"Wonderful, two suns. I hate the light," Alucard complained lightly, his red floppy hat quavering slightly. His dark red eyes seemed black in the suns light for some odd reason as he advanced upon the startled Jake.

Jake said nothing, whipping his body around to face yet another red clad oddity. Recovering from his surprise, he fired two rounds into Alucard's throat and stomach, laughing at the idiocy of the enemy to stand in point blank range. Vash, having just overcome the realization that Alucard had materialized out of nothing but a growing mass of darkness from some thirty feet under his paralyzed body, watched, amazed as Alucard took the bullets without flinching. His thoughts were more appropriate: Nope, i'd... run away, sure as donuts...and...man, I feel so greeeeat right now... Liquid darker than blood leak from the bullet wounds of his companion.

He imagined his brain currently turning that way as the effects of 'super potent poison' turned out to be nothing more than 'instantly wasted' blend of everything he should have experienced since he started drinking at 12. I need to market this to saloons...'could call it, eh, the Sixty-Billion Double-Dollar Bounty Mix an' earn...no Millie could – At this point the sanity wore thin, breaking into more distantly spaced ideas strung along by an imaginary desert cat, staring at him. Apparently it became the future logo of his [ridiculously named] product line. Meanwhile Alucard carried on. What dark drops of liquid hit golden sand turned to ash, sizzling as they did.

"Who sent you?" Alucard asked coolly, his wounds healing as he spoke. Jake stared, more curious now then amazed.

"Who made you?" The youth countered, stepping back, an eight inch, edged, blade set with intricate patterns deep into the metal and flowing to the very tip appeared in his left hand. Tiny razor marks made up the sides of the weapon. A tool of many uses. Alucard raised his brow, examining at a distance. The interest passed after it hit its target dead on. Alucard stumbled back at the impact, oddly grinning as he regained his balance. A hilt protruded from his chest, hitting his heart.

At this the boy waited, expectantly.

Slowly, Alucard pulled the odd knife from his heart, maximizing the sound of tearing and cracking as curves and angles caught rib bones. Petting the blade he watched the boy.

"Quite interesting! It truly hurt, marvelous detail in the edge and then the hooked point- exquisite! Did you make this weapon?" The entire time he spoke, his eyes stared at the glinting sheen of the metal, his blood sizzling off in the light. Jake stood dumbfounded at what he was hearing as Alucard dusted the suddenly ash-like remains of the wound over his heart with a devilish smirk. "Silver blade! Wonderful! That will take more than a few seconds to recover from. I was afraid this fight would be less interesting than it has turned out to be, but luckily I am proved wrong!" Obviously the vampire's interest in the weapons had returned with his Cheshire cat grin.

"What – what the hell are you?" Jake thought aloud as Alucard flung that blade back at the boy. It hit him in the knee, which immediately failed to support the weight of his body and sent him falling almost gracefully to his other knee and arms.

'Yea, I think his arms skipped ..some physiiiics,' Vash sang his comments over what he had drunkenly labeled 'thought radio' in disjointed fashion.

Frowning replaced the grin. A very tangible lack of enthusiasm overtook Alucard. Staring into the young mans eyes he lulled him into a nightmare of his choosing. Haunted by things partially-memory and mostly evil, the vampire forced his way to what he needed – dates, locations, and who. His answers were found along with a long list of other more interesting discoveries.

"Vash," Alucard asked as he released Jake from the grip his eyes had on his mental state, "I would like to change our search, if it is alright with you." There was no wait for a response, Alucard turned after Jake had fallen limply on his side, convulsing, and hefted Vash on his shoulders. "Your brother Knives seems to have unintentionally invited me to his domain with this envoy of his. If he has half the technology the boy's thoughts described, I will have more than enough of what I would need to create synthetic blood for myself. Not to mention he has something that may cure my boredom for a while.' Alucard explained.

"Invited to a party with allllll the Jerks const'ntly fooooollowing me arrouund," Vash continued to sing, unable to move much due to a very spinny-world. He hung limply off of Alucard's shoulder like a dead body. It was then that Jake came into view, no longer convulsing.

"Hey!" His voice came so crystal clear and full of urgency that even Alucard stopped moving to listen. Unfortunately it was followed by a very wobbly, and childlike, "Iiis heee alive, Alu..cars- Cards...?"

"As I mentioned before, my powers are harder to control with no one holding my leash. The Hellsing family…" Alucard drifted off as if in a dreadful and wonderful day-dream which faded in seconds, "In any case, the boy looks worse than he actually is. When he wakes up he will immediately make his way back to Knives and explain to him, rather blatantly, that I am coming to overtake his home," Alucard ended the sentence with an almost maniacal chuckle that chilled Vash's bones.

Jeeze, you're creepy! Vash thought half to Alucard. The statement was followed with another, deeper, chuckle. 'Thought Radio' singing ensued, more verbally than mentally as Alucard walked towards the ship only partially visible above the sand now. His steps were heavy for him, almost burdened. With a calm glance, the ground shook, and a large black object came shooting out of the ground to land gently and vertically next to him. What the heck? Vash's thoughts yelled at the suddenness of it. Alucard's black coffin only inches from his face. Smirking, he looked the way that they had been heading before stopping to rest.

Okay…Vash thought, interupting his new job as mental DJ-ist to recover from the last new trick Alucard had shown him. "Look, Knives ...let's avoid him! He-" The thought ended and a faint whisper of Rem caused Alucard to pause a last time and stare at Vash with an expression of pure annoyance.

"Alright, I have had enough of this," Alucard said, the smirk leaving his face. The temperature seemed to drop by a few significant degrees. "As a sign of respect and courtesy, I have not read your memories too far, but if you continue to omit some crucial details about your existence along with your brother's, I will break that polite barrier preventing it." His tone was cold as he spoke. "I have already gathered enough from the boy and the old man to know that somehow you and your brother are connected to the humans being on this planet, so do not pretend I can't put two and two together."

"Heyy, you know – i'll tell you allls stuff y'needs...My brother ...is psycho..perth, path. You got any br'thers? I didn't th'nk so's! We - " Vash stumbled into a silence before the main subject went on, apparently not drunk enough to freely engage. His noble steed dealing with extreme light exposure had little patience for it. He could wait until a more sober time. He could have.

When the singing began the memory struck to clear a bell that he did not hesitate to drop him from his shoulder so irritated did he become. The slurred noise disgraced the gentle words... Unaccustomed to such failure, such truth without need of further explanation, he literally melted into the ground as a puddle of black sinking into the pores of the sand.

All the while Vash continued singing: "SoooooOOOoo...On the first evning,
a pebble from somewh're drops upon the world..." His voice cracked often. Tears streamed down his face which contorted oddly in the drunk stupor of amplified emotion.

-!-!-!-

Vash wished he could see Alucard's face as he swayed slightly over his back, occasionally getting a glimpse of the odd insignia on his white gloves as his arms moved. He felt tired, but could not remember much. This made him grateful. Silence followed again, and finally Vash's curiosity got the best of him.

Eh, Alucard? He thought timidly, trying to find out if he had somehow pissed off an extremely powerful unhuman by being so, well, drunk on the job.

"We're here," The deep voice held a quality about it that hadn't been there before. Emotion?

Eh, what? Vash asked, not fully comprehending what Alucard had just said. The next city was a full day away, there's no way we're there alread- Woah! Vash thought, amazed as he saw the gate of a city North of the one he had thought they were heading. What? Why are we here? Wait… How did we get here! There was no way we could have traveled that fast! Vash gawked as he managed to maneuver his head to see the gate more clearly with the poison finally beginning to wear off. His back ached terribly from blisters gained after being left in the hot sun all day by his caring Earth-friend who'd spent the day napping underground. At least, he assumed it was sleep. At night he had risen to a very quiet companion staring at him.

"Effects of the drugs." Alucard stated simply, walking through the front gate with odd stares from the armed guards. Inside, the city looked exactly like that of other smaller towns with the exception of a wider range of shops and more space to move around in. He walked directly to the next hotel. The man at the door way stopped them.

"Excuse me, sir, but I cannot allow you to enter here in such…rags," The man said coolly. Alucard, unaffected, did not bother to smirk like usual and didn't say anything at all, only extended a hand. A key was given immediately.

Are you going to do that every time we need a place to stay?

"Of course."

The pair made it to the room in extended silence. At first the hotel warmed Vash. The desert hit freezing every night and hotels usually kept a toasty interior, often charging more because of it. Now he felt the warmth leaving in degrees per minute. Ahead a door to a room opened before them and casually Alucard walked in with his human cargo, boots absorbing sound instead of making it. Shivering overtook him as Alucard lay him a little too carefully onto the bed. The man's coffin slowly rose from the boards of the floor, surrounding areas warping momentarily to accommodate it's apparent will to be there. Instead of mentioning day three without food, the vampire evaporated into the air without a word.

"What the Hell-" Then it hit him. Something had changed without him knowing, and he knew how dangerous that could be. Crap! What'd I do?

Before he knew it, he found himself stumbling through town, desperate to stop violence before it broke itself loose.

-!-!-!-

It was morning. Sunlight illuminated his form slouched over in the inner market bench. In a normals town there would be a saloon or a bakery, here there were only rotting memories of what had been their structures. Half conscious he watched as people moved in and out of make shift stalls before thinning out for lunch. A withered serenity overtook him. For the most part people ignored him.

I wonder what Maryl's doing right now, Vash thought, thinking he was alone. He had spent most of the night attempting to find his so called traveling buddy but given up after seeing no evidence of harm anywhere. She's probably still mad at me, Vash sighed staring at some of the stars becoming visible in the growing darkness. Knowing her, she's probably- His thoughts were cut off, rather abruptly, by a certain blunt, overly proper, man of destruction. Any and all peaceful thoughts of his favorite insurance girls were chased off immediately.

How do you manage to function with so little sleep? Alucard asked, interrupting his peace.

Damn it, Vash thought as his earlier tensions resurfaced.

In truth, I can't, but I get along somehow. So you're not mad at my brother or me, even though he's trying to kill all the humans? I guess I should have known since you don't seem to really care about them either-

"Mad? I am furious. However, I do plan to keep him alive enough for your so called 'rehabilitation', Alucard stated after cutting him off. Vash flinched as a strange undercurrent of emotion seemed to weave its way through, subtly highlighting bits. "As for you, I would have to be an idiot to believe you had any part of making the humans land here on purpose, you are forgiven in any part you played accidentally in your brother's strange game."

You care about humans? Vash asked, amazed. He lightly wondered if he should help his traveling companion find his brother when he had that kind of violence in mind as the rest of what Alucard had said sunk in. Erm, don't put my brother in a coma or anything, I don't think I could rehabilitate him that way… No response.

Finally there came a hushed train of thought. "Vash, you've had little sleep in the past two days or so. I know even beings like you need rest, so you have two choices: one; that you sleep for another day and thus end up wasting it; or two, that you ignore you're weary body which was worsened by poison and tread onwards towards Knives's domain. Alucard seemed to be unbiased towards either of the ideas as he spoke, leaving Vash to figure out what he was getting at on his own.

Vash was silent as he stood up and walked slowly around the bench, wobbling a little. The poison, if you could even call it that with such ludicrous effects, had left him an inability to distinguish the passage of time properly. One moment he would be sitting, the next he apparently teleported to somewhere else. Chunks of memory were being omitted. Over the night he had tried to ignore it, carefully walking through town, now he decided to try harder to remember.

"I guess," Vash said aloud with a shiver running along his spine, "I have to choose…" Something in the back of his head screamed 'No!' and he stopped in mid-sentence. "I can walk, it'll just be like a fun ride for kids is all," he quickly finished, wanting to be considerably closer to their destination and be rid of Alucard as he realized the vampire would be hungry again soon. It had already been a day since his last…Vash stopped that train of thought, his body remembering the pain and flinching. There was a pause, and then Alucard's presence left his mind.

That's your decision then, his words echoed as he left.

Vash sat back on the bench, the wave of déjà vu leaving him slightly but his body still convulsing slightly in the memory. Why'd I have to remember that? So he brought up the sleep thing to remind me he was feeling hungry? Then every two days is his limit, then. He thought with a sickening feeling in his stomach.

-!-!-!-

"How long have we gone, so far?" Vash asked. An extreme pounding filled his head. Possibly an extremely late hang over experience – the first true blue of his life. Yea, he'd been drunk before, but most of it was acting. When you're body processes alcohol better than the average human and you're broke, you can only afford enough drink to get humanly buzzed but not humanly drunk enough to wash all sorrows away. Maybe a powernap? He thought jokingly.

"My grandmother takes powernaps, come on Vash. You can do it!" He imagined Maryl saying to cheer himself up. It was fairly easy to picture with as much time he had been spending with the insurance girls in recent months before he had met tall, dark, and gruesome. A harsh laughing distracted him. He looked around but saw nothing funny about his situation as his imagined Maryl and Millie vanished.

"What?" Vash asked and saw to his horror that they had walked maybe half a mile from the city and he was already feeling like he was falling apart.

"I can still see the protective walls." Alucard commented the faint beginnings of a smirk returning to his face. Somehow Vash felt safer with that instead of the blank expression of late.

"You're kidding me," Vash mumbled weakly, wishing he had something to hit his head on as he realized that there was no way he could make it even halfway to the next dot on their mental map. Before they had left, Alucard explained what he had learned about Knives location from Jake. It was the remains of a ship buried underground but unlike others the remains were fully functioning near a small town called December. Having history with the desolate spot, Vash knew where to go. He sighed, knowing there was no shorter route as he unconsciously racked up the number of times he would have to be fed off of by Alucard.

"Alucard, can you hold off on erm…feeding off of me for until we find another place away from a city? I don't want to hurt anyone if my arm changes again. Last time you-" Vash stopped, shuddering. His hangover somehow helped deal with it. Maybe his mind would block it out like it did certain chunks of traveling from place to place as it did now?

Scary, he thought for a moment but forced himself to continue. "…last time, you said that my arm changed, and as I told you before it can do some really bad stuff when I can't control it."

"You're not afraid you'll blow me up?" Alucard said with a smirk, completely unaffected by Vash's unhidden shudders.

Vash looked at him nervously, "Well, you always say you're invincible and that you're already erm…dead, so I didn't think it would hurt you."

Alucard, apparently content with the answer, nodded. Vash sighed, and felt as if a large weight had been lifted off of him. Out of impatience with his companions speed, Alucard tossed him over his shoulder and walked back to the hotel. Remembering his earlier accommodations, the young man at the front desk bowed and greeted them with glazed eyes and a smile.

-!-!-!-!-!-!- -!-!-!-!-!-!-

Authors rant:

Sooooooo flame accepted. Just as a warning, this is the latest rewrite as i'm finishing the story. Before i'd tried to rush the plot I originally had for this in order to finish by the 8-10th chapter as planned, but now I knows better~ *~ *

ANYWHO:

Me: edges slowly towards ALucard

Alucard: raises eyebrow watching me suspiciously

Me: edges closer a little more

Alucard: Stop looking at me like that…its creepy from the person who could have me do whatever they want.

Me: eyes widen YOU'RE RIGHT! I CAN DO THAT, CANT I?

Alucard: Damn it... fears for the worst

Me: hands him a revised edition of this with an evil smirk'

Alucard: suddenly gets mad HEY! THAT'S WORSE THAN WHAT I THOUGHT YOU WERE THINKING!

Me:D

Alucard: Fine. Here's my hat…angrily gives me his hat…I immediately dance and put it on saying I'm Alucard and he's me…XD