Old Blood (CthulhuTech crossover)

[Academia Nut]

Here's an odd idea that bit me. At least EarthScorpion ought to get a bit of a kick out of this one.

---

Few would peg the Johannesburg Arcology as the seat of all that was evil in the universe, but stranger things had happened. In fact, stranger things that had already happened were what set in action the current chain of events, what had shaken the world and transformed it into something new, something terrible, and something worthy of attention.

Thoughts shifted through an alien mind lurking beneath all too human eyes. Some thoughts moved at a pace where the stars were impermanent things, others could catch an electron in the act of transitioning from one orbital to another. A mind that could contain such thoughts side by side simultaneously saw humans as the plodding, glacial cattle and the evanescent mayflies that they were. Such a mind also knew how evil they found its presence, yet not only did it not care, it revelled in the appellation.

For if it was evil then it was also a necessary evil. It was the reaper at the bed of the old and sickly, the settling of the black rain after a nuclear explosion reduced a thriving city to radioactive sludge, the burnt out degenerate matter of a white dwarf after a star had had its time, and it was the buzzing at the back of the head of a wolf as it slaughtered a deer. Death, entropy, conflict, and time were but a fraction of the names it wore.

Most of the time on this backwater world in the middle of nowhere in a desolate galaxy in the ass end of nowhere in the universe, this being went by one name. When it was with those that worshipped it as a god, it went by Nyarlathotep… well, at least when not being formal. There were other titles, Director, Endless One, Outer God, and so on and so forth, but none of them could capture even an infinitesimal fraction of the being’s true nature and purpose.

Those who thought him their father, their saviour, thought that he was here to destroy the world, to throw it down into chaos and destruction, to purge the weak and usher in a new age. Maybe. If that happened, it would be an incidental thing. They thought that because they thought that they knew him, knew what his plans were and meant. Hardly. Their minds, even the ones with pretensions of enlightenment, couldn’t hope to understand how he thought. For him, short term planning could involve waiting for the continents to reach favourable positions, while long term planning could mean getting a single neutron to collide with the correct nucleus during a fission event.

No, for Nyarlathotep, the ending of the world was not a goal, just one of many possible means to another end. The ultimate victory of the Children of Chaos, Hastur’s band – and how Nyarlathotep enjoyed using a name that had no sway over him – the poor misguided Deep Ones trying to wake a deity that hated water, the terrified and decadent Migou, or even the ignorant masses of humanity meant nothing to him. In fact, if it could be said that the being called Nyarlathotep had something had could be construed of as a heart and if it could be said that such a heart could have a soft spot, it would be for humanity.

An electron quick thought grew and propagated until Nyarlathotep considered the amusement he might have in telling his followers who he truly wanted to win. Not that he expected the fools in the New Earth Government to succeed with so many powers greater than them, including Nyarlathotep, bearing down on them, but in any fight he always secretly rooted for the underdog. Mostly because the fights he checked in on were the fights to the death and the underdog tended to fight so much more sweetly, more desperately.

And that was the wine that he cultivated, bottle, and savoured. Conflict. Not petty chaos, but conflicts that shook species to their knees – or tentacles or fins or pseudopods or whatever – and none knew what might come out the other side. Nyarlathotep was the manifestation of entropy in a hostile universe, the thing that transformed order to disorder. But so much of the disorder in the universe was boring! The only part of his job that he could be said to enjoy was watching the progression of intelligent species.

Even then, so much of it was petty and not worth his time. The sort of social chaos his followers dreamed of, of brother slaughtering brother in the streets, of madness and brutality ruling the day… Nyarlathotep didn’t really care about that. Not that he didn’t sow it at every possible opportunity, but that again was just a mean’s to an end.

No, that all was useless, random noise, just that same as Brownian motion or the rearrangement of molecules into simpler forms. What he wanted was evolution! Life’s struggle against death, the frantic, constant reorganization of systems against the claws of entropy was such a thrill to watch in the chaos the struggle produced. Let the best killer win! And humans, like so many other intelligent species before them, had learned that the best killer of all was not an individual but a society.

Yet even individuals could find new ways to thrill him. Humans had found a few ways in the past that had so excited him he had not interfered. Not precisely because they were novel ways, but because they were things humans dreamt up on their own instead of relying on outside help. To his great amusement, many of these accomplishments had been destroyed by other humans.

He admired both sides. The courage to travel into unknown waters and the courage to hunt the monsters that returned from strange shores, both traits that made him smile. The NEG were such a neutered bunch, so afraid of the shadows. Their ancestors had faced the shadows with teeth bared, like the animals humans truly were, but at least they had heart in them. He never said it, but Nyarlathotep preferred the fool who went down swinging to the worm that bent to the first thing that glared at it. At least the fool would be interesting to watch, and might even be remembered.

The Department Head of T99 walked into his office, breaking Nyarlathotep out of his surface reverie, not that such a trivial, temporal thing could break the full concentration of even a lowly avatar like the one manifested here in Johannesburg. The Dhohanoid looked so expectant, so eager to please. A billion years from now, he would not be remembered by Nyarlathotep. Alexander William Charleston, an NEG mecha pilot who just pushed the battered remains of his mech into the middle of a Migou advance and triggered a D-Engine overload, might. Funny the things an Endless One could choose to remember.

Nyarlathotep watched with feigned interest as the creature flapped its fleshy parts in painful slow motion, the vibrations producing shockwaves in the air that seemed to take forever to reach him. He considered just killing the thing in a pique, but that would derail a few things that he didn’t feel like putting back on track. He already knew more than the fleeting creature did about the project, but the only thing more boring than watching hydrogen turn to helium was using his cosmic powers to force things to work. No conflict in that, no enjoyment from watching the chaos spread like drops of blood diffusing in water.

Sometimes it was necessary, but not today. Today the incompetence of his underlings was marginally less bad than usual and they had finally tracked down the correct genetic lineage he had asked them to find. He could pick out a single atom of yttrium from a sample of seawater, how hard was it for them to find a single individual?

Ah, now the fool was wondering if perhaps this individual might be the key to a new Dhohanoid breed. Simple minded fool. No. He had something better in mind. Something closer to the Tagers. Oh, if only he could arrange to have all the Dhohanoids and Tagers in one room and tell them he arranged for both of their fighting as idle amusement. The looks on their faces would be so worth it.

Now Nyarlathotep took precious, meaningless seconds to wave away the suggestions of his underling, his minion. How inefficient the communications of these creatures, glacially slow and yet not taking the time to fully express their thoughts properly. He could try and teach them, but none could appreciate the significance even a single electron out of position could make in the long run while the demolition of a mountain could mean nothing.

No, he had better plans for this one. Last of a kind. Same as another. A pair of one-of-a-kinds, destined for one another. One dreaming, the other the one to wake the dreamer. And in the long run such a more interesting dreamer than that foolish old squid Cthulhu.

Nyarlathotep instructed his peon with an over inflated sense of worth to instead contrive for the individual they had discovered to arrive in a certain place at a certain time. He would leave the details up to them, even though he already knew all the possible ways to do it and what ways would be chosen. This would still be interesting to watch.

Far away in a decrepit mansion outside the London Arcology, a simple wooden box about six feet long and three feet wide sat waiting. Waiting like the mythical dowry from the gods.

[Robo Jesus]

How come I get the feeling that what waits sleeping in England is eventually going to come to terrify even Cthulhu?

[JonB]

Depends if it's Alucard or Seras.

[Academia Nut]

The outskirts of London had seen better days, with some sections still bombed out husks from the early days of the First Arcanotech War nearly thirty years prior. The areas often needing the most work were the former mansions of the rich and noble. Often existing in legal black holes with unknown ownership that still somehow vehemently defended the property against redevelopment, they were also in unfavourable locations far from the arcology and the safety provided. Sometimes someone would obtain secure ownership and have the money to redevelop the land, but most of the time the buildings rotted in obscurity, looted out skeletons of a prior age sheltering squatters and worse.

Except for one proud old structure that no one liked to go near. It still sat, gloomy and brooding, its structure blemished with battle damage like a pox victim and its surface finery long ago looted, but beneath its damaged façade reinforced military grade infrastructure stood through.

Shining a torch on a bit of armour cladding about a main supporting pillar, Ellie wondered what might possess someone to hide battleship grade armour beneath the surface of their house. No wonder squatters and looters avoided this place, it was built like the old Pentagon, and anyone crazy enough to build something like that was not one you wanted to come home unexpectedly and find you looting.

There also existed a bad air to the place. Not quite sorcerous or otherworldly, but the little animal part of the brain started to grow agitated and disquiet the further in one went. Only crows seemed to enjoy perching on the burnt out husks of the trees and gardens torched by war. Already Ellie could feel a crawling desire to escape, to flee into the night. But in her short life she had seen and felt worse and she refused to let that stop her.

Her client wanted something recovered from this place, something hopefully hidden deep enough that the decades had not yet touched it. The client had said that it was an original piece of 19th century literature, but Ellie would be running it past the authorities first. She wasn’t stupid enough to go handing occult texts over to unknown parties. The guy was apparently a representative of one of the Chrysalis Corp. entertainment divisions, but the boys and girls at Chrysalis had always given her the creeps whenever she took a job from them.

Pushing with some force on a joint that had corroded into a solid, unbending mass, Ellie shoved open one of the inner doors, kicking up a massive swirl of dust in a lightless interior hallway. Shining her light down the corridor, she found it full of disapproving portraits of nobles from centuries past looming down on any intruders. A thick carpet of dust covered and muted the actual carpet, equally rich and gloomy as everything else in this place.

Unbeknownst to Ellie, a number of factors were conspiring against her, although only one actor understood that what was happening was in fact ultimately malice rather than stupidity. Through an escalating series of bureaucratic miscommunications between the secretive and malevolent organs of Chrysalis, what would have otherwise been a single Shadow Tager trailing Ellie to see what the Chrysalis wanted would rapidly turn into an all out brawl between the Children of Chaos and the Eldritch Society.

In terms of body count, Nyarlathotep fully expected his cultists to come off the worse for the wear, but hey, they could always make more Dhohanoids and surprises were the whole reason he stayed around on this planet. Of course, if things went as planned then the side with the fewest casualties would be the one that could run fast enough.

As it turned out, Ellie was somewhere on the second floor trying to figure out the location of the main study when her keen ears picked up the distinctive popping noise of distant gunfire. Her whole body perking up in alarm, she drew her pistol, a nice beefy 15mm guaranteed to slow down anything that could be slowed down by bullets.

Ellie frowned in memory of the list of things not guaranteed by the manufacture to be slowed down by the gun. It deepened as the sound of gunfire got more frequent and from different locations. It sounded like quite the battle was going on nearby.

Finding a corridor with exterior windows, Ellie crouched down and peered out through the shattered frame of the closest window. The setting sun cast long shadows down over the enormous lawn, but it looked like there was a pitched battle in one of the gardens between a large number of soldiers or paramilitary men and someone or something that was keeping very close to the shadows.

Slipping back from the window, Ellie considered her options. Her first priority was not getting shot, so fuck the client for today. So did she go to ground in the mansion or make a run for it?

The whole building vibrated slightly as a rather large explosion went off out on the lawn. Then from the other side of the building the distinctive chatter of a machine gun firing became audible. Okay, it sounded like someone was trying to do a re-enactment of the First and Second Arcanotech Wars outside. Running for it was liable to get her shot by both sides. So hiding in the mansion it was. Now, up or down?

Aged, deteriorated armoured glass shattered as high velocity bullets passed through the windows, walking along towards where Ellie’s head was. Only the still intact armour plate in the wall kept her from obtaining a compromisingly large hole in her skull. Still, the little patter of plaster falling off the decrepit wall convinced her to go for sturdier cover, like might be found in the basement surrounded by nice bullet catching soil.

As Ellie rushed to get down the stairs, she found troops spilling into the main entrance hall across the courtyard. She considered just surrendering to them since they looked legit, but through the dirty windows she saw several of them sudden sprout large masses of tentacles. Her eyes going wide for a second, Ellie suddenly appended her opinion to ‘not legit’.

Doing an about face, she ran for what she was fairly certain was a door down into a cellar, hopefully one with a hidden exit somewhere outside far from the monsters shooting at things. Already rather strange sounds more akin to needle rounds were starting to dominate the battle.

Throwing open the door, Ellie checked that she hadn’t found a closet, and after some quick checking of the dark with her flashlight, she ducked inside and slammed the door shut. It was only after she had a second to examine the room in full that she realized she may have made a slight miscalculation. She had discovered an entire firing range complete with racks of weaponry from the Second Cold War era, carefully preserved. It looked like there had been a battle sometime more recently since the weapons cage had been pried open and there were loose casings and rounds scattered about the floor and in open boxes.

Old, undoubtedly unstable, ammunition. Evening moving stealthily and safely through the thousands of corroded copper cylinders would be rather much of a pain, especially in the dark.

Shuffling away from the door, Ellie frantically looked around for some sort of escape route, her larger torch stowed away in favour of the under barrel light so that she could keep both hands on her large gun. Scanning about, she quickly found that at the other side of the range near the weapons cage there was a set of stairs leading down. Heading down the flight, Ellie tried the door and found that while the door wasn’t locked, the handle was corroded and difficult to turn.

A loud tearing of metal heralded the arrival of a pair of combatants through the door Ellie had entered by. Each one over two metres tall and made of abominable flesh, they tore and smashed each other with fists full of claws capable of tearing Ellie’s face off. Rolling about on the ground, they started to run over loose bullets and igniting the decayed primers, adding sick fleshy pops to the tearing of their unnatural bodies and their abominable bellowing.

Frantically slamming the butt of her gun on the stubborn handle, she finally succeeded in tearing it off, the entire assembly tumbling out. Screaming out in frustration, she rammed her shoulder into the door and it went flying open, sending her tumbling into the lower reaches of the mansion. Scrambling to her feet, she just ran from the confrontation between the huge monsters.

As she went deeper into the mansion, she discovered to some growing dread that the structure was getting older, the stonework no longer hidden, and the atmosphere decidedly more ‘dungeon-like’. Now rather worried, she shone her light into various rooms, looking for somewhere she could at least hide and hope that the monsters would be too busy tearing each other apart to look for her and the NEG would get a task force out to break it all up before they ate her.

Hearing a clicking noise like a parrot clattering its beak somewhere down the hall, Ellie decided that she would just have to make do and find the nearest place to hide. Shoving open a door, she discovered a nearly empty room except for a plain, rectangular wooden box on a raised stone platform in the middle. She considered moving on, but the clicking was getting closer. Running behind the box, she turned off her light and waited, tense, hoping the shadows would conceal her.

For an interminable time that felt like hours but was probably a minute or two, the only thing Ellie could hear was her too loud breathing and heartbeat. It felt like her heart would explode in her chest. Finally though something else broke the silence. Soft, mocking laughter.

“A box? Really?” A cold, inhuman voice asked before the air was torn by the roar of a fully automatic weapon in a confined space. Night turned to day and Ellie thought she would go deaf. Bullets ripped through the box, and Ellie dropped to the ground, screaming as lead and wood splinters flew above her. When it ended she could barely hear herself scream or the maniacal laughter above the hellish ringing in her ears. There was so much blood and her body stung along her arms from the wooden shrapnel kicked up. Too much…

Screaming and laughter died away, replaced by horror. A diffuse red glow was filling the chamber, revealing dark blood pouring profusely and impossibly from the box. As it poured down the sides of the stone plinth, the blood began to fill in intricate geometric shapes and lines, hidden before in the darkness. Worst of all, the glow came from the mixing of Ellie’s blood with the blood from the box, and it was slowly spreading.

She was sitting in the middle of a sorcerous circle. One powered by blood, hers and some otherworldly source, and sufficiently complicated that it was starting to appear on the walls. The tentacle monster was already shaking, trying to run but finding its rubbery limbs glued to the floor by the spreading blood. It fired randomly but the sorcerous energies seemed to devour the fury of the weapon.

Ellie soiled herself in terror as the blood filled in the ceiling, the glowing portions following shortly behind it. Upon completion of the entire blasphemous pattern a cracking sound was heard. Blood began to violently and randomly spurt out of the bullet holes in the box, almost like something was thrashing about within. Finally, like a chick breaking free of its shell, a skeletal arm punched through the top of the box.

Blood red and completely free of flesh, the arm reached down and clawed off the entire top of the box. Rising like a sleeper from a bed, a totally bare human skeleton completely free of flesh exited the box. Empty eye sockets stared down at Ellie, who had long ago lost the capacity to scream her throat was so swollen with pain and terror.

Tears running up her eyes, she just watched as the thing stepped down, blood flowing up like dark tar along its bones. It bent down before her, letting her see the elongated canines in its jaw while a long tongue manifesting out of the black blood to lick at her left arm. She recoiled at the unclean, tingling feeling, but the tongue left no residue, having taken all the blood away. Her blood.

The grinning skull, tongue stirring within its mouth, the skeleton advanced upon the now completely immobile monster. Bones warped like clay and the jaws distended impossibly while the once mostly human teeth turned into the over wide mouth of a great white shark. The skeleton pounced, ripping into the squealing tentacle thing. Unnameable fluids spattered everywhere, but the flow seemed to revitalize the skeleton, wrapping it in flesh made of blood and shadows.

When the nightmarish feeding ended, the tentacle monster was a desiccated husk with the majority of its head torn off, while the skeleton now had a tar black layer of goo about its frame, giving it an almost human appearance. Turning back to Ellie, it walked over to her, manifesting a new feature with each step such that by the time it reached her it looked entirely human.

Trembling like a hamster accidentally dropped into the kitten pen at a pet shop, Ellie watched as the creature knelt down before her and bowed. It said, “It is dilute, but you have the old blood in you. Command me my master. Command me, Sir Hellsing.”

Ellie looked back at the monster even as the light of the sorcerous array faded. Somehow she had summoned an outsider. She knew about the occult, significantly more than the average citizen, and she knew that the NEG tended to dissect people that summoned outsiders. Even if said outsider looked like a teenage girl.

---

Aaaaaand it's Seras.

[Darth Nostril]

Trembling like a hamster accidentally dropped into the kitten pen at a pet shop

I narrowly avoided spraying piping hot tea all over my desk at that
Excellent work.

[Academia Nut]

Do remember too what Seras' nickname is.

[Darth Nostril]

Which is why I give tummy rubs with shoulder length kevlar reinforced gloves. No matter how cute they are.

[Academia Nut]

Seras kept up a smile for the young woman who was her new master, but on the inside she was suffering from a minor bout of psychic indigestion, to say nothing of general confusion. That creature she ate had some weird memories and thoughts, and had this been her first meal she probably would have had some problems, but Pip and some of the others were taking the proverbial rubber hose to the thing. She almost felt a tickle of pity for it. It had spent its whole life despising humans, and now it would spend the rest of eternity stuck beneath them in the hierarchy of souls within her.

Then the current date hit her and she mentally swore in the back of her mind. 2085. Damn! She’d been sealed about seventy years ago, and it seemed a lot had changed. It looked like Integra had been right, that there were still things that went bump in the night. If only the States hadn’t been drawn into so many wars in the aftermath, if only the Hellsing family hadn’t burnt up so much political capital in the wake of the attack, and if only Alucard hadn’t disappeared.

So many regrets, but the time wasn’t appropriate to dwell on them. The first thing to do was to protect her master. The poor girl probably wasn’t much older than she’d been when Alucard turned her, and the blood in her veins was several generations removed from Integra, but only the blood of a Hellsing could break the seal about her so this girl Seras would serve unflinchingly.

Of course, she didn’t seem in the right state of mind to issue orders at the moment, especially now that the ambient light levels had dropped below the point where humans could see, so Seras just said, “How about we get you somewhere safe, master?”

The girl just sort of nodded, clearly wanting to run away and so she just went along with what the scary vampire said. This would take some work in the long run. Taking the girl’s hand firmly in her own so that she wouldn’t pull away, Seras lifted her gently to her feet and said, “Come, just follow me, I know the safest place in the mansion.”

Her senses picking up the ebb and flow of the battles through the mansion, Seras neatly circumvented them and brought the girl down to the lowest level of the dungeons, to a secluded chamber containing the various anchors for the complex warding system about the mansion. Of particular note were the two raised platforms, one of which stood empty, one of which contained a relatively unassuming coffin.

Seras just stared at this while her master looked about fearfully, scanning her torch from side to side, trying to make sense of what she saw. Finally Seras just shook her head and resolved to figure out where master’s coffin had gone later. Turning to the girl, she said, “You’ll be safe here; there’s nothing above with the psychic willpower to get through the aversion ward about the room.”

“Aversion ward?” The girl asked, her whole posture indicating that she was in shock and not quite all there.

“Magic that keeps intruders away from important things by making them turn back. Get too close and eventually the psychic compulsion will either force you back or knock you out. As the head of the Hellsing family you’re not affected, so you can stay where no one can get you,” Seras explained before she smiled and said, “Now that we have a little time, I’m Seras Victoria. What is your name master?”

“Ellie,” the girl said before she replied in a daze, “Uh… Elizabeth. Elizabeth Doe.”

“Good. Now, enemies are attacking the mansion master. Would you like me to take care of them?” Seras asked.

Elizabeth just nodded slightly.

Seras smiled and replied, “Very good master. I will initiate a search and destroy mission. Could you possibly initiate a temporary restriction release to make the task easier?”

That kicked Ellie back into conscious thought and she violently shook her head, backing up against a wall while crying out, “No! I’m not letting you break free to wreck havoc! Do you know how many idiot sorcerers die because of that?”

Seras considered this question and psychically kicked in the ribs of the Dua-Sanaras she had eaten. The response was an emphatic ‘Most of them’. So Seras just grinned and said, “Okay then, we’ll do this the tricky way then. Stay here master, I’ll return when it’s safe to come out.”

Moving off into the darkness, Seras quickly assessed her options. With full restrictions in place that mostly sealed away the more esoteric abilities having to do with the company of souls within her. So she had to maintain a human shape, no summoning of familiars, and regeneration took longer, along with a few other things. So long as she played things smart though, she figured she could clear up the situation with a minimum of fuss.

Turning to shadows to move through the substance of the mansion, Seras felt a mind lurking at the boundary of existence in the shadows, resentful for her intrusion upon its domain. She just sent a psychic growl back. This was her turf. The presence retreated, for the moment, and Seras had the most distinct feeling of recognition. She would have to re-examine her memories.

Slipping through the lightless interstices between the atoms in matter, Seras settled in behind a group of four snake-things firing needles from their mouths like machine guns. Between the four of them they kept up a steady stream of projectiles that kept their enemies pinned behind the landing of a set of stairs and they made an awful mess of the place, turning this section of the mansion into something that resembled a hedgehog.

Stepping out of the shadows behind the creatures, their only warning about what was going to happen was when Seras tore the head off one of them. They reacted instantly, two turning their attention to the closer threat while the third kept up the suppression fire. They were good, lithe and fast, but Seras was faster, and unlike Alucard she had never developed the habit of letting her enemies get in the first strike and then regenerating.

Better to dodge and give them the false hope that if they could just hit her it would do anything. Of course, hitting her could be a touch tricky considering she could discern the flight path of each individual needle and move to avoid it accordingly. She spent a few seconds teasing them, dodging their attacks while letting the blood from their comrade’s severed head drain out of the severed neck and fall on her waiting tongue before she went back on the attack.

Suddenly darting forward, she punched out into the torso of the one on the left, shattering the rib cage and sending most of the internal organs spraying out the back like squeezable relish bottle caught in an industrial press. This nightmarish display of strength caught the remaining creatures off guard. Grinning like a hungry great white, Seras then grabbed the remaining lower half of the snake-thing by the spine and cracked it like a grotesque and enormous whip. The attack caught the other creature going after her across the face and snapped its neck.

It was at this point that something rather unexpected happened. A previously completely unseen creature began to attack Seras, moving between locations so fast it would have looked like it was in two places at once to a normal human. Caught unaware, Seras could only weather the impacts as it ripped apart her flesh with the thorns that covered its body.

Once it had teleported away again the last remaining snake creature turn on her and fired a constant stream of needles into her, transforming her into a pin cushion in seconds. The other faction previously pinned behind the stairs immediately joined in on shooting her, either with guns or their own needles or in one case some sort of energy blast fired from the shoulders. That last one hurt like a bitch.

It seemed that both factions considered Seras more dangerous than the other and had temporarily declared a minor truce to shoot her first. Ripped to shreds by the attacks, Seras slumped to the ground with more holes in her than the Bismarck. A half silence fell over the room even as the battle raged on through the rest of the mansion as both sides tried to figure out if she was actually dead.

They got their response when Seras twitched her elbows hard enough to dent the floor and propel her towards the ceiling. Her feet made contact with the ceiling and held there like she was on the floor, and then she was moving again. Now that she was no longer reeling from the unexpected assault, she presented a much harder target to hit.

Rushing down a ceiling height window, Seras moved ahead of the massive barrage of firepower, running on glass even as it shattered beneath her feet from the rounds passing through it. Touching the bottom of the frame, Seras kicked off and launched herself faster than the human eye could track into the closest bundle of foes. Tragically for her first target, its eyes could track her movements, but it couldn’t move fast enough to avoid the attack, so it could only watch in slow motion as Seras’ fist closed with its six eyed face.

The creature’s head half exploded, half ripped off its neck, bits of the skull and brain matter smacking into a creature behind it hard enough to stun the shocked beast. Another similar looking creature to the one Seras just killed tried to take a swipe at her with a clawed hand while its insect-like wings took it to the air. Seras wrapped a hand around two of the four legs and tore it apart like a wishbone.

The largest one, the one that shot those irritating energy balls from its shoulders, was apparently a touch cleverer than some of its fellows as it decided to attempt to immobilize her by shooting out a tentacle to ensnare her. Seras blocked with her right arm, letting the fleshy appendage wrap about her forearm. She just grinned and pulled. The tentacle was stronger and more connected than she thought, as instead of shredding or pulling it out of its sheath she instead ripped off the entire tore the entire arm off at the shoulder. In casual contempt for the damage done, Seras swung the dismembered limb about and used it to strike the last snake thing in the head, snapping its neck with the impact.

The battle paused for a second while the remaining foes considered what to do, Seras giving them the moment to let the tentacle about her arm slide free and mostly to let the fear stew within them. She noted with some interest that the creature whose arm she arm had ripped off was already starting to have the wound heal over. It had fast regeneration, but not No Life Queen fast. She also noticed that the unnatural flesh of the dead creatures was boiling away, revealing human forms bodies and body parts. Interesting.

The creatures started to edge away, clearly wanting to get as far from her as possible, but not wanting to turn their backs and get slaughtered in the rout. Seras casually licked her hands, her inhumanly long tongue curling about her petite wrist to pick up the various fluids of gore shed by the strange beings. Even in their multitudinous, alien eyes, she could see their fear; see that simple need to get as far from the monster as possible. She wondered if they comprehended the irony.

One of the larger, more humanoid creatures suddenly did something unexpected when its entire torso exploded into writhing viscera. At first Seras thought it had been struck by an unknown sniper with an anti-tank weapon, but when the long coils of flesh wrapped about her, she realized it was a new form of attack. Gazing into the exposed torso, Seras realized that the interior was larger than the exterior, a waiting maw to devour whatever got pulled back with the tentacles.

Seras grinned and stood her ground even as the pull started. The monster dug its feet into the floor and strained with the effort to move Seras, but despite her small, feminine frame, she would not budge. Instead, she grabbed one of the tentacles and began to haul, hand over hand, the creature towards her. Thick talons tore into the floor as it resisted the pull, its torso attempting to close, but it couldn’t with a tentacle still manifested.

A sudden light caught Seras’ attention. Turning to the side, she saw that the hulking brute thing had gathered together three floating balls of energy that glowed brightly, distorting air and light about them in rippling waves. Its dozens of eyes glared at her hatefully for a moment before the image was lost in the flash of condensed energy as a beam of pure destruction shot out at Seras.

The last thing Seras got out was a truncated, “Oh sh-”

Matter peeled away under the onslaught of shifting higher dimensional energies. Where the beam passed, little physical could continue to exist. The entire right side of Seras from the crown of her head to the bottom of her right foot simply ceased to be, while elsewhere in the mansion new doors had been cut by the passage of the beam. Deprived of support, Seras’ body slumped to the ground; still connected to the enemy she had been struggling with.

The massive creature slumped to the ground, exhausted from firing so much energy while still regenerating from such catastrophic damage. Its fellow began to reel in its tentacle to finish the job, but after little more than a meter it suddenly encountered resistance. A strange sound, an awful sound rose from Seras’ body. It was the sound of laughter rich with evil emanating from a body cut in half lengthwise.

Pink, bloody steam rising from her body, Seras looked up even as she regenerated. Letting go of the tentacle, she allowed it to retract, the owner suddenly discovering that it had seen too much and it would prefer to run screaming along with those of its fellows that could run.

Getting up on a leg half formed from blood and shadows, Seras rolled her jaw about, working out all the kinks that inevitably resulted from such extensive regeneration. That had almost been fun! She really needed a major drink though, something to pick her up after expending so much energy.

Extending out her senses to their limit, she noticed that one faction was now definitely in full fall back, while the other was advancing, moving to occupy the mansion, something that just would not do. She would need to find a command position and obliterate it to convince the enemy that her territory was not one easily trespassed upon.

Moving out towards the main entrance hall, she quickly encountered a large number of creatures, and she could now name them. There were five Dua-Sanari, three Gelgores, four hulking Elib, and one massive Zabuth likely in charge. Together they were taking advantage of the retreat of their enemies to attempt to surround and destroy a pocket of the flying creatures on the opposing side.

Her right side still a half formed mess of charred and bloody flesh, Seras stalked into view along the right flank of the enveloping force. The pinned down fliers saw her and apparently knew of her as they immediately broke cover to get away, while the other side only devoted a single Elib to take care of her while attempting to take advantage of what they saw as a tactical blunder.

They immediately regretted their own massive tactical blunder of not running the moment Seras entered sight when the Elib flew through the air and struck one of the Gelgores, the now tangled pair hitting a nearby wall hard enough to explode like balloons full of spam, showering the entire entrance hall in bits of viscera.

The fliers took advantage of the sudden horrified pause to make their break, escaping from the mansion, something Seras allowed because it encouraged further running. The remaining enemies turned their guns or mouths or whatever on Seras, but the Zabuth held up a clawed hand and they all held their fire. It glared down at her with a single alien eye.

Finally its face shifted to something more human, although mounted on a three metre tall body of monstrous shape, it was hard to reconcile anything human about it. It grinned down at her and said, “You’re strong little one, and I think it would be a shame to waste the ammunition on something so amusing.”

A feral, psychotic grin spread over Seras’ face, showing off her razor sharp teeth, and she said, “And you’re an arrogant one and it would be a shame to waste spilling your blood too early. A bit tall though. I’ll have to cut you down to size first.”

They both acted at the same time, the Zabuth transforming back in an instant, its enormous eye firing out a blast of otherworldly energies that sliced through the floor where Seras had been standing. Seras on the other hand cleared the distance between the two of them in the blink of an eye. Her foot collided with its knee in a side kick, shattering the joint and sending the creature tumbling down into Seras’ waiting arms, her jaws stretched impossibly wide, seeking the throat.

About a second after it registered that their commander had been beaten like a human in a boxing match with an Elib the stunned remainder of the squad opened fire, bullets and needles smacking into the rapidly exsanguinated body of their leader. Hurling the body aside and crushing a Dua-Sanaras, Seras pounced upon the remainder and began the slaughter afresh.

It was at about that point that things took a decided turn for the worse for Seras as someone had heard enough about her to actually send in something heavy enough to deal with her. Draining the last drop of ichor from the last Elib, her first warning of what was coming was the roaring sound as the flames approached.

Composed of a complex blend of binding agents, ultra-energy-dense chemical fuels, and powerful oxidizing agents, the flamethrower fuel produced a flame well over 3000K, hot enough to melt steel in a hurry. The white hot heat flash boiled the water out of flesh before it even struck, leaving combustible fats to melt and wick to the surface, igniting from the radiant heat just as the actual substance of the burning fuel struck.

Seras was engulfed and incinerated in an instant.

---

I think this should be sufficiently rage inducing to serve as a cut off point for today.

[Singular Quartet]

I'd just like to state, for the record, that you suck.

[Academia Nut]

Ellie was left alone down in the depths of the basement, only her gun, torch and the implements in the room for companionship while that thing did its grisly work. Distantly she could hear the battle above, but she had no idea if the popping, crackling noises meant anything important had changed.

Scanning the light about, she eventually noticed a small alcove where a small urn rested, along with a slim book. Ellie peered at the urn and looked for any obvious hints of the arcane, but she just saw what looked like a typical brass urn for the storage of cremated remains in the style of the mid century. Ellie noticed that dust seemed almost afraid of the urn, which fortunately meant that she didn’t need to brush any away to read the tiny inscription on the surface.

Here lie the final remains of Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing, 1973-2059. Killed in the act of assassinating the Nazzadi flag officers Verta, Many, and Cera during the initial assault on London, stalling attacks for a month in the chaos. Body was sent back badly desecrated by the furious Nazzadi. After cremation one half of the ashes were stored here, the other half mixed in with nerve gas used against the Nazzadi. Casualties amongst the Nazzadi were estimated at over ten thousand.

Ellie just sort of looked at the urn incredulously for a long time. She had actually heard of the story of some old woman forcing her way into the command centre of the Nazzadi during the initial siege via just telling them to bring her there and then killing the top three officers on the scene with a sword hidden in her cane. She just always figured that the woman was in her late fifties, or something, not 86!

Turning her attention over to the small, bound paper book, Ellie read the words on the cover and her interest suddenly spiked, for they said in pre-Reformation English “To the future heir of the family.” Considering that that monster insisted she was the heir to this insanity, maybe there was something in here about banishing her back to whence she came.

Picking up the book, Ellie opened it to find inside a journal made from unlined sheets of white paper covered in neatly inked cursive writing. The first thing written there was “If you are reading this, you’ve probably woken up the Vampire Seras Victoria already as she is the only one who would lead you here. If you are reading this you probably also don’t have any clue how to put her back to sleep. Suffice to say, this book does not contain any knowledge of how to get rid of her.”

“Well fuck,” Ellie noted before she kept reading.

“What this book will cover however is a basic understanding of what it means to be the heir to the Hellsing family. While the Order of Royal Protestant Knights and the Round Table have long since been disbanded, it is impossible to carry the blood of the Hellsing family without having to face up to the obligations such ancestry demands. I do not know how this strange new world of the past few decades will evolve, but as a Hellsing, welcome to a world where things that should not be go bump in the night. It is your job to keep them in the night.”

Ellie read that, wondering back at the strange naiveté of the writings before the first Arcanotech War. She had always wondered how people could be so blind. Maybe this was a clue.

“There are many monsters out hiding in the darkness, but the ones that most concern the Hellsing family are vampires, because they are the most dangerous. Oh, there are other, stranger and stronger creatures, but they have not the combination of numbers, power, and invisibility that vampires do. Also, where most other monsters serve other powers and are thus restrained in certain ways, vampires owe allegiance only to their sires and dames, if at all. Their strengths are many, and their weaknesses far fewer than what many believe.”

“I must take this opportunity to make a slight divergence, in that in my own time I have seen the culmination of millennia of suppression of the arcane finally come to a head. Since the time of the pharaohs rulers have cultivated private sorcerers while allowing false superstition to spread, obscuring the truth. With each revolution, social collapse, and Dark Age, these secrets become more concentrated while the superstitions spread further. With the fading away of the Order, I now fear that the Vatican may be the last bastion of the old ways. I see the marvels of the new ways and I cannot help but wonder what more could be achieved if they opened up their vaults and shared the fruits of two thousand years of arcane research. Their tight lipped refusal to help only further help the fumbling child-sorcerers of today confirms my antipathy for them. At least my excuse is that I am but a single old, curmudgeon who no one takes seriously anymore.”

Ellie paused and parsed all of that, and suddenly the atomization of Rome and the surrounding areas of Italy during the opening salvos of the First Arcanotech war made a lot more sense. Everyone had always thought that had just been a way to demoralize humanity.

“Aside from this secret hoarding of arcane knowledge, there is also the spread of superstition and the idiocies of the various bands of deluded cultists who worship the monsters of the night, who have their own reasons to keep the truth hidden. The purity of many tomes of knowledge has badly degraded over the years, such that I believe that the last ‘true’ copies of the Necronomicon are now found in my private collection and in the collection of that American university. Every other version I have come across is a degenerate, slipshod mishmash of atrocious additions by those disappointed by the contents of the original. In particular, certain cultists have been deliberately rewriting such texts to keep their allies from learning the truth of their supposed god. I find it sad that what was once considered a basic occult primer available to anyone with a cursory interest is now considered a threat to public mental health.”

Okay, this woman was definitely crazy if she’d read the Necronomicon and…

“The most ridiculous culmination of these trends has been the recent circulation amongst the occult community of a recent discovery of the so-called ‘Breath of R’lyeh’, an ancient fragment of the Necronomicon found in Nineveh. This is utterly ridiculous as the Necronomicon, or Al Azif in the original Arabic, is younger than Islam as attested by the various secondary works of literature associated with it only appearing in the 9th century. Therefore this new text is either a predecessor, unrelated, or as I personally believe, an outright modern fabrication, especially as it is supposed to have been written in an ancient language. This makes any relation to the actual Necronomicon a laughable idea. Translations of such languages have only been achieved starting in the 19th century, and anyone with the opportunity to learn from a native speaker wouldn’t bother to read a secondary source when they have a primary available. Plus the vast majority of ‘ancient’ languages are in fact relatively recent occult ciphers and secret tongues misinterpreted by scholars.”

Ellie wanted to throw the book across the room in rage, but she wasn’t sure if the rage was from the writer or her own teachers. She was an investigator, a retriever, a high class scavenger really, and as such she had some basic occult knowledge to keep her safe. And as such she knew that the Necronomicon was written in R’lyehan. But then again, she had known other falsehoods in her childhood, what was one more lie?

“Apologies for the digression, but I am old and annoyed at the idiocy of youth, and it did serve a purpose, namely being to point out many well ‘known’ things are in fact distortions, errors, or outright fabrications. Of the lore of vampires, much of the same holds true, especially when it gets conflated with stories of other monsters. For example, while they are all creatures of the night and hate the sun, vampires are not in fact harmed by it unless they are particularly weak. This is probably a conflation with the creatures often called Grave Things, which do decay rapidly in sunlight. Somewhat ironically such creatures while much larger and stronger than almost all vampires avoid our world for the most part due to the fact that their reproduction relies upon inanimate corpses. From scholarly studies and talks with a certain vampire who had encountered them before, the process does not work on the undead and vampires see such creatures as competitors. When the two clash, the vampires invariably adopt the strategy of simply transforming a population into ghouls and simply cutting off the population of viable corpses for the Grave Things to breed with. While still needing of extermination, there is some speculation amongst certain scholars that vampires may in fact be a sort of ‘immune response’ by the human species against such creatures.”

This was crazy, this was crazy, this was…

“In any case, the major weaknesses of vampires are as follows: silver, stakes through the heart, and water. Of the three, water is perhaps the most prominent and a vampire trapped in water, particularly sea water, is nearly helpless. This is not surprising as large quantities water is capable of blocking many supernatural abilities, for reasons still not well understood.”

Bullshit. Superstitious tripe.

“Of the other two major weaknesses, a stake through the heart is only good for paralyzing a vampire, not for outright killing it. Once the stake is removed the vampire will be able to move freely once more. Silver on the other hand, particularly blessed silver interferes with their ability to regenerate, aiding in dismembering the creature beyond the capacity for regeneration. Of course, since you are dealing with Seras, only the issue of water applies to her and her sire. They are both capable of regenerating even after total incineration, hence the more esoteric means required to remove her sire. However, while dumping Seras to the bottom of the ocean was considered, there are enough things dwelling in the deep that might accidentally wake her up and subsequently bring her to the surface intentionally or not that it was deemed not worth the risk.”

Okay, anything that could regenerate from complete incineration terrified Ellie in ways she didn’t want to really think about too much.

“Fortunately, as heir you hold her leash absolutely, and fortunately unlike her sire she is far less likely to try and test her limits. Despite her transformation, she remains humanistic to the core and even a creature of moral character, despite her status as an undead monster. While she still requires a diet of blood, preferably human and by necessity non-artificial, she only draws from three sources. The first is from packs of donated blood. The second is executions, particularly of other vampires. The third, and most loathsome yet curious, is ‘battlefield scavenging’, whereby she will finish off the mortally wounded who are of agreeable character. This habit was acquired both from the circumstances of her own transformation and from her first full meal. Fortunately she did not produce her own offspring before being sealed, but I feel that has more to do with the lack of activity than lack of inclination.”

Ellie was having a really hard time believing that what she had seen had ever been human, but at least it seemed whoever had originally done all of this insanity hadn’t been crazy enough to let her go running off without a leash. Only know Ellie had the leash, which would probably get her vivisected by the NEG. Oh, and apparently she could make more such monsters. Great, just great.

“While controlled, Seras’ powers are somewhat restricted, and thus much of her power is sealed away. It is possible however to temporarily release these restrictions, and in the face of catastrophic damage they will automatically lower until the danger has passed.”

Fuck, she was crazy after all.

“The only restriction that requires personal authorization is Level 0, which suffice to say, is unnecessary unless fighting a large army.”

It was at about that point that Seras walked through the walls, slightly smoking and carrying what looked like an energy weapon sized for powered armour over her shoulders, a worried look on her face. Ellie just looked at her and asked, “What?”

“I just thought you should know there is a large army camped on the front lawn.”

Ellie responded by pointing an accusing finger and crying out, “No! No, you’re not letting me release you!”

Seras looked at her curiously before she said, “Actually, we need to really hide. There are quite a lot of them and they seem pissed. I think they also have some sorcerers about, never a good thing as they might detect the warding.”

“We’re already at the bottom of the house! Where else can we hide?” Ellie asked, starting to hyperventilate in panic. This must be the NEG showing up to make them all disappear.

Setting down the ridiculously oversized weapon, Seras grinned broadly and said, “We have one last retreat in situations like this.” Her right arm then discorporated into a blob of shadowy tendrils. Hurling them forward, she wrapped them about a section of wall and started pulling. With what looked like a bit of effort, the petite vampire hauled several tonnes of stonework away, revealing a hidden chamber beyond.

“How many secret rooms does this place have?” Ellie asked incredulously.

Seras considered for a moment before she shrugged, the action restoring her arm to its original form, and said, “Depends on your definition of ‘secret’. Now could you just take one step to the right please?”

Ellie, so shocked from the insanity of the day, took a step to the right before she even thought about it too hard. Seras then walked up to her and lightly poked her in the right arm, which was enough to caused Ellie to skid across the floor slightly. There was a brief flash of light and then a sensation of a pressure being removed washed over her.

“What did you just do?” Ellie cried out in shock.

Seras moved over to the coffin on the raised platform and picked it up with one hand before she bent over to pick up the mecha weapon with the other. She then said, “The sorcerers will detect the ward. If we want minimal snooping, it needs to go. Now come on, let’s go.”

Torch in one hand and the book gripped tightly but forgotten in the other, Ellie followed into the hidden chamber, one that rapidly took on the appearance of a tunnel. They travelled for what had to have been close to a kilometre before the tunnel stopped at a dead end. Setting down the coffin and taking the giant gun in both hands, Seras then said, “Stay here for a second while I check out the surface.”

Stepping into the shadows, Seras disappeared into the darkness, leaving Ellie alone once again. Glancing about furtively, she realized that she still had the book in her hand. Opening it once again, she began to furtively flip through it, looking for anything that might explain how to deal with this monster. Finally she got to the end of the book and read the last paragraph.

“Well, if after all that rambling you still have questions, which you probably do, I recommend that you find the Hellsing family library. With increasing pressure to turn over our occult books measures have been taken to ensure their security. The current plan is to hide them in the Hellsing family tomb, well away from prying eyes. Seras can lead you there. Do be careful as while most of the books are no more harmful than a history book, there are numerous legitimate spell books within.”

That didn’t sound all that great of an idea. In fact, it sounded just about every book banned by the NEG would be sitting there, along with a few they hadn’t banned due to not knowing about them yet.

Seras chose that moment to reappear, all smiles. Setting down the beam weapon, she then morphed both her arms into that shadowy black goo and used them to haul open another chunk of wall, revealing what looked like a sewer overflow chamber. Long abandoned, it stank mostly of rotting vegetation rather than fouler things. Just a simple concrete shaft with a rusty ladder leading up to a grate at the top, it was a rather unassuming place to have a secret exit from a heavily fortified mansion, which Ellie supposed was the point.

“Master, I’ve already made sure that the grate will open for you and that the rungs will hold your weight. The army is doing a sweep at the moment and if you wait there and play the innocent bystander hiding from the monsters card you should be safe,” Seras said with a smile, then adding on cheerfully, “Oh, and its probably not a good idea to mention me.”

“What do I tell them when they ask me why I’m here? If they find out I was looking for a book, they’ll tear the house apart and surely find something they don’t like!” Ellie cried out.

“Tell them that you’ve just found out you’re the owner and you were examining the property,” Seras replied.

“They won’t believe that!” Ellie replied.

“Tell them to do a genetic test,” Seras countered.

“My father lost his memory in the war and we’ve never found out who we are even after gene tests!” Ellie said in a panic.

Seras frowned and shook her head sadly before she asked, “Did you check the databases for the nobility?”

Ellie blinked and asked, “Why would we?”

“Tell them to check those. Now go, they’re almost here,” Seras said, pushing Ellie out into the overflow chamber. Just before she closed the multi-tonne door she paused and plucked the book out of Ellie’s hands, saying, “We probably don’t want them knowing just how deep you got into the mansion.”

Then with barely a sound the wall was shut, not a seam visible against the background of cracks and other interference. Ellie stood there for a long time before it all rushed up to her and she started screaming, no longer capable of containing the trauma of everything she had experienced. Soon she heard the sound of boots tramping about on the grate above and lights shone down at her.

Holding up her hands, she cried out, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

Hidden in the glare of the lights, someone opened up the grate and then heavily armed and armoured soldiers were rappelling down into the darkness, pointing guns at her. Rough hands shoved her to the ground and she cried out, tears in her eyes, “Please help me! I don’t know what’s going on!”

“We’ll determine that,” one of the soldiers replied.

---

Sorry for the long delay, I wasn't sure on how to write this chapter, so I settled on this. I'm not entirely pleased, but right now I need to get the plot past the rocky bit of how they're not all killed immediately by the NEG.

[LadyTevar]

Shes' at least truthful... she does NOT know what's going on at all

[Alan Bolte]

I think it worked pretty well. A little info-dumpy, but that's difficult to avoid at this stage.

[JonB]

Integra Hellsing just waltzes into the Nazzadi HQ, and kills the top three with a sword?

That's sounds about right.

[Setesh]

Oh, there are other, stranger and stronger creatures, but they have not the combination of numbers, power, and invisibility that vampires do.

Was that supposed to be 'invisibility' or 'invincibility', the second would make more sense in this context as she goes on about Seras' regen capacity right after.

[Academia Nut]

Invisibility. It's referring to the fact that vampires can blend into human populations a hell of a lot easier than your average Lovecraftian beastie.

[Academia Nut]

I have embedded at least one really bad pun in here. See if you can find it.

---

Chandler Jackson was the sort of man whose name was only ever said aloud when someone was about to be whisked away, never to be seen again. He was not a nice man, but he was a necessary one. An officer of the OIS, he was one of the few tasked with keeping the NEG from imploding from within due to the depredations of the cults, the insane, and the just plain stupid. Sometimes all three at once. Today he had been summoned to London by higher ups even more drenched in blood and shadows than he.

If not for the diligence of a rather esoteric LAI scanning reports, he might not have come here at all, so obscure was the report flag. Apparently someone had claimed, and later been confirmed, to be a Hellsing, near the family’s ancestral manor during a major Outsider incursion. What a curious flag had been raised by the LAI as well. The rarely seen ‘Obscure Occult’. While to most such a flag seemed redundant, to those immersed in the occult it meant that something was very good at hiding amongst things usually regarded as smoke amongst fog.

Ironically, the Hellsing name was better know to fans of popular culture than among occultists, or rather the van Helsing name, associated with a character from the famous Dracula novel. While somewhat fallen from the public consciousness in times of real monsters, the seminal tale of the vampire was still relatively well known. What was barely known though was the fact that there had been a man of that name who had married into the English aristocracy at the turn of the 19th century.

What happened after that was almost completely unknown, due to the fact that apparently the Hellsing family was in charge of keeping the records of its own activities. After that, nothing for a century until the family was involved in the massive cover-up of the first major Outsider incursion in recorded history. The British government had tried to cover it up by saying that it was an attack by a rump party of Nazis, but every serious occult scholar knew that the incident was a massive attack by Outsiders. The Hellsing name was bandied about in whispered tones during that period, and opinion was divided over whether they had started or stopped it. Considering that the family had apparently lost most of its power in the aftermath, many felt that the latter was more likely.

After that, with the integration of Britain into the NUN the Hellsing family all but vanished from the records again except for the eldest member of the clan, a certain Sir Integra, repeatedly butting heads with occult investigators at the time. While nothing had ever been proven, she had repeatedly insulted their intelligence. After that, the family seemed swallowed up in the holocaust of the First Arcanotech War. Their manor had been repeatedly and regularly swept for the arcane and occult, to no avail.

Until four days ago when two groups of Outsiders decided to turn the outskirts of London into a scene from modern Afghanistan and an unexpected heir to the family showed up in the same place.

Chandler slipped into the darkened room outside the interrogation chamber where one Elizabeth Doe Hellsing sat quietly and miserably in a bright orange jumpsuit, her hands and legs cuffed, her fingers in immobilizing braces, her jaw clamped shut, and her head shaved bald.

“Gene scan results?” Chandler asked gruffly to the other officer on scene, a local OIS member named Gerhard Yeager.

“If anything, reverse taint,” Gerhard replied. At Chandler’s raised eyebrow, Gerhard said, “Her profile is so clean the possibility that someone put a spell on her genes to prevent Outsider taint from entering them. We think it could be hereditary… and the sorcerers are already salivating over the idea of such a spell, even if it’s theoretically impossible at the moment.”

Chandler, himself a practicing sorcerer, considered the implications and found them incredibly intriguing, if also incredibly dangerous. Contamination from the energies and entities they dealt with was one of the biggest problems for sorcerers and one of the main reasons the OIS had to be so harsh. A ward against that, especially one so powerful it could be passed on as a hereditary trait, opened up new, terrifying avenues that couldn’t even be considered otherwise.

Shaking off the thought, Chandler said, “Okay, so that just means that if she associates with Outsiders we can’t tell the easy way. What else do you have?”

“Not a great deal. She’s the daughter of an ArT1 PTSD amnesiac John Doe, and apparently no one ever bothered to check the databases for nobility in attempting to track down identity. He was one Arthur Hellsing II, son of Joseph Mallory and Elizabeth Hellsing, daughter of Integral Hellsing and an unknown father. The records grow corrupted by war damage around that point. As to what she’s been doing with her life, she’s been avoiding the arcology because her father couldn’t stand the crowds in his condition and so she grew up despising them. She’s a registered private investigator known to us as an occult student and with commendations for turning in contraband material she had been hired to track down. She’s young but good, and her nose has been clean up to this point,” Gerhard said. Chandler already knew this from his AR glasses, but he wanted to know that his subordinates were actually paying attention and could tell him these things without need for electronic aids all the time.

“So if I hadn’t shown up, you probably would have let her go,” Chandler stated.

Gerhard shrugged and said, “Well yeah. We don’t know what the hell those things were after, but one of the groups might have just wanted a quiet place to perform a ritual and the other wanted to stop them when she wandered into the crossfire. We found a couple places that might have been active arcane circles, but they were still hot, recently shut down. We’ve been checking the place, but other than being built by the militantly paranoid and subsequently abandoned, it’s pretty clean. Sometimes people just get caught up in shit.”

“Sometimes they do, but not this family. They’ve been involved in the occult in the past, and the really obscure occult that most reliable sources didn’t like to talk about. To me that screams that they were up to something. I think she’s been lying about why she was there. Under neural stimulation she later changed her story from checking out her family estate to looking for an original copy of Dracula. I bet we can make that story change again if we go deeper,” Chandler replied.

“Your call, I’m not going to stop or protest. I’ve seen more than one innocent looking suspect turn out to be summoning things that shouldn’t be named in their spare hours,” Gerhard said with a shrug.

“I’m going in for an interview. Make sure I’m covered,” Chandler announced.

“Always are, we don’t take chances around here,” Gerhard replied.

Walking around to the entrance to the interrogation room, Chandler went through two layers of security before he entered the brightly lit white room without corners. Elizabeth looked up at him, utter defeat in her eyes. Chandler had seen that look before. She would crack soon and reveal whatever it was she was hiding.

With a wave Chandler signalled for the guards to release the clamp about Elizabeth’s jaw, allowing her to move it and thus speak, but the slightest hint of something they didn’t want coming out of her mouth the clamp would slam shut again, severing her tongue between her teeth if necessary.

“What do you want to know?” She blurted out immediately.

“Whatever I want, although I suspect at this point we could get you to confess to knowing the location of R’lyeh if we really wanted to,” Chandler replied nonchalantly. “No, what I want to know is what you haven’t been telling us. So far the story you have stuck with most is that you entered the house, ran into the basement during the crossfire, and then found a secret escape tunnel, which we have yet to find ourselves. But I think you’re glossing over some details. You found something down there. What?”

“I… I… I found a book,” Elizabeth admitted. “I suppose it would be my great-grandmother’s book. It was a… journal I suppose you could call it. She was an occultist.”

“Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere new. I must say, while you’ve been very helpful, this would have been useful to know from the start,” Chandler stated coldly.

“I know what happens to people who get snapped up by the OIS, I didn’t want you blaming me for anything she did. I didn’t even know about her until that day,” Elizabeth snapped irritably before recoiling in fear at her own actions.

For his part, Chandler just smirked in amusement. “Got a bit of a temper, do you?”

“Maybe I got it from my great-grandmother. She seemed like a fearless bitch,” Elizabeth replied. “And I only just found out about her.”

“Do tell,” Chandler said smugly.

“I saw the urn with her ashes. You know the story about how the Nazzadi advance on London was stalled because some crazy old lady basically got into the Nazzadi HQ by glaring a lot, and then decapitated the three top ranking officers? That was her,” Elizabeth replied.

Chandler’s facial expression quirked just a fraction and he asked, “Really now?”

“Yeah,” Elizabeth said with a nod before she licked her lips nervously. Chandler watched her very carefully. She was tip-toeing around something. Finally she said, “I think she more than just dabbled in the occult. I just don’t want to get vivisected because of something she did. I’ve never hidden from a gene scan and I’ve never come up positive for anything; her sins don’t carry into my blood.”

“Maybe. But it sounds like you… have a deal to make, perhaps?” Chandler nodded, wanting to see how much rope she would hang herself with.

She nodded very slowly, especially considering the rig about her head, before she said, “Her journal, it mentions early on a kind of creature that was known in her time for keeping Grave Things in check, but she seems to have been involved in hunting them to near extinction.”

Chandler’s face settled down into something unreadable before he asked, “When you say near…?”

Sweat glistened off Elizabeth’s face and she looked like she was about to throw up, but she finally said, “She sealed something away. Something under her control, something I think she used to hunt other Outsiders.”

Running a finger over his AR goggles, Chandler summoned up several images from the scene of the crime and asked, “Strong enough to gut a Mk-5 Crusader PA or two?”

“Maybe,” Elizabeth replied, a queasy look on her face.

“You do realize that everything you just said was enough to make you disappear down a very dark hole?” Chandler asked, somewhat rhetorically at that.

Elizabeth stayed very, very quiet for a long moment, trembling with the need to keep her terror in check, before she finally managed to get out, tears running down her face, “And that changes anything how?”

A cruel sort of smile crossed over Chandler’s face and he said, “Because now we have a choice of holes to disappear down. One is the metaphorical rabbit hole, the other the metaphorical unmarked grave. So what will it be?”

“The rabbit hole?” Elizabeth squeaked.

“Then tell me about it. What did you find?” Chandler asked, his face an unreadable mask.

“I don’t know what it is really, but you could call it a vampire. I know there are a couple of things that could be called that out in the shadows, but this thing is a blood sucking monster that looks human when its not killing things,” Elizabeth said.

“Really,” Chandler replied.

Elizabeth nodded emphatically and frantically added on, “Yes! She… err… it… it can carry power armour weapons with one hand despite being no bigger than I am. It can walk through walls and dissolve her own limbs, and I think she’s telepathic. I haven’t even seen her in battle but she didn’t leave with the gun she brought back!”

“So what you’re trying to say is that you have made contact with an Outsider capable of masquerading as human, can phase through solid matter, can read minds, can take on power armour with its bare hands, and can carry around mecha scale weaponry?” Chandler asked.

“Yes?” Elizabeth squeaked.

“Are you trying to go down the hole that ends after six feet?” Chandler asked.

“You’d get it from me anyway!” Elizabeth snapped, before her jaw snapped shut, the clamp slamming it together, snipping off the tip of her tongue in a little burst of blood. She let loose a muffled scream, and her whole body jerked against the sudden pain. Chandler waved a hand and the clamp released, allowing her to spit out the blood in her mouth and scream out in pain.

“Let us not require another reminder of who is in charge here,” Chandler noted quietly.

At that moment his AR display went insane as the base reported a massive psychic assault on the wards, breaching the outer three layers like a charge beam going through human flesh before badly cracking the fourth and fifth layers. The colour drained from Elizabeth’s face and she said to no one in particular, “Don’ do tha’! Yu’ll juth make ‘im mad!”

A spark of rage went into Chandler’s eyes as he slammed his hands down on the table between them and screamed, “What just happened?”

Like a deer caught in the headlights, Elizabeth just looked at him absolutely terrified for a moment before she said, “Yu made ‘er mad.”

“How?” Chandler demanded, furious.

“Zhe coud ‘ear us, zhe dinnit lak wan yu mad me bite ma tong,” Elizabeth replied, pain and panic creasing her face as blood dribbled down her face.

Chandler ground his teeth in blind fury, but he paused when no further attacks arrived. Glaring at the young woman before him, he asked, “Why didn’t she do that before? Why didn’t she follow up?”

Tears running down her face, Elizabeth cried, “I don kna! I don kna! Zhe obayed ma, I thank!”

“She obeyed you?” Chandler asked.

Elizabeth nodded.

“If you told her to kill herself?” Chandler asked.

“I don thank zhe knas ‘ow,” Elizabeth replied. A cross-eyed look went across her face and she said, “Zhe don kna ‘ow, an’ is na a odor zhe obays.”

Chandler seethed while he watched the data stream of the attack scroll past his eyes. That wasn’t the most powerful psychic attack the NEG had ever recorded, not in the top ten really, hell it pretty much drowned down below the top hundred if you counted some of the stuff that came out of the Zone, but this was the first really powerful attack by a bound creature they had ever encountered.

Chandler glanced at the seemingly blank wall that Gerhard was behind and said, “Get her cleaned up.” He then turned to Elizabeth and said, “You no longer exist. Welcome to Wonderland, Alice.”

[LadyTevar]

Damn... Chandler should be terrified. Sera's in Psionic connection with Elizabeth THROUGH SHIELD WARDS.

[Darth Nostril]

Chandler seems to be a bit too sure of himself ... this can only end very messily.

[Faabio]

Interesting story.

Damn... Chandler should be terrified. Sera's in Psionic connection with Elizabeth THROUGH SHIELD WARDS.

Not being familiar with the CthulhuTech setting at all really, could someone elaborate on this a little?

[JonB]

In short? Those wards are supposed to ensure a degree of privacy from 'supernatural' forces. Our lovely Policegirl knew that Elizabeth was being injured through these protective wards, and then proceeded to break the first 5 layers of these protections after the biting of the tongue.

Depending on the number of protective layers Chandler had, his anger at the response may be quite justified. But yes, if Seras gets Chandler alone, I'm sure she'll give him a very polite warning about messing with her Master. C-Tech definition of polite.

Hope you post a new part soon Academia!

[Xon]

Damn... Chandler should be terrified. Sera's in Psionic connection with Elizabeth THROUGH SHIELD WARDS.

Chandler will probably shitting bricks when he learns more about Seras.

As this is what Academia said about Hellsing Vampires in CTech;

While still not quite correct, a parapsychic shoggoth that hides the majority of its mass in extradimensional space is probably getting close to what the true form of a Hellsing vampire.

[EarthScorpion]

In short? Those wards are supposed to ensure a degree of privacy from 'supernatural' forces. Our lovely Policegirl knew that Elizabeth was being injured through these protective wards, and then proceeded to break the first 5 layers of these protections after the biting of the tongue.

To expand, for a human sorcerer to take down those wards, without physically attacking the binding things that are maintaining the spell, would require about a day of preparation, then another day per ward, and they would probably have to be casting in group rituals to be throw enough ruach at the target to make it easy and working in shifts to maintain concentration. Unweaving a spell, by human methods, is about as hard as casting the damn thing in the first place, and Ward Against the Unseen is a second Tier spell.

Seras just mentally punched through something which took highly trained human sorcerers over a week to put up, when the need for rest is taken into account, and they have to spend almost another week a month maintaining, because wards weaken over time. Hells, by standard Cthulhutech sorcery, she shouldn't have even been able to find where Elle is; Ward Against the Unseen can be used to protect against Great Old One mental influence, keeping them out of your dreams, which means that something really weird is going on from the point of view of the OIS and the Ctech occult community.

[Academia Nut]

Well, in terms of ruach, Seras has the souls of several thousand humans to draw upon at the very least, so even if the accumulation is non-linear, she probably has enough spiritual energy to make a sorcerer of the Rapine Storm suffer a rectal prolapse in terror. In fact, while I would quietly take a pen to the current Star Spawn listing of 15 effectively unlimited, she probably has more than them in the game book before that little alteration.

You will note that there was something in the shadows that seemed annoyed with her but didn't do anything about it. You may begin gibbering now.

[Xon]

If Seras is like that, I wonder how Alucard would be taken?

[EarthScorpion]

Well, in terms of ruach, Seras has the souls of several thousand humans to draw upon at the very least, so even if the accumulation is non-linear, she probably has enough spiritual energy to make a sorcerer of the Rapine Storm suffer a rectal prolapse in terror. In fact, while I would quietly take a pen to the current Star Spawn listing of 15 effectively unlimited, she probably has more than them in the game book before that little alteration.

What are you talking about? As far as I'm aware, Star Spawn have always been absolute monsters, with effectively infinite reserves of Orgone, and are rather akin to Desolate Ones with how they can punch above their size. I don't see the need for crossing out 15, when it's obvious that they have far, far more Orgone than that.

It's rather worrying how we seem to parallel-think about certain... decisions in Cthulhutech, isn't it? I wonder what the influence is that we're having on the wider fan-community perception of the setting.