Disclaimer: Most characters in this fiction belong to the great master Kouta Hirano. Except Duke, who I hope you are liking him. I'm getting no money out of this.

(Re) Building an Empire

First Week –Day Two-

The click in the weapons ready to fire alerted Seras, she rocketed to the back part of the room urging the kids that were languid like dead bodies. She knew they didn't have a chance if they wanted to keep their precious lives, jumping behind a knocked down huge desk she managed to keep them safe just a split second before the rage of bullets pierced the wooden surface that supposedly was going to protect them. Even though the weapons managed to make some holes in the surface, hitting straight on her back. The riffles thundered all around the room, luckily the enemy was shooting normal bullets and she could manage the pain comparing it to mice bites. The only thing that mattered was that the girls were safe. Pip materialized by her side, she felt grateful to have him by her side in that moment of need. Pulling out a handgun that Seras had hidden somewhere in her unnatural body, the mercenary peered above the desk while the fire had not ceased, he shot a couple of bullets and hunched back in mid safety with his face tore open. It returned to his original self in seconds, reminding Seras that the mercenary was neither human, which gave her the advantage of a men more in the battle.

"There are about twenty of them" Pip yelled overpowered by the roar of shooting. He peered back, his bullets landing of the foreheads of two enemies across the room; he received a straight hit on the shoulder without flinching and corrected "Eighteen. They don't seem to care for the ghouls either."

"Where's Duke?" Seras screamed for letting herself be heard, wishing that the enemies would run out of ammo from one moment to the other.

"He's on between a rock and hard place:" Pip mocked. Reality is, she didn't need to ask, with her third eye she had seen how the Nazis had turned Duke into pulp and now he wasn't more than a pile of rust on the floor. Seras concentrated on his partner; she had to contact him, to let him know that the safe spot was some yards away from him. They could think about a better solution once they were safe. Instead, she found nothing but blurriness in Duke's mind, a crying in the back part of her mind ached. There was something wrong with the older vampire. She tried to synchronize her thoughts with him for bringing the vampire back in action.

It hurts. It hurts. IT HURTS.

The bullets pierced his body in every corner; every muscle tattered by boiling hot metal. The pain, the emptiness of his own intestines. It hurt so much. A steady pause. Duke opened his only eye available to see. He shivered, the image of his mangled body tattooed in his head. Had he had the power to feel the enemy as Miss Seras did he should had noticed the Nazis' den when waiting for the Draculina. Instead his starvation had clouded his sight.

More bullets. The unbearable pain.

Again, his conscious slipping by. No more pain please, no more bullets please. I'm no longer ill, I'm cured. Look at me I'm cured! It wasn't working. No more pity for him. He was a monster, he shall feast of humans. He shall feast of vampires. The whole world was by his feet.

He forgot his human shape. Melting, at least the pain had gone. The fright gone as well. The love gone as well. Only an emotion carved in his lost soul. Hunger.

Seras chest was moving rapidly, saliva was dripping by the corners of her mouth as Duke's crazed mind slipped controlling her own. Pip looked at her in awe, an echoing plea from her familiar attempted to stop her, but it was too far and too empty for being real. She stood up ignoring Pip like a shadow, before her the carnage. She heard their enemies bone and flesh tore apart by the vampire, the smell of warm blood abandoning its owners. She was overexcited, couldn't wait to join the fun, to feel alive one more time. Her mind moved ahead with an only slogan, EAT!

Obersturmführer Berit Nolten had had a hard time after London's invasion. Not only he had to retreat his troops when Hellsing's monster Alucard had dispatched a great amount of them, but also the destruction had let them isolated. He confirmed the device Herr Doctor had given them for hiding their vampiric existence from Hellsing's pets worked. It was a beta prototype device the shape and size of an ID card, he had used it in a recognition mission and since no one had asked for it back he had kept it. Everything was so silent outside, only the occasional rat peering at the gnawing meat of the lost corpses. And talking about corpses, our reserves are nothing than withered husk, he thought. He had taken the prevision of keeping hostages before ending trapped, but five lanky women weren't enough for his men. In a few days the girls had been dried and ghouled. He needed to find a good source of blood for his three officials and eight men. He tried sending some ghouls for recognition, but as long as the device was working he couldn't find any presence outside that building. It was a matter of time for them to go try going out of this ground.

What if Herr Major had won the war and the silence was the utter devastation in this country? He didn't know. Not getting orders from above, not very comfortable with the idea of coming out with the remaining of his men to confess he had ran away in the middle of the battle. Afraid of the enemy. Afraid of his own. Buried under levels and levels of rubbish. Yes, he had to make a decision.

"Meine herren," he stood up from his chair, his men stopped his card game to stand still "it's time for us to get out of this dumpster."

Everyone acclaimed his decision, for they were all tired of being trapped. An earthquake rumbled the floor under them; the men looked at his higher rank frantic expression in their eyes. Even so Berit Nolten was as flabbergasted as them. By the door two vampires busted in, consequently rolling on the floor. One wore a perfectly recognizable uniform with a spiteful shield. It was the blonde vampire girl that belonged to Hellsing. She carried two human girls in the verge of death. The other was a short male vampire, weakened to laughable levels. Only a huge gun on his limp hand. The female vampire fruitlessly turned her back to protect the humans. Those kids didn't worth a drop of fluid in them. She yelled something in English to her partner, but the guy was frozen, his sole gun on the right hand and not wanting to lift it and shot.

His men, ghouls included, gathered the rifles waiting for his single order.

"Kill them!"

The bullets fell like rain on them. Did Herr Major know the Draculina was still in London? What had happened with Kommandant Zorin? One thing he had for sure, those pathetic vampires wouldn't make it out of here.

The short male vampire got all the damage directly, in minutes he was nothing but rust on the floor. But he was not the kind to overlook his enemies, his orders were to destroy totally, his men didn't stop until they had to recharge their sturmgewehr g36. What a beauty was this. Their enemy's flesh tearing apart, falling like beaten chess pieces. He had enjoyed the killing rampage outside, after finishing these pitiful vampires they would head to continue the massacre. The raging blood boiling in his veins, even with no heartbeat he could felt it. Herr Major was right. What a beauty war was!

And then everything turned downhill. The vampire turned to dust disappeared, a minute was there under his men's feet, and the other he was gone. A heavy thick copper mist flooded the place. Not even with his night vision he could perceive what was happening. He heard some terrified screams from his soldiers, broken bones, crushed flesh. Suddenly the mist started to concentrate in one point; it was like watching a gas grenade explosion backwards until it materialized in the shape of a man. The vampire they all had thought dead had Officer Hans' throat in the jaws. The British vampire spun his head not wanting to let go, Officer Hans's neck crushed in a mighty turn. Officer Oskar, Officer Ritter and a bunch of ghouls were almost recognizable under his feet. Hans' limp body fell like a wheat sack. The English vampire had a coughing fit that turned into manic laugh. The ghouls shoot again, this time he dodged most of the bullets. Sharp teeth crunching one undead after the other. He pinned one of the ghouls for pulling each limb as a kid that pulls a fly's wings. Then he took both stay arms to spear them to another ghoul. More bullets, he received them smiling!

The Obersturmführer was terrified. He ordered the ghouls to continue shooting, but it was useless. In the crossfire the female vampire abandoned her makeshift barricade, and hell broke loose. Two rampaging monsters, the male one had mostly lost the shape for the bullet holes, nothing more than two legs carrying an slimy shadow from where patches of detached skin, a pair of gleaming red eyes, and dozens of mouths emerging from the blackness. They mercilessly devoured two ghouls while the female vampire, who had lost one arm in some moment replacing it with a similar colored bloody shadow, sliced his ghouls in mid air.

Berit Nolten stepped back. He had already left his troops behind once; he started when his back reached the wall. By his foot there was a sturmgewehr. He crouched to reach it, his fingers trembling. The two monsters seemed to notice him. The girl stood half crouched feral eyes on her face, shiny pointy teeth drizzling blood. The other keep quiet looking at him while his many mouths got hold of a ghoul in front of his body, clearly draining it. It was a pause that had might last one second or one hour, the Obersturmführer wouldn't know it; his body was frozen in fear.

Even in his mauled state, Officer Ritter reached a sturmgewehr and fired at the female vampire. It hit her straight in the head, more than once.

The Hellsing vampire stumbled forward never losing feet. Instead, swift from her shadow a tall red braided man emerged. The apparition crushed what was left of Ritter under his boot, then picked the sturmgewehr to finish two or three ghouls. The other vampire pelted towards him, he shot aimlessly; it might have bulls eyed it, it might not. The only thing that was certain was his head falling by the side of his body. Walls dripping with the blood of his comrades and that short vampire, now with a more tangible shape, mauling his beheaded body.

Early in the morning. Integra had decided to hit the bed. Some hours ago she had received a call from Seras; everything was going according to plan. The Head of Hellsing was about to slid in dreamland when someone knocked at her room door with urgency.

"Excuse me, Sir Integra, for disturbing you at this hour in the morning." It was the head doctor on charge of the victims in the house "I got a call from Lieutenant Aiden; he needs to talk with you."

"I'll be there in a minute." No members of the Wild Geese were allowed to contact directly with her, had something happened with Seras? Integra dressed hasty to receive the call in her provisional office.

"What is it Lieutenant?"

"Sir, we've got a problem. Captain Seras and Duke entered in a pile of debris. They haven't come out and the sun is coming out."

She pinched the bridge in her nose, such a mundane task to call them?

"I assure you Lieutenant that they are perfectly capable to go back under the sunlight."

"That's not the problem Sir. They entered under the wreckage searching for survivors, and... the cranes showed that they have done more damage than the expected. But the problem is the rescuers have found a quite disgusting place where Captain and Duke may be, but no one wants to enter."

"And in which way do you find me fitting to attend such place?" Integra was losing her temper. Honestly they didn't want go out in the early morning when she had so much paperwork to do. However Aiden didn't give her a straight answer, he only asked one more time for her to come before hanging up.

And Integra couldn't believe her eyes when arriving to the place where she was lead through the ruins by Jules, Aiden and Morris, reaching a wide enclosed room in which walls were painted in blood. The floor was flooded with corpses and tattered pieces of flesh. It was like someone had put people in a mixer and had scattered the remains all around the place. Of course she was used to this gory display with Alucard, but so far she had thought sweet Seras and odd Duke were different. She noticed the swastika armband in a mauled arm, those Nazis deserved it. Somehow she was proud they had performed the task.

Upon entering the room a feeling squishiness under her dirty shoes made her shiver. The place stenched like slaughterhouse. In the wall with the door she noticed something unusual, two dead girls on the floor. Her flesh was soft, they had been alive not long ago; but their throats had been torn wide open. Integra stepped back, she had commit a mistake thinking of Seras and Duke as humans, they were monsters with all the extension of the word. Now the question was where had those two gone?

She got a call from outside, the rescue worker wanted to know if there was still danger, otherwise they should face a retrieving corpse mission. Integra shook her head even when only her men could see her anguish.

She went out of the room for not interfering with the sledge hammers breaking the wall from the outside. As the morning lights started to seep by the broken wall, Integra noticed something shuffling under the layers of death bodies. The last hit that made the wall crackle into pieces lighting the complete room triggered the awakening of two angry vampires. Seras thrushed to the darker side snarling and hissing, her missing arm again an unshaped shadow, her curvy body drenched with blood. Duke the other side, rushed over the closest rescuer, bare fangs ready to attack despite the bright light. Jules was the faster reacting, his rifle piercing silver bullets in all Duke's body. The vampire reacted furiously, not a glint of conscience, just numbing feral instinct, coming to his former comrades. Aiden and Morris bathed his body with more bullets. The vampire fell some feet near Integra, she could see how Duke had feed as his skin was no longer grayish. Seras had hidden in a corner, back against the wall. Obviously scared, and yet menacing. She grunted as Integra went closer, and then shifted to growls and snarls with the exposure of her dentition. The rescue team retreated, only some stayed there frozen by fear.

Integra pulled her gun. Three bullets were enough for the angered young vampire.

Afternoon, that same day. The vampires had been locked in their coffins. They had disobeyed her orders, as they were in a mission for killing ghouls, and they had instructions of calling rescue team in case of finding someone trapped in the ruins. They not only had killed two innocents, not related to the enemy, nor soldiers or policemen, but civilians. Moreover they were two starving kids. Integra could feel her pride thrown out by the window when they informed her that the victims were the children of German Consul, as the other country considered they had taken away two children for the consulship without formal authorization of their parents. And how could they ask for that if the Consul was a rotting corpse crushed under the remains of his own office?

When Integra got a calling from the Queen she knew this was not going to be easy.

Author's Note: Thank you all for the comments, I got some that really fired me up. This is the outcome of the battle, an explanation of why Seras couldn't find the source of the ghouls was in order, I hope it made sense.

This chapter reveals a little about Duke's past, but I won't push his background here. After all, this story is about Integra and Seras.