Author's Note: Answers to some FAQ.

Alucard's eyes are blue? Why? : OVA IX. That's why. Call it anime genetics logic.
Animeverse? : I guess? If you want it to be. I'd think it would be more like OVA canon variance?

Time as Seras knew it had stopped. Or at least that's what it felt like, as she stood silently with eyes locked with the man who, all of thirty seconds ago, had been a vampire the same as her. Somehow she felt that as long as they stayed within the clearing, everything that was happening to them was merely fiction, a dream that they'd wake from after leaving the moonlit patch of witch-sacred grass. She inched closer to Alucard, peering up past the tangled knots of hair to look more closely at his features. His heartbeat resonated beneath her fingers, as foreign to her as she knew that hers must be to him. She'd known him for so long, and yet never before had she felt the strength of his heart. It was odd, and strange, and she wasn't at all sure if she liked it or not.

Her own heart skipped a beat at the thought, as if trying to remember how to properly keep time. After all, it had stopped prematurely, one warm summer's night, and no one had expected it to start back up again. He must have felt the change, as his eyes slid down to where she still held his hand pressed against her chest before meeting her gaze once more. His eyes, she thought absently. I'd never really thought about what color his eyes might be. Even if she had thought to ask it, it seemed like an entirely too-personal question, and he wasn't a big fan of any query that had to do with his human years.

It struck her now that he had known what color her eyes were, having seen her before her death. But she had never known, and for some reason had just always assumed that his were red. Even though she knew that humans normally didn't have red eyes, his crimson visage was too iconic in her mind for her to imagine anything different. But now, their dusky blueness shone back at her, strangely lackluster compared to the brilliant hues that she'd known before. She found that she couldn't have imagined it to be anything else, now that she'd seen it. They simply stared at each other for a long moment in shock; she was unwilling to break the eye contact, and he made no move to do so either.

"Does he still have his guns?" Seras jumped, having forgotten all about Anderson. The man was standing now, having recovered from his earlier—despair?—and staring at her with a wary gaze. When she continued to stay silent, he motioned to the forest around them. "I—cannae summon anything, and there's no way to get out of the forest without killing them." Looking in the directions he pointed, Seras realized that he was right. Despite her bad night vision, she could still see the jerky, disjointed movements of the Ghouls just beyond the tree line. If she—they—were really human now, they wouldn't be able to dissolve into mist, and Anderson couldn't use his holy mumbo-jumbo to fly away in a blur of biblical verses. They'd have to rely on the Hellsing Organization's specialty of blessed bullets. She was suddenly grateful to Walter for making sure that Alucard's weapons were always outfitted with the most powerful ammunition his mind could think up.

"I dunno," she called back to him, before turning to Alucard once more. "I don't suppose she took them away, did she?" After all, she could still see the metal glint of her Harkonnen in the shadows, but there was no way to get to it without taking care of the Ghouls first. She looked at Alucard for confirmation, waiting for him to brandish the guns and secretly hoping that he wouldn't decide to kill Anderson with a bullet while the man was in such a state. Somehow she thought that he wouldn't, knowing his penchant for fighting with the man; he would want them both to be in top form before allowing a real battle. Alucard blinked at Anderson before looking back down at her and letting out a string of unintelligible speech. She didn't answer and he spoke again, the upward inflection of his tone suggesting a question.

"What?" she managed to squeak, and saw his eyes widen at her tone. "Talk normally; I can't understand you." He only gave another, longer string of endless syllables that meant nothing to her, his face growing mottled and voice rising with every passing minute until he was shouting at her. She could feel his anger and growing frustration, even if she couldn't understand anything. Finally he stopped talking and shook his head in disgust, the edges of his teeth showing. It was a double shock to her—where there should have been fang glistening among the pearly whites, there were only dull, blunt-edged canines.

"What's the matter with him?!" she asked Anderson in a panic. The Scotsman only shrugged, and then boldly stepped closer to the pair. She wondered if it was her bad vision, or if his eyes really weren't as vibrant as they had been before. While as a Regenerator, they had glowed with an almost eerie light in the darkness, now they just seemed wholly… human. Regular old green eyes, no more and no less. Without the scar and the stubble he looked much younger, and Seras noticed that if he didn't have such a serious, angry look on his face he might have even been somewhat handsome.

"Can ye even understand me, ye bastard?" he sneered at Alucard. Seras scowled at him, but he wasn't even looking in her direction. If Alucard couldn't understand the language, he still caught the mocking tone and his eyes narrowed. He replied, his voice tugging the foreign syllables into a harsh rhythm that suggested the highest of contempt. Anderson laughed scornfully, crossing his arms. "Tha's it then, eh?" he said to Seras. "He's forgotten his English, or else he just cannae remember how to speak it back." A thoughtful expression cut through the jeering one for a quick moment. "Probably he's forgotten altogether, or else I'd think that he'd at least pull the guns on me."

"That's just bloody brilliant. This is bad," Seras muttered, gnawing at her lip. "So, so bad. What's Sir Integra going to say to me?" Her own teeth matched Alucard's, the fangs she'd grown used to gone. What the hell was going on? She remembered everything perfectly: why could he not remember how to speak plain English? Alucard scoffed something back, and she distinctly caught Sir Integra's name thrown in with the rest of the jumble. She stared at him, wondering whether he was answering her question, or if he had heard his master's name and was merely making a statement of his own. She sighed, tapping her boot against the soft grass before deciding on a plan of action. No matter what they did, they first needed to get rid of the Ghouls. Reaching for him, she fumbled in his coat for the guns. He gave a sharp, scolding cry and leaped back, staring at her as though she'd lost her mind.

"I just want your gun!" she huffed, only to instantly scowl. This is going to be tougher than I thought, if he really can't understand what I'm saying. Her cheeks burned with embarrassment as she foolishly mimed shooting a gun with her fingers. He understood the gesture, setting his jaw in an expression that she knew as the 'Honestly, Police Girl' look. He pulled out both guns, looking down at them in surprise. He moved his hands up and down as though weighing them, and then scrutinized her with a tight-lipped, bitter smile. She shook her head in exasperation when he took too long; leaning forward, she yanked the Jackal from his grip and then squealed as her arms nearly fell out of their sockets.

"Damn, but it's heavy!" She nearly dropped it, but thankfully her human body had been physically fit before she had turned into a vampire. She struggled to raise it to proper shooting level, flashing him a look. Alucard tilted his head in a gesture she knew well, used when he was trying to decide what she'd do next. Usually it was in response to some training he was forcing—er, teaching her about, but now it seemed he was merely curious as to what she'd do. Oh, right. 16 kilos, was it? Walter, you really have outdone yourself, she thought irritably. Anderson seemed to think this was amusing, as he was laughing again. Alucard frowned at him and pointed the Cassul in his direction, and the laughter abruptly stopped. There was a challenging glint in his eye.

"Stop!" she shouted at Alucard, forcing his attention back on her. "You do realize that he won't just get up now if you shoot him in the head!" Alucard stared blankly at her and she growled under her breath before putting the Jackal on the ground and motioning wildly with her arms, pointing at Anderson and shaking her head no as though trying to deal with a small child. "Do NOT shoot him! No shooting!" She mimed the gun again and then a grin slowly etched itself onto the ancient man's face. "I'm glad you both think this is funny," she hissed at both men before shaking her head and picking up the gun again. "A bloody riot, isn't it?" She aimed at the nearest Ghoul and shot, only to nearly lose her shoulder from the recoil. She was flung onto the ground, gasping in pain as her entire arm protested. "Ow-ow-ow!" At least her bullet struck true, despite being hardly able to see.

"Need some help, lass?" Anderson stood over her, looking down with a hint of smugness before taking the gun away from her. He too seemed a bit surprised by the weight, but when he raised it and shot he managed to fare better than she. At least, the recoil only knocked him back a few paces. He regrouped, steeled himself, and tried again, this time managing to shoot three times before stopping and rubbing his arm. "Ugh, I'm not used to bullets," he said aloud to no one in particular. Seras sat up and watched him, surprised to see him handle a gun so well. Then again, there was nothing that proved he'd only ever used bayonets before….

Alucard joined in with his remaining gun, and soon every Ghoul surrounding the clearing was nothing more than a pile of ash. Seras knew that the vampire was somewhere in the woods still, but now there was nothing they could do about it. Anderson hesitated to give Alucard the Jackal back, but Seras glowered so fiercely at him that he handed it over without much of a fuss. Alucard pocketed the guns and then they stared at each other, none of them really wanting to leave the clearing.

"Well?" Seras finally asked with a bravado she didn't feel. "Aren't you going to go back… home?" Anderson actually managed to look uncomfortable and she realized how foolish the question was. The woods were in the middle of nowhere as it was, and who knows how far one would have to walk to get to the next village? And it wasn't as though he could get back the same way he'd come. "Oh," she muttered when he said nothing. "Right…" Sir Integra would hate her for suggesting it, but her mind was still the mind of a civilian-protecting policewoman, and Anderson, despite being against them, was still a civilian. "Do you want to come back with us? You can call someone when you get back to London to come get you." Anderson thought it over, seeming to become angrier with each passing moment.

"What choice do I have?" he finally grunted, shaking his head.

Afterword: These chapters are going to be pretty short. I'm going to try to keep them under ten Word pages per chapter, just because I want a shorter, quicker story to work on in between my big main ones. (bad Russian accent) Don't like, don't read.