"So, 'Police Girl' huh?" Eir inquired as she and Seras made their way back to her quarters from Integra's office. "What's that about? Is it just the getup they've got you in or was that like actually a thing?"
The blonde girl perked up a bit, sapphire eyes sliding over to the woman beside her before looking down quickly at the skirt and blouse Sir Integra had presented her with that first night, the Hellsing sigil sewn into the left breast pocket. "Oh, well before Master turned me into a vampire I actually was a police officer. Now he just calls me that, I think I may be a bit of a disappointment to him."
"Your father was a policeman I take it?"
"Well…yes, actually. How did you know?" an incredulous look stretching over the vampire's face.
A smile slid into the corner of Eir's mouth, "Daughter's generally take after their fathers, especially when they're good men." Her eyes unfocused as she walked, her mouth straightening into a thin line for a moment before she shook her head slightly and refocused. "It's an important profession, good people need others to stand between them and the rest."
"The men I worked with were good people; they picked on me a lot, but it was all in good fun." Seras recalled, it wasn't so long ago that she had begged them to "please stop calling me kitten," and now she was a vampire working for an organization that had been killing vampires for generations. "Eddie and Simon were good men."
The American glanced over at her, noting the saddened expression on her face. "What happened to them, might I ask?"
"The night I was changed, we were all called out to the village of Cheddar, people were disappearing for days before everyone was either just gone or dead. A pair of officers went to check up on a wife who had reported her husband was missing and found the whole village had been turned into these monsters. Men, women, the children were all dead or worse; it was horrible.
"Eddie, Simon, and I were tasked to investigate the church, we found the villagers and the vampire who had been turning them into ghouls. They killed Simon, ate him while he screamed. Eddie told me to run, get help or get away, before they ate him, too. So, I ran, I was terrified and what could I possibly do against the monsters? But I wasn't fast enough, the vampire caught up with me; he was going to rape me then kill me, turn me into just another ghoul. Simon and Eddie, he turned them into ghouls, they didn't even recognize me. It's like they were just gone and the monsters wearing their faces had taken over."
Seras shuddered at the memory, recalling his hands on her, fingers digging in and caging her in bands of immovable iron. "Then Master was there. The ghouls shot him into pieces and he just came back, completely fine; like they couldn't even hurt him. He pulled out this huge pistol and when he shot at the ghouls they just turned into dust; I think that vampire was more terrified than I was even though he still had ahold of me. I guess that's why he wanted Master to let him go, so he tried to bargain with him, told Master that I was the only survivor and he'd give me to him. Then Master shot him through me and turned me into a vampire. That was just a few days ago."
"Sounds like you've been through quite a lot for such a short amount of time," Eir offered, taking notice of the knight's suit of armor just across the hall from where her room should be. "But, for what it's worth, I think that you seem to have a good handle on it. This is me."
She turned sharply, striding into the room that had been assigned to her and digging through the sea bag that lie open on her bed. Seras stood just inside the door jamb, watching patiently as Eir pulled a black tactical chest rig and a pair of shooting gloves from her seemingly bottomless bag. As the American donned the chest rig, she noticed there were two KA-BAR knives in sheathes clipped with the grips pointed outboard on the mesh in the rig. Eir pulled on her black, wrist-length shooting gloves and Seras noticed they looked as though they had certainly seen better days.
"Walter can get a new pair of gloves if they're worn out," the fledgling offered, indicating the missing fabric on the index fingers to the first knuckle.
"Huh?" She inspected her gloves before catching on to the girl's meaning. "Oh, no that was on purpose," Eir laughed, flexing a finger at the vampire. "It's so I can feel the trigger pull, just another little habit I picked up."
"Oh. I…I hadn't thought of that," the blonde girl admitted, appearing properly admonished for her lack of knowledge and experience before someone so near to her own age.
Eir sighed and turned to the blonde fledgling, hands on her hips, "Check it out. How long were you a full-fledged 'police girl' before you were turned?"
Blinking at the question, not understanding why the American would ask, Seras responded hesitantly, "Three months."
"So, it's safe to say you were pretty much brand spanking new; fresh out of the academy with only the limited amount of information they gave you on tactical gear and tricks of the trade. Never even had to fire your weapon in the field. Right?"
"Well, yeah. But-"
Eir cut her off with a wave, "This stuff takes years to pick up on even when you work in a direct-combat unit, learning what works best for you in a hostile-fire situation, how to stack your gear. It's not something you just know off hand, especially when your only combat experience is right after being attacked by a vampire then changed into one yourself." She turned from the vampire and hefted her second sea bag off the chest and onto the bed, "I'm not trying to put you down, but there is literally no way you could know this stuff if you've never had any exposure to it. But I'll teach you if you'd like, give you some pointers, show you some stuff I know."
A bright smile lit on Seras' face, "Would you really? I'd appreciate it so much; Master hasn't taught me anything since he turned me."
Halting rather suddenly in unpacking her bag to find what she was after, Eir gave the blonde a perturbed glance, cocking a questioning eyebrow. "Really? Just 'hey, you're a vampire now, good luck figuring this shit out on your own.' What an asshole." She shook her head and went back to pulling various items from the bag until she finally came to what looked like a suit case.
"Well, Master's told me how to do a few things, but only when I needed to know them most," Seras admitted, twiddling her thumbs as Eir opened the case and began assembling what appeared to be a very strange rifle of some sort. "But if I knew this stuff before I needed it I would be more prepared. It's like he just expects me to know and it's all just way too fast."
"The best way to learn isn't really in the field, I'll grant you that. But you can't exactly take this stuff at your own pace, otherwise you'll never learn," Eir told her, shouldering the strange black rifle. "I'm definitely not the best person to ask about vampire powers and how they work, but I can teach you how to fight."
With an excited nod and a smile Seras stepped outside the doorway to the American's room. "Thank you so much!"
The green-eyed woman grinned, "Alrighty then. So, shooter's course, let's get a move on."
The Hellsing shooter's course was a labyrinth and though there were no actual ghouls within, the targets and obstacles within presented a very real sense of danger. The course had been constructed in a fashion similar to MOUT training for the war in the Middle East, the roof nonexistent, though there were some extreme differences. Trap doors, explosions to pose as distractions or waylay the runner or group of runners, and instead of stone or cinderblock, the walls were made of a steel compound to prevent the necessity of rebuilding portions of the course during live-fire exercises. Some of the targets were mobile, others popped out from just around blind corners, and there were even some that rushed at the shooter at speeds that ghouls were known to reach in crazed, hunger-induced rampages. The course overall was designed to test the accuracy and awareness of either a team or singular runner; it was one of the finest ranges that Integra had ever seen, if she might say so herself.
"Eir's at the starting point, she's ready to go," Seras called from just behind the Hellsing director and the master vampire at her side as they took a place at the balcony to observe.
"Good," Integra confirmed with a nod. "Walter, run the full team session."
The aged butler drew back, rather shocked that the woman would pit a single person through a session meant for a team of no less than ten men. "Sir, isn't that a bit much for her first time through?" he inquired carefully, selecting the proper challenge level at the computer dedicated to the running of the course and selecting the initiation sequence.
The Hellsing director's eyes narrowed as the session began, assessing with a critical eye as Eir made her way through the steel door of the starting point. "The Americans seem to think she's the best operator to ever come through their ranks, let's put that to the test."
Alucard smirked, his wide, fanged grin stark white against the pitch black of his hair. "My Master means to take her measure, Walter. Let's see how she holds up, she may even make it through the second ring if she's lucky." The master vampire threw his head back and let out a chilling laugh as the targets began to move.
Two stories below the on-lookers, Eir crept through the course on swift but silent feet; buttstock of her rifle in the pocket of her shoulder and her weight perfectly balanced, maintaining a low profile. The first moving target rushed at her from around a blind corner, a paper target with a fairly realistic rendering of a ghoul upon its surface. A single shot marked a kill on the target, it folded down to the floor and the operative kept moving.
The master vampire at Integra's side let out a low whistle, "Not bad."
"She can shoot, that's to be expected," she rebutted.
"There were two shots, Sir," Walter informed her, reading over the information returning from the active course to the computer. "One shot to the heart and another to the head. She's not sloppy, and the weapons she brought with her are certainly nothing to turn one's nose up at."
Two more targets converged on Eir from her flanks and Integra couldn't help but be impressed as the operative fired upon the closer of the two, registered the third as it popped up directly behind her, and turned smoothly to fire upon the second target as she threw a KA-BAR at the third. She back-tracked for a moment, pulled her knife from the popup, and returned it to its sheath at the small of her back before proceeding forward once more. A volley of frozen paintballs rushed toward the operative as five rushing targets converged upon her in quick succession. But she simply lowered her center of gravity, bending further at her knees and fired, the last target registering a kill before the second had begun to fold down.
Eir continued onward, never halting her movement through the course as she made her way along the veritable maze of corridors. A loud groan of metal sounded out from the portion of floor beneath the operative's feet and she ducked into a room just to her right as the trap door collapsed; the target that popped up as she entered was met with a KA-BAR to the heart area before she gave it a solid kick, forcing it to collapse. She scanned each corridor as she progressed, clearing corners and watching for traps, until an explosion went off just her left and the wall collapsed down unleashing more than a dozen mobile and rushing targets.
The operative tossed a quick glance into the corridor at her back before slowly backing up, firing killing shots into one target after another and effectively avoiding the volleys of frozen paintballs. After the second target registered a kill Integra saw a flash follow a round fired; for a moment she had thought it was a trick of the lighting but then she saw it again after the fifth target registered a kill and folded down. Eir ejected the magazine from her rifle with a press of her right thumb to the release then reloaded seamlessly with a fresh magazine retrieved with her left hand and continued firing. She continued checking the corridor behind her for targets, minding her surroundings, until a popup and several more targets converged from her rear while two targets continued from the first group.
She threw a KA-BAR into one of the remaining targets and took down two of the targets converging on her from behind, movements calculated and concise. Then she put wall to her left at her back to keep every target within her line of sight, finishing off the last remaining target from the initial group and backing away from the remaining five targets of the second group. Three of the rushing targets were taken down in quick succession and when her boot hit the folded down target with her KA-BAR she took a knee and retrieved it with her left hand, taking down the remaining two targets as she stood once more.
Despite herself, Integra could not help but be impressed, Eir was exactly the operative her service record has suggested: calm, calculated, and concise. The operative made her way through the final four rings or the course in much the same manner, every move purposeful and no action wasted on flair. The action within the course drew the attention of more than three dozen of her troops, all gathered on balconies or overlooking areas to watch the lone runner's progress in a session that they all knew was meant for a full team. After a full thirteen minutes and eleven seconds from when she entered the course, the operative felled the final obstacle of rushing targets, randomized popups, and several explosions and made her way through the archway that marked the finish line.
"Thirteen minutes and eleven point eight seconds," came Walter's voice, drawing Integra's attention from Eir clearing her rifle and pistol of rounds. "Not the record time for the full team session, but certainly impressive for a single person."
"Impressive indeed," Alucard sneered, and she had a feeling the fact a human woman out-performing his own fledgling rubbed the master vampire the wrong way.
A grin slid to Integra's mouth as she looked over the action report on the course computer. Two shots to each target fired upon, head and heart with incredible precision, no less than ten centimeters of penetration with the KA-BAR. For as personable and non-threatening as Eir presented herself, she was incredibly lethal as her service record suggested, perhaps more so. For a woman who had just run the entire length of the shooter's course in slacks and a button-down shirt, Integra couldn't wait to see just how effective the operative would be in full tactical gear against more than just paper targets.
"That was amazing!" Seras squealed, rushing to meet Eir at the resting area just outside the course. "I've never seen anyone run through the course that fast by themselves."
Sweat trickled down the green-eyed woman's spine, running a dark, wet line down the back of her black dress shirt as she drank from a large water bottle. The black chest rig, rifle, and gloves lying on the loading bench the operative sat atop just meters from the archway, her breath slow and steady but Seras could hear her bloodflow steadying as the last strains of adrenaline fled her system.
"That was tough," Eir conceded. "If I didn't know better I would think you all had it out for me with the trap doors and explosions. I've never seen a course like this, Integra must have some good friends in pretty high places to have put it together."
"That was an impressive run, Ms. Eir," Walter applauded, announcing both his and Integra's arrival. "An IWI Tavor SAR-IDF, though I'm unfamiliar with the muzzle attachment."
"It's a hybrid I machined a couple years ago; muzzle brake, compensator, and flash suppressor all in one." She scratched the back of her neck with a grin, "Took a long time to get just right, but it works pretty well."
An impressed smile settled on the man's face, "I would certainly say so. Do you mind?"
Eir dismantled the rifle in a few short seconds as both Seras and Walter looked on with rapt attention, then she handed the barrel over to him. "It's the grooves in the side," she offered as he examined the attachment. "If you open them up too much in the machine process the recoil kicks like a mule, if they're too thin the flash redirects through the end and FUBARs the accuracy."
"May I ask why you chose a Tavor, Ms. Eir?" Walter inquired, still mentally mapping out the machine work on the attachment.
"I like the weight distribution; having the bulk of the weight in the buttstock keeps the rifle in the pocket of the shoulder and a lighter barrel-end makes for quick target acquisition without sacrificing your accuracy. That, and it's probably the easiest rifle to break down for cleaning, just pop those two pins, open it up, and the guts just slide out of the buttstock. Easy-peasy."
He chuckled at her terminology. "Just so, Ms. Eir. I'll leave you to it, Sir Integra. Come along Ms. Victoria," he called, handing the barrel over to the operative with a nod and a smile before heading back inside the mansion with the fledgling vampire in tow.
The Hellsing director smirked as Seras and Eir shared a small wave before the American reassembled her rifle. "It was an impressive run; may I ask where you learned to shoot like that?"
"Here and there," Eir offered, pushing the pins of the buttstock back into place and racking the slide a few times to ensure a smooth mesh of the assembled parts. "Fighting changed from my time with Blackwater to the F.B.I. and again when I was tasked to the V.T.C., but some things are universal."
"I assume you weren't trained to fight in slacks and a button-down blouse, though."
Eir laughed before taking another long gulp from the water bottle next to her thigh on the bench, "Well, you never know what might happen or when, right? If you have an operative who can only fight when they're assured full range of motion then you've saddled yourself with a pretty useless asset."
"Well, I've had more impressive results from operatives on the course, though I've certainly seen worse out of others." Integra waited patiently as Eir hopped off the bench and collected her gear, "I'm sure they could learn a thing or two from your own experiences in combat."
"When you say you've seen worse, you wouldn't happen to mean Seras would you?" Integra had the good manners to appear flustered for a moment before Eir went on, "You don't seem to have much tolerance for her, honestly, it's a hard thing to miss whenever you two are in proximity."
The Hellsing director turned as the American operative made her way to the manor entrance, shocked that the woman had dared to call her out on her frustrations regarding the fledgling vampire. As the two entered the manor and made their way towards Eir's quarters Integra finally spoke.
"Seras Victoria is a vampire that refuses to drink blood; she's starving herself and limiting, if not completely negating, any possible way she might be useful," the blonde woman vented. "What's more, Alucard doesn't teach or train her because she's so useless. I cannot afford to wait for the Police Girl to learn in her own time, not now."
Eir's brow furrowed and she hefted her gear over her shoulder. "No, she can't just pick things up in her own good time, but the vampire that changed her refuses to teach her anything save for the rare moments when that knowledge could be the difference between success and failure. I get your frustrations, but she's a rookie in all sense of the word. Not three months in to being a police officer she was turned into a vampire and she's been on how many missions, just picking up stuff as she goes because her master is as useless as a sack of smashed assholes when it comes to raising a new vampire."
Integra cocked an incredulous eyebrow at her, "Shall I make friends with her then? Coddle her and pander to her inexperience?"
"Okay, humor me for a moment," the American offered, turning the corner of the hallway leading to her room. "When you took over Hellsing you were what, fifteen? Did you just automatically know how to respond to every situation, how to handle every vampire attack that was thrown at you"
As Eir opened the door to her room and entered Integra thought for a moment standing in the doorway. "No, I didn't, actually. I confided in Walter and he assisted me often in the early years, especially when Alucard got more out of hand than usual."
"It would be safe to assume then that I'm not entirely wrong when I say that she's just barely treading water after you've more or less thrown her into the deep end," the American suggested, having stowed her gear in the chest at the foot of her bed, her pistol on the bedside table. "Seras, through no fault of her own, is terrified of turning into a monster. I'm willing to bet she associates drinking blood with becoming the same monster that attacked Cheddar and killed the men she worked with.
"I'm not trying to tell you how to run your operatives, but a little bit of understanding might go a long way. Seras is still pretty young, even from a human standpoint. She's likely been picked on and put down her whole life for being pretty and flighty and she has no confidence to speak of, so unlike you and me she doesn't know how to push back, much less when to push back. It might not be such a bad thing for someone to be around that she can confide in when she needs to instead of trying to find her footing all on her own."
Integra leaned against the door jam, crossing her arms over her chest defensively as she watched Eir situate her belongings. "So, you are implying that I should make friends with her?"
Eir laughed lightly, putting neatly folded clothes into the dresser across from her bed. "No, you're already an intimidating authority figure, she'd likely be scared shitless if you tried to make nice with her." She pulled a wireless speaker system from her bag next and as she situated the units around the rooms Eir explained. "You were really young when you inherited Hellsing if memory and reports serve well, so I'll gather then that you had to be untouchable from a young age; chances are you wouldn't really know how to 'make friends' with her even if you wanted to. No offense, but you're not exactly the warmest person in this place and you've got vampires here. Walter wouldn't be a bad confidant but he's more someone she would look to as more of a father-figure. She obviously can't talk to the Minotaur because he's another intimidating authority figure and ultimately someone who refuses to try and connect with her because he sees her in likely the same light that you do: as a useless asset."
She turned and looked at Integra as she configured the system, "I'm not saying you're wrong to think she's useless, but it's not entirely her fault."
"I suppose you may have a point," Integra admitted. "Now what's all this that you've strewn about?"
"Oh, it's a sound system for a smart speaker," Eir picked up the Echo system and brought it over to the blonde woman. "I've got it tied into the sound system because I'm a bit of an insomniac, so there's probably a hundred different playlists in here." She retrieved her phone and opened the application controlling her music, "See? It's pretty nifty."
Integra watched in rapt interest as Eir scrolled through the playlists on her phone, and she noticed more than a few titles for various classical artists, traditional music, some for more modern artists, and the rest seemed to be for specific moods. Beethoven, druidic, Cesar Cui, Romanian traditional, neo-classical, combat, madness, and Tremonti were only a few of the names she did catch.
"You've quite eclectic taste, Ms. McWilliams," Integra noted, handing the phone back. "Now what's this about a sword you've brought with you?"
A strange expression flit across Eir's face, passing so quickly that Integra had a bare moment to register the change before it was gone as the American turned to the bag on the bed. For someone that conducted her actions so fluidly the stilted action rang out in alarm to Integra's senses; there was a secret surrounding the woman before her, a secret wrapped around the existence of the sword she had made bare mention of to Alucard whom she had dubbed "minotaur." Of course, there was every possibility the director was simply reading too much into the operative's reaction; too much stress and not enough sleep.
"Forgive me, I didn't mean to pry," Integra offered. "I have a particular fondness for traditional weapons, I'm afraid my curiosity got the better of me for a moment."
Eir turned once back around, a bundle wrapped in cloth so old the knight could not identify it was cradled in her arms. "It's all right," she spoke softly, the forlorn expression Integra had barely glimpsed before firmly affixed to her face. "This sword is … the labor worthy of several lifetimes," she pulled the cloth from the leather-wrapped hilt carefully, holding the bundle as a new mother would hold their firstborn, then unwrapped the blade once she had a firm hold of the grip.
The Damascus steel blade shone in the artificial light, swirls and ripples glinting a myriad of color. "It was broken centuries ago," Eir recounted, the rough-spun cloth crumpled in one hand as the other held the sword aloft, "or so the historians say, I've been collecting the pieces one by one and re-forging it."
It was a magnificent blade, certainly ages old from the look of the casting and forge work. The pommel was indicative of Eastern Europe, and from the dual handed grip the blade was certainly full-tang, the leather carefully wrapped around the grip worn but well cared for. The cross guard was just as black as the pommel and though it wasn't crafted from metal, she couldn't quite tell what the material was aside from clearly ancient. As Integra inspected the weapon before her she came to a sudden and abrupt halt; the last eight inches of the blade were missing from the point nearly to the end of the fuller, the jagged break standing out like a scar.
"Ah, yes, the last piece." Eir's forlorn expression fell from her face and the glint in her green eyes sent a shudder down the knight's spine. "I've spoken to countless historians and philosophers about this sword, they all argue that it could be any of a number of actual historic weapons; from Joyeuse to Durandal, even Excalibur was thrown around a bit. The only thing they were all in agreement on was that this sword was broken very intentionally." The American took the cloth and wrapped it carefully about the sword once more and shook her head. "It was a beautifully crafted weapon; I learned how to forge specifically to make this sword whole once more."
Integra shifted as Eir set the bundled sword upon the bed with great care. "Why such attachment to an old, broken blade? Surely you could have simply given it to any museum and they would have cleaned and cared for it, found its history."
A smirk settled on Eir's mouth as she leaned her hip against the bed and crossed her brightly tattooed arms over her chest, "Some things just aren't meant to sit behind glass. I found the hilt years and years ago, it was the first piece you see, and when I saw it I just kind of knew, you know. That after a lifetime of having nothing, this one thing was meant for me."
Then Integra recalled from her service record, Eir didn't have a family or a place where she belonged; no one to miss her if she was killed in combat, a trait that singled her out as the perfect candidate for a specialized supernatural operations division. In having no familial attachment and no real home to tie herself to, this woman before her had chosen a broken sword; hunted down the pieces and painstakingly re-forged it. She'd searched for its history, its home, and in finding none had given it a home with her. This was another layer to the American that Integra was rather pleasantly surprised in finding: in having been made a weapon from "a knack for fighting and a peculiar talent with a rifle" she'd attached herself to a weapon as surely Integra had attached herself to the continuity of her family's legacy.
"Any idea where the last piece is then?" the knight inquired carefully, unsure if Eir would welcome assistance in locating a piece of something she had claimed so completely.
The green-eyed woman smiled and uncrossed her arms, tucking her hands into the rear pockets of her trousers as was her habit, but in the process, the lapels of her black dress shirt parted to reveal striking swaths of watercolor across her collarbones and an empty black outline against the tanned skin. "It's here actually. Rather, somewhere in Britannia, I heard a few rumors about a piece of an ancient sword and figured I'd hunt around for the truth. If you wanted to offer an assist though, I really wouldn't turn it down, I'm eager to see the sword completed."
A smile settled at the corner of Integra's mouth as she turned to leave, "I'll have Walter look into it then. And I expect you to start training the Police Girl once you've settled in, since you offered."
Eir let loose a laugh and brought a hand to the back of her head, fingers curling in her elaborately coiffed auburn hair as though she were a child caught pilfering sweets before dinner. "I suppose I did, didn't I?"
In spite of herself, Integra found herself enjoying Eir's presence, her general lack of decorum and propriety were a much-needed breath of fresh air in light of current events. Walter would certainly not have approved when she had been a child, such conduct was decidedly not-British and would have been corrected immediately. But in Eir it was endearing, that under the lethality she had displayed on the course she was just a person and in a way Integra had forgotten that even her own troops had their own lives outside of her organization. Eir was easy to talk to despite the fact no one had ever so blatantly called her out on anything in her life, and the knight found herself admiring her for it; the blunt, no-bullshit way she said what needed to be said.
After years of being untouchable, too intimidating to speak to, and generally unapproachable because of who she was and what she did, maybe she had just found a friend.