A/N: It would appear that the 'dark' Seras is going down rather well. I hope then that you're all prepared for the following - it's not the darkest that she will become but it sets a good precident for things to come.

Please enjoy this latest installment.

The Departed.

As the vampire in question backed hastily into a corner, Seras caught against his chest with a knife to her throat, Alucard wondered what the outcome of this situation would be. It was clear that the vampire was an idiot – not to have even noticed that Seras was a vampire herself – and it was clear that he would be dead in a very short amount of time. What wasn't clear however was which one of them it was who would off him. Seras looked, for her part, absolutely terrified and to the vampire who had her clutched to him as a shield that was probably exactly how he saw her. But to Alucard it was blindingly obvious that it was not terror in her eyes but excitement of the darkest kind.

Her pupils were fixed on her master, dilated and glistening in the dim light of the street lamps and she had ceased to breathe. He could practically see her teeth elongating behind the cover of her lips and it was only because he was so terrified of the master vampire before him, that her captor didn't notice them as well.

"There have been a string of attacks around Piccadilly circus," Sir Integra began. She was reclined in her desk chair, a cigar between her fingers and she rolled it circumspectively. "Large numbers of prostitutes have been reported missing and have all been reported to have last been seen with the same man."

She paused for a pull from her cigar and the smoke spiralled lazily towards the ceiling, two pairs of red eyes watching its ascent. Sir Integra continued, "We have three policemen dead and one child reputedly involved in the case. You have one objective: Search and destroy. Seras, you are dismissed, Alucard, I would have a word with you."

With a quick peak at her master, Seras turned around and left. Almost as soon as the door was shut, Sir Integra was out of her seat. She crossed the room under Alucard's curious red gaze to a set of drawers on the far wall, from which she pulled a briefcase, clearly too heavy for her to wield comfortably because she huffed and puffed as she struggled to close the drawers one-handed.

Gently, Alucard took the case from his master, lifting the weight from her thin, bony fingers and taking the thing to her desk for her. She raised an eyebrow and folded her arms over her chest. Damned vampire being so smooth. Yes she was older now and wasn't as capable with some things as she used to be, but that case was damned heavy, it wasn't because she was frail.

She was determined not to feel thankful for his good behaviour and stayed exactly where she was. "I took the liberty of replacing your old Jackal with something a little more reliable." She said and, at her prompting, Alucard opened the case.

The gun looked, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same as the jackal, indeed it was even named the same. Every spec she listed was the precise copy of everything Walter had laid out for it. Red eyes narrowed as he inspected it.

"It's an exact copy."

"Not quite. It is a half gram heavier and won't explode with excessive heat."

"Really…?"

"You over fired the last one and the metal wouldn't take the strain. I had that gun made nearly thirty years ago so it is now an antique. Don't break it."

The grin that spread over his face was barely perceptible from the slight curve in his cheek, but his back was to his master so the full extent of his amusement was lost on her. This was probably a very good thing.

"I have one more thing I'd like you to do, Alucard." Sir Integra said when Alucard had finished his inspection of the new Jackal and, finding it satisfactory enough, put it away in a halter beneath his jacket. "I would like you to observe Seras Victoria and report to me anything of note."

"Of… Note?" There was a lot which could fit into that category.

"Behaviour, acts of unnecessary cruelty, mission performance dipping below the ideal." Sir Integra clarified, fishing her cigar case from her left breast-pocket and popping it open with one hand while her other dug in her pocket for a lighter. "If there's anything about her which seems out of her ordinary, report it."

Did this count as abnormal behaviour; the sexuality that she leant to a routine clean-up operation? He could feel the tremors from her heart as the dead flesh fluttered in her chest, attempting to beat. Strange scents began to overtake him as her irises slipped off the edges of her eyes, the pupils so wide as to monopolise her gaze… It took him a couple of breaths to realise that this scent was her personal pheromone being released into the air. It was like a finger, crooked in the direction of his heart begging it to beat as well, but all it did was lengthen his fangs.

The vampire she was crushed to also seemed to notice the scent, but wasn't experienced enough to recognise it for what it was and so just stood there, sniffing the breeze. Seras' mouth began to move, so slowly it was barely perceptible, but as the seconds passed in tense silence a wide smile began to stretch the flesh of her lips. Trepidation for the kill began to rise as their situation seemed to be reaching its head, but Alucard was loath to take the shot and deprive his fledgling of what promised to be her pleasure.

To the vampire target, there was nothing suspicious about the girl he was holding, but before he even had time to fully realise it, her hand was beneath his ribs, finger-tips tickling his heart. He dropped the knife with a pained shout and shoved Seras from him. She fell to the floor with a splash of stale blood.

An eyebrow rose as before Alucard's eyes black, glistening tendrils began to bloom from a small nick on his fledgling's throat. They unfurled like a set of tentacles just stretching after a long sleep and extended towards the now-cowering vampire. Terror seemed to be the order of the night as the hands which had been clamped firmly over the gaping hole in the vampire's abdomen were pulled firmly away and the hole was pulled open by many more of the tentacles, like hooks. The screams filled the night air; she had opened him out like some lab experiment that was up for dissection. Alucard couldn't take his eyes from the scene.

At his feet, Seras began to chuckle as she picked herself daintily from the ground and brushed herself off, although the blood soaked into her clothes was going to need more than a simple brushing off to sort out.

"Did you know, it's said that it takes an average of five seconds for the vampyrric body to disintegrate following the removal of its heart?" She said as she turned to face her victim. It was amazing how quickly the situation turned itself around in her hands. "Shall we remove yours and see if that's true?"

The victim could only scream in fear, prompting Seras to shake her head in apparent amusement. She shot a glance over her shoulder at her master and smiled, "Incredible, isn't it? How even the stupidest of monkeys can end up being vampires. He hasn't managed a single word this entire time."

Alucard raised his eyebrow at the sentiment but made no comment because Seras had already returned to her prey.

"If you can manage the language of the human race," She said, a scathing note in her voice as she stood before the quivering vampire, "You're going to answer a few of my questions and I will end your suffering."

Questions? Alucard couldn't remember there being any questions to be asked, but once again he let her get on with it; perhaps there was something he missed.

"Have you had any contact with a small child since becoming what you are?" She asked, arms folded over her chest.

The vampire appeared confused and shook his head. His jaw was between Seras' fingers, several snaps sounding as she broke his teeth like little pegs inside his mouth. "Language of the human race." She snarled, eliciting a pained and frightened yowl from her prey. "That means words, cock-sucker!"

Alucard winced at the phrase. Far from the usual derogatory meaning affiliated with the term, to imply such a thing about a creature who sustained its life through the action of sucking… It was a little too low, even for him. Did Seras mean it like that though? Was she clued in to the implications of what she'd just said? The wrinkles on her nose – adorable, by the way – and the sardonic note through her voice suggested she did.

"No." The vampire whispered, voice barely audible above the croak that broke from his throat.

"The child has nothing to do with you?" She asked him again, knuckles turning white from the grip she had on his jaw.

"No!" He shouted, eyes screwed tightly shut.

A whisper of a prayer was felt in the air, but before it could make anything of itself it was cut viciously short. Seras dangled the heart in front of its owner by an artery – the subclavian artery if Alucard wasn't much mistaken – and the vampires eyes widened in horror as Seras began to count.

"One… Two… Three… Four… Fi- Hmm… That's a shame," She turned around to face her master, fore-finger and thumb still clasped as though the heart was still there. "He didn't even make it to five…"

Alucard raised his eyebrow. He seemed to have been doing that a lot lately where his fledgling was concerned. "It's only an average." He heard himself say, sounding remarkably calm despite the turmoil he felt inside.

This was probably exactly the sort of nightly activity that Sir Integra was talking about when she said 'anything of interest', although to whom it would be the most interesting was not clear. Currently, Alucard was leading the way back to the temporary base while his fledgling walked along behind him and frankly, it made him feel a little uncomfortable. He wasn't used to such human emotions as worry. Technically he hadn't had to 'worry' about those for almost 600 years, give or take a few decades, and boy oh boy what a relief that had been! Now he was feeling the hints of emotion again he was reminded just how much of a burden they were.

In the car ride back to Hellsing Mansion, there was very little space – apparently one of the cars had struck with a flat tire and needed to be hauled away by the AA, of all things – and thus the only place for Seras to sit was on her Master's knee. Facing forward. Thankfully she appeared to be just as embarrassed about this as he did – her scent was so seductively strong it was almost destructive - and for the better part of the journey they sat in determined and uncomfortable silence.

Eventually, desperate to lift the oppressive atmosphere, Alucard asked one of the questions that had been preying on his mind since the completion of the mission – though admittedly the question he chose to ask was one of the less wild ones – "Why did you bother to ask him about the child?"

Evidently glad of the conversation, Seras shifted on her seat so she wouldn't have to crane her neck to speak to him. "I wanted to make sure that we'd completely finished the mission. It wouldn't do to leave any lose ends. Simply assuming he was the only one to have been working in the area means we'd have missed it."

"It?"

She frowned, as if he was being stupid. "That there's another vampire out there."

He rolled his eyes. "Police Girl-"

"Not my name."

"-There will always be another vampire out there. As long as we exist, there will be vampires." The frown turned into a scowl, clearly unimpressed. "It's unavoidable. What you're doing is extra foot work. Unnecessary foot work."

"I'm a cop, it's my job."

"Past tense."

By the time they'd arrived back at the Mansion, they had descended once again into silence, though this one was decidedly frostier than the last. The two pet vampires went immediately to report to their master, keeping a good cubic meter of space between them.

"So," Sir Integra addressed them once they'd settled themselves into at-ease positions. "What have you to report?"

Alucard's purr was the first to be heard. "Mission successful, my Master."

"There is another Vampire in the close vicinity." Seras said suddenly, very nearly cutting her master up, but keeping herself on the polite side of insultingly close. Just barely though.

"What do you mean?" Sir Integra snapped, the extra bit of information, lack of sleep and her advancing age rendering her instantly irritable.

"The case with the child has nothing to do with the Vampire we destroyed tonight." Seras replied, "He said so himself."

"And what makes you think he told you the truth?" Sir Integra growled, "Scum have no trouble with lying."

"I made it sound as though I would give him his freedom if he gave me the information I wanted."

"And did you?"

"Of course not. I killed him as soon as he had outlived his worth. But he was adamant that he wasn't the vampire in connection with the child."

Sir Integra paused for thought, dragging a breath through her cigar and letting the smoke roll around her teeth. "Very well, if you have nothing else to report, Seras you are dismissed." She finally conceded, the smoke coming out with her speech.

Seras nodded, swept a bow and about faced, making to leave the room. But not before she stuck her tongue out in an I-told-you-so fashion at her Master.

"Well," Sir Integra prompted once Seras was deemed far enough away, "What have you to report, Alucard?"

"Nothing of note." He lied.

"Are you lying to me?" She questioned, eyes narrowing menacingly.

"When I have something worth reporting, I will endeavour to do so, my Master." He dodged the question.

"There was really nothing?" She wasn't convinced. "Alucard, I know something happened tonight, I could smell it all over her and she's covered in blood. Are you sure there was nothing."

"I'm sure."

"But the smell."

"Smell?"

"Yes!" She snapped again, her momentarily returned patience frittering away alarmingly quickly in the face of his apparent stupidity. "The smell! Her smell! It's filled my office! I know you can smell it and I know you know what it is, so don't even attempt to tell me you can't smell it!"

He adopted a sheepish expression, purely for effect as he muttered, "I didn't realise you could smell it."

His words were, of course, perfectly audible and Sir Integra bristled visibly. "What did you do?"

"What makes you think the scent has anything to do with me?" He asked and his master wrinkled her nose. Apparently the word 'scent' was far too kind for her liking, although calling it a 'smell' didn't really fit in his books either.

"Fine." She said and turned her eyes away as she wafted a hand dismissively in his direction, "Keep your secrets. I don't even want to know. You're dismissed."

He swept a low bow, one hand fisted behind his back, the other held to his chest, palm first before fading away to go and find his fledgling. There were some things he just had to know now. Like why the hell Sir Integra praised her for her unnecessary analysis of the mission.

When he arrived in his fledgling's room however, all words deserted him. It would have appeared, from the strangled yelp of his fledgling and the garbled string of curses that exploded from the short blonde, that his visit was somewhat unexpected. She dove for the night dress that was slung over the edge of her four-poster.

"It's nothing I've not already seen." He said, as much trying to assure himself as her.

"That's not the point." She whined, face bright pink. Well, some things never changed at least. And it wasn't as if she was naked, she was still in her under-wear for Pete's sake!

He rolled his eyes and joked, "Should I turn around?"

The narrowed eyes that peered out at him over that stifling blush warned him not to try to be amusing because it wasn't going to work. But from somewhere she managed to find some courage and discarded the night dress. It fell just short of the bed, a rumpled satin skeleton.

"Don't bother, I wasn't feeling the night dress anyway." She said, hands on her hips. Was she sassing him? He thought he was sassing her.

There followed a staring match, bright red eyes versus dull red orbs that seemed almost dusty in her head. Was she ok? She looked a little… Well… peaky…

"You look ill, Police Girl." He said and her blush darkened dramatically, her streak of eminent bravado waning. "When did you last feed?"

"Last night." She said, turning around and going to her bedside table. "But this has nothing to do with that."

She began rummaging around in her room, searching through cupboards, drawers, under her four-poster and everywhere until eventually she came up with a packet of cigarettes previously hidden under her pillow. She cast about for a lighter and – failing to find one – turned to her master. "Do you have a light?"

He raised an eyebrow. "No."

She clicked her tongue in annoyance and looked at the cigarette forlornly. "It's a shame, it looks like the night ends here. Well," She looked up at her master, "Goodnight, Master."

It looked as though any questions he had would have to wait until another time as Alucard found himself being ushered through the door by the scantily clad fledgling. He walked to his chambers in silence, thoughts running wild, so confused and pretty damn sure he was going to be unable to sleep. She smoked? Since when? Why? Did she understand what indulging in the habits of the living meant? How insulting it was to a vampire to copy the living? She was a queen of the undead, so why was she smoking a damned fag?!

He arrived in his chambers a bit of a mental mess and cast his eyes about for a meal. In front of his throne sat a bucket of ice, and three packets of blood. He tucked in without hesitation, thankful that the blood was still the same as he remembered it to be. At least that hadn't changed… Collapsed gracelessly in his throne, sucking on the blood packet – fore-going the wine glass in the light of the evening he'd had – he decided to do a little probing of his little bird's mind, hoping to throw some clarity on his situation. He very quickly wished, however, that he hadn't. The image of his own lips caressing soft, supple skin and blonde hair falling in sexy disarray beneath an annoying familiar cowboy hat helped him in no way, what-so-ever. But it did tell him how much sleep he was likely to get today; very little indeed.

A/N: A bit cheeky at the end, I know, but I just couldn't help myself. We shall see the return of the cigarette at some point and all questions shall be answered, have no fear. I am aware (before anyone decides to wave a copy of the manga under my nose or cite the OVA) that Seras doesn't think very highly of cigarettes, but all shall be explained, so keep your knickers on people, geez!

Anyway, if anyone has any prompts, anything they'd like to see, I will happily write to specification :D

Please tell me what you thought of this lastest installment (It was only supposed to be 100 words... Oops!) and if there's anything you think I need to improve upon :D

-Lapin...