In the darkness of slumber, one dreamed. Of times long gone... a past barely remembered. Times happy... and sad. Bright... and dim. Memories that brought joy... and sorrow.

The fog raises, and a few of these memories are brought to light for a brief, fluttering glimpse and gone again.

xxx

Blood-red eyes

xxx

After the situation with Millenium and the Freak chipped vampires had ended, things began to slowly die down for the Hellsing organization. Most of the vampires in England had joined in the Nazi uprising, and had died in battle. The few that remained had gone to ground, hiding themselves away or leaving for other places.

The council of Twelve convened, and after a lengthy discussion decided that the Hellsing monster, Alucard, had become a liability. While he was the only option against the powerful Elder vampires, or swarms of the weaker variety, his time had come and gone. Integral had argued against the decision, but the facts had stood. There were simply not enough vampires left in England, even should they all unite, to justify the use of Alucard in combat... and Elder vampires, though powerful in their own right, tended to prefer to live comfortably in the shadows, and rarely killed or turned those they fed off of. Alucard himself was something of an exeption to this rule, as he had never shed the battle-lust and killer instinct that came of becoming a No Life King.

After a long argument, Integra was overruled and Alucard was informed of his fate... a fate he took surprisingly calmly. When questioned, he'd replied with his ever-present smirk and a few short words.

"Police girl... No, Seras... I am eternally the weapon of Hellsing. I will never cease existing... whether it be one year or ten... centuries or millenia... there will come a time where I am needed once more. Frankly I prefer it this way... without anything left to challenge me, I'm afraid I'd grow quite bored."

Then, having said his piece, he calmly sauntered into the small cell, allowed the few Wild Geese who'd stuck around to shackle him and chain him to the wall, and slumped to a sitting position.

In the last moment before the door was fully shut and barred, Seras noted that he was still grinning wildly.

It was that image, more than anything, that finally prompted her to fully accept her inhuman nature... and to teach herself how to use her powers.

Perhaps that was a mistake. When the men of the council got wind that the comical 'Police girl' had made leaps and bounds towards her masters level, they began to quietly draw together and murmur... wondering what to do about Hellsing's other monster.

For the moment, they were content to leave things lie. After all... just because Hellsing's nocturnal activities had diminished didn't mean that they had ceased entirely. There were still a fair few humanoid leeches around to hunt down. And Seras's powers steadily improved with use.

Eventually though, there came a time when days would pass between vampire appearances... then weeks... then months... and then a year and more passed without the slightest hint that vampires even existed... outside the Hellsing mansion.

And then the council convened once more, summoning Integra to speak to her once again about a pet monster. Once more she argued vehemently against them, and once more she was overruled by the old men, scared of the 'tame' vampire's swift increase in power. Let the humans hunt down whatever remnants of the Midians remained. In the end, Integra surprised her with a quick hug and apology before leaving her locked away in the dark, mere feet away from the being that had turned her... cold, still and lifeless as a real corpse.

With no way to judge the passing of day and night there was no sure way to tell when the hunger set in... but it couldn't have been too long. At first it was merely an irritant, but it steadily progressed to the point of agony... she was no longer used to going long periods of time without blood. It wasn't long until she succumbed to her instincts and began thrashing wildly with the desperate urge to feed... but even so, the lack of blood had weakened her to the point that the sturdy chains could easily hold her down. Over time, her struggles weakened, and slowed to a stop.

And then her body slipped into the false death of vampiric hibernation.

It was only then, as her vision suddenly shifted and she was looking down at her own shriveled and gnarled cadaver, that she realized the second reason Alucard hadn't been too terribly upset about being sealed once more into the basement. For about a week she experimented with this odd new ability, floating through the walls and ceilings and spying on the day-to-day life of the people that still lived in the Hellsing mansion... remarkably fewer than the amount of hustle and bustle she remembered.

Years passed and more and more soldiers left the Hellsing institution... reassigned to places that the council had decided they were needed more and payed hefty bonuses as reminders to keep their mouth's shut about their previous occupations. The few Geese that remained stuck around longer than the soldiers did... perhaps out of respect for Lady Integra or perhaps out of the pragmatic suspicion that the vampires were biding their time, waiting for the right time to return.

If so, then they were correct... But that did not save them.

The vampires that had left returned... all in one great swarm of bloodlust and chaos. The Geese fought valiantly against the sudden attack, but were swiftly overwhelmed as the raving hordes rushed past their destroyed comrades to tear the mortal gunmen to shreds. Integra withdrew to the interior of the building, knowing full well that she alone would stand no chance against the Midian army.

She nearly made it.

She had even managed to remove the first bar from the heavily sealed door before they caught up to her. They circled her as she turned and looked at them. They looked back. She drew her sword in one smooth motion and the fight began.

It was hopeless from the very start. Minutes passed and vampire after vampire hurled themselves boldly into the fray... dozens fell to the lady Hellsing, but for all her skill and training she was still only human, and soon succumbed to exhaustion, collapsing in the ankle-deep dusty remains of the vampires she had just slain.

Her ending was surprisingly merciful. A vampire in an expensive black suit stepped slowly through the stilled crowd. Integra managed to rise to her knees and look up, and for one brief moment the eyes of the opposing generals met. Then a single shot resounded... cold and hard and dark, and Integra slumped backwards to the dusty floor, the life swiftly draining from her body. The vampire holstered his pistol and leaned down to gently close her eyes... one more mark of respect to the human that had killed so many of his kind.

She had fully expected him to destroy the bodies of both her and her master Alucard, but instead he had barked out orders in another language and the lesser vampires surrounding him had immediately snapped to attention, dragging a pair of coffins in and treating their dehydrated forms with the utmost care as they set them within those boxes. Then he turned to where her disembodied spirit was floating and smirked as his eyes flashed.

The next few weeks were a blur, a multitude of nameless, faceless lesser vampires moving her about at the whim of their leader. Her first memory when she came to her senses was the head vampire carefully setting her body on a raised block of stone in a cave. Then he spoke.

"Police Girl... I know you can hear me. And I know that you know... A vampire in the state you are in is never left alone forever. Perhaps something will happen to destroy your body. A cave in maybe. But I doubt it. Sooner or later you will awaken, and I will be watching to see what happens next. Your plane had become boring... and this one could use some spicing up."

He turned and paced out of the cave, slowly fading away but leaving a last parting shot behind.

"ENTERTAIN ME!"

xxx

Seras swiftly discovered that, unlike before, she could not simply wander freely... for whatever reason she could now move no further than the mouth of the cave and look down into a wooded valley. Centuries passed, and a town grew, sprawling to a mere stones throw from the hill. People came and went... Ninja, using the hill as a training ground. Against all probability none of them ever noticed the small, rocky hole she was confined in. More time passed, marked only by the passing of the sun, the occasional snatch of conversation gleaned from random passerby, and, once in a very long while, screaming and large explosions... the symphonies of war, as the mad Major would put it. Not that it mattered... she would be pleased to sleep forever just to spit in the eye of that suited bastard.

Unfortunately, it was not to be.

xxx

Uzumaki Naruto panted heavily as he slumped against a tree. It was October Tenth... his eighth birthday and the annual celebration of the defeat of the Kyuubi. As far back as he could remember, this was his least favorite day of the year. When he was four, the lady in charge of the orphanage had drug him out of bed, tossed him onto the street with an orange jumpsuit far too large for him, and coldly ordered him not to come back... or else. When he was five, the drunken mob assembled for the first time and beat him nearly to death. When he was six, he recieved a nice cake from an anonymous source. It was laced with multiple heavy duty poisons. When he was seven the mob set fire to the tenement he was staying in. He managed to make it to the basement, but was buried under the rubble for days until he dug himself out.

And this year he was running from a mob of angry drunks again... only this time someone had managed to drive a broken glass bottle into his side.

He stood back up and began glancing around... he'd made it to a training area... that was both good and bad. Good because that could mean he could probably find someplace to hide easier. Bad because it was less likely he could be rescued by an ANBU patrol if the mob caught him. Also, if they were close enough to the forest the scent of his blood could attract hungry predators.

He started to move before pausing... was that? He turned to look at it closer. Plants had grown to conceal the opening in the hill, but it was unmistakeably there. He staggered into it, praying that none of the people chasing him noticed the small hollow.

He paused again just within the tiny hole... for a moment he'd heard something... a silent voice crying out in warning... screaming for him to leave, to run and hide elsewhere. A trained shinobi might have known to trust those instincts, but Naruto just shook the feeling off and staggered fully into the cave. Odd... the entry was small, but just a few feet in it opened up to a larger hollow... he patted himself down until he found an unused match in his pockets and lit it.

He barely managed to suppress a strangled scream by dropping the match and covering his mouth with both hands. Seconds passed as his breathing slowed and he calmed down, shocked from what he'd seen.

"A corpse... great."

He sighed quietly and glanced at the cave mouth, where he could hear the mob stampeding past in search of him.

"Not like I got a choice though... Sorry miss... I hope you don't mind me joining you here for a little while. If they find me... I can't run anymore."

He slumped back against the rocky wall and hissed softly in pain and fatigue. Pain was a part of life. He was accustomed to pain and could handle a great deal more of it than any child his age should be expected to. Nevertheless...

"This has to come out..."

He braced his uninjured side against the wall, gritting his teeth as he gripped the glass bottle firmly. One savage yank and it came loose... followed by a spurt of bright red blood.

xxx

The more powerful vampires, simply put, cannot die of starvation like their lesser brethren. When seperated from blood sources for extended periods of time, these Greater vampires go through all the pain of slow starvation, but rather than dying descend into a false death. It is theorized that such a dehydrated Greater vampire could spend centuries... even millenia. More fascinating though, is how simple it is to awaken the vampire from its hibernation. Even a single drop of blood, if placed in direct contact with the dehydrated vampire will awaken it from its hibernation.

Time seemed to freeze, all of creation holding its breath as the crimson fluid reached the apex of its arc, then continued down, splatterring lightly across the corpse's face. Naruto dropped the bottle, tinking lightly against a pebble on the ground and the disembodied Seras felt the inexorable pull back to her body... and the hunger that came with it.

Slrp.

Naruto caught his breath and glanced around. What was that sound? Where had it come from?

Slrp. Slrp. Slllrrp.

His eyes had finally adjusted to the greater darkness in the cave and what he saw horrified him. The corpse that occupied the stone slab in the center had rolled over... and was eagerly lapping up the blood that had spurted onto the stone. Its head came up, focusing on his sharp gasp, and the dead eyes opened, revealing a slight red glow.

That was enough for him to snap out of his shocked stupor and dart for the exit, only to be caught up in a pair of unnaturally strong arms from behind. He screamed then, a hopeless cry of absolute terror, draining off to a gurgle as the corpse's jaw clamped over his throat and pierced it with unnatturally long fangs.

xxx

The mob heard the scream and immediately homed in on it, ignoring the way it swiftly broke off. Upon reaching the hill it only took a few minutes to locate the hole they'd missed the first time around.

"So that's where the little runt's hiding."

The angry mob gathered around the tiny opening... and paused.

"So... who goes first?"

"I'm not going. Look how small it is... I wouldn't even fit."

"It might be a trap."

"That would be just like the demon brat."

"A cave in, burying us all."

Still more murmuring broke out through the suddenly indecisive crowd.

Crunch.

The crowd grew silent and the sound of footsteps on pebbles. The idiot was going to come right out to them.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Several of the weaker ninja in the mob slowly stepped back as they sensed a sudden wave of killer intent floating out of the small cave.

Crunch.

They were followed swiftly by most of the more sober villagers as the figure began to take shape against the opening. Whoever this was, it was too tall to be the demon brat...

Many eyes widened as the figure took the final step out of the cave. It... no she couldn't possibly be human. That conclusion could be drawn by the fact that her arms were somewhat longer than normal, giving her body, draped in rotting leather, an oddly proportioned look. It could have been that she was hunched lightly over, with the Kyuubi brat hanging from her jaws like a wolf that had just caught a baby rabbit. It could also be that when she dropped the boy and he slumped to the ground like a wet dishrag her fangs were revealed and her eyes glowed blood red as she pounced, tearing open the throat of a fat drunk with her teeth and burying her face in the arterial flow, loudly guzzling at his lifeblood.

The spooked crowd fled, screaming in terror about monsters eating monsters.

Slowly the drunk's bloodflow came to a stop, and Seras stood from his drained corpse, not even giving him a glance before casting a sorrowful glance at the orange-clad child. She had long since accepted the fact that occasionally she would have to kill humans. Even so, she hated to see the death of an innocent child... even though...

"Right... he's too young to have lost his purity. I'd forgotten about that, with all the FREAKS. Damn..."

She let loose a sigh and lifted the boy, who while bloodless was still breathing shallowly, and faded into the night with her new Childe.

xxx

A.N.

Alright... I was working on Honor among Thieves, but frankly I've hit a block there. So naturally I put it off a little, and then my little brother came up with the crazy idea of crossing Naruto and Hellsing. This actually isn't anything like what he'd rambled on about but one thing led to another and things got going, you know. The clincher was when I thought of a Naruto dressed up in Alucard's clothes... only the coat and hat were BRIGHT VIVID ORANGE! I bust a gut laughing at the idea, but I still like it.

Anyway, the origional idea had Naruto-kun being turned after the Genin exams, by Alucard, but after brutally tearing and reforming the idea I decided I liked this better. Seras won't be canonical, more of a blend of her and Alucard's personality really, but I think this will do well. Oh, but let me know if I should put in a few of Alucard and Naruto's misadventures in as Omake. Could be amusing.