~ Holy Sword Temple ~

Bayonets clattered to the floor as the vampire's body liquefied. Anderson rolled to the side to avoid getting any vampire drippings on him.

Holding her sword in one hand, Seras extended the other to Anderson. She belatedly realized that he probably didn't need her assistance in getting to his feet, but he smiled at the gesture and took her hand, allowing her to help him up.

"Why didn't you call for me earlier?" Anderson asked, frowning.

"I had the situation under control," Seras answered. Even though, honestly, she really hadn't.

Anderson reached out to pat her on the head, much like he would one of the children at the orphanage.

"You did well enough for your first real mission," he said, "but you still should have called for me when you were having trouble."

Seras blushed and stammered with embarrassment at the praise and indignation at the priest's insistence that she had been in over her head and should have called for help.

The moment was broken by the arrival of a new person on the scene. This person had long blond hair, was dressed in a business suit, immediately began yelling at Anderson, and Seras honestly had no idea whether the stranger was a woman or a man.

"Your actions here are a violation of the agreement between the Vatican and Hellsing!"

Agreement, what agreement? Seras wondered. Until this point she hadn't even realized there might be other secret organizations besides Iscariot which hunted monsters, much less that she and Anderson might be encroaching on another such agency's territory.

"I killed your pet vampire. I cut off his head."

Seras was startled at Anderson's blatant lie, but tried not to let it show on her face as she quickly realized that his claim of having committed the deed himself was done in order to protect her.

"You cut off his head? Is that all?" A slow grin spread over Integra's face. "It will take much more than that to kill Alucard."

Seras looked down at the blob of vampire goo on the floor, then back to Integra, then back to the puddle of vampire.

"It's not dead?" she asked in a tone of obvious disbelief.

She looked to Anderson for confirmation, but he seemed just as perplexed by Integra's claim as Seras was.

Seras looked back down at the floor, but the puddle of vampire was gone.

What? Where could it have gone? It was just there.

She looked around for the severed head, but that was also no longer where it had landed.

Integra laughed at the bewildered Iscariot duo as a swarm of bats filled the hallway - a swarm of bats which coalesced into the form of the vampire.

Alucard was entirely prepared to either attack or defend, depending on the priest's next action. But it turned out that neither was necessary for, with a worried glance back at his apprentice, Anderson let loose a swirling vortex of Bible pages, which somehow teleported the two of them away.

He was surprised, not simply that the priest had chosen to flee rather than continue to engage him in combat, but that the young woman's safety was apparently more important to him than attempting to slay a monster.

Although he hadn't met these particular Iscariot agents before, past experience with those from Section XIII was that the church considered those who couldn't survive combat an acceptable loss as long as the monster was slain in the end. What made this girl so different, that a hardened Iscariot agent would prioritize her protection over the completion of their holy mission?

Integra turned to leave, and as he trailed after his master, Alucard said to her, "I want to make that girl into a vampire."

"No," was Integra's immediate response, although she had no clue what made her vampire decide such a thing. "Absolutely not. You're only saying that because it would piss off the Iscariots."

"Ah, that would be a satisfying bonus," Alucard said, grinning. "But it certainly isn't my main reason. Did you notice her accent?"

"What accent?"

"Exactly."

Integra turned the conversation over in her mind for a few long moments before she reached the conclusion her vampire was hinting at.

"You think she's the rumored sole survivor of the Cheddar Village incident?"

"I'm almost certain of it."

~to be continued~