Chapter 1: First Sighting

It was a warm spring night in France, a blanket of grey-tinted clouds stretching silently over the coastal city of La Rochelle helping to maintain that constant soothingly warm temperature that made the country such a popular tourist destination. The constant sea breeze was gentle and quiet, barely a whisper above the various sounds of the night such as the various insects coming out of their hiding places they took up during the day, or the people in the town going about their usual business for this time of night, which mainly consisted of finding the nearest bar and enjoying themselves as much as their wallets would allow, or staying in with their families. Almost nobody was out on the streets anymore though, as the events of recent years were still very fresh in many people's minds, causing the age-old fear of walking at night to return once again en mass. In many respects, this fear was more than justified.

The waterways flowed by just as peacefully as they had done every single night of the year thus far, down from higher ground lying far to the east and through the long man-made channel leading to the ocean, on their way passing by countless riverside restaurants and fishing boats that had been moored for the night, along with what looked to be a storage complex with numerous warehouses and garage-like storage-rooms where people could hire out space to put the various odds and ends that they either had no room for at home or were just sick of seeing the sight of and wanted to sell somewhere away from where they lived. Disused vehicles made to move many of the heavier objects around littered the sight like giant toys that had long since exhausted the interest of the child playing with them, now just sitting there with only their slowly growing rust to keep them company.

It was here, in front of one of these supposedly secure warehouses that the still and calm of this unremarkable evening had been completely ignored in preference of boisterous violence, large smears of dark red blood staining the ground and the walls of the area at nearly every corner that there was to turn around, though there were no bodies in sight anywhere, only steaming patches of ground around scorched silhouettes where they once lay. Most of this collateral damage lay within and around one building in particular, which had been locked with perhaps the heaviest of locks in the entire complex (that now resembled shrapnel cluttering up the entrance) and tall metal gates that would have required huge motors to move even an inch to one side or another.

A white-gloved hand reached out from the thick darkness that had settled inside the large building to grasp one of these gates, the sleek-yet-muscular feminine arm taking a gentle hold of the 50-foot high and 3 metre thick steel sliding door and moving it to one side as casually as one might pull aside a shower curtain, a loud reluctant screeching coming from the gears and railings that it rested upon as it moved. For a few moments, nothing else happened, allowing just enough time for the door to collide noisily with the braces at the end of its tracks before the quiet was once again allowed to settle on the complex for a while as the arm retreated back into the darkness it had appeared from.

Then out into the cool moonlight stepped a beautiful example of a woman, curved in all the right places, clad in a mustard yellow uniform that consisted of a tight shirt that accentuated her large bust and a matching skirt that was, if anything, even tighter around her ample rear, and so short that is was bordering on indecent. A set of plain white tights that reached halfway up her thighs and black leather working boots completed her attire, save for two mis-matching armbands on her short-sleeved shirt; one was white and bore no symbol or insignia, white the other was the same red hue as the blood dripping down the inside of the door she had just opened, and bore the crest of a shield with alternating red and black squares emblazoned upon it, the mark of the Hellsing organisation.

The name-badge on her chest read 'Seras Victoria', above it laying a beautiful young face with deep red eyes and cute feminine facial features, her shoulder length blonde hair framing it perfectly.

Slung over one of her shoulders was a gun that had long since been put out of use in the military as it proved to be far too heavy to be wielded with enough effectiveness to warrant its use in the field. Well, at least for any human soldier anyway.

It was a gloriously designed version of an anti-tank rifle, with a barrel almost one-and-a-half times as long as this woman was tall, and a chamber for rounds that was so wide it almost resembled a tank loading chamber in and of itself. It was a far sleeker and lighter than the old version of it that had been designed by an old friend she had once trusted, a combination of both emotional pain and professional requirements deeming it necessary to take the next step up from it, but otherwise it looked fairly similar to its predecessor. It was hard to improve on a near-perfect firearm after all.

Taking a quick breath of the copper-scented night air, Seras walked calmly out into the open yard that sprawled out in front of the building, her quiet footsteps reverberating off the many metal surfaces in the complex. Even though nothing else would have appeared to be moving anymore (most due to her) to the average person looking at the scene, the young woman was far from your average casual observer, and so had a far more informed opinion on the matter.

Concentrating hard, the young woman closed her eyes and concentrated hard on her 'third eye' for a moment before opening them again as she had been taught by her master, her mind now picturing her surroundings in perfect detail as if from some immaterial observer, the blood in and around the littered bodies in her wake now glowing red as she searched behind crates and doors and disused vehicles with her new point of view without needing to move an inch from where she stood.

Soon enough, she picked up a tiny murmur of sound, low and very muffled, but a steady constant pulse that maintained itself with very precise accuracy, and it was rhythm that she knew very well: a heartbeat. Focusing on that sound, she let her mind's eye follow that sound, seeing the large crane that stood at the edge of the yard come into view as the sound grew louder. The mental image grew closer and closer to the cabin that stood near the top of the crane, the once quiet pulsing now so loud that it felt like a bass drum thundering in her ears, and through her inhuman eyes she saw blood glowing as bright red as a dying star as it flowed through the many arteries, veins and capillaries of her quarry as he crouched down inside the cabin in a desperate attempt to remain unseen.

Which a quick shunt of her shoulder, the large battle-rifle was in her hands and aimed at the cabin in an instant, Seras pulling the trigger immediately and launching a high explosive shell straight at her target where it exploded in a shower of fire, broken glass and burning metal, her strength once again proven by the fact that she was able to suppress the recoil of the giant gun entirely by holding it firmly in place.

Unfortunately, she caught sight of her target seconds later, still alive and kicking but missing part of his left arm, running desperately along the arm of the crane in an attempt to get away. She cursed under her breath, knowing that she couldn't risk a miss where he was or she would potentially be firing on a residential area. Tensing her legs, she leapt straight upwards onto the roof of the building she had just emerged from, running in parallel alongside the fleeing 'man' with her sharp fangs bared in irritation.

It would have been clear to even the most oblivious observer by now that her target was no mere human, his balance to precise, his vigour despite the obvious blood loss too great, and his fangs giving the game away as clearly at a large fluffy tail on a werewolf.

The individual she was chasing was a vampire, but hardly a worthwhile example in the grand scheme of things. Dressed in the garish baggy tracksuit pants and top that many kids still fooled themselves into thinking was cool, and all he had for self-defence was a handgun loaded with silver bullets and a few more magazines to reload this in his pockets, but even then he had shown himself to be a very poor shot, and even dropped one of these magazines while trying to reload. Sure he had the stereotypical perks that came with being a vampire, like increased agility and longevity and so on, but he had none of the capabilities of a higher vampire, like regeneration or the ability to summon familiars or even flight.

He was nothing like her.

All he was capable of doing was harassing a few of the groups that were on interest to her boss, and for that she had been sent to eliminate him before the problem had chance to grow. Her mission had only lasted half an hour so far, and it was very nearly over already. The only thing that had been keeping him alive thus far was his stockpile of infected ghouls that he had used to distract her, but they were hardly of consequence. And they were running out.

In fact, two ghouls managed to climb up onto the rooftop in front of her as she ran, their blank eyes staring soullessly at her as they groaned in their shambling un-death, but in reply she simply cocked her gun at one of them and damn-near vaporised him with a point-blank shot to the head, and as for the other (who had still been in the process of clambering up over the edge), she kicked his head clean of his shoulders like a football, sending it flying across the yard to collide with her escaping target's with a dull 'thunk', sending him somersaulting off the crane's arm to the roof of a nearby storage warehouse.

With another agile bound, Seras was arcing through the air in his direction, aiming to land right on top of him and kill him outright, but the little wretch managed to roll off the side of the roof at the last instant, vaulting off the side of the building to try and escape across the ground instead as she bent the thick metal of the roof inwards were had been laying moments earlier, the woman still having to tell herself that she wasn't fat even though she knew it was her own brute strength that had caused. Deciding he wasn't worth wasting the additional ammo on, she re-clipped the gun-strap of her over-sized rifle over her shoulder and tossed it over her back, leaping down to the ground and sprinting after him at a much faster pace than he could possibly hope to achieve.

He turned around at the last instant to fire off another volley of bullets in her direction, causing her to dodge out of the way effortlessly as they whistled past but still slowing her down just enough to keep him alive for a bit longer. Eyes wide and panicked, the cornered vampire wannabe caught sight of another group of his ghouls stumbling around the corner of one of the buildings close by. They appeared to be the former guards of the establishment, with walkie-talkies clipped to their belts over blue and black uniforms and sub-machine guns held somewhat loosely in their hands, but by no means anything more threatening than what he'd already thrown at her.

"Shoot her! Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" he cried out in fear as he ran down another narrow gap between 2 buildings, the thoughtless husks turning to look at Seras approaching them as she sighed in mild annoyance, the ghouls raising their guns and doing just that.

Amazingly, despite their eyeballs having rotted away, they were actually better shots than their master, providing the female vampire some temporary entertainment as she closed in on them with a series of acrobatic flips and slides, a dark grin on her face as she clenched her hands into fists and began, quite literally, to tear them apart.

As for the vampire she was after, like the coward he was, he ran the moment her eyes left him, heading down a narrow alleyway between two of the building and coming out close to one of the higher outer walls of the complex, intending to vault it and make it away to freedom. For the first time that night, a smile broke out on his face as the notion that he might actually survive passed through his mind, tears trying to break pass his eye-lids at the thought as he ran for what remained of his life.

Halfway to the wall he stopped dead in his tracks, what little colour there was left in his face draining out of him instantly as he looked up and saw what was coming at him outlined against the full moon. It was already too late for him to do anything about it as well; his gun was empty, he was out in the open and had no hope of rescue now that the last of his ghouls were already being brutally disassembled behind him.

Having finished of the shambled wrecks of humanity that he ordered to kill her, Seras took a moment to wipe off the chunks of flesh, bone and brain that had accumulated on her hands, the bodies of the ghouls lying scattered around her with their anatomy equally scattered amongst each other's.

A few seconds later, she heard a loud scream come from nearby.

Recognising it as the voice of her target, she jumped clean over the building that lay in the direction she had heard it come from, looking below her as she glided through the air to see if she could spot any evidence of him.

She found it in the form of a steadily growing pile of ashes on the ground in the middle of the empty yard, nothing else visible in the entire complex save for her own work indicating anyone else had been there at all.

This caused her eyes to go wide in alarm. There was nobody else in Hellsing that had been assigned to this mission, and their best information had told them that Iscariot, Hellsing's Catholic Church funded 'rivals', had not known of this excursion, and had made no preparation to send anyone to intercept her or see to the job before she could.

Stunned at this sudden turn of events, she landed and placed her hand on the ground next to the ashes of her target and attempted to use her vampiric 'third eye' as she had done before, trying to identify the culprit of this or at least try to track him before he could get away. She wasn't exactly upset that the guy was dead, far from it as it meant less work for her, but the fact that he was killed so quickly and easily meant that someone or something with a lot of experience in dealing with this type of threat must have been present to carry this out, and was more than likely more than a mere human. Certainly a human would not have been able to have disappeared in as little time as it had taken her to get there.

Strangely, she sensed absolutely nothing from her keen senses, not even the faintest ripple of warmth that might give her a clue as to which direction this person had fled in. With every single creature she had encountered thus far, there was a small residual trace of them being there unintentionally left behind in their wake; even if it was someone being shot from a distance she could always tell which direction the shot had come from by letting the left-over 'memories' of the scene flow into her, like how the air had moved as the bullet arrived or which direction the sounds had come from, but there was just emptiness coming back to her now.

It was something that she couldn't really describe in words, but this genuinely scared her a little; this heightened sense had never failed once before to tell her just what had been there, even managing to identify her master with this technique, and he himself saying that he had never had it fail for him before. Not even Hellsing had been able to come up with an effective way to fool vampire senses yet, which did not bode well if somebody had managed it without them hearing about it.

Looking up from the smouldering ashes for a moment, she nearly jumped out of her skin as she saw someone standing atop the outer wall of the complex, outlined perfectly by the full moon, the young lady pretty damn sure that he wasn't there just 5 seconds ago. Springing to her feet on the spot, she quickly re-aimed her freshly-loaded gun at him as she took stock of the new stranger.

This person's dress could only be described as strange, like he'd just stepped straight out of some other time period and into hers without thinking to change his attire to suit where he was going. Every single item of clothing he wore was absolutely pitch black to the point that it shimmered in the moonlight, including his large broad-brimmed hat that bore a unique gold and silver emblem on the side of it, his skin-tight one-piece body-armour-looking-suit that covered every inch of him from his toes up to his neck and hands, his long black cape that bore a painstakingly well sown orange lining on the inside, the leather straps that criss-crossed over his chest and waist holding small scabbards for what she assumed were small daggers sheathed in them, and all of them put together couldn't compare with his unnaturally beautiful long flowing midnight-black hair, which exquisitely framed his breathtakingly handsome face. A bluish-purple jewel of some kind resided in the very centre of his chest-armour, breaking the vast canvas of blackness than was formed by the rest of his attire, though hardly detracting anything from it.

However, the most notable thing about him was easily the large sword-handle sticking up in plain view from over his right shoulder, the pommel bearing a silver, black and gold insignia that reminded her of a skull while both the handle and pommel were otherwise as black as everything else he wore.

As she looked at him, she couldn't help but be reminded a little of her master in the way he looked: her master was almost always dressed in the fine clothing he'd encountered during the Victorian period, caring very little for the stark contrast it made to modern dress, and here was someone else who came wearing another very distinctive outfit, who even as he stood there in plain sight did not trigger any of her vampire senses.

The two of them stood silently appraising each other for a short while, neither of them breaking eye contact with the other. The cool night breeze blew gentle past them as they remained there, neither of them seeming willing to make the first move.

Then the black-clad man on the wall smiled warmly and tilted his head forwards, the motion obscuring his eyes with the rim of his hat.

"Well done." he spoke in a deep soothing voice, the kind of tone that puts virtually all men who hear it at ease without even trying, and woos women who listen to it with the same ease, making Seras blush noticeably as she heard it.

Before she could muster up a syllable in reply, the man took a step backwards and disappeared over the wall in an instant.

Leaping up after him, Seras took a fraction of a second to reach where he was standing, and yet when she looked over the edge to locate him, he was gone, her keen senses once again drawing a complete blank as to where he had gone as if any trace of him had simply been wiped away as easily as markings on a whiteboard.

As she stood there looking down at the empty air below her, the hidden ear-piece she wearing crackled into life.

"*Crackle* Seras, our mission window is coming to a close. Have you neutralized your target? *Crackle*"

The vampire woman turned back to look down at the pile of ashes slowly skittering along the ground with the night wind, still a little disappointed that it wasn't her doing.

"Umm, yes sir. Target has been neutralized." she replied, deciding to keep quiet about this occurrence until she returned to headquarters. Hopping down from the wall to the outside of the complex, she began running for the coastline where her retrieval-up point lay. Nothing particular interesting happened during her trip to get there, and she was picked up without a fuss as well, but for the entire flight home she couldn't help but feel uncomfortable.

Someone was out there who was either strong enough or smart enough to counter-act a higher-vampire's powers of detection, and maybe even other abilities that she hadn't used in that mission, something she hadn't seen since the events of Millennium. The thought of someone being out there who could potentially become as big a threat as that, was terrifying. For the moment, she tried to rest after her mission, and thought hard on what to tell her superiors, and if this was something her master had encountered before but not spoken about.

As the helicopter she rode in flew away into the distance from the calm French beaches, the handsome black-clad man she'd met stood watching her leave with his arms folded from the top of a tree-branch, his pale skin catching the moonlight perfectly.

"See you soon." he whispered under his breath before turning and leaping back along the rooftops into the distance with unnatural agility, his figure once again vanishing almost as soon as he started moving.