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"Ugh." Normally Joshua wasn't one to complain, but the tedium of sticking his head in portals for hours on end was getting to him. As it turned out, London was really boring compared to Shibuya. Everyone was dressed blandly, the music was dull, and the people had nothing to do in their lives except make mindless chit-chat. Even the weather was tired and gray. What Joshua would give to be able to play with that girl Larissa again and have a decent conversation.

Look in a portal, nothing, move on. Look in a portal, nothing, move on. Look in a portal, nothing, move on. Look in a portal, drown for a second, move on. Look in a portal, steal a towel, move on. Look in a portal, see a guy with black wings eating a sub sandwich, move on.

Wait what?

Joshua looked back through the portal. Sure enough, right smack in front of his face were two big black wings sprouting out of a tank top and a very shocked looking tiny man with a sandwich hanging out of his jaw. Joshua's luck spread itself all over his face in a toothy grin.

"Helloooo," he sang. "Those are some very nice wings you have there." He started pulling himself out of the portal towards the Reaper, letting his arms dangle as he crawled over the countertop his portal had been hovering above. His eyes narrowed seductively at the Reaper. "Why don't you and I have a nice chat about a woman named Seras Victoria."

Rocky felt a cacophony of emotions at that moment, one of the primary ones being a sense of creepiness from the kid's stare. There was also confusion, annoyance, some lingering attraction to the cashier girl who was giving him a worried look, hunger, and finally understanding when he heard the name, Victoria.

"You're one of the foreigners working for Seras," Rocky said coldly, putting down his lunch. Joshua perceived his subtle switch from the Real Ground into the UG. Now they were in private, which was perfect for him.

"Heh, sure. You can say that I guess." Joshua stepped out of the portal and floated over the counter. Rocky stood and hovered up to Joshua's level. Joshua noted the twitching pulsations in his wings, as though they were having muscle spasms. Odd.
"She erased my friend," Rocky hissed. Joshua smiled coolly: this would be easier than he'd anticipated.

Joshua leaned forward real close until his face was nearly touching Rocky's. He whispered something very quietly, just barely audible.
"Your friend was weak," he taunted him with a nasty sneer.
Suddenly Joshua's vision went black as something grabbed his face, and he felt Rocky throw several punches into his abdomen. Then before he could react Joshua was crashing into a wall and fell onto the sidewalk.

Across the street he could see Rocky, and realized why his wings looked so odd before: they weren't Reaper wings. His wings were obscured behind two black appendages that looked like wings at first, but had now morphed into large muscular arms that were swaying behind his back. Something was squirming under Rocky's flesh, moving around his body just under the skin. Rocky himself was enraged, breathing a dense mist and curling his fists.
Joshua picked himself off the ground and pulled out his phone, smiling. "Don't you die on me," he said. "It's been ages since I've had a good fight with a Reaper."

Rocky kicked off the ground and charged at Joshua, his four fists clenched and ready. The black fists on his back clearly weren't bound neatly to his frame, because when Rocky punched right it was able to punch left despite the twist in his body, and Joshua got hit by it. Left open, Joshua took another pummeling until a fifth hand grabbed his leg and tossed him into the air like a rag. Rocky flew after him.

Unfazed, Joshua typed a command into his phone and brought down a volley of laser fire. Rocky was able to dodge most of them, but got clipped by one and had a chunk of his shoulder blown off. A sixth appendage grew out of the hole and corrected his flight pattern, and he was back in close range within an instant. He was incredibly fast, Joshua had to admit.

This time, Joshua was able to weave through Rocky's attacks despite his steadily increasing number of fists. He deftly inputs another command into his phone, and a portal opened up above the two. In a fluid motion, Joshua kicked off of Rocky with both of his feet and sailed away as a truck fell on the Reaper. He and the truck fell several meters, and then stopped in midair. The truck tipped off of him and Rocky flew after Joshua's falling body.

Joshua fired another volley of lasers, this time sure Rocky couldn't dodge them. But then one of the appendages stretched out from Rocky's body and stuck into a nearby building, yanking Rocky out of the way. He landed on the wall with a stony crunch and continued his manic charge.
"Oh," Joshua said stupidly as Rocky bashed into him head-first. Reapers in London were way more aggressive than in Shibuya. He skidded down the concrete and hit his head on a mailbox with a loud clang. Rocky stomped up to him and grabbed him by the collar.

"Seras," he growled. "Tell me where she is and I'll consider not killing you."
"Huh." Joshua looked down at the Reaper and smirked. He let his cell phone drop from his palm onto the ground. "I guess I get to try this now." Joshua's fist cracked across Rocky's face and the two went soaring in opposite directions. Joshua glided onto his feet and gently massaged his torn knuckles as Rocky bounced helplessly down the road. Bits and pieces of his face splattered on the road and walls between them.

Joshua picked his phone off the ground and placed it in his pocket. He chuckled a bit to himself. "Shame," he said. "I'd hoped to make a grander show." Someone made an impressed whistle beside him, and was accompanied by the telltale sound of 90's hip-hop.
Two outlandish collages of color strode out of an alley just behind Joshua. The source of the hip-hop was a very white teenage boy with a bright yellow sideways hat and a boom box resting on his shoulder. He had a big bull-like nose ring and a large fury pimp coat over his bare chest, and purple cargo pants with various mix tapes and CDs weighing down the pockets. The one who whistled was a girl with giant light green pigtails and shirts so layered and torn that a normal person would think she'd been stealing clothes from tiger-attack victims and tie-dyeing all of them. Her skirt was plaid, and that's about it. She was rolling forward on a pair of hot pink roller blades and mindlessly spinning a yoyo.

"Not too shabby friend," the girl said. She gave Joshua a feminine wink.
"'Not too shabby?!'" the boy copied. "That was fucking sick bro!"
Joshua hesitated for a moment before responding. "Thanks. He wasn't too tough."

The girl teetered on her wheels and palmed the yoyo. "Heh, you haven't fought Big Rock before, have you? He ain't done with you."
The three looked down the road at the Reaper's body. There must have been a dozen various black, wormy limbs pushing Rocky off the ground. He looked up, his eyes livid and uncontrolled. A large section of his face had been blown off by Joshua's punch, leaving only bone from the bottom of the left side of his jaw to where he used to have an ear. Black tendrils were wriggling out of the wound and forming a kind of oily mane. Through his teeth, Joshua saw a single glowing white eye staring at him, completely blank of intent but entirely aware of his presence.

"He's got a Noise inside his body," Joshua realized.
"Yup," the girl said. The boy was switching out the track in his boom box and rifling his many pockets for a new one. "Real biter, that one. Keeps Rock alive no matter how bad we beat him, and it ain't got a stable form. The thing can be whatever it wants outside his body."
"And yet it's always one ugly motherfucker," the boy added, examining a CD. Unsatisfied, he kept searching.

"No reason to worry, though," the girl said, spinning her yoyo around her finger. "B-rad and I are always happy to lend a hand to our fellow Player."
"And lay a serious beat down on them nasty-ass Reapers," Brad said with a wily grin, finally settling on a track. He set it in the boom box and turned the volume up to max. When the beat started up Joshua immediately felt his energy spike. His torn knuckles healed themselves and suddenly it was like the fight before never happened.
"Oooooh," the girl moaned. "Nice choice B. Digging the bass."
"I aim to please."

The girl rolled forward toward Rocky. She spun around and addressed Joshua. "Name's Amy by the way."
Joshua smiled. "Joshua. You know I have a couple friends that I think would really get along with you two."
"Maybe another time Josh. Right now, you think you're up for another round with Big Bad Rock over here?" She winked at him again, and her yoyo began to glow with a pulsing energy.
Joshua grinned his Cheshire grin and winked back. "I like you."

Annabelle sat upon her Composer throne, carefully thumbing through the plans of her Game today. Seven teams had already completed their mission, far more than she'd originally accounted for.

"I must have made today's mission too easy," she addressed Reece, who was still in his workshop but she knew he could hear her. One of the things she admired about Reece was his virtual omnipresence in the HQ. "Megan and Rocky must be slacking off today. Perhaps I should have sent Malcolm in her place, let Megan get some more rest after yesterday. It's odd about Rocky, though, his kill count is normally much higher than this." Reece did not reply, to Annabelle's mild disappointment.

She checked her feed into the goal of the mission. There was Megan, fighting a pair of Pin Players with what looked like relative ease. Annabelle was relieved to see that she had healed fairly quickly, and her kill count was steadily rising. But other Players were clearly sneaking around her to reach the actual mission goal, some low-level Red Noise.
"Where the hell is Rock?" She scanned the immediate vicinity around Megan's battle, but found nothing. Annabelle began to fume silently; after the London Eye incident, she was in no mood to deal with straying Reapers. She opened up the map of the London cityscape and looked over everything to find her Reaper. It didn't take long to find the giant lasers firing into the sky.

She zoomed in. "There you are Rocky… Oh bloody hell, the Americans." There was Amelia Mandlo and Bradford Coglitch, some American nobodies that came to London on vacation and got killed in a hit and run. Probably because of their gaudy fashion sense, Annabelle thought. Their very appearance is a road hazard. They'd been picking fights with her Reapers all week. The girl especially had an intensely violent streak, Coglitch was actually fairly calm. It was rather amusing to Annabelle to watch them get tossed in the dirt whenever they'd start something stupid with a Reaper, but somehow they always managed to slink away and finish the mission before they could be erased. And now they were keeping Rocky away from his post.

"Stupid wanker Yankees," Annabelle grimaced. She narrowed her eyes at the fight: there was Mandlo, skating around and waving her yoyo like a flail, of course. There was Coglitch, doing what appeared to be cheerleading with his boom box, giving Mandlo various buffs of course. And there was Rocky with his Tamed Noise, going completely berserk and breaking things in the UG. But who was the fourth figure?
The frame froze at Annabelle's command, and she focused on the blonde figure. Asian, vaguely masculine, and… holding a cell phone that hadn't been invented outside of the UG yet.
"You aren't a Player…" She let the feed continue playing.

"Wooooooooooo!" Amy spun over and around a flurry of arms and sped past Rocky, her yoyo propelling her forward in an explosive version of the "walk the dog" trick. She skid into a U-turn and swung at an amalgamation of black serpentine limbs. A few popped open upon contact with her yoyo and left a gap for her to fashionably leap through and bring the yoyo back down on the Reaper core in a swirling arch before speeding away again.

Meanwhile, Joshua was making the sound barrier his bitch. He'd grossly underestimated the strength of this Reaper at first, so now he decided to take things a little more seriously. But with Rocky's attention split between two targets now, Joshua didn't have to try to dodge his blows. Rocky himself was chasing after him to the best of his ability, striking at Joshua's after-image and getting slammed by barrages of laser fire. With every hit more and more of the Noise inside his body crept out of him; if Rocky so much as opened his mouth the worm-like thing would strike out and try to bite whatever was in front of it. There were shards of metal and mail envelopes caught in its teeth from one angry outburst. Joshua thought it wasn't very fair, but they were making one hell of a show.

"Good to see you're having fun," Joshua called back to Amy.
"Hahahahaha, are you kidding?" She screamed over the wind blowing in her ears. "This is the scariest fucking shit I've done in my entire life! I can't feel my everything!" She grabbed a light post and spun around it into a multicolored tornado, her yoyo whirling like a buzz saw and laughing crazily.
"Whoa…" Joshua dived under Rocky and blasted him into the troposphere. It was more of a forceful hit than a painful one. "Is she okay?" he asked Brad in the brief moments they had before Rocky came back.

"Yeah, girl gets a little wack when she fights Reapers." He shrugged to the rhythm of the music. "Don't sweat it, Jay."
Joshua snickered. "Seriously, you HAVE to meet my friend Beat."
Brad pointed to the sky. "Yo man heads up!"

The black amorphous asteroid known as Rocky and his Tamed Noise came down on Joshua faster than a cell could split and slammed into the ground with a sound that only a volcano could be heard over. A thousand sharp teeth were fighting to dig into Joshua's flesh and keep him immobilized.
"Josh!" Amy raced to the mountain of Noise flesh prepared to dig out Joshua with her yoyo. Suddenly a mostly human body burst out of the Noise and grabbed her by the throat.

"You first!" Rocky roared as he carried her into the air, his Noise tethering him to Joshua and the ground. His Noise squealed between his teeth and nipped at her torso, tearing off chunks of her stomach and chest as if she was an apple. Rocky bit the wormy thing and it retracted back into his gullet.

"Shit!" Brad exchanged mix tapes in his boom box at a panicked speed. He aimed the speakers at the Reaper. "You get your fucking hands off of her!" He started the music and two twisting pylons shot out of the speakers and slammed into Rocky's gut with a loud metal chorus. He recoiled and dropped Amy, giving her a moment to hit him in the side of the head with her yoyo. Brad dropped his boom box to run out and catch her. She was bleeding pretty badly.
At the same moment Brad's blast struck Rocky, Joshua burnt a hole through the Noise pile and leapt out into the sky above Rocky.

As Annabelle was watching him ascend, she saw the boy do something terrifying: he winked and pointed his finger at her through the screen. She leapt back as he fell back down and drove his knee into Rocky's skull and blew him into the asphalt.
"Reece!" She yelled.

"I saw it too," Reece appeared behind her throne. "Malcolm and Richard are heading to that location as we speak."
"You need to go too," Annabelle said. There was an edge of fear in her voice. "They won't stand a chance, you need to go take care of this." She stood up and raced past Reece to a secret door in the back wall. "Go now damnit!"

Damnit, I knew that kid looked familiar! Her thoughts raced as she sped through the secret halls of the HQ into her personal study, clutching her necklace protectively. There was a filing cabinet impossibly filled with reports and documents about Games and Composers from all over the world. She'd been studying them ever since she became a Composer in order to better do her job.
No Player or Reaper could know she was watching them, especially not one from outside. Annabelle rifled through the Japanese Composers, and after some flustered digging, she found a match.

"Yoshiya Kiryu," she read. "Shibuya, Japan… Why the fuck are you in my territory?"
An onset of realization shivered Annabelle's spine. The Living Player. He belongs to Kiryu. They said he was connected to Seras. Kiryu is working with Seras. Kiryu is trying to dethrone me!

Annabelle involuntarily dropped the file. Joshua was smiling up at her from his picture, taunting her. He had more experience. He made one of the most complicated Reaper Games in the world. He had a veritable army of Reapers at his beck and call, and she only had four and a Producer because nobody wanted to stay dead in London while hundreds of Japanese kids are lining up at his door for the opportunity. He had an angel for a Producer, and Reece was only a thousand years old. He had a Living Player. No matter what angle Annabelle came at the problem, she was stunningly outmatched. If Reece didn't erase him right now, things could become unwinnable.

"No…" Annabelle growled. She stared at Joshua's picture, and it stared back. "I'm not going down, not like this." She stormed out of the study and out of the Reaper HQ. The sun was setting, night had all but fallen. The Player's mission had nearly ended.
"I will not have my right stolen by that girl again!" She announced to the London skyline. She bellowed from her very soul the goal she carved into her life. Her power flared and electrified the city of London, and everyone living and dead felt her energy at the same moment. "If anyone tries to deny me, I will destroy them! I am Composer King, and I will ascend into godhood!"

Looming over Rocky's limp body, Joshua felt a wave crash against him. He smiled, knowing that his message had been received. Suddenly the day had become very productive.
Rocky struggled to raise his body from the cracked earth. Blood and Noise was dripping from his wounds. Brad had already fled with Amy in his arms to recuperate; the Reaper and the Composer were alone.

"Still alive?" Joshua asked mockingly. "Do you need anything? Coffee? A bowl of chicken soup?" He kicked the Reaper in the stomach and he hit the ground ten feet away. "Should I draw you a nice hot bath?" Joshua approached the sprawled body and leaned down, his hands in his pockets.

"Or maybe I should just erase you now. Would you prefer that?" The air temperature spiked and Joshua raised his hand to block the barrage of explosive fire coming at him. He turned to see two Reapers lording over the scene from the rooftops. A fiery ball formed in front of Oni's outstretched hand.
"Get away from our friend," he said in a low, threatening tone. Richard stood beside him, his hand hidden under his vest.
Joshua's face changed instantly into an amicable smile. "I've seen you on TV."

"Get. Away. From. Rocky." Joshua raised his hands in submission and backed off. The two leapt from the roof and stood between Joshua and Rocky. Oni kept his attack ready and poised to knock Joshua's head off while Richard helped Rocky onto his feet.
Rocky coughed painfully. "He's… with Seras."

"We know Rock," Richard said. He slid Rocky's arm around his shoulder. "Don't worry, we'll get you home and fixed up."
"No!" Rocky struggled to escape Richard's weak grasp. "I can fight! He's going to tell me where Seras is and I'm going to kill her!"
"You're missing part of your face Rock," Oni pointed out. "You aren't fighting shit. Just leave this to me while Richard gets you out of here."

Rocky struggled harder. "Fuck you Oni! You're going to bring that treacherous cunt back here to kill us all, just like Bobby! Oh God, Bobby…" He started trembling uncontrollably at the memory of his friend. The Noise in his body began to squirm with life.
"Rock." Richard and Rocky turned back to see Reece standing behind them. Joshua leaned to the side with curiosity. Oni didn't look away from Joshua. "You're relieved for the day."

"I can help with that," Joshua said giddily. He typed a command into his phone and Rocky disappeared into a portal. Richard nearly lost his arm trying to catch him when the portal closed again. "No need to worry, I just sent him to a spa. Some hot water and pretty British girls should help calm him down."
Oni grit his teeth to suppress his anger. Reece walked forward calmly. "At ease Oni, Rocky will be okay. Had the Composer deigned to, he would have killed Rocky long before we even knew they were fighting."

Oni and Richard were taken aback. "Composer?!" Joshua chuckled at the fear he saw born in their eyes.
"Composer Yoshiya Kiryu, from Shibuya, Japan." He mocked a traditional Japanese bow to the three. "And you are Reece Nayake."
Reece raised an eyebrow. "You know me?"

"I learned everything about the London UG before I came. I know your names, your entrance Games, every Composer you've served under." He paused and gave a devious smile at the three. "Your histories. London really is a depressing place to die."
"Well, that's disturbing." Oni lowered his arm and let his body relax.

"Composer Kiryu," Richard started.
"Please, call me Joshua," he interrupted. "'Composer Kiryu' just sounds so tacky. It's like Composer King, far too heavy handed." He chuckled again.
"Joshua," Richard started again. "We have a lot of questions."
"No time," Joshua said. "You want Seras? I'll take you to her, but we need to leave now. Our time is extremely limited."
"That's not happening," Reece said simply.
"What?" Oni said. "Mr. Nayake, questions are all well and good, but he's offering to take us to Seras NOW. I'd jump at this opportunity."

"Being rash isn't going to help us bring Seras back Oni," Reece countered. "We need information Joshua, and rather than arguing about whether or not you will give it to us we will waste less time if you just give us the answers we want."
Joshua sighed. He looked to the setting sun: very little time left. The vampire would be approaching that ship as they speak. "Make it fast. I'll answer what I can."
"Why are you helping Seras?" Richard asked immediately.

"I was ordered to," Joshua said.
Reece started at this. "The Higher Ups sent you to enthrone Seras? Why enthrone Annabelle than to begin with?"
Joshua shrugged. "Protocol I guess. Ever since Seras became a Composer to begin with the Higher Ups have been a little crazy. I didn't question it too much." Reece took a moment to think about this.

"So we even have the Higher Ups on our side," Oni said. "Great, then Annabelle won't argue. How can she say no to Their will?"
"Heh, funny thing about that actually," Joshua laughed awkwardly. "They aren't going to make that order for about another twenty years." The three stared at Joshua in astonishment. Even Reece was at a loss for words. "They needed me specifically to take care of this at this specific point in time, not the past me that could have just taken a plane to get here."

"Oh boy…" Reece pinched the bridge of his nose. "Let's just… ignore that for now. It actually doesn't matter."
"I think it matters a lot actually!" Richard cut in. "What happens in the future that makes the Higher Ups want Seras back? Why does it have to be now, why couldn't you take care of this in your time? If you do something wrong can you just go back in time again and fix it? Have you done that already? There are a lot of follow up questions here!"

"Don't know, don't know, the portal back was one use only. If we do this right, we get taken back to our time. Otherwise, we just kind of die and another version of me gets to do this in some alternate dimension or something. I'm honestly making wild leaps of logic here, I really don't know. It's a Higher Up thing, like I said I didn't question it."
"Okay enough," Reece said. "Let's focus on Seras. Her vampirism, how deep in is she?" Richard became quiet, and Joshua noticed Oni visibly shrink.

"She's unbloodied," Joshua replied. The three let out a small sigh of relief. "She's tasted human blood but hasn't actually drank yet."
"Good," Reece said. "A little tinkering and some begging to the Higher Ups and I might be able to reverse an unbloodied vampire. She'll die, but she'll be a Composer by then so it won't matter."
"Except there's another problem with that," Joshua continued. "She's unbloodied now, but I don't know if she will continue to be after tonight. Which is why we should really get going!"

"Tonight?" Oni said. "What happens tonight?"
"A war." There was silence. "A war that your little girl gets caught in the middle of because of her vampirism. Vampires swarm the streets of London and bathe the city in blood."
Nobody spoke. After a moment, Oni's voice croaked. "Does she survive?"

Joshua looked down. "I don't know. Officially Seras died months ago, there's no recorded history of her after that. The information I got about her from the Higher Ups was extensive up to this point, but after the battle nothing."
Reece spoke up. "Who wins?"
"Yes, please tell us who wins."

Joshua spun around and was struck by a lone figure cast against the setting sun. His slim proportions actually rivalled his own in femininity. His piercing light red eyes met Joshua's with unnatural confidence, and his precisely trimmed blonde hair was offset by twitching dark cat ears.
"Are those cat ears?" Richard asked.
"Is that a guy or a girl?" Oni followed.
"Is that a Swastika?!" Reece finished.

"Oh no," Joshua muttered. "No no no, it's too soon. You aren't supposed to be here until nightfall!"
"No need to worry Joshua," the cat Nazi appeared behind Joshua and leaned his chin on his shoulder. Joshua jumped away in surprise. "We're still following schedule, it's only me."
"You know my name," Joshua was beginning to panic. "You can't know my name. How do you know my name? None of you have even been in London since I got here!"
"Oh Joshua, you've lost your touch." The cat Nazi smiled exactly how you'd expect he would. "I am everywhere and nowhere. I've been watching you and Neku for days now, and reported everything to the Major." Joshua brought up his phone and atomized the Nazi with a single laser. The other three stepped back out of the way.

"So who does win?" The Nazi lounged upon a nearby light post, his ears twitching playfully. "Do you really think using frauline to get these Reapers on Hellsing's side will stop us? The Major welcomes the additional challenge!" He jumped down in front of Joshua and smiled self-assuredly at him.
Joshua was struck with shock. "You… you think that's what I'm doing? Recruiting soldiers to fight you?" Joshua's face twitched. His lips curled into a horrific smile, and his eyes lit up as he started laughing. He gripped his sides from the splitting pain of this joke. He was nearly crying. "You think I care about your stupid war?! Ahahahaha, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard! I couldn't give less of a crap about your war!" He bent over laughing hysterically. The Nazi didn't waver in his charm. The Reapers felt a little out of the loop.
"Let me tell you something about your war," Joshua said, wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. "You all DIE! Your forces last a single night before getting completely slaughtered by a few religious zealots and some vampires! Kill as many people as you want, because in the end it will mean absolutely nothing! You have no chance of winning, and in the end, every single one of you will meet a horrible death! Your bodies will be burned by men in hazmat suits with flamethrowers and your remains get tossed into the trash. You and your war are literally nothing to me except a mild annoyance that I'll have to deal with to pursue my actual goal." Joshua was hit with another laughing fit, and when he managed to open his eyes back up the Nazi was gone. The sun had now completely vanished behind the horizon, and stars were becoming visible. Somewhere blood was being imbibed greedily, and warships of the air were crossing the sea into English territory. Joshua settled down and opened a portal.
"Come on," he said. "We only have a little time."

There was a long pause between Joshua and the Reapers. They seemed to be having trouble digesting his words to the cat Nazi, or his response to a slaughter of thousands of innocent lives.
Reece stepped up faster than he humanly should have. "Let's go."
Oni followed. "'Kay."

Richard was the only one to maintain his hesitation. He remained frozen in his spot, unable to see the grander picture even with his hundreds of years of experience. A Nazi army invading London, killing thousands of people, and then wiped out by vampires? And he was supposed to worry about Seras?
"Guys," he said. "You can't be serious."
"What?" Oni said. "We need to get Seras."
"SERAS?!" Richard yelled incredulously. "London is about to be attacked, we need to be here and protect everyone!"
"Out of the question," Reece said. "We don't deal in human affairs, you know that."
"Did that cat boy look human to you?! He could see us, that makes him, at least, half dead! All the others could be like him too, and even a Composer couldn't kill him!"
"Pretty sure he's unique actually," Joshua interjected. "The rest are vampires."
"Vampires?!" Richard yelled again.
"Woah," Oni remarked. "That could actually be a problem Reece. Vampires can see us and the Players, they could do some serious damage in a single night."
"Hmm." Reece contemplated all this. "Oni, you go with the Composer. Richard and I have fought vampires, we stand a better chance against an army."
"Right," Oni said. Joshua led him into the portal and the pair disappeared.
"Richard," Reece walked beside the Reaper. "We need to collect both Megan and Rocky and return them to HQ for an emergency healing. Everyone will need to be at their peak."

"Got it. I'll go get Megan, you get Rocky." Richard vaulted into the sky and took off towards the mission end goal. Reece followed his senses and pinpointed Rocky's location. He sprouted his wings and flew as fast as he dared.
Composer Annabelle King stood breathlessly atop the seat of her kingdom. She was staring unblinkingly at the shining full moon, stroking the golden disk at her neck. She vaguely noticed her four soldiers land behind her and secretly tucked the pendant in her bodice. Richard led Rocky and Megan into HQ to be healed; Reece stayed with Annabelle.

"Anny," Reece said, a touch of sensitivity in his voice. It was a tone Annabelle hadn't heard come from him since Seras' reign. "You feel it too?"
"Yes," Annabelle said, keeping her eyes on the glowing celestial body. Inky blackness was beginning to sprout from its center. "A horde of hellspawn come to attack my domain." She paused to think.
"Anny, about Seras…"
"You know what I did Reece."
"… Yes."

Her head leaned down. "Do you hate me for it?"
Reece hesitated. "I… I don't understand, Anny. All these years and I still can't understand."
"I don't regret my actions, Reece. Not one of them. Nothing will hold me back from ascension, not even Seras." Annabelle turned her head back to him. The moon was slowly being taken over by the dark, and the light in Annabelle's eyes dimmed. Reece could read the hatred she held in her heart after so long, putrid with its age. "I won't blame you if you hate me, Reece, so long as you follow my command."

"And what is your command?" Reece asked with trepidation.
"The same command I've given the Players. The same command I will give the Reapers when they've finished their business. The same command that I will personally follow." She turned to her Producer, grim and determined. The night had arrived, the moon was broken. In moments, the Players would awaken for the second time that day, and for many it would be the last time they do.
"Kill every vampire and defend London and its people."

For both the living and the dead, the Hellsing War had begun.