"Amy!"

Two young children dashed through their school playground. The girl had stolen the boy's lunch and was sprinting with his sandwich flapping against her face.

"Amy!"

Teenagers tumbled from the sky, tied together with a climbing clip and a bungie cord that the girl disconnected from their belt. She gripped the release line for their parachute as they reached the arch of the jump and screamed joyously. The boy only screamed.

"Amy!"

A semitruck slammed into the side of their rental car. Both the boy and the girl tried to cover each other, but the brick wall of a barber shop crushed them into each other and fused their bodies with metal.

"Amy!" Neku repeated again, but she wasn't responding. Amy had curled into a kneeling fetal position and became completely unreachable. He cursed and turned back to the fight, narrowly dodging the rubble that the Butcher thing was hurling while also overwhelming Richard and Rocky at close range. It batted Rocky away effortlessly with its massive paw, all the while the bodies making up its form grasped at the air to pull him in and devour his body. Richard was riding his Noise around the beast, slashing away at its extremities, though all that really accomplished was making the Butcher's imposing shape more defined.

Neku brought down another rain of lightning and stones, but nothing seemed to faze the creature. It didn't even flinch when Oni's fireballs blew chunks out of its hide. If the Butcher felt pain, it was not showing.

"This isn't working!"

"No shit kid!" Oni shouted back at him. "If you got a better plan I'm all ears!"

"I..." I really wish I did, he thought. Neku had fought huge monsters before, hell one of them had been Joshua kind of, but all those had been slow and were easy to dodge. Butch, whatever he was at this point, was huge and much faster than something that size had any right to be. Neku had a pretty good idea what a lost battle was, and at that moment this was one of those battles.

He shook his head. That kind of attitude was toxic, and Neku had no time for it. He dashed to the side, waving Pins madly in an effort to contain the raging abomination between tumbling boulders and spears of ice. A whirlwind launched Rocky into the air and he hammered the Butcher with a double elbow drop. The attack was shrugged off passively and the Reaper was blown away by a series of headbutts from a dozen weathered skulls. A mound twitched in the Butcher's flank, and suddenly a spire of contorted bodies shot out toward Richard. They quickly grappled the Noise and devoured it, leaving the Reaper a mere moment to leap to safety. He glided down to the carpet of bodies and turned on a dime, sword in hand. Rocky haggardly came to his side, littered with wounds leaking Noise tendrils. Neku teleported between them and tapped both with a Pin. Their wounds closed, but nothing could be done for exhaustion. They had been fighting a slew of foes all night with very little time to rest. Neku, being the only one with a living body and having gotten maybe ten hours of sleep in the last week, was at the end of his adrenaline reserve.

"Ah hell..." The Butcher's massive fist tore through the carpet of bodies, the asphalt below, and into the three's position. A series of ear splitting snaps and cracks told Neku that most of his bones were now broken, and then he blacked out when his lower spine connected with a brick wall.

Consciousness came and left in spasms. Neku could not think, nor hear, nor feel anything below his arms. His vision darkened between sights of the Butcher lurching closer, ever closer. A few balls of fire denoted Oni trying to fend off the monster, but it paid him no mind. Each pair of eyes among the thousand seemed to be absorbed by Neku for reasons beyond his knowing. As though he was something it had never seen before. Its many mouths watered, creating a snail trail of bloody drool. It's fetid breathe ruffled Neku's hair now, the Butcher was so close. What was it waiting for? All those dead, blind eyes, sensing him, waiting. Its posture seemed to betray... disappointment?

Even if he had the mental faculties to consider this without passing out again, Neku wasn't given the opportunity. A wire circled Neku's chest and quickly pulled him away, seconds before the Butcher lunged maw first into the wall. He skipped over bodies and pools of blood as Amy reeled him to safety. A groan was all he could offer as way of thanks; meanwhile Amy grabbed his healing Pin and tapped it against him a couple times, returning the sensation to his torso and legs. They all hurt like an egg supporting a concrete block, but he could feel them.

"Congrats Phones," Amy said as she turned to the Butcher, rearing its many headed figure. "You're gonna witness the climactic end to my story. You better remember to tell your grandkids."

A series of disembodied arms exploded out of each other, more rotten and black than the one that held it, and at the very end of the line was the Butcher's cleaver. It swung through the air effortlessly, sparking against the ground with a loud grating. Amy wrapped her yoyo wire around her finger and spun it in a circle of white light.

Both weapons speared toward their targets; the yoyo landed home and burrowed into the crevices between bone and flesh, propelling Amy toward it and narrowly around the string of arms. She sped around the Butcher's many legs, but it saw past her scheme and forced the yoyo out of its body with a burst of coagulated bodily fluids. It thrashed at her like a wild tiger with the tail of a scorpion, but of all the combatants Amy was the one who could very nearly match the monster's speed. Blade and yoyo clashed with explosions of fire and lightning, and Oni took potshots from behind.

Meanwhile, Richard climbed out of the window he had flown through when the three of them were knocked away. He took a moment to observe the battle: the Player was back in play, Oni appeared largely unharmed and continued his assault, and the Living Player was recovering a distance away, injured but not incapacitated. And Rocky...

"Shite, Rock!" He leapt from the building and ran over to where he saw the top half of Rocky's mangled body. Nearby lay a shattered street lamp, and the lower half of Rocky was past that. But that, shockingly, was the least horrific sight: the two halves were still connected by an intertwined chord of Black Noise twisting against itself with a hot hiss. The Tapewyrm was doing its job, keeping Rocky alive, but it was not meant to have this amount of free space. It would grow back to its full size in open air.

Richard knelt by Rocky's head and lifted him. "Rocky, you must get up and put yourself back together. If you pass out..."

Rocky pushed his hand away. "Relax. I'm awake." His eyes squinted at the fight taking place mere meters away from them. "I'm wide awake."

"Good," Richard said, relieved. "Than get up. I'll fetch Neku to heal you and..."

"Richard." A Noise tendril wrapped around his ankle. "What the hell are we doing?"

"What? What are you one about man, we're in the middle of a fight!"

"I know that. But why?" Richard wasn't sure what he was trying to say. "We're fighting Butch, man. Fucking BUTCH. That thing was our Conductor. Now it ate Megan."

"I know, that's why..."

"No, I don't think you know!" he suddenly shouted. "You don't understand at all! Why the hell do you think Butch is a big monster made of human bodies now?" Rocky paused, but Richard didn't have an answer.

"I think Ol' Georgie did that to him," he answered himself.

"What?!" Richard was taken aback. "Rock, that's ridiculous!"

"Is it? Is it honestly so ridiculous to imagine a sick fuck like Ol' Georgie doing that? He sure didn't have any scruples toward forcing Bobby into becoming a Reaper after he won the Game. Yeah, that's right, Bobby! You forgot about him didn't you?"

"No! What? I wouldn't forget Bob!"

"Bullshit! This whole week I've been the only one who gave a shit that Bobby died. Huh, you forget about that too?! Seras MURDERED him a few days ago! Our old Composer who you all seem to love so much beat his head into the dirt as our Producer watched! He didn't do a goddammed thing to help!" The Noise jerked and lifted Rocky's torso into the air. His skin was a lifebed of activity, surging and tearing under the force of the Tapewyrm.

"I'll even bet Annabelle sent him knowing he would die! Why would she care, none of the other Composers ever gave a shit about Bob! Ol' Georgie forced him into Reaperhood, Annabelle sent him to die, Seras killed him, and then everyone just forgot about it like he never existed! It's all about Seras or Neku or vampires or all this other shit! I bet you aren't going to forget Megan so quickly! You and Malcolm were real gungho about avenging her! Where's that anger for Bobby, huh? Why does fucking Victoria get a pass?!"

"Rocky, I..." Guilt and confusion were stirring in Richard's stomach.

"What was his name? Prove to me that you didn't forget Bobby and tell me his damned full name!"

"I... I don't know it. I never asked."

Rocky's legs exploded into a flurry of tendrils and serpentine tails, rending every bit of flesh and bone. His skin bulged and turned black and red.

"ROBERT MACLEOD! HIS NAME WAS ROBERT MACLEOD, AND HE WAS MY ONLY FUCKING FRIEND IN THIS DAMN JOKE OF AN AFTERLIFE!" The sudden explosion of noise and energy drew the Butcher's attention, as it disengaged from Amy and dashed at the quickly disintegrating body of Rocky. It stretched its paw toward him, and Rocky's arm popped into a meaty mesh of skin and released a bundle of huge Noise tendrils, stopping the mass of bodies.

Rocky breathed shakily. "I'm so sick of this. I'm sick of being a part of all these terrible games. I don't want it anymore." His mouth opened wide and revealed the two glowing red eyes of the Tapewyrm.

"I'm done."

The head of the Tapewyrm squirmed over Rocky's tongue, hesitated under his teeth, and inched into the air. It took a breath through its slitted nostrils, looked back at Rocky, and smiled wickedly. In one violent motion Rocky's body split into bits and was swallowed by the massive throat of the true Tapewyrm, newly released from its bonds. The head slithered into its body's mouth and peered through the dripping black fangs at the Butcher. The two monsters took a moment to study each other, dominated by stunned silence, and then pounced on each other with deafening roars.

Richard stood dumbfounded under the carnage. Oni dashed in and pulled him away before they were trampled.

"Rich! What happened?"

His sword trembled in a tightened fist. "You moron Rock," he said through grit teeth. "We were your friends." It was the truth, and yet somehow the statement rung hollow in Richard's ear. Oni grimaced and lowered his head.

"Come on," he eventually said. "Rock's Noise is holding Butch still. Let's not let their erasure have been in vain." Richard nodded slowly, and raised his sword. It seemed to become harder to lift as the night went on.

Neku observed this from afar, not of his own volition but because his legs couldn't actually support him without tremors of bone-searing pain. While the Noise wrestled against the Butcher's massive frame Amy and the Reapers beat at it with all they had. And yet somehow it still did not falter; for every body cut out of it, for every fireball that seered its flesh, for every monstrous bite the Tapewyrm ripped off and swallowed greedily, the Butcher came back twice as ferocious. Worse than that, its mass never subsided. Bodies replaced bodies, and skeletons attacked as powerfully as fully-fleshed corpses.

And all that was inside one guy, Neku thought, bemused. Then it occured to him: this was still that one Reaper. At the core of the monster must be that single soul controlling it in some fashion, or at least holding it all together. If they could kill that core Butch, the Butcher would die too. Probably. Hopefully. Neku really had no idea, but was putting all his cards in the theory. Of course, it would all be for naught if he couldn't stand on his own two feet and fight. The single healing Pin just wasn't doing enough. He tried to push himself up again, got as far as his knees, and buckled under his diminutive weight, landing with a crunch.

A crunch? What's in my pocket that would crunch? His hand dug under him and touched a soft material. Joshua's bag. For emergencies only. Wow, I am an IDIOT for forgetting about this! Desperately hoping it was a holy rocket launcher or a portal to a different dimension, Neku pulled the string and was overwhelmed by the ensuing force that escaped the bag. He might have fallen over if he wasn't already on the ground.

What was in the bag, and was now soaring out of it like a trail of birds lifting off a tree, were dozens... no, hundreds of Pins. Pins of all colors, with different designs and styles. Neku recognized a few of them: Sparkle Charge, Zantetsu, was that Macrocosmic Pull?! Pin after Pin poured out of the bag in a massive deluge, each one gravitating toward Neku and setting themselves in a static orbit. Some of them clicked and chirped to each other in a metallic language, glowing and shaking slightly. The pain in Neku's body evaporated, and he recognized Handsfree Healing orchestrating the dozens of other healing Pins. They practically lifted Neku on his feet and settled into their place before him. This, Neku realized with awe, was every single Pin from the Shibuya Reaper Game. Their were even the Tin Pins, and the Gatito sets!

Joshua could have given Neku a nuclear warhead and he wouldn't be able to do as much damage as these Pins allowed. Heck, the right combination would likely be equivolent to a full air raid! And the Butcher took notice the instant that Neku opened the bag

Still restrained by the Tapewyrm, a spike of bones shot out of its side aimed for Neku's head. Almost instinctually Neku, and his entourage of Pins, teleported to the side. Eyes darting to every side, Neku sought out a few choice Pins and tapped them in rapid succession. A few slid under his fingers, others buzzed against the air, and others followed Neku's fingertips drawing lines in the ground. Each one glowed with an intense heat, and it was like a fire giant's sword sliced across the spine in the blink of an eye. Fireballs peppered the air, the bodies on the earth burst into flame, a flowing of fire torched the collection of bones until they caught and broke into embers. The remains quickly retracted into the Butcher's body, but the damage had already been done. Neku admired his Pins with a grin he felt he hadn't gotten to wear in a very long time.

"Oh man," he said, a light burning in his eyes. He pressed one hand to his headphones. "I love this song."

Neku raised the gun Bernadotte had given him in his other hand and aimed it at the Butcher. The revolver had been out of ammo for hours. A line of Pins reordered themselves in front of the barrel, clicking against each other with excitement. He pulled the trigger, and an avalanche of automatic fire chewed into the Butcher. Bullets exploded inside it, zigzagged through its innards, and shook its fleshy carapace.

The Butcher showed no pain, but it also stopped thrashing for a moment. Everyone else kept beating into it, but it barely registered them. It looked confused, like it didn't understand that Neku had just hit it the way he did. Drool started pouring from its maw again.

"Hey ugly!" Amy slammed her yoyo into the beast's head. "Don't you ignore me just because Phones got a power up! Fucking fight me!"

*Aaaaaaaah* A puff of haze creeped around the Butcher's body and over the Tapewyrm. Amy wasn't interested in seeing whatever it was about to do; she slashed into the body again, and again, spraying browned pus and blood. Neku twitched his hands and chains shot into the mist. The cloud became soupy and blocked their vision of the beasts. Flashes of black Noise flesh would surface occasionally, but that was it. After a while Amy stopped striking flesh with her swings, and she inched forward to peer into the fog.

"Don't," Oni said. "We'll be more blind than him in there. Back off." They did as he said, retreating without lookng away from the creeping mist. Discontent brewed in Amy's chest.

A minute passed. "Come on!" she shouted. "I'm right here! Fight me already!" Another minute. There was no visible sign of movement within the fog: a pop of bubbling flesh, quiet crunching, the creak of straining sinew, only brief sounds hinted at any life on the inside. Neku held his chains taught, but they didn't resist his grip.

"Okay," Neku eventually grunted and released the chain Pins. "I'm getting tired of this." Suddenly the air between the mist separated into perfect disks and the light appeared to distort and drain away like a whirlpool, slowly sucking away the fog.

Then a black tendril swung out of the cloud and struck Amy and Neku across the parking lot. Butch flung the rest of the Tapewyrm after them and stabbed his cleaver into the ground again. His body had separated from the Butcher beast, connected by an umbilical cord of viscera and bone marrow. His finger went tap tap, and the beast's throat rumbled hungrily.

Amy regained her balance and braced her wheels against the backs of dead bodies. In a feat of strength and frustration she pushed the thrashing Tapewyrm out of her way and charged toward Butch. Neku recovered from the blow and yelled after her.

"Amy! Don't lose your head, you're going to get killed!"

"Shut up!" She swung down on Butch's shaggy head, but he was gone before it hit the ground. Amy caught a blurred movement in the corner of her eye and tied a cat's cradle through her fingers, charged a flash of energy through the line, and impeded Butch's vertical slice. The force pushed her away on her wheels, which a large reason why the hulking cleaver hadn't cut through the string, energy or not. The beast pounced into Amy's path and raised its paw to squish her, but right as it began to bring it down the Tapewyrm bit into its face and the two wrestled away.

Richard instead grabbed her elbow and stopped Amy's uncontrolled momentum. "He's too fast for you. Focus on the monster."

"Shut up," she said with a scowl and pulled her arm away. "I had him fine earlier."

"Yeah, when he was full of that," he said, pointing to the flesh beast tearing at the quickly multiplying tentacles of the Tapewyrm. "That was slowing him down before. Now he's empty." A bundle of icicles jutted out of the ground beside the two, catching Butch midstride before boulders tumbled on his head. They leapt away and Neku teleported next to Amy.

"Hey guys, remember the fight? Quit it with the fucking conversation, we REALLY do not have the time to get ourselves killed." He turned to Amy. "You want to get emotional? Fine, go nuts, I don't care. But if you get yourself killed that's not going to help anybody, especially not Brad." He spun a row of Pins and blasted Butch with a double barrage of fire and lightning. "So get it together and get some good old-fashioned revenge."

Amy pushed past Neku and jabbed Butch's reeling body with her yoyo. "You don't have to tell me twice." But she did understand that Butch was faster than her, which meant he was now faster than all of them except Neku. Richard couldn't keep pace with his swings anymore, Oni wouldn't be able to hold his distance. That wasn't her problem though; Amy simply dug her heels into the ground, spun out her yoyo, and began lapping the area until she picked up enough speed to make her eyes water and her hair nearly fly out of her head. Richard was put on the defensive, narrowly blocking attacks or getting nicked by the corner of the cleaver. They noticed that Butch was wielding it with both his hands now, restricting his range of movement. Amy supposed without all that extra muscle in his body he had become weaker, and that was just fine by her. Neku switched between close and long range assault at a rapid pace, teleporting in and out of Butch and the Butcher's range and rinsing them both. Flames erupted out of the sky, orbs of water pinballed around the clearing, lighting exploded from his fingers, whirlwinds flung exploding debris, chains created a web that the combatants danced through, meteors rained on the Butcher's back and blew craters around Butch's dashing feet. His Pins flew through the air, busy as bees that could travel at sonic speeds. Four Pins circled Butch and fired successive shotgun blasts into his head and torso, then flew away when he swung at them. The Tapewyrm and the Butcher tumbled between the humanoid fighters in a raging brawl, each taking collateral damage from Neku and Oni's shots.

As they rolled through the fight, the cord connecting Butch and the Butcher brushed over Oni's hair. Instinctively he shot at it, only for it to curl around his explosive and glide away silently. Dumbfounded for a second, Oni came to a realization and nearly jumped.

"Hey rollergirl!" he called to Amy and pointed at the umbilical cord. "Tie that up!" Amy ducked under the flesh rope, simultaneously throwing her yoyo over it, and caught the ball, catching the cord with her string. Suddenly Butch and the Butcher were at both her sides, teeth bared and veins strained from exertion. Air burst under Amy and sent her soaring above them, dragging the cord with her. The Butcher sent out a volley of body spires in pursuit right as the Tapewyrm ensnared it again, and Oni and Neku blew them away. Richard flew between Butch and Amy and clashed swords with him.

Amy landed on the umbilibal cord, crossed her hands, and pulled with all her might. Every mouth on the Butcher's body squealed as Amy strangled its lifeline and it panicked in its binds. Butch planted his foot in Richard's chest and made a crater in the asphalt with his body. As he descended on Amy Neku teleported in and landed a headbutt. Butch's mouth split open, revealing his sick rows of bloody teeth, and right as he lunged for Neku's throat a small black hole opened between his jaws and concaved his skull. And then, with one final flare of strength, Amy split the umbilical cord in twain.

Its connection to Butch broken, the monster of cannibalized bodies became still and limp in the Tapewyrm's tangling grip, which the Noise proceeded to eat with gusto. Butch pulled his face out of the spacial sinkhole, but Neku was gone long before he had the opportunity to swing. A series of fireballs exploded in Butch's back, then a car dropped on his head and they plummeted to the earth.

The transformation Amy witnessed in the monster they had been fighting was nothing short of incredible. When Butch pushed the car off of himself Richard met him immediately and put a deep gash through his armpit. No skeletal hands came out to mend his flesh, no pus or animate veins to fill the wound. The cut was just a cut, and it seriously impeded his attack speed. Now with the speed advantage Richard put Butch on the retreat. Neku and Oni were at his back though, acting as a two-man firing squad and blowing chunks out of his spine and shoulders. A bullet blew out his knee and made Butch kneel, and Richard deftly chopped the rest of the way through his underarm and separated it from his shoulder.

Butch never made a sound. He tried to swing the cleaver with his other arm, but Richard disarmed him effortlessly. Oni and Neku put there arms down, panting in the heat they'd inadvertantly created.

No.

Richard put his blade up to Butch's throat. His blind eyes betrayed no emotion.

No!

"Good night, my friend." Richard raised the sword for the death blow.

"NO!" The yoyo wire appeared suddenly and dragged Butch away by the neck. Amy slammed him against a brick wall.

"No no no, this is all wrong! That was nothing! What kind of fucking fight was that?! Look at me, I barely have a scratch on me!" Butch faced her, expressionless and cold. Amy's grip on her yoyo shook tightly.

The others' looked at the scene in shock. "Kid, what the hell are you doing?"

"SHUT UP!" Amy screamed, still looking at the stoney faced cannibal. "I want a real fight! I want my big climax! This hairy shit spent all his time fighting you, or Rock's snake, or looking at Neku and his overpowered anime shit like he was a giant pair of tits! What about me? I want my fight! I WANT BRAD BACK YOU SON OF A BITCH! GIVE HIM BACK TO ME!" She punched him with her yoyo. "Give him back!" And she punched him again.

"Give him back!" Again. "Give him back!" And again. "GIVE HIM BACK! GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE HIM BACK GIVE ME MY BRAD BACK!" And again and again, until Butch's face was little more than a bloody pulp. Yet still he looked at her with his milky eyes, utterly blind to her rage and despair.

"Give him back..." She panted, her hand heavy with a mix of his and her blood. "I need him back. You don't understand, I NEED him. And you took him away..."

Neku reached out to Amy. Before he could touch her she threw out her yoyo and circled Butch's neck, and with a grip on both sides she severed his head from his shoulders. His body thudded against the pile of other bodies, melting away into the river of carnage left behind.

Amy turned to Neku and the Reapers. Tears brimmed in her eyes.

"There. He's dead. We won. Yay."

By now the entire Nazi zeppelin was burning down. It's gas reserves had already combusted, blowing holes in the infrastructure and causing the ship to collapse. Seras tore through the burning supports like paper in search of Integra. It wasn't terribly hard to imagine where she might be: she'd been directed by a werewolf not too long beforehand. Along the way she had found a handy anti-aircraft turret, easily made into a rifle by simply removing it from the setting.

The path was simple enough to follow. The fires licked ineffectually at Seras' sides. A heavy gun felt comforting in her hands. The end was so close at hand. And yet...

What was the growing stillness in the back of Seras' brain?

Master?

She stopped. The silence persisted in that region of her mind. Seras had not even realized there was a noise there before, but suddenly like the absense of white noise waking a child it jolted her awareness and made her nervous. Instinctually she knew what it had been, and what its stilling suggested.

"Mas-" The floor fell out from under her. Deftly Seras caught herself, but her handhold was burning away as quickly as the surface she had been standing on.

"There's no time," Bernadotte cautioned.

"Tsk!" Seras grit her teeth and pushed forward. The silence in her brain completed itself, and she knew it was over.

Alucard was gone.

But Integra's scent had suddenly caught Seras' nose. The source was directly ahead, clear as anything could be in such an infernal hurricane. Something behind her exploded, at this point it was impossible to keep track of what or where, and she took advantage of the backdraft and rode it through the ceiling.

Seras had overestimated how close the explosion would land her next to Integra, and she panicked for the briefest second that she had blown up. Of course, Integra was immune to collateral damage. That was something Seras would have to get used to.

But those thoughts were instantly swept away once Seras saw him, sitting in his bloody chair with a greasy smile malforming his fat cheeks, dressed in all white with hair slicked to the side like a Sunday School prig. It was the fucking Major.

"So," he said, the word churning out of his mouth like butter. "It will be you two that will kill me..."

The women looked upon him with such utter hate and spite that if they had answered with words acid might have spat out.

The Major's glowing gaze landed on Seras. It was an utterly unremarkable countenance that bore the eyes of Napoleon and Alexander the Great; the eyes of furious ambition. Those very same eyes had seen forward to this invasion decades ago, had overseen every detail, inspected every soldier, perfected every last minute expense and gain. Seras found them disgusting.

"Well, pleased to meet you, Fräulein. I am merely stating the obvious," he said, excusing himself as if he had committed a haughty social faux pas. "Yes, it will be you two. It will not be Alucard that defeats me. It will be me that defeats Alucard." He paused briefly to stand, offering the ladies the chance to speak up. They did not entertain the notion.

"My archenemy is Alucard and you right now, your archenemy is me!" The Major spread his arms wide in welcome to his beautiful, wrathful demise. "Now, bring it on! Here is your enemy! He is right here! You are over there and I am here!" His smiling face twitched in a momentary fit of time-worn insanity. "Here I am."

"Seras," Integra spoke levelly. "Shoot him." And then she began to scream. "Shoot him! SHOOT HIM!" The muscle memory took over Integra's body, and her arm lifted on its own and pointed judiciously at the pudgy Major. "Search and destroy! Search and destroy!"

Seras was happy to oblige, and found herself yelling with Integra as she lifted her cannon and opened fire on the protective barrier between them and him. Dents and divots spiderwebbed out, but the rounds could not penetrate.

The Major frowned disappointedly. "Doc made it too strong."

Seras tossed away the ineffective gun. It was a temporary setback: she had seen a suitable replacement on the way there. She drove her Familiar arm into the ground, and a few large Familiar tendrils for good measure, and fished around until they wrapped around her target.

The Major watched with sadomasochistic glee as Seras tore one of the Nazi zeppelin's 88 millimeter cannons through the floor and steadied it on her shoulder aiming at him. "The acht-acht!" He squeed in joyous recognition. "That's fantastic! I love it!"

Fuck you for enjoying this you sick freak.

"I agree," Bernadotte chimed. "Blast this monstrous maggot back to the hole he crawled out of."

Seras manipulated the pistons of the canon to click together and fire a single round into the barrier, through it, and blasting through the Major's body. Far away the slug dislodged a church bell and deflected into the morning sky. The empty discarded case clanged onto the ground. Seras slumped the canon off of her shoulder and followed Integra, who was already striding through the falling scraps of reinforced glass.

"It's over Major!" Integra pronounced into the smoking remains of his body.

Shockingly, the Major responded. "So... it would seem. But hey... not just yet."

Integra looked down at him with a surprised expression. "Is that... Is that what you are, Major?!"

The smoke cleared, and what Seras had thought were internal organs worming out of the Major's blasted body was steel piping and glass gauges. Blood and oil mixed in a pool around him.

"That's right," he said. "This is me."

Seras looked at it wide-eyed. "He's a machine."

"Good gracious," the Major breathed raspily. "Didn't your mother ever teach you... that it's rude to stare? Machinery aside, I am just as human now as I ever was, fräulein."

Integra's eyes narrowed and glazed over with malice. "Look at you, Major. A clockwork monstrosity."

The Major's bold smile did not waver in the face of this challenge. "Deny it all you want. My humanity is not in question. I still have that one trait that puts us in ascendance even above the angels.

"It is my will that drives me. The vampires that you were so happy to keep in your employ... without the lifeblood of others to keep them going, they would shamble to a halt. If it's a monster you want, look no further than Alucard, and this little one, playing at immortality. Don't mention me in the same breath as that fraud. The moment I am propelled by my own unadulterated will, I become heir to something Alucard can only steal. Even if I were reduced to nothing more than a brain in a jar, synapses firing in a sea of pure thought... I am human just like you are. Within me rests a human soul... and a human's will, precious beyond all worth.

"He smiles at you in the form of a young girl, or pulls at your heartstrings in the form of a weary veteran. So many faces a monster has, and all of them stolen, all of them lies." The Major rose, barely a few inches but more than either Integra or Seras thought possible. "I despise him. Every cell in my body called for his annihilation. So I destroyed his kingdom and cast him down into the dust. Fitting that it took a man with the trappings of a monster to slay a monster with the trappings of a man. He was a casualty to my will. 'My enemy is not human. My enemy is less than a human.' Since the earliest dawning of mankind, this is the battlecry... it just happened to be more literal in my cry. That battlecry... those thoughts are running through your mind right now, aren't they?" Integra showed no reaction to his accusation.

"I planted the seeds of this war half a century ago..." he concluded with pride, holding out his hand expectantly. "Now, show me what has blossomed."

Integra pointed her hand, looking as though she were poised to sick Seras on the crippled tin man, but stopped. She considered the thing below her, and after a moment's thought pulled her hand back and threw off her jacket. Then, in very deliberately measured steps, approached the Major with a gun in her hand. He smiled, satisfied, and removed the firearm from his own holster to fire at Integra with a kind of inaccuracy one could not believe was unintentional. She stopped walking mere feet away from the Major, and he stopped shooting.

In the breath of a moment, both parties fired on the other. Integra's eye splattered out the side of her head, but she remained standing. A hole oozed blood from the center of the Major's forehead. He fell back, eye's white with giddiness.

"Ah, excellent... This was exactly... what I hoped my war would be." And thus the grand leader of the Millenium organization expired, much too long after his due day.

Integra looked down on his body. "Die," she muttered to his unhearing ear. "You must die. Was it a good war, Major?" She pulled on last secreted cigar out of her pocket and lit it between her teeth. "This is not even a war. After being nearly dead for sixty years you have just expired. You must die. It is absolute retribution. Whatever you may profess humankind to be, you are no longer the least bit human. You are simply a genuine monster."

The flames engulfing the ship quickly approached the two women.

"And at any time, it is only a human that can defeat a monster. Monsters are defeated by humans. That is because only humans have defeating as their goal. Not for the joys of fighting. Because it is our duty to carry out. You are not human. That is why he is coming back." She took a long drag on her cigar, bolstered with undeniable certainty.

The fire quickly circled them, but neither Seras nor Integra felt them. It was as though the devouring force of nature was showing deference to their plight, if only for the moment. Out of nowhere Integra shouted Walter's name into the immolating bowels of the ship, then shrunk away.

"Walter has just passed on," she said, refusing to be overcome with sadness.

Seras bowed her head. Not for a second did she question Integra's knowledge on the matter. "Right." She hoped the traitor rested peacefully.

The roof above them began to collapse. Seras darted to Integra's side protectively, shrouding them both in her Familiar tendrils.

"Let's go back," Integra said. "Let's go back Seras. Back to our home. Fly!"

And so Seras flew. With Integra on her back and the flaming wreckage falling around them, and then behind them, Seras flew away from the battlefield. Away from the Hellsing War.

It could have been a beautiful summer's day. The sun was warm, the breeze was cool, the clouds were fluffy and white. Of course all that really accomplished was making the decaying bodies stink that much worse and carrying it across the city. Terrified civilians peeked out of manholes and subway exits, coughing and vomitting at the stench, to see if the battle had truly ended and if they one. It was unclear if there even was a victor.

Neku sat glumly on the hood of a car, fingering his Player Pin and the bag that his Pin arsenal had returned to after the conclusion of the fight with Butch. It jingled lightly as a bag filled with metal should with no hint whatsoever of the power within. Freaking Joshua. Couldn't even tell me what was inside before running off. Again. Neku sighed, overcome with the sheer predictability of it.

Oni and Richard were struggling to keep the Tapewyrm in line after it finished eating all the bodies Butch had left. Unlike regular Noise that could be controlled by Reapers, this one that Rocky had released was effectively a half-trained dog.

Amy sat in the spot where she killed Butch and hadn't moved since. No one was bold enough to tell her to stand up. No one could even think of something to say.

"I said cut it out!" Oni pulled the Tapewyrm down and punched it in the nose. It hissed and tried to shake him off, and he punched it again. "Listen to me you damn Noise!" *hissss*

Richard sighed. "It's no use Malcolm, that thing is so stubborn it won't listen to anybody."

"Urg, yeah," Oni said, wrestling against the Noise's head. "Except Rock apparently. Hell of a - hrgh - Tamed Noise to pick!"

He turned away from Oni and the Noise, shoulders sagged, and approached Neku.

"Nice save with the Pins," Richard said. "You could have brought it out earlier."

"Didn't know I had it. Joshua just gave me the bag and left, didn't mention what it was or anything."

Richard laughed humorlessly. "Sounds about right for a Composer."

"Yeah. Always doing their own thing."

"Playing their own games."

Neku grunted. "Speaking of Composers..." He pocketed the bag and hid his Player Pin. "Seras is outside of the city. Real big property, 'Hellsing Manor.' I think it's a government facility or something, I don't know. But that's where she is."

"Uh." Richard froze. Had he heard that right? It was so sudden and completely out of nowhere. "What?"

"I told you I'd tell you where she was once I was sure you were on her side. Well, you just saved my ass and your friend over there has kind of already been to see her. So fuck it, I think you're good. And to hell with whatever Joshua says."

There was silence for a bit. Richard looked at Neku as if he might take it all back. Laugh and say "psyche" or whatever the kids of this century said. But he didn't, Neku just looked back at him awkwardly.

Eventually Richard nodded. "Okay." Then Neku stood up, glanced at Amy for a moment, and walked away. It was about time he found Joshua and got back to the whole Seras problem.

A few feet away, the Tapewyrm had suddenly stopped fighting Oni's hand. It was now deathly still. Red eyes peered out between its teeth, staring straight at Richard.

"Ahhhhh." Annabelle stretched her freshly regrown muscles. Spasms of relief shook her skinny body as it recognized the healthy synapses and sinew. She rubbed her skinned-over stub, feeling the the tip of her bone slice into her index. It wasn't perfect, but it would be enough to stake a vampire. The only other unfortunate omission from her recovery was Annabelle's long head of hair, which couldn't grow back in the tub since it was dead tissue. Any hair she might have retained after the fight would have come off anyway. It was a small price to pay really.

Her Noise presented a few pieces of clothing to replace her lost dress. A three-piece suit, a few dresses, not the nicest things in her wardrobe but they'd work to put forward a good impression at the end of the battle against darkness. She chose a classy sequence blue dress with silver seamwork and silver flats, and tucked the winged pendant between her cleavage. There was a wig in the Noise's collection, but Annabelle turned it away. No part of her would be fake today.

The hours had passed slowly in the bath, but Annabelle was still struck by the light of the morning sun. No smoke dimmed the silky blue sky. The wreckage of London below her even had a certain dignity to it, like the ruins of a great empire. Survivors wandered the streets wearily and searched the rubble for belongings and loved ones. Annabelle's empire, beaten but not broken. Pride swelled in her bossom. Her people would carry on and her kingdom could be rebuilt. Now where were her Reapers?

She took off in search, the Noise trailing behind her. While making herself visible to the OG had its appeals, Annabelle chose not to show off too much. Reapers were supposed to be a secret after all. Let the survivors tell stories of her, spread rumors and craft theories. Make her into a modern legend. Yes, that would suffice. For now.

Annabelle spotted something below her: a great black serpent slithering down the street and three figures leading it. What in the world? Annabelle thought. Is that... Oh no.

The Tapewyrm noticed her descent before the others, rearing its head to watch her. Richard and Oni followed its gaze up to her. Their expressions turned to shock, and the two alternated between her hand and her head. The third figure, a girl Annabelle did not immediately recognize, barely glanced at her.

Annabelle touched down. "Malcolm, Richard, I'm glad to see you're alright."

"Yeah..." Oni hesitated. "Better than you apparently. What the hell happened?"

"Kiryu." Her Noise approached the Tapewyrm. The two locked eyes and stared at each other. Annabelle approached it and touched the slimy skin of Rocky's unmistakable Noise.

"Rocky..." Annabelle breathed. "What did this?"

Richard and Oni drooped. "You're not going to believe it, but... Butch. We found him fighting Players and... eating them. He was a monster, I don't know what happened but... Anny, he ate Megan." Annabelle half-turned her head. Her hand tightened into a fist.

"Rocky," Richard continued. "He completely snapped. He let the Tapewyrm consume him, then it fought Butch. Even that wasn't enough. The Living Player had to use hundreds of Pins at the same time to-"

"It ate my friend." The girl, seemingly only now taking notice of Annabelle, had turned to them. There was a yoyo in her hand.

Annabelle regarded the girl. "I recognize you. You're that American Player. Amelia, was it?"

Amy's purple eyes shook in their sockets, but they never strayed from Annabelle's curious gaze. "Yeah. Amelia."

"Well Amelia, I am sorry for the loss of your friend."

"Brad."

"Bradford Coglitch. Believe me dear, I know the name of every Player in my Game."

"Your Game? You mean... you're the boss? The big bad behind the Reapers? You made this whole thing. You set those monsters on us?"

"No. No no, let's get one thing straight. I do not deal in vampires, and Butch is no associate of mine. He left us many years ago, and I do not mourn his death any more than I would mourn the death of a rabid dog. But yes, the Reaper's serve me. And you, my dear Amelia, are the first person to ever win my Game. I would congratulate you, but I can't imagine you much care."

"... I want him back."

Annabelle smiled and nodded. "I might be able to arrange that."

Amy's eyes burst open. "What?"

"Stay with Malcolm," Annabelle instructed her with a chuckle. "He'll lead you to our headquarters. Once I return you and I can have a nice long conversation about the prize for winning the Reaper Game. I think you'll like what I have to offer." Oni and Richard stared aghast at their Composer. Oni shook his head in confusion. Annabelle waved him forward and repeated the order. He shook his head again, shrugged, and led the shocked Amy away.

Richard made to follow them, but Annabelle put a hand on his chest. "Not you."

"Composer King?" She stepped in front of him, any warmth or pride completely wiped from her countenance.

"You said Living Player." His lips tightened. "You fought with the Living Player?"

The Tapewyrm growled lightly behind them. "Yes, Composer King. He was indespensable in the fight against Butch."

"Mmm." Annabelle made a show of considering this. "Where did he go?"

Richard's eyes focused on hers. "I don't know."

Roaring shocked his back. The Tapewyrm arched its head and spat at them in a rage. Richard was completely bemused by it. Annabelle laughed.

"You know," she said, touching the furious Noise. "This Tapewyrm was specifically designed as a parasite. It can't survive without a soul to leech off of. If it had consumed Rocky completely, it would have died." Richard's eyes narrowed at the Composer. Understanding struck him like a ton of bricks.

"Rocky?..."

"More or less. He may be mostly gone, little more than a consciousness now, but its enough to feed the Noise. Feed it with emotions and cognitive thoughts, even desires. And I'll bet that Rocky had a real grudge against Victoria after she killed Bobby." The Tapewyrm let out another roar. "See?" Annabelle smiled pointedly.

"Now, please Richard, tell me where the Living Player went. And maybe I'll forgive you of your disloyalty just this once, since you've been such a reliable Reaper to me for all these years."

And here Richard was torn. He chewed his lip and thought long and hard about what careful words he should choose. The Tapewyrm... Rocky's eyes were on him. Annabelle waited patiently for his reply, the fires of her Noise burning her silhouette.

He sighed and relinquished his fate. "I don't know."

Annabelle nodded wordlessly and turned to the two Noise behind her. "Rock, please tell Jacky where he went. Jacky, you know what to do."

"Jacky?" Richard asked, but was cut off by Annabelle's open hand smashing his face into the concrete. Rocky leaned into Jacky's ear, and his inner mouth whispered something to her. She stretched out a flaming tendril and dug it into Richard's back. He let out an ear-piercing scream as the fire carved lines through his flesh. The flames cast a terrible red glow over them.

"Not too fast now Jacky dear," Annabelle commanded through her teeth. "I want this traitor to understand the depth of his betrayal." So Jacky carved with agonizingly slow and precise movements. Up and down his back, searing through flesh. The fat sizzled and bubbled under Richard's skin, and when the flame reached his spine the burning spread into his brain. All the while he screamed, but no living soul could hear him and all the rest were too few and far away.

After several minutes Jacky stopped. Scarred into Richard's back were three words.

"Hellsing Manor."

"Seras."

Annabelle released her grip on Richard and studied the Noise's message. Richard gasped for air between sobs of pain. The scent of his charred flesh was overwhelming, but Annabelle made no sign that she noticed.

"Thank you Jacky. Thank you Rocky. Please take this trash back to HQ and lock him up somewhere dark. Keep him out of sight though. I would hate to scare away my first winning Player before I could even recruit her." The Tapewyrm picked him up between its teeth and slithered away.

Richard looked through slit eyes at Annabelle. "You're insane," he muttered. Annabelle ignored him and prepared to fly out of the city to this manor.

"Come on Jacky. Let's not demean ourselves with his ilk."

"That Noise is not Jaqueline, Annabelle!" Richard shouted, his voice full of ire. "It's just the mindless remains of her soul!"

Annabelle looked at him with utter disdain. Jacky grimaced and spun her finger next to her temple. The two girls laughed and flew away side by side.

Seras very nearly crashed into the manor lawn with both Integra and the sun weighing down her flight. Craters and crevices had all but erased the lush grass, now replaced with blood and metal. Hellsing Manor itself was a tinder light away from crumbling to the ground. Putting out the fire must have taken a Herculean effort on the two surviving Wild Geese's part.

Integra Hellsing, descendant of Abraham Van Hellsing, master of the dread vampire lord Count Dracula, member of the Queen's Round Table, looked over the decrepit husk which was her ancestral home with her single remaining eye. Destroyed in a single night by a small army of half-century old Nazis looking for one last suicide mission. It was nothing less than history's greatest Pyrrhic victory. Madaam Integra stepped through her birthplace's shattered doorway, leaving Seras behind, and said:

"Sleep, Seras. Surely one of us will be able to."

Seras did not feel particularly sleepy. Exhausted, both physically and emotionally, but wide-eye awake. She toed the soil, unsure if it was brown from morning dew or dried blood. Insects that might have cleaned the dead men's wounds lie dead in the dirt. Scavengers made wide berths around the property, smelling poisoned meat. Even the crows shirked their ancient duty and refused to cry above the slain. Seras took a seat on the stone steps of the manor and fell sideways into the empty space a mine had blown open. With a sigh she accepted her horizantal state and stretched into a crater. Her Familiar arm spread out roots beside her, where Bernadotte splayed himself with a cigarette in hand.

"Hell of a night, oui?"

Seras looked at the blood ghost smoking next to her, half annoyed and half pleased with his presence. She turned on her side and lay her head on his non-flesh shoulder. He wrapped the rest of his arm around her in a gentle squeeze.

"You should listen to the lady and go to bed. Vampires don't sleep in broad daylight." She gave no response, staring emptily into the folds of his illusory coat. Pip removed the cigarette from his lips. "At least get something in your belly, mon cher. You haven't eaten anything all night. Well, except me!" Seras punched him in the chest, but Pip laughed and smiled stupidly all the same. The corner of Seras' mouth twitched upward imperceptibly, but he could feel her do it.

"That's not funny, you arse! You died!"

"Oui, and I've never felt better." He chuckled and rubbed his cigarette in the dirt. It disappeared moments after being let go of. "I do not often get the opportunity to be inside a beautiful woman all night while also fighting a werewolf! Although there was this very uncomfortable situation with a spanish woman and her very hairy father..." Seras punched him again, laughing a little this time.

"I have all your memories now idiot, I know when you're making this shit up."

"Heheh, yes," Pip chuckled, sitting up slightly. "I have no secrets from you. Just as you have none from me. And I can tell that you are very tired, very hungry, and very worried for those Reaper camarades and the Japanese boys." Seras' heart sank a bit, and she looked out toward the city.

Bernadotte stroked her head affectionately. "Well, we can do something about one of those things right now, and it will help with the others. Viens, some blood bags probably survived in the basement."

"Alright." The two stood up together and made their way into the Manor. "Wait, do I know French now?"

An entire cooler of blood bags had survived, in fact, and Seras drank two and was halfway through the third by the time she was walking past the window in front of her bedroom door. The vision of white almost completely missed her peripheral vision, and if that had been the case Seras would have gone to sleep in peace, and perhaps never woken up. But she did see it, and when she looked directly at the figure of Annabelle King treading down her lawn it sent a cascade of emotions down her throat and spine.

Annabelle examined the burnt husk of a mansion with mild curiousity. She saw the woman vaulting out of a window with even more curiousity. Recognition did not strike until Seras called out to her.

"I'll be honest Anny, this is a terrible time. But if you want to do this now, I will happily remove your heart from your chest."