PART 3
"Hallelujah" blasted from the vice principal's laptop as she showed no signs of getting sick of any variety of the song after Friday's glorious news. The middle-aged woman hummed along with what sounded like a head-banging, hard metal Hallelujah.
It was the tenth knock on her door that finally got her attention. Quickly muting her laptop, Vice Principal Blarney invited the visitor in.
When Bob made eye contact with the woman, her face quickly assumed a pallor similar to his. But in addition to this, she looked sick. So, without a hint of recognition or smugness, Bob asked if she needed something to drink. Perhaps water. Or a cup of coffee.
"I-" She hesitated, suddenly protective of the new shiny mug on her desk. So she coughed, unnecessarily, and bypassed the topic entirely. Or would have, if Bob's sudden bee-line for the wall and her stubbornly stained carpet hadn't made her stammer.
The freshly plastered wall reflected in the red eyes of the great janitor, and then he looked down at the carpet. He crouched to inspect the stain more closely, and eventually shot it with a spray bottle. The vice principal stared, numb, devoid of confidence now that Alucard's long lost male doppelgänger had begun to clean her floor, just like any regular old janitor would.
Bob watched the foam on the carpet, and shot more cleaner where he thought it was necessary. All in order to eradicate the stain's seemingly immortal existence. Then he waited a bit.
Well… at least this time it's my own mess, Bob thought passively. And he was pleased with the idea that no school children would be undoing his work as soon as he turned his back. It felt like all of his effort dropped into oblivion whenever he cleaned something the brats had access too.
Alucard had needed a break, and Bob served this purpose wonderfully. He could recuperate, reclaim his sanity, and prepare to dive back into the hellish war of clashing teenage dramas.
"What is your name?"
Making her wait for a response, Bob kept his back to the vice principal and began to scrub at the coffee stain that the previous janitor had failed to eliminate. Almost like he was attempting to pull Excalibur out of the stone, after a long lineage of predecessors had failed before him, he concentrated genuinely on his work. But suddenly he chose to answer, "My name's Bob."
It was a name that sounded flat and fake. "Are you sure?" the woman asked.
Snorting, simply out of reflex, given how strange the question would have been in most contexts, Bob stood up. His red eyes looked down at her incredulously (really, more annoyed than anything else), and Bob pointed to his obvious name tag. "I wrote it down in case I forgot. But sure enough, if I'm not mistaken… My name's Bob."
Hmph. The vice principal crossed her legs, her chair rotated back so she could watch as "Bob" resumed working on her carpet stain. "Bob. What is your full name?"
"Is this how you seduce all of your janitors?"
The woman choked on the man's temerity, and then paled, as it all felt so… familiar. Swallowing, the vice principal checked nervously on her coffee mug. It was still there. "I'm just asking for your full name, Bob. I've never seen you here before."
"That's because I'm a new addition to the school's staff."
She frowned sharply. "So give me your name."
"You're a very forward woman-"
"Do you want to make trouble, Bob? Is that your true aim here today? Or are you here to provide a service?" Her harshness led to a flat-lined silence in the office. And soon, as if reminded of his 'service,' the sound of Bob's rag rubbing against the carpet continued. He had thus far failed to surpass his predecessors. And this was beginning to irk him, somewhat.
"Why are you so curious?" Bob's eyes sparked momentarily, but from where she was sitting, the vice principal could not see this.
"You look very familiar." She stated simply, purposely displaying a calm and composed tone. "I'm curious to know whether you're a relative of one of my-"
"Oh, yes." He interrupted her, smirking at this point, and his voice came as a silky purr that floated back to her. A purr that looped around her throat, and tightened. "I'm Bob Hellsing. Alucard's father. I haven't heard much about you, but I know my daughter was frustrated by the blatant favoritism you showed Mr. Anderson."
Stupefied, and partially petrified and fused to her chair, Mrs. Blarney's eyes grew much larger than usual, even though they were already amplified by her purple glasses. "Oh." She paused, and then gulped and immediately acted as though Bob couldn't have heard her. "You didn't come to the meeting… And –Miss- Sir Hellsing said she wasn't married."
Nothing made sense. Nothing made. Sense. She was terrified, sweating, chilled, and her knuckles bleached under the pressure of her grip on her chair.
"Yes, she tends to say that." Bob replied casually, toiling away by the wall. "But the truth is irrefutable. You've seen my youngest daughter. The resemblance is… uncanny."
Before the woman could say anything else in her quavering voice, Bob continued, as though he were a father waiting for an opportunity to boast about his dear, dear family. "Yes, and the oldest one, she wants to be an officer. Our little Police Girl looks just like her mother, doesn't she? Mrs. Vice Principal? They certainly share the blue eyes, they share the blonde hair (although their eyes and hair are of different shades, I'll admit) and both are quite beautiful. Don't you agree?"
How could she not?
Bob hummed merrily over his work, and the woman looked on, deflated and anxious to be rid of him. His 'merry' tune was truly dark, eerie, and foreboding. And it appeared to be all his own; she couldn't recognize the melody from anything she knew. Which made it all the more disturbing.
But how in God's name had this- What was this? The husband of that wealthy woman-
ah.
Ah, yes. Her thoughts diverted. Because the most important question here was:
HOW OLD WAS THIS HELLSING LADY?
She had an 18 year old daughter? And still had a face and body that belonged to a 20 year old girl? A 20 year old Victoria's Secret runway model? Just WHO was her surgeon? God? Or did she make a pact with the devil? The vice principal would have loved to get an appointment with him sometime… whoever he (or possibly she) turned out to be.
And these distracting thoughts coaxed Mrs. Blarney away from her tremulous anxiety. These thoughts allowed her to endure another 2 minutes of Bob's scrubbing.
But then she began to consider, had Bob been lying? It wasn't impossible, since quite a number of people in the office had found out about her, ahem, aversion towards Alucard. And Alucard's peculiar appearance was widely spoken of… As well as Seras Hellsing's… and Sir Hellsing's… Really, two blonde bombshells and then the odd pale, red-eyed one… Hm. Now the vice principal felt like she was just being mean. The girl was quite pretty (though a bit corpse-like). But the blondes, they just blew her out of the water. It was simply a fact. Nothing subjective about it.
Well, whatever nonsense was going on, she'd just have to give Sir Hellsing a call. Alucard, after all, would be returning on Saturday when her suspension ended. The thought made the vice principal shudder.
And Alucard's father asked whether she were cold. And offered to fix her a nice hot mug of coffee.
Of course Elizabeth Blarney said no. But she said it politely, while she kept her new mug held securely in her lap beneath her desk, gave up on her "Hallelujah," subtly taped down her laptop, and then went back to work.