HELLSING: BLOOD KNIGHT
Chapter 02: Renegade Strife.
"The time is drawing near, gentlemen. Soon the ghouls will wake up, and so too will Hellsing. Nothing more to do now but wait. Our half-century torpor will come to an end this day, and with the cobwebs brushed away, we can re-grease the cogs and restart the engine of war. And what a glorious war...this will be."
THAMES HOUSE: 17:15 hrs.
Local military agents were busy trying to break into the Knight's main office, using a heavy black battering ram to destroy the doors that kept them from advancing. Guns were fastened to their bodies and they were ready to take on anything that lay beyond that wooden barrier. Within, that sadistic jester waited with anticipation, listening to the agents' efforts with a smile on his face that was all the more eerie because of the stitches that held his cheeks firmly together.
Outside, a strangely impressive car was pulling up, the engine humming low as it slowly moved through the blockades and headed for the Thames House front doors. The silvery paint on the Lotus 340R's exterior shone brilliantly in the late afternoon light, and its driver, a strange man with red streaks in the tips of his otherwise pale blonde hair, watched intently for anyone who might stop him and his charge.
The door inside was finally broken down, and the jester's carnal yellow eyes flashed open. It signaled his men, two helmet-laden warriors with grey buttoned-up, doublebreasted dusters took their place before the finally risen undead. The English soldiers paused for a moment in confusion as to what they saw, but instinct quickly took over as they realized they were facing something entirely unknown to them...and their firearms quickly began negotiations.
"Hold up there, chaps. This are is off limits to civilians at this time. I'm going to have to ask that you turn this vehicle around...and....blimey, I thought!!" The policeman stationed at the entrance was aghast when he saw Integral sitting in that very car. "But how!? Integral Hellsing!?"
The stern woman merely glared at him as if his very presence was an afront to her senses.
"I don't know how you managed to get out of prison already but.." The policeman's voice was cut off abruptly by the sound of another man's voice over his waist-hitched walkie-talkie.
"Sergent, was that Miss Hellsing who just pulled up?"
-Kssht-
"Wh-..yessir, but.."
-Kssht-
"Excellent! I'll be down in half a moment! It's about bloody time she arrived!"
-Kssht-
"But, sir, shouldn't she still be under arrest?"
-Kssht-
"Poppykosh! She was pardoned last night! Her Majesty the Queen cleared her of all charges."
-Kssht-
"Right then, I'll go inform the rest of the battallion."
Another man came out of the building just then, running towards the street as if in quite a hurry. Integral recognized him as the local chief of police, the man who'd been speaking over the walkie-talkie a moment before.
"Miss Hellsing!" He called out to her, "Miss Hellsing!"
Integral and Gabriel stood up, pulling themselves up from their seats with their hands firmly grasped on the windshield rim. They quickly got out of the car and assembled towards its rear where Integral would greet the Chief.
"Integral." Gabriel said flatly, something glistening in his hand as he withdrew it from the small storage area behind the front seats. Her sword. She caught it quickly and sat it over her shoulder as she glaced back at the black-uniformed man running up to her.
"So what's the situation so far?" She asked, words common in her vocabulary as Hellsing frequently took over missions from local authorities when it involved enemies beyond their ability to handle.
"A group of about four entered the building about twenty minutes ago, and we've confirmed at least 16 deaths regarding the Thames House staff. We've quarentined the block and sent in two heavilly armed agents to see what's going on. They went radio silent just recently." He explained with a weight in his voice. "We haven't been able to restore communications, and we fear they too may have been killed."
Behind them, Gabriel rummaged through the trunk of the car, looking at something golden within it, "It's been so long since I've needed to use this. Squee! It's so pretty!" He cried out in his thoughts, a devious smirk across his face.
"The assailants haven't made themselves known yet either, so we're not really sure what they're trying to accomplish. Scotland Yard just told us to wait for your arrival. Though, you don't have your normal men at arms with you. Who is this man?" The Chief inquired.
Gabriel slammed the trunk closed, holding a golden bladed, black-shafted halbred in his hands, "Good...bad...I'm the guy with the axe. But anyway, if we don't want this to turn into some kind of retarded crab battle..."
Integral half-way rolled her eyes at his statement, but continued to answer the Chief's question, "Ah, presently, he's all I have to work with. Make sure no one goes in or out once we go through those doors."
"Yessir!" The Chief announced. Gabriel was lamenting that Integral hurry, already rushing towards the entrance. She soon went after.
Down the Thames, one Seras Victoria was rushing towards MI6's HQ as far as her legs could carry her. It was deja vu all over again for her, but she just used the bad memories of before propell her forward even faster, "I'm not going to make it!" She thought frantically.
Within the building, Gabriel and Integral's footsteps were hushed by the short yet intricate carpetting. Gabriel stood before the platinum-haired woman, leading the way, though suspicious as to the lack of any personelle, or even their bodies. A strange sound catches his ear though and he pauses, wondering what it is.
Beyond the next corner in the hallway, the two would find themselves gawking at a ghoulish feast. A minion of the undead was gorging itself on the flesh of one of the building's staff, a bit of lower intestine hanging from its gnarled mouth.
"What...the fuck?" Gabriel asked matter-of-factly, horrified at the sight. Integral was only half-surprised.
"Doesn't matter anymore, kill it swiftly!" She called.
"Right!"
The two attacked at the ghoul, and it retalliated just as quickly. There was a clicking sound and a blur of something exploding from the opposite end of Gabriel's halbred. Before Integral knew it, the ghoul had partially been knocked back, and he was getting ready to pull it in quickly. The halbred apparently had a unique dual-use, as the opposite end from the blade was equipped with a tri-point grappling hook. She looked from the halbred, down the thin line that attached to the hook embedded in the ghoul's chest, and noticed something peculiar.
"Wait a moment, what happened to his eyes?"
She heard a faint groan just a second before Gabriel used the momentum from pulling on the line to cut the ghoul in half at the hips, the ghoul shrieking in annoyance as its torso fell to the floor, its legs falling soon after with a thud. Gabriel approcoached without hesitation and placed his foot firmly on the ghoul's head, keeping it well pinned to the carpet. The halbred began making a whirring noise as the thin wire was being reeled back into the shaft, spinning around a thing wheel encased behind the blade. When it clicked, and the grappling hook was secured firmly into the end of the shaft again, Gabriel leered down hatefully at the aboninable creature, his one red eye pulsing with a slight glow.
"I'm so sick of you people who drop to insanity so quickly. You who know nearly nothing and crack at the slightest bit of discord." He raised the halbred above his head, poised to strike.
The blade stopped within half an inch of the ghoul's mangled face. He was hardly interested in why Integral had him stop, but under the Queen's orders, he came back to his senses and allowed her to approach, though it's likely she would've shoved him out of the way if he hadn't.
"Take a moment and look at this thing." She said, emphasising the last word as if to point out to the other blonde that he wasn't dealing with just some crackpot who forgot he'd just been cut in half. "Its eyes have been gauged out and his face has been partially skinned."
"So?"
"Nevermind." She heard that faint groan again and her eyes lifted to the corpse a few feet away. Immediatly she abandoned all interest in the ghoul and ran forward, kneeling quickly by the body. Behind her, she heard the hollow crunchy sound of Gabriel's blade being driven through the ghoul's cranium. She cared little though, realizing that the 'corpse' the ghoul had previously been feeding on...was still barely alive! "Sir Holmwood!"
"...Si....ing..." He whispered, blood trickling from his mouth. Integral knew that the man would soon change for the worst, and she called his name again to try and get him to focus. "So...this is...what it's like to be..." He paused, choking a moment on his own blood, coughing a gaut of it before speaking again, "...eaten alive..."
"Sir Holmwood, who did this?"
"...clow.....a clown..."
"A clown?"
"A clown? For real?" Gabriel asked behind them. Integral raised her hand in a polite way of telling him to shut up.
"...white...face..." Sir Holmwood continued, barely conscious anymore, almost mumbling things in a drawl as if he were being anesthatized for surgery. Sadly for him, there would never be a groggy awakening later. This was the end, and every second counted. "...fascis...t..."
"A Nazi clown?" Integral said, feeling almost foolish for uttering the question out loud, "A Nazi did this?"
A final gasp escaped his lips and his head tilted slightly as the muscles in his neck relaxed. Integral stood and withdrew her gun, the Browning 9 millimeter, and shot the body in the head.
Gabriel whined in the background, as if having experienced a sudden incredible pain, and he clenched at his head with one hand, "Good job, Sir Knight...you shot a dead guy in the head."
Integral ignored him and went on towards the door before her. It wasn't locked, but she wasn't prepared to find out what was behind it without competant backup, so she looked back to the fool behind her, "On the count of three, kick in the door and hit the wall." She whispered.
Gabriel pointed to himself, but then nodded, approaching. Integral already had her back against the wall, and watched as Gabriel approached the entrance, reaching for the handle. Before she knew it though, she blinked, and Gabriel was gone. She blinked again, but he didn't return. The hallway darkened just a little, as if a light had faded in the distance and regained power shortly after. She looked around cautiously, expecting it all to be an illusion, but her eyes soon felt rather heavy and she fell to one knee, grasping her sword in one hand and her gun in the other.
"What is this..?" She asked quietly. She felt a hit by her right hand and heard her gun go skittering off down the corridor, and before the same could be said about her sword, she reached with a burst of focus and withdrew the blade, slashing aimlessly at the empty air before her. Tired again, she fell to both hands and knees, her head wobbling with a swimmy sensation in her brain. Unwilling to let herself be taken down so easily, she crawled towards the wall and used it to support her ascent to her feet. All the while, she felt as if someone were watching her, and silently musing at her difficulties. "Show...yourself!" She demanded, a strand of hair dangling precariously before her challenging eyes.
No one and nothing answered, not even the body of the man she'd just shot, or the split open ghoul. She felt something behind her, a slight wind, and just as she turned to face it, she felt something cold and sharp dig painfully into her cheek, extending from the corners of her mouth to just before her ear. She couldn't comprehend it at first, but the jester who had lured her there had just dug a rather sharp knife into her flesh and let her turn into it to carve out the mocking extention of her cold smile.
"My my, Miss Hellsing, what have you done to yourself? You look terrible." He commented, holding up the knife in his right hand. Integral had no time to feel the new wound in her face, but she sure felt the stinging as her body suddenly realized it had actually been hurt. "Well?"
"Who are you?" Integral snarled, unable to see straight, "Lift this accursed illusion, vampire!"
"But that wouldn't be any fun. You'd lunge at me and probably try to pry my head off. That would be counter productive, Frauline." He answered, his image swirling back and forth before Integral's eyes.
"Out with it then!"
"So impatient..." The clown stated, "Your family has always been like that...headstrong and foolhardy, acting almost without thinking, like you're so high and mighty because of the fact that you are able to control a vampire. What does that say about you, Frauline? That you're powerful and strong? No. That you're undefeatable? Hardly. It just says you got lucky...you caught a vampire who was ready to die anyway."
Integral said nothing, though not because she had nothing TO say. She figured, the sooner the jester had gone out with what he had to say, the sooner the awfully nausiating feeling would go away.
"The point is, Frauline...that your day is coming, and it's going to be soon."
She couldn't contain it anymore, "So you killed another Knight just to tell me this?"
"Would you have taken me seriously had I not?"
"You expect me to do so just because you have?" She retorted, "You're nothing but a terrorist."
The jester was taken aback, though intrigued with her comment.
"Nothing but a God damned terrorist." She continued, "The Hellsing Organization doesn't have time for your antics."
"You certainly don't have the power to kill me right now though, either, so I suggest you pay attention." The jester said firmly, grabbing Integral's neck with one hand and her sword-wielding hand with the other, pinning her hard against the opposite wall, "You...are going...to die." He hardly cared that Integral didn't act surprised or worried, "You are going to be washed out of this world in a flurry of fire and death."
Integral only seemed surprised right then because she thought she heard someone calling her name from afar.
"Now I want you to think long and hard about what you're going to do between now and that moment, because it won't be today, Frauline. No! It will be soon...and I'll give you a hint as to who will do it."
Again, Integral heard the voice far off calling to her, though this time a bit closer.
The jester leaned in near to her ear, "It will be someone whom you trust, and you will not see it coming until it's far too late."
Integral clenched her teeth together, but her eyes flew open wide as she heard gunshot fire hailing from beside her. The jester let go of his grip and she fell to the floor, and she grasped at her neck as she coughed. Before her, she saw her Browning and she clamered to it, grasping and aiming at the bloodied and shot-up clown that had once held her captive. She looked down the hall, seeing a brigade of many soldiers, though not of English origin. The jester backed against the door.
Integral could feel her senses returning to her almost instantly, and she regained her footing, seeing the bloodied pulp of her 'protector' curled up in a corner on the opposite side. The two soldiers that had beaten him up were hovering behind their commander as he was finally knocked onto his back. Bits of glass lay strewn across the floor, some white, some yellow, and one chunk looked remarkably like the iris of an eye. Integral could have sworn it was indeed an eye, but why would it be made of glass...and moreover, why would it be on the floor? She looked to the only person in the area whom she knew had yellow eyes, and that happened to be the jester. Before she could really look, there were voices yelling behind her at the two remaining soldiers.
They didn't respond to the small army's threats to surrender, and instead, held out their hands towards the human attackers. Again, Integral felt that strange nausia, and the trio vanished as if shrouded by a rippling blanket. When the nausia faded, the soldiers were gone, and the clown's body was removed. She looked back to Gabriel and then again to the small battallion.
"The dead are walking." One said.
"Forget about it, you're just making that up."
"Well, maybe, but they sure do look pretty out of it."
"If they're zombies then I'm Frankenstine's monster." The group's leader joked, a tall man with a bandage over his left eye. He had a long dirty-blonde braid wrapped around his neck loosely. "You two, go help that kid up off the floor."
Integral was momentarilly flabberghasted as to the identity of these men, and moreover, what they were doing there. It struck her a moment later that these must be the twenty men that the Chief had mentioned being seen going into the building before her own arrival.
She stared at them as Gabriel was approached by the two others, though he immediatly held his hand back at them so they would know to stop. He had his head pressed against the wall and looked to be in considerable pain, bleeding from more places than he had thought possible.
"We're the cavalry," The leader answered, "We were called by a man named Walter C. Dollneazz about a week and a half ago...said something about how our particular services were needed in London, and that we'd be handsomly paid for it."
Integral sneered to herself, but it passed as she recalled how Walter had met his end in that helicopter, "Walter is no longer with us." She stated, "Though if you know of him, I'll consider your proposal. Name?"
"Bernadotte...Pip Bernadotte."
Integral saw the two men struggling to convince Gabriel to let them help him up, but he had both hands pressed firmly against the wall beside his head as he himself slowly began to pull himself away from it. He must have hit it fairly hard, considering there was a small hole in it where his forehead was once pressed. However, once finally pulled away, the two soldiers grabbed him under the arms and pulled him away to help him to his feet. A third man grabbed Gabriel's halbred, looking it over curiously as the opportunity presented itself. Footsteps down the hall could be heard approaching them, and before anyone knew it, a particular strawberry-blonde was looking at them all with just as much a surprised look as they gave to her.
"Sir...Integra?"
"Stand down, Victoria."
Chapter 02 - End