Misiunea Unei Regine
Ketti: I have nothing to say! Nothing? Nothing? NOTHING? Nothing tra la la?!
The very next day, in first period, Seras was left wondering about her Master's sanity once more. It seemed to have become a daily occurrence, and now she was sure that the people around her were questioning their own sanity or the girl's who dared bring a pet bat to school.
Her Master currently sat under her chin, his… wings wrapped securely around her neck and was silent. People would probably think that he was just a mere trinket if it wasn't for the fact that he had flown right into the window in the middle of class to land on her shoulder, shuffle his feet, and seemingly fall asleep on her. She couldn't probe his tiny mind or find any sign of intelligence within him and was almost considering it being a real bat until she heard a faint chuckle in her mind that promptly vanished when she realized it was her Master. He must be hiding something from her.
The teacher, (whose arse Baskerville crawled up to die) finally recovered from his shock and slammed his ruler down on his desk with such a clatter that every student save Seras jumped. "Miss Hellsing!" He nearly screamed, face turning such a violent red Seras wondered if he was about to burst a blood vessel. She tipped her chin up calmly – and her traitorous pet bat snuggled even closer to her neck subtly – and met his poisonous gaze with her own calm brown one, "Yes?" She asked mildly.
He did scream then, and stormed down the aisle between the desks with the ruler clenched tightly between his white knuckled fists. Seras wondered if he would try to hit her with it…
"Miss Hellsing…" He growled, clearly trying to keep from spitting with rage, "need I remind you that" he swallowed, and Seras saw his adams apple bob as though on a trampoline, "THERE ARE NO PETS ALLOWED AT SCHOOL!" He bellowed into her face and the ruler cracked in half.
Every other student in the room cowered back, one of the girls even began to sob, Seras reached up with deathly calm to flick the spittle off her cheek, and her smile was brittle, "I'm sorry, Sir, but I'm afraid he's quite attached." Literally, she added mentally, "and removing him would require my absence as well."
The trig teacher spluttered and the blotchy red turned a sickly shade of plum, the students began to whisper amongst themselves in a low murmur that grew to a quiet roar as such things often do. The teacher couldn't meet her gaze, and finally he turned around and stormed out of the room, bellowing something unintelligible that she thought translated toughly to, "I'm telling the Principal on you!"
Her lip twitched before she groaned and lifted a hand to cover her eyes. Great, just great, how was she supposed to blend in and get information from the students when everyone thought she was some sort of freak? Possibly with rabies. She added cynically, and the urge to laugh fought to rise, but she pushed it back. The last thing she needed was her classmates telling everyone she was crazy … er.
Seras spent the next half hour of the teacher's absence completely still and quiet as everyone around her silently thanked the freak for the teacher's distraction.. that was, until the bell rung and they had no choice but to report to their next class.
When she bent to gather her things the bat's wings tightened minutely and his tiny clawed feet curled into the collar of her shirt to keep his balance. She forced back a sigh and plastered a carefully neutral expression on her face as though, yes, having a bat attached to her throat was perfectly normal, thank you.
The Draculina once again found herself being stared at as she moved through the halls silently, her newfound pet clutching onto her neck. Otherwise, the walk was quiet, until someone bumped into her, causing her to turn and hiss in a very cat-like manner. Normally this wouldn't provoke such a reaction, because Seras had very good sensing abilities, despite her current distraction in the form of an entirely-too-cute fluffy bat, and normally she'd never simply get bumped into, as she could sense everything around her. But what startled her into her hiss was the fact that the person- or rather, ginger female- that bumped into, /wasn't/ on her radar, and that was very startling.
Seras made no comment of this though and kept her face blank (very strange for someone who'd just hissed) as she stared down the ginger she recognized from yesterday, noticing the very unapologetic look on the soulless (yeah, I went there) girl's face, then simply walked away. She made a note to tell this bit of information to her boss next time she got the chance as she hurried faster down the hall to her next class.
She heard - or felt, rather – the subtle growl in the bat's throat vibrating against her skin and she wished she could crane her head down to give the creature a look, to demand answers, but she refrained, pursing her lips as she slid in the open door and plonked herself down in her seat with a continued forced calm. Today was going so well…
Studiously ignoring the odd looks she received over her … scarf, she waited for the teacher to come back from her smoke break – smoking was not allowed on campus, and the teachers liked to call it a bathroom break or what have you, but Seras could clearly smell the nicotine on the middle aged woman despite her best attempts to mask it – to begin lesson number two of the day. Mrs. Dodders, bless her, gave only a perfunctory glance at the new student and her odd neck apparel, perhaps thinking it was a doll, before opening her thumper of a book for the day's class to begin. The sound of zippers from backpacks was followed swiftly by the gentle thumps of binders and notebooks hitting desks as students prepared to take notes, or to just pretend to pay attention and start sketching little doodles.
Mrs. Dodders paid little attention to Seras' living trinket and began the class droning on about History once again, and Seras tried to ignore the weird fact that her Sire was the main subject of almost all of the lessons in the History books. "Vlad Dracula formed an alliance with Hunyadi, in the hopes of persuading him he was the rightful heir to the throne, but it wasn't until 1456, that Vlad Dracula would make his move, killing his father's murderer, and defeating Vladislav II, to take over as the new ruler of Wallachia. In 1569, following an Easter Sunday feast, Vlad Dracula had all the boyar families who had been attending arrested. Those who were in good health were condemned to a life of slavery, and put to work on the construction of his PoenariCastle on the Arges river. Those who were old and weak were impaled for all to see. Thus began Vlad the Impaler's reign of blood and terror."
Seras should probably have been paying attention, maybe to learn more about her Master, but she couldn't find it in herself to listen to such a boring voice drone on and on. Though she offhandedly wondered why it was that she heard and reacted to everything that her Master probably didn't want her to hear, or something she didn't want to hear at all. Such as Vlad's conquests and wives, though she had to admit, Elizabeta's death was quite the tragedy, and couldn't bear the thought of coming home one day to find her love dead in the local river. But the bat stayed surprisingly calm during the lecture about himself.
"Vlad's time-tested scare tactics had a profound effect on the tired and hungry Sultan and his army. He abandoned the campaign, but he would later retaliate by sending Vlad Dracula's own brother to pick up where he left off. Radu and his men pursued Vlad to PoenariCastle on the Arges river. Dracula's wife, fearful of being captured by the Turks, jumped to her death from one of the battlement towers. Dracula himself fled through a secret passageway, which he used to get to the mountains. Seeking refuge in Transylvania, Vlad met with King Matthias Corvinus, but the latter had heard of Vlad's wicked ways, and had him imprisoned at Visegrad, the Hungarian capital." This little bit surprisingly caught her Sire's attention, because she was sure she just had heard a tiny squeak from her companion before he went bat shit and decided to terrorize the teacher by flying around her head in an irritating manner. Apparently her Master was embraced or something about this bit of information, and Seras had to hide the giggles that forced themselves up her throat.
The students began to shriek like little gi-…oh, right. The ones in the front row went so far as to duck under their desks with their binders held above their heads, spouting some nonsense about not getting in their hair. Mrs. Dodders actually took a moment to register the assault and when she did, she fell off her chair and Seras winced in sympathy.
The room devolved into a mass of screaming and flailing, and Seras' brow twitched minutely as she sensed the mob turn towards her, one girl was shoved and tripped on the Draculina's desk, nearly face planting herself in the vampire's generous bosom. She heard a whisper of laughter in her head, but it vanished in an instant when she tried to follow it back to his.
"Do something!" Someone screamed in her ear, and Seras stood, making her way to the front of the room where she held her hand up at an angle like a falconer summoning their tamed beast to land. Somewhat surprisingly, he did, and he went so far as to flip upsidedown with his toes curled around her wrist. She stared at him for a moment, a baffled expression on her face. She now had a pet bat as a bracelet.
The screaming had yet to cease and poor Mrs. Dodders had trouble getting to her feet, looking dazed. "I think," she said, "that it might be best for you to skip today's lesson, Miss Hellsing, and to not bring your little pet to school again." Her tone was mild, almost amused. Seras muttered some vague apology and grabbed her bag before exiting the room with her arm held at an awkward angle so that her 'pet' would not be jostled as she took refuge in the girl's bathroom to avoid the hall monitors.
She shot the winged mammal a warning look as she transferred his supposedly slumbering form to hang from a light fixture. She was practically daring him to take human form and molest her again.
(She wasn't sure if she was thankful or disappointed that he refrained.) She spent the remainder of the hour reading a book she had been meaning to finish for the past few weeks, too caught up in it all with her Sire's belated return to find the time to do so.
The bell for English rang and she put the book back in her bag, as she stood, she heard the flutter of wings, and sighed resignedly as the (comforting) heat of a small body nestled back into her neck.
Again she ignored the looks.
She was a little surprised that she hadn't been called to the office yet. (I mean, really¸ a pet bat?!)
When she sank into her seat, she immediately tuned out the hoe-ish teacher prattling on about… whatever the hell she was spouting. As her mind drifted, she absently noted the warm weight shifted slowly downwards until it was nestled into her breasts. Her (brown) eyes had an unfocused glassy look to them as she stared out the window, her left hand raising to begin absently caressing the soft fuzz of the (smug) bat's head as the weird looks became even more scandalized. She didn't notice.
Many long, long, boring hours later Seras was very happy to walk into her dorm, and had planned on taking a nap before she had to infiltrate the girl's meeting later that day.
Unfortunately Seras was not granted such a luxury, as soon as she entered she could hear the ringing of a phone and her roommate's glare.
"Someone has been calling you for the last hour." McBitch complained, irritation high in her voice, and something else the Draculina couldn't identify in her eyes.
Seras wondered idly why they hadn't called her cell phone, but then she remembered that her beloved Master had ruined it about an hour ago when the shrill ringtone interrupted his... nap.
She glanced at her roomie meaningfully and the girl sneered, face contorting in an ugly expression. "Fine!" She hissed, storming from the room and slamming the door. "Stupid fucking pushy bitch." Whatserface swore, and Seras rolled her eyes, shrugging.
She picked up the endlessly ringing room phone, and barely had time to say 'ello? before she was cut off.
"Police Girl, put Alucard on the phone." Sir Integra's voice floated up from the ear piece, and the blonde half turned, looking over her shoulder at the bat that had migrated to her ceiling. Her brow arched silently, and as she watched, the wretched beast descended towards the floor, growing bigger with each flap of his membranous wings. He bared his teeth at her in a shark's grin as he extended his gloved hand towards her for the (thankfully cordless) phone. She rolled her right shoulder in a half shrug and handed the device over, dropping down into her chair to start her homework.
"Jealous, my Master?" Her Sire cooed into the phone, and Seras fought back the urge to snicker in response. She listened with half an ear as Integra spouted obscenities at the laughing man in her dorm room.
"Calm down, my Master." He interrupted when Seras could tell the woman had stopped to catch her breath, she had a faint worry that perhaps her Sire might drive the Hellsing to aneurism with how he loved to raise her blood pressure. "There is no need for me to be at Hellsing when there's nothing to do." He continued in a lofty tone, sounding bored.
"BATS!" Seras heard that scream quite clearly, and the tip of her pencil snapped, she cursed and reached for a new one, cinnamon brown eyes (thanks to her contacts) dancing with badly concealed mirth. Oh, it wasn't funny, not really, but listening to Sir Integra berate the vampire tickled her pink.
"Bats would imply a plural." Alucard corrected mildly, also amused.
"And how does having a pet vampire bat help Victoria blend in?!" Integra hollered, and a smack sounded through the wires as the aged woman slapped her desk in aggravation. Seras' rather joking worry was quickly losing its mirth, and she felt the ridiculous urge to portal over to the manor to ensure that Sir Integra took her blood pressure pills and had a drink to calm her down.
Alucard, perhaps reading his Childe's thoughts, modulated his tone slightly – only the two women left in his unlife would notice – and murmured something the distracted girl didn't quite catch. With a flick of her wrist, the pencil scribbled the last answer on her sheet and her homework was done. At the same time, the phone was put back on its charging cradle and the call was over. The blonde's brows furrowed slightly, but figured that she'd get her chance to talk to Integra later that night after she crashed the meeting with that David fellow. It was the only lead she had.