The Banana Slug: Before you read this chapter, I'd like to say a few words for seriousness now, because if I don't, I will get bombarded with hatred and bile if I do not.
This chapter contains real-life events that happened some time ago, both events were horrific and tragic that should have never happened. The massacre of Halabja, for instance, was a brutal and terrible event, where many Kurdish people lost their lives and leaving horrific images that were even haunting to me.
As such, the prison scandal of Abu Ghraib was a horrible and disgusting act that should have never happened. It damaged the United State's reputation and it damaged trust, and the traitors that perpetrated the events should have gotten worse punishments.
And if I make mistakes in this chapter, historical or emotional, I do sincerely apologize for them. However, you turn my review page into some anger-fueled rant-house, I will drop you and ban you, son. None of that, folks.
Anyway, thank you if you read this and enjoy the fanfic.
Hellsing's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
By The Banana Slug
CHAPTER 19: No One
Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan
March 16, 1988
A little rose sat alone in a small hill, with the morning breeze hitting its petals as a shadow descends upon the little rose. Carefully, a small hand reaches down and does its best to avoid the thorns. It is taken from the dirt, and pressed against the breast of a blue dress of a little girl.
The little girl wore a blue dress, with a lighter blue jilbaab atop her head, hiding her black hair. She had a soft face, not yet hardened by evils as she stares at her dress, patting it down with her black sharkish eyes staring down.
"Nehal! Nehal!" calls out a voice from behind, with the young child turning her head and smiling happily. She sees a tall and stunning woman, wearing a beautiful red dress as her black hair sways in the wind. The woman grunts in exhaust, stomping up the hill with her necklace of gold dangling around.
"Nehal, you naughty beast," she scolds with a false anger, "I told you we were leaving a few minutes ago, stop wasting time."
"Yes, mamma," breaths Nehal calmly, running down to her and hugging her legs. Her mother simply gives a content laugh, resting her hand on the back of her soft head. Mother leads her down the hill, hand in hand with her as Nehal smiles widely.
"Come, come," coos her mother, "papa is waiting, we cannot keep your grandmama waiting, she misses you."
"Papa, Najib said that I'm not Kurdish, he says I'm Indian. Is it true?"
Nehal sits at the back of a small brown car, with her mother sitting in the passenger's seat and her father driving with a soft chuckle. He was short, squat, and sporting a cragged face. The man sported a wide moustache and slicked-back hair, wearing a black buttoned shirt and grey slacks.
"No and yes, Janni," he explains to her calmly, "you have Indian in you, from my side of the family, and you are also Kurdish, which comes from your mother. So, you are Kurdish, but you are also Indian."
"Yeah, that's right," Nehal lets out, smiling before asking, "we're related to Captain Nemo, and he's Indian."
Her father laughs and nods pleasantly, "Yes, we are related to the Captain Nemo, but he is called Prince Dakkar in reality, so that is why our last name is Dakkar, right?"
"Malak, I don't want to give her ideas, she's impressionable enough," groans his wife, with her husband chuckling in response.
"Ideas? What ideas?" blurts out Nehal, much to her mother's worry as she sighs and rests her hand on her cheek.
"Your ummu is worried that all this talk of your great-grandpapa will make you go all pirate," scoffs her father with a flick of his wrist.
"Maybe I wanna be a pirate, papa!" she beams out, earning another sigh from mother, "See seas, find buried treasure, fight sea monsters, discover ruins! Like Grandpa Nemo!"
"Oh, but elbi, being a pirate means you will kill people, and you don't want to do that, right?" points out her father wisely.
"Oh, no papa!" gasps Nehal quickly, with her parents reacting with a humored laughter. It was the only laughter Nehal would wish she could remember of this day, but that would all change when the sounds of jets were heard not more than five minutes later.
It was a sound that would make the young girl's heart jump every time, a feeling that her parents would feel along with her. Those screams of the jets were soon followed by the sounds of explosions, and the sounds of screams.
Nehal couldn't see much, for she had her knees against her face as her father sped across the smoke that shot from the nowhere she wished she knew. She could hear him shout desperately, trying to calm his screaming wife. Nehal peeks and sees her mother shouting to her, but the sounds of the screams and the blasts hitting Halabja savagely were deafening to the two.
Nehal could see Kurdish villagers frantically rush through the town as they scream out a word that made her heart sink, with her father's driving more swifter and her mother more desperate in her attempt to talk to her daughter: "Gas".
The young girl watches as her mother desperately presses her fists together, trying to convey her message to her baby girl. Nehal was able to see that her mother wanted her seat belt on, to keep her save.
She desperately searches, breathing frantically as those loud blasts and those nightmarish screams were added to by that laughter. Those horrid exhausted laughs that seemed to chill the skin and turn bone into ice, adding to the nightmare that Nehal was forced to enter into.
Nehal could hear her parents shout out in shock and terror as a woman, old and feeble with her eyes blank with green bile spewing from her wrinkled lips, runs into the path of the car in her blindness with a desperate cry and her arms high into the poisoned sky.
Her father was desperate to miss her, but in the speed he went, that proved impossible as that woman was slammed against the side of the car by his frantic swerves. Nehal screams to the top of her lungs as the car lets out a violent screech and begins to flip around violently.
The poor girl, unable to find her safety belt in time, was flung around the car as she kept hearing the desperate shrill cries of her dear mother and the sobs and shouts of her beloved father. It wasn't long before the world got dark, and Nehal Dakkar was swiftly pulled into a world of blackness and hears the screams and laughs no more.
…
…
…Her eyes open, with that poor girl groaning in pain, for those eyes were watered and red. She awakens in the ceiling of her car, in a bed of glass as she looks to see her parents gone from the front seats.
As Nehal presses her hands on the glass, wincing from the cuts her palms were forced to endure, she begins coughing loudly with a low rasp to her voice. The young girl attempts to climb from the wreckage, trying her best to ignore the pain as she notices a black figure in the side of the window.
Climbing over it, feeling how soft and cold it was, looks down and sees a haunting face that causes her to scream a pain that came from no glass but from her very soul. Her father's eyes were pale, lifeless, and bile of a pale-green was dripping from his splattered lips onto a puddle of that vomit on the dirt.
Jumping back, she hits the back of her head on the door before scrambling away from the corpse. Every step hurt her lungs, forced to see more dead bodies scattered around the town that filled her being with terror.
Nehal couldn't help but dart her head around, hyperventilating in her fear as her watery eyes were forced to see a second corpse that caused her such horrid woe. She cries out to her, shrilly to the point it sends her into a coughing fit, but her mother would not answer. Her mother lays there, her eyes open and staring at her as that bile leaks from those once-perfect lips with her arm reaching from the dirt, as if to try and comfort her even in death.
Poor Nehal Dakkar, falls to her knees with her hands dripping with blood and onto the dirt, would sob with a look of pure hopelessness for the future as she stares at the carnage around her town that she once played in.
The streets were littered with dead men, women, children, and even infants, making her question why she, of all people, why was she spared from this nightmare and forced to live with it in her memories. Nehal couldn't believe that she would have to forever remember the day her parents died, along with thousands of Kurds in a Friday that lives in infamy.
The Nautilus
August, 2009
Captain Nemo would look down at the corpses at her feet, but these were not the corpses of men, but that of animals.
She witnessed them all, these creatures that had the form of men, transformed by a woman that wanted to be god. They were all species she recognized, ranging from sharks, dolphins, barracuda, crabs, and marlins. Even more fishes were merged with man to create nightmarish figures, with their pale eyes looking out in death with their agape mouths letting out blood and pink flesh.
These beasts were dressed like soldiers, wearing camouflaged army uniforms and even sporting dog-tags that had numbers with the letter "H" before every one. They wielded assault rifles, knifes, any weapon a decent soldier could be found with. Nemo realized that instead of vampires, beasts will be used to take over Britain.
And so, she stands there with her harpoon-gun in hand as her men would fire from behind, passing by as more of those vile fish-men were slaughtered by these hardened pirates. Nemo stares out at the horde, who scream and snarl at her like the vile things they were, brandishing their webbed claws and their jagged jaws of needle as they wish to dine on her and her pirates.
However, she has dined on their kind multiple times, and refuses to let them take her without a fight as she holds her massive gun out and begins firing, killing them all in an almost ironic manner as harpoons skewer them over and over.
As she stomps through the halls filled with ichthyoidal corpses with her own horde stomping with her like soldiers as they are determined to keep their ship as their own. During her charge, Nemo turns to see a large dolphin-man leap out, screaming an ear-splitting screech with its teeth like pins out and a razor-sharp hunting knife in the other. The captain was hardly intimidated by this overrated creature, reaching out and grabbing her scimitar from the sheath, slicing the creature's head off in little to no time at all.
She'd crack a smile at it flopping on the floor like the beast it was if she wasn't so enraged by this defilement of her home and country. So, Nemo continues to lead her forces to kill, to win, to reclaim what is theirs.
These animals seemed to have underestimated Nemo and her killing will, for out of the seventy-eight they sent, all but ten have been butchered and gutted as nature intended them to be. Even with this seemingly easy victory, Captain Nemo feels a deep dark coldness to her heart as she begins to believe that worse things are coming, horrible things are about to happen.
And so, she kicks the door down to her mess hall, revealing the fool that challenges Nemo and disrespects her in her own country, in her Nautilus. The foe stands there, with her beast-men cowering behind her as Moreau faces Nemo without fear and with arrogance at her own divinity.
"Your…ship is quite impressive," she breaths out, making idle conversation, "if only it were in more…suitable hands."
"These hands are more than suitable, demon," growls out Nemo darkly.
"You gave up your Nautilus as soon as you bent down for the Westerners, Nemo," she snidely mocks, Moreau curling her nose with a haughty smile.
"Poor choice of words, bitch," snarls Nemo with a deep glare, "I will be sure to spare you so that my…men will use you like the little whore you are."
"I only speak the truth, Captain," she continues with a sly grin, holding her hand casually, "for your company would better be suited for…the New Millennium, for they are your enemy, not us."
"I know what the Old Millennium did, and I doubt they'd stop there," scoffs Nemo with a perk of her lip, "it would spread everywhere, including the oceans that I call home. I will not have endless bloodshed force my hand more than it already has, that is why I help the West in killing you dogs!"
"The late Major lacked ambition, Nemo," corrects Moreau as she holds a finger out, "we only want to reclaim Britain as our own Airstrip One again."
"I believe the Major had as much ambition as you sows," snarls back Nemo spitefully, "and I know that despots like your beloved Detective will only want more, and snuff out any freedom that threatens it…and that would include me."
"How sad to see such a rebellious and strong woman turned to a bitch for the Empire," hisses Moreau, showing off her feline fangs as she cracks her knuckles, "I guess I'll have to kill you and claim this little sub for my own."
However, she is rushed at by five of Nemo's pirates wielding bloody machetes with two carrying AK-47s as they roar out in bloodlust and hate. Moreau flicks her hair back and jumps at the first pirate, slashing his neck wide open with long arched claws splitting from her fingers.
Her eyes glow yellow as she throws her hand back at the next foe, tearing his face off and leaving a bloody skull to replace his visage as it screams horribly. Swiping his machete, she slashes the first pirate holding the AK-47's arms right off in one clean slice, blood spraying everywhere as the companion would unload his bullets into her back.
Moreau is riddled with shells as blood spews from her chest and tatters her top. However, in her riddled form, she swirls to her opponent with a cat-like grin and slices the top part of his head clean off, leaving him a cross-eyed corpse as it flops to the floor.
As the last three of her attackers try their best to kill this seemingly unstoppable monster, she grabs the AK-47 from the dismembered hands holding it and tatters them with the rapid-fire shells that leave them a bloody mess.
Captain Nemo glares at her darkly, all as Moreau stands there gracefully, covered in blood as she holds a splattered machete in one hand and an AK-47 in the other. "Am I suppose to be impressed?" the Science-Pirate scoffs out, "I see that all the time from my vampire compatriots, but I don't know what animal you spliced yourself up to become impervious to bullets."
"The same animal we used to create our old Neo-Nazi friend," she answers proudly, "however, I was able to dilute it enough so that I would not be infected with the schizophrenia that came with it and still get the desired results."
"How fortunate for you, it seems," she calmly breaths out as she points her harpoon gun at the Animal-Witch, "seeing how I killed the freak when he was filled with that horrid DNA, you will be much more easier to kill."
Aissa Moreau looks at her claws with a smug smile, parting her hair and breathing out, "I am sure you were first to assume I'd put only one strain of DNA inside of me, then again when you think I'd put only two."
Suddenly, her head whips back as she opens her mouth and lets a long red tongue shoot out and lash at Nemo with insane speed. The captain growls as she is constricted by the neck before being thrown to the ground far from her astonished and shocked pirates, with Moreau turning to her with a sly grin.
Nemo chokes as that tongue constricts around her throat tightly, gagging and trying to breath as her men begin shooting madly at the beast-woman. However, the Doctor simply stands there with her bare fangs visible as she grins madly at the dying captain.
However, she should have expected the Captain to have an escape plan, especially to something as easy to escape from as this. Nemo grips her scimitar and slices the tongue off just as fast as Moreau wrapped hers around Nemo's throat.
The Animal-Witch hisses as she backs away, jumping up as fast as a bolt of lightning and clinging to the steel ceiling. The pirates attempt to riddle her escaping body with shells as she crawls into the darkness, but they either missed or their bullets would do little to no damage to her. The vile doctor would escape through one of the doors, with the last remnants of her fish-monsters guarding her escape as they fire back at Nemo's pirates fanatically and with savagery that the original Moreau would abhor, his teachings distorted by his own blood it seems.
They were, however, slaughtered just as easily as their companions. Eventually, Moreau would be all alone on this ship, with her children slaughtered like animals. Shredded meat covered the floor, pink flesh bare as those dead fish bodies twitched and flopped. Nemo has won…for the moment.
Nemo struggles to get up, coughing heavily as her brow trembles with rage. The Captain was held up by a familiar face, holding her back and shoulders as her first mate looks with concern on her blooded face.
"Cap, you alright?" asks Mike with a cigarette kept in her mouth by her teeth.
"No, I am not, we still have a rodent problem," she growls back, straightening up and wiping the saliva from her throat, "as long as that horrid woman is scrounging around my ship, we won't be safe."
"Don't worry, the men will find that bitch before she escapes," she informs calmly, then turning to the pirates, all hardened and angry as they were already reloading their assault rifles and wrapping their wounds with bandages.
Mike then shouts out and orders, "The doctor is hiding somewhere in the ship, the first to find and butcher the witch might be looking at a higher position on the ship. Make sure she doesn't escape, and keep an eye out…there might be more of those damn fishes."
They shout with gusto, scrambling to the entrance and exit of the cafeteria as the Captain would lurch to one of the seats. Nemo rests herself at the tables and places her Navy cap on the flat surface, with Mike walking up to her with curious apprehension.
"Captain?" she breaths out, "You alright?"
"You already asked me this question, Mike," sighs Nemo, looking down at the table, "this beast-woman…has taken my men from me. She butchered them before my eyes, and acted as if she was some sort of…deity. That killing them was simply Zeus smiting his enemies like rats, only fueling a deep hatred for that arrogant piece of animal shit."
Mike sighs and flicks her finished cigarette into one of the trashcans, shaking her head and not sure how to respond to her captain. However, Nemo would turn her head and ask, "Mike, why did you join my crew? You never hated the west, and I doubt you changed your feelings since coming onto my ship, and even that, you have proven yourself to be a very loyal crew-mate, deserving the title of First Mate."
Mike shrugs and says, "You're right, I'm not ashamed to admit I'm American, and that I do love my culture. However, when it invaded Qurac, Qumar, Iraq and others, I began having little faith in the government, and I saw them as the problem." She reaches into the pockets of her skirt and goes on with, "So…when I saw you rise from the sea when I returned to the island, I knew that you were in the right."
She looks over at the captain and questions her captain unashamedly, "So, why do you hate the West? I know you hated the Middle-East after…after Halabja, captain…but why do you hate the West, what did they do to you exactly?"
Captain Nemo turns away for a moment, then looks back at her again and commands coldly, "I need a cigarette." Mike obliges, stepping forward and handing her one of the white sticks. Nemo holds it with her fingers as her first mate was kind enough to light it for her, all with the Captain sporting a morose and blank expression to her face.
"Did you know I actually did help the Americans during the war?" she explains with shame, "Well, I did…and for my efforts, I was betrayed."
"Why would they do that?" queries Mike, surprised by that fact.
"I was a pirate long before they showed up, and I'll admit, I killed many westerners before the war, but never out of spite." explains Nemo as a dark chill creeps up her back, causing her glare to turn more grim and miserable, "So, they captured me, me and twelve of my men, and they sent me to Abu Ghraib."
There was a silence between the two, with Mike simply standing there with a regret to her question, knowing what Nemo will tell will be bone-chilling at the most. Nemo herself would hunch, her frown dark and deep as she remembers the cigarette in her hand as ash burns her finger.
Slipping it between her soft lips, Nemo sighs darkly, then tells her first mate with a chilled tone, "Those soldiers, they treated me like an animal, treated me like a whore, and for what? Oil, money, control, propaganda from a moron on the throne of America."
Nemo could remember it all, how those grinning soldiers with their shades over their eyes and their breaths filled with smoke, doing all those things that they would claim to be for the American Dream, but was only because they could get away with it.
All those times she was stripped, all those times she was beaten down, caused her to grimace greatly as she takes a deep breath. The more she thought about those savage blood-thirsty dogs barking at her and backing her to a corner, having her own element turned against her via a jet of ice-cold water spraying against her naked and bruised form, and of having those self-righteous and numb soldiers over her body, forcing themselves on her temple just for their own selfish, and quick, desires.
"When I escaped from that hell, Mike," she went on, "I swore that the Nautilus would make the Americans fear her and the captain that controls the mast." Straightening up, Nemo says to her first mate, "I have succeeded at that, did I not?"
"I can say so, cap," Mike breaths out, stepping forward and sitting beside her, "so that makes me have to ask this question, cap. Is Millennium as bad as it claims to be to team up with Britain?"
"Yes, it is," Nemo states to her darkly, glaring at the wall with a sneer, now wanting that Moreau woman's blood even more. However, that dark feeling of something going wrong returned as that similar alarm was heard, that long honking that signified rise.
With this in her notice, Captain Nemo leaps from her seat and grabs her harpoon gun from the floor. She cracks her neck as Mike rises from her seat soon after, gripping an AK-47 from the ground and approaching her captain.
"Mike…follow me to the deck," she growls out, "I think our animal-woman is trying to escape."
A lone pirate, a young man from Somalia, groans as he rests his back against the wall with his legs spread on the floor. He spurts blood from his lips as his hand presses against the long wound for naught, looking at the horrid sight of his innards slipping out.
This young man from Somalia, dying on the main deck, cries for his dead friends as they were ripped apart on the floor. The floor was stained with blood, with the murderer standing before the pirate as she pilots the submarine with her hand on the panel.
"What an annoying noise," she hisses out, sneering at the alarm blaring out to signify rising, "and to think this was all for naught…" The Animal-Witch groans with misery, knowing her love would be quite disappointed in her.
"You…evil…whore…" snarls the young pirate, with Moreau looking at him with blazing yellow eyes, "the captain…will…skewer you like the worthless…shit you are."
She curls her lips and snarls lightly like an animal, walking from the captain's wheel and toward the young pirate as he glares back at her with brave hatred. "Worthless shit? You are mistaken, half-creature," she growls out, "I am a goddess, I create life, and I destroy life."
"You are…nothing more than…" moans the pirate, grunting in pain as Moreau kneels down and glares straight at him with a fang-bearing grin. He continues weakly, "…nothing more than…a servant…to an even greater shit."
Before he could ramble on, he was grabbed by the head and shoulder. He stares at her with wide eyes as his head was forced to look up, then feeling sharp fangs dig into his throat. He was gored horribly as Aissa snarls and hisses, ripping the flesh as she eats the warm bloody tissue, the red fluids splattering out and running down his shirt as that young and fearless pirate's death was hastened by the Beast-Woman's savage bite.
Moreau shoves him to the floor, careless of her kill, and stands before him as she chews on that glob of meat hungrily. The pirate would moan and try to breath as he bleeds to death, trembling at the coming of the death he is given.
"I am a goddess, for I am Gaea," she states to her corpse as the lights shining from the windows grew brighter and clearer, "and the Detective…my love, is the Demiurge. He is the master of the New Millennium that he will bring to this shit-country."
She turns around and sees the cloudy sky of Britain, the Nautilus emerging from the Thames and exposing the submarine to the world. Moreau walks on the bloody floors, getting to the ladder and resting her bloodied hands on the bars, climbing up the ladder to escape from her failed mission.
She'd be quickly stopped from escape by a swift harpoon impaling her stomach and forcing her to the ground with a loud thud. She hisses and snarls, slamming her hands on the floor and picking herself up with fury, looking to the source and seeing Nemo and her first mate facing her with their weapons drawn at her.
"You!? How dare you!" she snarls out angrily, "I have no time for you gnats! Leave me!"
"You speak like some villainess of a fantasy novel," scoffs Nemo darkly, "a bad one, to be honest." Nemo stands there, with her harpoon gun in one hand and her scimitar with the other, pointing it at her and hissing to Moreau, "There is no escape from the Nautilus, not after you butcher my men and insult her captain. You will die, Moreau, you will die like an animal, like the animal you are and always have been."
"You stupid lesbian freak!" snarls back Moreau, pulling herself to her feet with one hand on the bloodied harpoon. "I will…I have a contingency plan for this…failure. This place will blow itself straight to hell!"
She moans in pain as she yanks that harpoon from her gullet, groaning as blood spills from her stab wound, closing up quickly as Aissa hisses out, "My people, my children, placed explosives across the ship. This place will be a shipwreck in the River Thames in less than five minutes!"
Just after she said that, Nemo turns to Mike and orders calmly and trustingly, "Mike, find the bombs and disarm them."
"Got it," she responds obediently, turning back and rushing through the halls. Moreau looks at her with dumbfounded disbelief, shaking her head with annoyance.
"You…you think that she'll find them all, hm?" she blares out spitefully, "You don't even know how many there are, you don't even know where-"
"Michelanne has a talent of finding explosives and disarming them," Nemo explains to her, "she has surprised me many times when she'd find bombs even I didn't know about. Overall, this isn't the first time this happened, and I doubt she'll fail this time."
Moreau snarls and throws the harpoon onto the red floor, her face was like an enraged tiger as she roars out, "You are mocking me! There is no way that is true! I have no time for your lies, I am leaving your dinghy, one way or the other!"
Nemo responds to her insane rant with silence, sneering as she slips her shoulders free from her long Navy coat, letting it fall to the floor along with the harpoon gun and letting that long bloody scimitar slip right through the sleeve.
"Are you quite done?" she snarls out, pulling her second scimitar and dual-wielding her dreadful blades.
Moreau snarls and leaps at her with animalistic rage, running on all fours before lashing at the captain hatefully, in which Nemo retorts with a step back then followed by a harsh kick to her jaw. Teeth shatters as they clang together, blood squirts from between them as Moreau slides to the floor with a deep grunt.
The Animal-Witch would return to her feet swift as violence, snarling at Nemo with saliva dripping from her bleeding jaw before opening them wide open to have her long blue tongue lash out at Nemo once more.
Prepared, Nemo slashes it vertically and splitting it down the middle for a whole foot. After that, Nemo rushes at the shocked Moreau as her tongue slips back into her mouth. The Captain begins slashing madly at her, with a dark gleam in her black eyes that yearned for her blood. Nemo would slash at her stomach, making the innards poke lightly from the wound before Aissa Moreau hisses and slashes at Nemo's face, causing a red scratch mark to appear on her cheek right as it began oozing blood.
Aissa attempts to take the situation into her hands as Nemo reacted lightly to the pain her slash caused, by leaping at her with her sharp fangs bare to gore her throat like a lioness. All that Moreau would taste, though, was cold bloody steel as Nemo blocked her vile bite with her scimitar as Moreau would bite the sides, just as the blade cuts her cheeks and makes more blood seep from her mouth.
"As dumb as any animal," she groans out to her, shaking her head and using the situation to stab Moreau in her gullet. As Moreau would open her mouth to scream, Nemo slips her blade free and slash her mouth brutally.
The crescent blade slips from her stomach, leaving a large red wound that slowly began to heal itself. However, Nemo was determined to kill her once and for all, and so she spun back around, holding both blades out pressed together to make one final horizontal cut.
Moreau would look out with shock, as this goddess was slashed in half and dismembered so easily, just as it seemed that she was falling backwards onto the floor. It was worse when she could see her leg and lower body standing there for some time before falling to the red crimson floor with her.
Moreau hyperventilates, blank with an expression of confusion, not even sure how to make of this situation she's been put into. Aissa, however, looks up to see Nemo standing over her, just as unemotional as she was as Nemo watched the light escape from her eyes and lay there motionless and bloodied.
Her radio would sound off before hearing the words escape, "Captain, I found the bombs…all twenty of'm." She sounded very proud from that, with Nemo turning away and walking to her mast.
"Good work, Mike," she said to her, "now are you sure you got them all?"
"Positive!" beamed Mike, "I looked everywhere and checked the weakest points twice."
"Still amazes me how you can run through my ship like that," mutters Nemo to herself, then speaking into the radio and asking her importantly, "Now, what were they suppose to go off at?"
"It seemed to be four eighteen, sir," replies the First Mate quickly.
Afterwards, Nemo looks up and sees a clock, displaying the time as four seventeen. Nemo stares at the clock for some time, waiting for it to turn to the next minute with a deep and stoic worry as it got closer and closer.
Finally, she heard it click, and nothing happened. She took a deep breath and said to the radio, "Very good work, Mike. Now, have you found out how they got into the Nautilus?"
"One of the men radioed me in, cap," Mike responded, right as Nemo heard the dreadfully blaring sound of the hatch opening and closing. Turning out, she looks to see the dead Moreau now gone with a bloody footprint visible on the floor, even if the lower half was still on the floor like a corpse.
"We think they entered from the exit hatch down below, where you and the boys go out 'fishing', and they must have found a way to enter without triggerin' the alerts," she exposits to the captain, "I don't know how the hell they did THAT, but hey, this is an old ship, and-"
"I'll speak to you about that later, Mike," she snarls to her First Mate, all as she rushes to the ladder with her swords brandished darkly. She issues radio silence as she starts climbing the bars swiftly, swearing she'd make this vile woman pay for all the lives she has devoured.
When Nemo thrusts herself out of the open hatch, meeting the white cloudy skies, she finds Moreau kneeling at the top of the ship. Her lower half was naked, and slightly paler from the top of her body as she rummages through the pocket of her vest. As she did this, an empty vial with the words, "Tursiops" written over the tan tape sprawled horizontally at the side, would drop out of the pocket and roll down the submarine and into the dark waters of the Thames.
"Fleeing like an animal, how noble of the goddess," taunts Nemo as she steps over to Moreau slowly.
Aissa Moreau pants and grips another vial, filled with blue liquid and also sporting a taped named that read, "Paralithodes camtschaticus" right on it. "I have no fear of you, sea-witch," she snarls at Nemo, "even you would flee if you were near death, only a fool rushes into battle expecting to die."
"Then what was just now, Moreau?" she retorts harshly, "What was ten years ago with your late Major?"
"The Major was an idiot, that fat nihilist didn't understand how the world works!" she snaps back, holding the vial close to her as she growls out, "I never understood why the Major would create a war that never ends, when such a thing could never happen. Everything has to end, and whoever comes on top must rule. The Detective will be that new leader, and the world will welcome him as the new and all-powerful Demiurge."
"…Even if he succeeds, his reign would end as well, as did the last Big Brother's," snarls Nemo, standing over Moreau as she began drinking up the liquid inside swiftly. Nemo holds out one of her blades against the side of Moreau's neck, saying, "Now, I think it is time to end this little charade."
The Doctor Moreau's execution was delayed as the Beast-Woman growls inhumanly and gutturally as she slips to her feet, smacking Nemo's face with insane strength as she was sent flying in high speed to the right. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth as her body hits the viewport of her ship.
Groaning, Nemo helps herself up and sees the vile woman groaning and shrieking as she began transforming into a red monstrosity. Her skin began to turn brittle and reveal a red shell underneath covered in spikes, and her left arm began to increase in size and turn into a massive clamp. Her bottom half of her body would rip apart gruesomely as long spiky legs jut out from a oval red structure of shell with a white crème underbelly.
Nemo watches with shock as Moreau turns into this crustacean horror, standing over fifteen feet tall and heavy enough to cause the ship to lean slightly. Moreau would stand before her with her crab legs smashing against the hull, with one hand covered in shell and jagged bumps as the other was a large crab claw. Her once bountiful breasts now sagged in their increased state, crème-colored and without nipples. Her mouth would sport a perpetual frown that reached to her throat in a rectangular fashion, and sporting nightmarishly huge black eyes that shined with the sky overhead. Her hair was longer now, reaching down to the crab body that acted as her lower half, and would step closer to Nemo with a gurgling growl.
"You will die…" she hisses in a deep guttural tone, "you will die screaming…and I will enjoy every moment I take to make your life a living hell…no one harms a goddess without suffering from her wrath…it is simple…logic…"
"Logic? You believe yourself to be this…false Gaia, and you speak to me about logic?" Nemo points out angrily to Moreau, then snapping out as she stumbles to her feet, "I am getting tired of your self-righteous attitude, it is unbecoming to villains like you."
Bravely, she holds her sword out to a challenge, tilting it slightly once and watching with a stoic and featureless glare as Moreau releases a shrieking hiss before ramming at her savagely.
Her crab legs scramble around as the submarine shook with every jab at the metal, then sending her crab-claw down at Nemo like a hammer as she shrieks. Nemo rolls to the side as Aissa dents the metal hull, scrambling to face Nemo as the captain slashes at one of the feet. It butted against the carapace, causing a spurt of blood but only wounding the limb as Moreau screams in pained rage.
"You know of the centaur, correct?" calls out Nemo loudly.
"Silence!" hisses Moreau, slamming her crab-arm at the hull trying to smash Nemo as she keeps running around from behind. Moreau hisses when she feels Nemo stab upwards, only going an inch or two deep as the Beast-Woman shakes Nemo off and makes her lose one of her blades.
Rolling to her sides, Nemo watches as Moreau slams her crab leg at her repeatedly and trying to skewer her with the limb with swift savage speed. Nemo slashes at the legs, slashing them away as the sword clangs against the red shell and causing it to spurt lightly with red blood.
"The centaur, half-man, half-horse," she continues as she bashes the legs away, "built with the top of a man over the body of a horse, who went extinct in the last days of Ancient Greece."
She is suddenly grabbed by those vile claws, gripping her tightly as blood squirts from her nose and sees Moreau's vile mouth filled with viler teeth open wide open, wide enough to swallow her whole.
Ready to give a fight to the very end, Nemo reaches down and grabs from her belt a small revolver. Slipping it right out, Nemo begins shooting madly at Moreau, eventually hitting one of her black eyes and causing the mutated witch to drop Nemo and cradle it with her one hand.
"It died out…because it was genetically inferior," explains Nemo, with Moreau looking around and trying to find Nemo, who has disappeared from her sights. Little did it know was that the Captain was already behind the crab-like Moreau, then jumping up and climbing on the back of the repulsing monster. Moreau snarls as she struggles to get her off, swerving around as Nemo gets a footing and keeps her hands pressed on the carapace.
"How they died out is a mystery, but there is one very good idea why they did: Evolution," went on Nemo darkly as she climbs up to her top part as Moreau swerves around, snarling as she can't seem to turn the right way. "Evolution made them into these strange beasts, and it is very hard to survive if you have a major blindspot."
Taking the chance, she inflicted massive damage to Moreau as she grips the back of Aissa's black hair and tugs it back, then stabbing her from behind as the Beast-Woman would let out a shrill screech as she was skewered from behind.
She continued to stomp around, gargling blood from her wide deranged mouth as she twirled with crab-like mannerisms. Finally, Moreau would groan with a deep gurgle as her legs gave out and she became as limp as a rag doll.
Nemo slips the curved blade from the creature's body and jumps off the crab-body as that corpse would start to slip off the Nautilus and into the Thames. The Captain, feeling victorious, slips the blade back into its sheath as the legs of the crab would touch the water.
She has earned her victory, and begins to walk to the hatch, to fix all the damage Moreau caused and contact Hellsing about this wicked turn of events. However, she heard the sound like cracking whip and felt something wrap around her leg, yanking her and forcing her to fall face-first on the hull as her person was dragged to the water.
She turns her head, shocked and enraged that her foe is still alive. Her blue tongue wrapped around her ankle as she was sinking into the water, disappearing into the black river as rain kept pounding on her.
Nemo knew she had the upper hand, as she gripped a handle on the Nautilus hull, that Moreau had the upper-hand. As much as Nemo loved the sea, it respected its creatures more than it did her. She will drown, and Moreau will live, and the New Millennium will best her.
The strength of it was too much, being yanked hard to the water as Nemo cries out, clinging to the side of her ship as bubbles frothed around her, shoulder-deep in the water as Nemo held on for dear life.
As she looks at the sky, panting and doing her best to pull away from the leviathan that had so much strength, Nemo began remembering her life. Starting with her school days, then that horrid night in Halabja. She saw Lincoln Island, where she found the Nautilus after much hardship to find it, then retooled it. She even remembered her brutalization in the prison of Abu Ghraib, by the hands of Americans she grew to hate.
In the end, she concluded that she was not ashamed of the path she chose, of the path that was forced upon her by the Middle-East, by the United States, by the whole damn world. Nemo was actually feeling glad that she became a pirate, because she couldn't picture her life as anything else. Not as some fifth wife for a man she doesn't know, not some vendor in the streets, not a corporate businesswoman off to sell useless things to the world and its people, but only as this, right now, a pirate taking her last breath before her head was dunk down into the briny waters.
The light shined down brightly from the sky, just as she saw a figure rush to the side with swift speed. Just as Nemo held her hand out for assistance, a harpoon dove into the deep and jutted past the Captain. Nehal Nemo looks and sees the harpoon stab Moreau in her gaping mouth, causing it to screech under the deep as her tongue loosens her grip.
Taking this chance, Nemo swims up just as Moreau sinks into the water, leaving a trail of blood as she would hide away to her master and lover.
Nemo gasps heavily as she grips the side of the hull, pulling herself up and climbing back on the ship as she looks to see Mike standing over her, wielding the harpoon gun as she crouches down and holds her hand out. "I got yer back, cap," she replied, Nemo saw that she was genuinely worried, and thought she was going to cry.
Nemo took her hand and climbed up back on the Nautilus, wet and damp as she falls on her back on the steel submarine and looks at the sky above her with relief. Her eyes stared at the white clouds as they slowly hung around above her, before closing them and grunting out, "I'm glad…"
"You bettah be glad," snaps Mike, wiping her brow and dropping the harpoon gun right next to Nemo as she starts walking to the hatch, "you ever try any of that hero stuff again, I'm quittin' fer good, capiche?"
As Nemo lays on the metal surface, sprawled with her arms and legs spread out as the water keeps comforting her with its cold embrace, she begins to think more into what she said. She's glad.
She's glad, it was a confession to the hell she caused and the hell she drives the Sword of the Ocean into, just to terrorize the demons of the world and make them remember that she is Captain Nemo.
She's glad that she is no one, she is glad that she is accompanied with many nobodies. She prefers their company than to the one that has her work for them to ensure their survival, only because she wants to live like a pirate and live with adventure in this strange world she lives in.
Nemo could kill the entire world, and she'd still be happy. She could destroy the entirety of Western Culture and she'd still be happy. Nemo could fail and be blasted into the water to become food for the sharks, and she'd still be happy.
Her life was filled with misery, from those green clouds eating her home to the brutes that desecrated her in that horrid prison. It wasn't until she became the Captain Nemo did she become truly happy.
In the end, she was content with being no one.
The Banana Slug: I was going to include a flashback of Nemo in Abu Ghraib, but I thought that would be distasteful so I did not do it.
However, I think her episode in Halabja was important because it was the definitive part of Nemo's life and what made her into what she is today. She is a survivor, and only wants to repay the world on what it gave her and give it back to them at the just amount.
Actually, I was very nervous posting this chapter because this is very serious stuff. Both the Halabja Massacre and the Prison Scandal of Abu Ghraib are very sensitive topics...well, in my mindframe. So, please, don't say I'm insensitive when I wrote a huge speech about it, and if I got something wrong, I am truly sorry and I do not mean to do it.
All in all, I think this will be the last time I use current events with my fanfic. So, I hope you enjoyed it otherwise, and I hope you stick around for the conclusion of this arc.