Naught But a Remnant:

A Beacon in the Night

This is the first fanfic. Many thanks to FidderTheClown (did I really just say that) for challenging me to do this. I guess all there is to say is: Onwards with the show!

A dark figure stole across the bedroom. Shadows clung to it, as though it never left their cover, even when crossing beam of moon light that entered through the grand window. Clad in a long red jacket, and a red hat that matched, it stole across the floor. It leaned over the single bed that dominated the room, and a hint of white gleamed slightly as fangs slid from its gums…

Gunshots echoed through the room as the occupant of the bed, a woman with one eye covered in a simple eyepatch, dressed in a rather floral nightgown, unleashed a full magazine into the hellish creature, who crumbled against the wall, lying slumped as though dead. Then she unleashed a second rounds into the beast, the far more accurate aim hitting a certain vital organ which had once beat in the fiend's chest, then the rest into the head. This thing could survive ordinary gunshot wounds, no; they had to be far more permanent than that. The head was always a good place to start with the supernatural, and the heart was doubly so. The reason for the third magazine was slightly different. It had the gall to enter her room, hers out of all of the people in Great Britain, then to bleed on her carpet! She kept her cool however, at least outwardly, especially when she saw the monster's attire and his now reforming face. That was the only reason she didn't order the seemingly young woman that burst in to take him outside and introduce him to her Harkonnen for splattering brain matter all over her freshly painted walls. "Sir Integra are you all- Master!" Instantly Integra's bodyguard lowered her weapon; the khaki clad blonde recognising the crumbled figure and though there was a big smile on her face, she kept her distance. There were very few people that were ever happy to see Alucard, particularly when someone had gone and pissed him off, like filling him full of bullet holes. Integra was safe from his wrath, (the perks of being a Hellsing were just as many as its cons), but the Harkonnen-wielder mightn't be so lucky. Because while outwardly Alucard was grinning, laughing and monologuing like any psychopathic vampire, inside he was furious that someone had ruined his suit. He had spent hours dying it in blood, apparently, sometime between the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries, a gruesome little fact that he had imparted on a young wide-eyed Integra. He'd even used his victim's guts to hang the drying cloth, while the bodies had been reanimated as ghouls and used to terrorise the surrounding villages while he had taken a trip to Romania. He had assured her that that had been a minor detail. Coincidently, it was the last time any Hellsing had been foolish to even consider giving Alucard time off, let alone leave the mansion unsupervised.

"Alucard, how… wonderful to see you. I thought our little tangle with Millennium might have been the end of you." Alucard's feral grin stretched even wider than it was. "Oh, no I was simply preoccupied with killing off the three million, three hundred thousand, twenty four thousand eight hundred and forty-six souls that resided in my body. The Schrödinger brat's soul was troublesome to deal with, though nothing I couldn't handle." He stood, the lethal wounds that had criss-crossed his body now gone, as though they had never been. "How much time have I missed, hum? A few years, a decade? The mind grows somewhat fuzzy when you're busy slaughtering vast amounts of people." "It's been thirty years Alucard. I have grown old, while you have stayed the same-""Please don't divulge into a monologue at the moment, I've had to listen to condemning rants for quite a while, stating that I was a monster etc. I detest self-righteous fools, particularly if they're dead." Integra took a deep breath in, she had handled him in the past with ease, so why couldn't she now? He was different, more feral; the thin layer of civilised grace that he had once had, now almost entirely transparent. Had he unhinged what little sanity he had possessed; slaughtering the souls that he had taken in or Hellsing had transplanted into him? Or was it something else? Abraham Vans Hellsing's diaries had stated that Dracula, no, Alucard had seemed wilder until the final battle, where he had claimed that he had finally found a worthy opponent. Could that be the case, could Alucard need a rival, an arch nemesis to ground him in life? If so, he had a dangerous villain complex. She'd get the Warlock division to investigate; this could be a serious matter, because if he had no one to ground his mind in this world, how long would the ancient spells bind him to the Hellsing family, the world couldn't stand to have to deal with another bloodthirsty Vampire, especially since the Tenth crusade all those years ago, London was still in the process of rebuilding.

"Have you any blood to spare, I am simply… famished. It has been so long since I've tasted some, so long…" inwardly sighing, Integra withdrew a penknife from her pocket, before cutting one of her fingers with it. Blood pooled from the slit, and Seras's eyes turned crimson, the aroma bringing her vampiric side to the fore. Alucard's glasses hid the colour of his eyes, though she doubted he had anything but a vampiric side, he was the one of the oldest vampires living, if not the oldest. She rose from her bed, and Alucard lowered himself to the ground, until his gaping mouth was underneath the small wound. Then a droplet fell, and eagerly the mouth snapped shut, an expression of pure bliss spreading across his face for a moment. "Thank you, my Countess" the words were said without a trace of mockery, his features neutral. "Of course… my Count" a small smile on her lips. This was bad; could he be remembering what he was? Had unleashing his full form those thirty years ago left more than his new attitude, could it also rekindle the supressed memories locked away in his head with black magic and primitive science? Goddammit, she needed answers, but first there was business to attend too.

"Seras, I want you to first stop staring at Alucard with puppy dog eyes, then go down and tell Sergeants Mason and Filks that I expect their squads to be ready for deployment in ten minute's time. Meanwhile I shall be bringing Alucard up to date with the current state of affairs, understood?" Seras nodded hastily, and then left the room quickly. That one understood orders at least, unlike the other two she'd picked up over the years. "Alucard, wait outside while I dress myself. I will be but a moment." Alucard left silently, his feet making no noise as he stood once more and crossed to the door. "Oh and Alucard, one last thing." He turned slightly, his face mostly still hidden in shadow. "Inform Ms Victoria through your mental connection that she is to also send a clean-up team to my room. You've left quite a mess in the corner with your bodily fluids." Alucard acknowledged the order with the predatory smile so typical of him, and then left the room.

"Police Girl, Integra wants you to send a janitor to clean her room, understood?" "Yes master I understand, welcome back master, welcome back-"he severed the mental conversation. He had no interest in listening to the girl. He had a headache at the moment. It seemed some of the souls had escaped the massacre and were trying to wreak havoc inside his mind. A quick mental plunge into his brain later, and the white static noise of some of the Romanians he had used to create his lovely jacket was gone, though the headache had yet to subside fully. Just in time, as his master stepped out the door leading to her now blood-splattered bedroom. She wore a tailored version of the clothes she had worn the last time he had seen her, the eye-patch suited her. He was never one to study a person's appearance for long, nor to take in much of its detail. Most of the time he was too busy trying to kill them to really notice. All people looked the same after a few rounds from the Jackal that was to say, bloody pieces scattered across the ground. Oh, how he missed it. There was nothing quite like holding a weapon that could blow sizeable holes in people. Sure, the guns he had wielded in the past had been good as well; doing their job, but the Jackal had the added attraction of stopping pesky regeneration. It was a shame that Walter had detonated a small charge he had hidden inside it. The Jackal had mysteriously malfunctioned after that, and he had discarded it amidst the London rubble. It was no doubt long gone at this stage, if thirty years had passed since he had carelessly thrown it away. Perhaps he could get a new one, despite Walter having turned traitor and being no doubt killed during or after Millennium's invasion. Integra did not handle betrayal well, ever since her uncle had tried to kill her for the family position, that had been the day he had been awoken again, after Sir Arthur Hellsing had locked him away in the darkness so many, many years ago.

He shook himself from his memories, he could reminiscence later. The pair began walking through the mansion, heading towards the garage, or so he thought. He needed to know how much the world had changed. If it was free from all the things that went bump in the night, then he might have a problem on his hands; there would be nothing he'd be allowed to kill, though the continued existence of Hellsing meant otherwise. "The world has changed, Alucard, and we have many new enemies (oh joyous day!), and a few more reliable allies. The hole your absence left, coupled with the extensive casualties that Hellsing and Iscariot took, and we had all the hidden occult societies and hellish creatures appearing from the woodwork, intent on our destruction. Iscariot, having been reined in and withdrawn as quickly as possible from the battle of London by the Pope, suffered fewer losses, though they did take quite a beating in the days that followed, since they too were missing their trump card; Anderson. The queen saw fit to give a continued grant of emergency powers to Hellsing, and I rebuilt the organisation from scratch. I realised that we needed more numbers, among other things. The current strength of living Hellsing operatives is roughly thousand combat troops and non-combat around is around four-hundred or so." "Living?" Alucard questioned, catching the added word. "We also employ three vampires, Seras among them, of the other two one is turned, another artificially created by the Warlock division." Alucard glanced at the woman striding beside him, she had certainly grown up. "What happened to the innocent girl that I knew, going on about the virtues?" he asked mockingly. "We needed the extra strength, and besides Hellsing only kills vampires that are a threat to us. They were part of the plan to partially fill in the gap left by your supposed death, and in case you're wondering the Warlock Division is there to research our enemies, aid our soldiers, and provide all of the guns that we need." Alucard raised an eyebrow, she had learned alright "So now you have magic users in the ranks, impressive. Especially if they're fully living up to the warlock name and using science to enhance those powers. If I may ask, what was the other part of the plan to fill the void my supposed death?" Integra replied neutrally "We're on our way to see it now, just be patient." Inwardly she was grimacing; crap he wasn't going to like this at all. She led him to an elevator, slid a key-card into a slot beside the metal doors, and then typed in a code using the keypad below it. The doors opened, and the pair stepped inside. She pressed the button for minus level three, and they descended to the bowls of the mansion. With a slight ping, the doors parted, allowing them to see outside. They stepped through onto the catwalk the elevator exited on. "This is the second part of the plan to replace you, The Ghoul Army!"

Integra had been right, he was not happy at all. "Are you telling me" he growled, his eyebrows twitching slightly "that you tried to replace me with… ghouls?!" "It's just the support part of the plan; the vampires are the main part, the five thousand or so ghouls gathered below are just in case Iscariot or any other organisation tries to do what the Valentine brother's did." "I DON'T CARE!" he bellowed, before gaining control of himself. "You're sleeping on the couch tonight, understood the couch!" "We're not married at all, we don't sleep together, so why would you even bring that up?!" Alucard rubbed his head for a moment. "Sorry just a figment from someone's wife I killed a while ago. Even if you've destroyed their conscious will, their energy can still affect the one who consumed them, for example right there." He was bristling though, so she moved on hurriedly. "Do you remember Blue Star?" Alucard's mood changed alarmingly fast. "Those snivelling cowards" he laughed "those ten that offered a truce, they would stick to non-human experimentation with magic, if we didn't kick their doors down in the middle of the night? I remember them well." "They now number around seven thousand members, with a few hundred magically created vampires, as well as several thousand of some kind of wolf possessed with a human soul among that figure." Alucard laughter died down after that. "They also have magic users, but we don't know how much of them there are. They've moved along way down the path of human experimentation while we've been weak. The task that I've assigned to you tonight is to target one of their bases that we've found. I have their majesties' full permission, and they are already mobilising the armed forces, as is Iscariot and the new American organisation, the Founders. Understood?" Alucard replied after a moment's thought "I'll need weapons, wait, let me try something." He concentrated, and a long old-fashioned rifle appeared in his hand. "Ms. Rip Van Wrinkle's rifle will serve for this mission at least." Integra was taken aback; he could use his victim's abilities now? Had he absorbed them so totally that he didn't need a familiar to use the power? The Warlock division would have to investigate this as well. "I want you ready to leave within ten minutes. You're our going to part of our first strike against Blue Star. Don't fail me!"

And so ends the first chapter! Expect crossoverness to happen in the second or third chapter, and if you have any questions, just ask, and I'll answer them in the next chapter's author's notes. I'm a bit rusty on all the Hellsing know-how (My RWBY know-how isn't the best either), so any mistakes you spot in naming or anything like that don't hesitate to tell me. Flames will be ignored (I don't waste energy replying to people who think you suck is a valid argument.) Constructive criticism is appreciated, so keep it rolling. Make sure to check out FidderTheClown (goddamnit I said it again), and hopefully you can forgive any of my pathetic attempts at humour. R&R please, and BYEEEEEE!