were easily able to make short work of them. However, they paused before making the killing blow, and stepped respectfully aside for their lady.
The crowd gasped and cheered when they saw their beloved Lady Hellsing.
With the lieutenants maimed and bleeding on the ground, Integra looked them dead in the eyes as she pulled the trigger.
"That's quite enough of that, thank you very much," Integra said as she addressed the terrified auction hall.
The audience was gasping and murmuring in shock and horror. Lady Hellsing was alive?! She killed their lieutenants? Did they put on a show for this auction?This girl truly was the head of MillenniCo? Their lietenants really were dead without their previous Fuhrer's consent? Was this a hostile takeover? Was this just part of the show? What would it mean for them?
To the crowded auction hall's shocked silence, Seras stomped on the metal floor plates so hard that the edge under her feet drove down, while the edge on the other side tore up, bringing the bodies of the murdered auction winners high in the air, for everyone to see. They were covered with blood and bullet wounds, from where Jan had shot them down. Seras waited for the scene to sink in. She then nodded to the Captain, who stood a ways off, and the two of them then stomped at the huge metal floor boards again. He then tore them out of the ground. Underneath the clean metal was a mass grave, filled with so many rotting bodies piled so closely together you couldn't see how tall the pile was.
The audience gasped and shot out of their seats with horror, once they realized what was under their feet.
Sir Integra waited for them to calm down before she nodded to Seras.
"MillenniCo will not be doing this anymore!" Seras said, surveying the audience calmly.
"That is correct," Integra said, "There will be no more victims of the Angel of Death," turning to Walter on her left.
He continued to brandish his wires, so that he and his ladies were all standing inside a protective whirlpool.
"We will no longer sell you organs for the express purpose of murdering you to get them back," she said, and tore Rip Van Winkle's face in half. She let the tattered pieces fall to the ground.
Much to her dismay, most people watched the fallen face with shock and grief, with a clear expression of: "But I wanted that!"
"And we will no longer hide the corruption and decay under pretty shrouds," she said, turning to Lady Hellsing to her right.
The three stood before the audience: tall, proud, confident, and dangerous.
"Organ decay continues to be a problem," Integra said, "and we shall focus our efforts on finding a cure for organ failure, not just replacements once the organs have already gone. We shall still provide organs for those who need them, and elective surgeries who desire and can afford it. However, we shall be much more scrutinizing of whom we provide our services. If we feel that you do not have the financial means to obtain an organ, or are not in need of a surgery, we shall be well within our rights to deny you; rather than allowing you to default or sending out the Angel of Death. We wish to expand our company beyond the surgical room; expand the city, expand the economy, expand your lives outside the operating room. We are hoping to build a world where you will have surgeries to live, not live for surgeries."
Much to their dismay, most of the people in the auction house just stared in stunned silence. None of them seemed particularly thrilled with the news. 'Why should they?' Walter would later say to Seras, "They can afford as many organs as they want. What do they care about self-control or the Angel of Death, when they have no need to fear him?"
Dejected, but still outwardly proud, Seras and her familiars walked out of the auction hall as she had in the opera the night before. People stared after her more with terror, less with reverence. Seras was to learn in the months to come that filling a power vacuum in the aftermath of a totalitarian government would be difficult indeed.
However, when she pushed open the giant oak doors, however, she was greeted with the entire streets of the city filled with people cheering loudly. Seras' eyes widened in surprise. Hundreds of poor people in rags and fishnets and tattered lingerie all gathered from all over the crumbling city to cheer their new leader. What touched Seras was that not one of them had been directed to do so. Well—Seras spotted the grave robber among them, smirking and lifting his zydrate vial to her like it was a martini glass. Seras stared at him. 'You did this?'
He gave a slight nod, still smiling mysteriously.
Seras smiled, her eyes filled with joy and gratitude.
The people cried out their happy hopes to the new leader.
"Down With Repossessions!" someone scrawled on a large piece of cardboard, in blood.
"Clip the Angel's Wings!" someone scrawled on another.
However, she was a little sobered when they all clamored after Integra.
"WE LOVE YOU, LADY HELLSING!"
"I KNEW IT WAS JUST PART OF THE SHOW!"
"LADY HELLSING FOR MILLENNIUM!"
Seras smiled wryly. Of course, put Lady Hellsing on any campaigned and people would follow.
Several overly enthusiastic ones tried to rush the stage, but Walter brandished his wires at them. To this, Seras placed a hand on his shoulder and leaned her head against his arm, smiling fondly. Walter looked deeply affected by the simple touch, and lowered his wires.
For the second time, the light of day began to dawn.
Seras spotted the Captain in the distance, and nodded to him.
"MAKE US PROUD, FUHRER!" someone screamed in the crowd.
Seras nodded, summoned her familiars and kicked off.
The story ended as it should have began, with the young lady flying toward the dead city, like an arrow from a fully drawn bow, without regard even for the light of day, to chase the morning.