The smell of fresh evergreen permeated the Hellsing manor on this cool December night. A great rustling and much cursing could be heard from the great hall as a battle of man versus nature was raging at its finest.
"No to the LEFT I said," Seras growled as she surveyed the crooked tree. It was a massive thing at least nine feet tall and full and heavy with fragrant bows of pine needles. Pip and the wild geese were at this moment struggling to set the thing up in the slightly small tree-stand.
"This is left!" shouted the aforementioned Pip back at her as he tried to help right the prickly tree. He was cold, wet and tired and had just tromped through several acres of snow with his men to find this blasted tree at four in the morning, and he would be damned if a little thing like getting it in the tree-stand was going to impede him.
"Gah! Not your left, my left!" she gasped as the tree tilted dangerously to one side.
"Quit wobbling it so much," Alucard said casually as leaned up against the wall and watched their attempts with mild amusement.
"You could help Master!" the younger vampire snapped at him, he hadn't done a single thing so far today.
"Right...there," Alucard said, ignoring her, as the tree came into perfect alignment with the high ceiling.
"Thank God," mumbled Pip as one of the geese bent down and secured the tree at the base. Stepping back he paused to admire the massive tree, before taking off his jacket and shaking off a great torrent off needles, snow, and what might have been a bit of pine cone. Getting the sap off was going to be a different story.
"Oh it's lovely!" Seras said joyfully with her eyes sparkling, Christmas was always her favorite time of year.
"Ah, I see...You got the tree," Walter half mumbled as he walked in the room from downstairs, carrying several boxes of lights and Christmas ornaments. The fastidious butlers eyes couldn't help but follow the trail of snow and muddy footprints that lead from the front door to where their Christmas tree now proudly stood; he knew exactly who was going to end cleaning this up.
"Isn't it grand?" Pip asked as he admired their handiwork, they had spent the better part of an hour tromping around in the compounds woods looking for the perfect tree. Now that it was set up, maybe they could take a break and go get some coffee.
Seras sat on the floor, looking through one of the boxes of lights as Walter carefully set down the delicate glass ornaments on the dining table.
"Colored, or white?" the blonde vampire asked, holding up two badly tangled strands of lights for everyone's inspection.
"Why not both?" Walter replied jovially as he headed back down for more decorations. The bulk of decorations would have to be purchased anew, but the Hellsing family's precious German glass ornaments and delicate glass icicles would be making a trip out of the basement this year again.
Walter carefully made his way down the slightly creaky steps and surveyed the actually quite well organized basement. Past the brown paper covered paintings, ceremonial swords and shields and crates full of all documents sat a few neat stacks of slightly dusty boxes full of precious antique ornaments.
Opening one to peer inside, he pulled one exquisitely crafted blue glass orb from its protective tissue paper, replete with spidery silver ribbons and snowflakes. Holding it up to the light the thick translucent glass gave off the appearance of seeming to glow from the inside.
As he put it back and closed the lid he fondly remembered Sir Integra many winters ago as a bright eyed youth gleefully helping put these same decorations up with her father. Picking up another stack of boxes to take up with him, he vaguely wondered if the sight of them would make Sir Integra nostalgic or saddened.
"Give me that! You are just tangling it up worse!" he heard the Police girl squeak at
Commander Pip as he reentered the room. All thoughts of Christmas' past quickly fled his mind as he studied the scene in front of him: Seras was sitting on the floor with Pip, the whole box of lights seemingly in her lap as she attempted to untangle them from one another. The commander was making half-hearted effort to help, but had appeared to have only worsened the situation. Seras was now attempting to disengage a string of lights from the end of his braid; judging by his yelps at her insistent tugs, things were not going so well. The other geese just looked on confoundedly as Alucard laughed from his spot against the wall, of course making no move to help.
-Some time and many cups of coffee later.-
"Ok! Let's plug em in!" Seras said excitedly, her Christmas spirit seemingly still not dampened. She tossed the end of one now untangled string of lights to Pip who bent down to insert the plug into the wall outlet. The string burst, well flickered really into "life". More than half the bulbs seemed to be burnt out, and the rest twinkled merrily out of sequence from each other. Testing the rest of them delivered much the same result.
"I suppose I can put new lights on the list as well then Miss Victoria?" Walter asked rather apologetically, the poor Police girl looked rather crestfallen that all their efforts had been for naught.
"I suppose so," she replied with a rather indignant sniff.
"Would you like to come shopping with me to help pick them out?" he asked her, hoping that would cheer her up.
It obviously had the desired effect, as she smiled broadly at him and seemed to immediately forget her unhappiness. "That would be great!" Seras answered gaily. It had been a long time since she had really left the manor for anything but missions, much less for Christmas shopping.
"So does anyone else want to come help us?" she asked the geese as Walter helped her up off the floor. Silence greeted her as she turned around and noticed everyone was suspiciously missing. What was it about most men and shopping?