Osiris Hellsing

Chapter 5: The Hunt

I took my red paisley vest off and put on my holster, putting Anta and Abraham into their respective holsters. Then I put my belt on and put my battle cross in the sheath at my hip and several magazines around the circumference of my waist, both black but silver strips down the side for Abraham and just solid black for Anta, to tell the difference between the two I would feel the burn from the magazine. I put my vest back on, took my glasses off, put my leather gloves on, and opened the door leading to my balcony and jumped onto the wall climbing up the wall using gargoyles until I reached the top. I always saw people on movies or shows jumping from tree tops to tree tops. I also had first hand experience granting me the right to say that those scenes are bullshit. Those trees are mostly air. Thankfully about one kilometre away there was a neighbouring house. From there it was simple stepping stones back into the main business districts of Tokyo. All I had to do was make that one jump. Simple enough.

I backed up to the very edge of my slanted roof. And took off with supernatural speed, my muscles firing off fast and hot, until I made it to the edge of my roof and as soon as my foot hit the edge my foot half on and half off of my roof, I bent my foot forward using the edge of the roof as my fulcrum, and using the side of the mansion as a springboard. Below me the world flowed past me, like a river, the wind in my hair and tickling my red eyes. The scents of the trees below me in my nose. Until, with a rush of adrenaline, I saw the modest house that served as my landing point. I shot my legs forward, braced, landed, rolled, and took off in a run across the roof and jumped again.

I continued to jump through the district until I reached the main part of Tokyo, the area that most people think of when they think of the city. Neon lit, bustling especially at this hour, where work was either just getting out or just opening up. Tourists, hostesses, hosts, business men, drunks, punks, and teenagers alike all made up the sea of humans beneath me. I jumped from building to building flying more free than the mere mortals will ever be. But I had no time to linger. The wonder of flying through the city had long since worn out. I now thirsted for blood instead of flight. I continued to jump from building to building, moving to the docks.

When I finally arrived my sensitive ears were already picking up the sounds of moving shipment crates, lighters, small conversations, and numerous sounds of people weeping. Its not unusual to hear the first two but the third one was obviously a sign that my intelligence was correct. As I drew nearer I lowered my hearing lest gunshots or anything else cause me to become disoriented or deaf and I unholstered Anta and Abraham both from beneath my vest, jumped onto the top of the nearest warehouse and knelt watching what was going on beneath me.

From what I could see from my vantage point there were two people with tactical security agency masks and uniforms on and small handheld weapons with long magazines watching the entrance gate, presumably ghouls. They probably had them watching each entry place to the docks, just to make sure they aren't interrupted by some non-corrupt officers and unfortunate citizens. Seeing the weapons in the guards hands I gasped. Firearms in Japan, specifically Tokyo, are very closely watched and registered. Hence why my 'unregistered casings' being such a big deal. Even some SWAT members within Tokyo are armed with small pistols. To see what I only assumed are semi automatic weapons was fairly shocking to me. Either this family had a lot of backing from the bigger heads of the Yakuza to get this shipment in, or the Katsushia family could only afford a few weapons like that, and they chose for the guards to wield them. The latter is most likely the case, meaning that there might be some more important people here with guns like that. I couldn't take out the two of them with Abraham for the noise would draw attention. So I turned my attention to the docks itself. There were easily twenty people down on the docks milling about the shipping containers, the ones that never seem to move. I could tell some were human and some were vampire, but because I couldn't single out any particular scent out of the group simply because of the magnitude of people and the lack of any specific target that I could single out. All I could tell is at the very least there were Class III vampires on the docks itself. Each one of them were unloading cargo  from a small ship, the ship had roughly seven shipping containers and a dozen smaller, human sized crates. Probably both had people inside but it was more likely that the smaller crates had people than the shipping containers. Men were unloading the smaller crates with dollies and carrying them down the gangplank and a crane gingerly took the shipping containers from the ship and slowly put them down.

To the left of all that I could see the shape of a limousine. This was far enough a way for me to single out the scent of it. The window was open allowing me to see a shadowed figure inside. I tried to single it out from the rest of the scents, the gasoline, the rubber tires, and the leather upholstery, and tired to attune his specific scent. From the first thing I could tell he was rich, with expensive cologne on and the slight smell of well tailored silk (yes that has a scent). I tried to ignore that and get his primal scent. The scent that is specific to each individual, we vampires don't have that. My scent would be the same as another halfling vampire, Kisho would smell the same as any other Class I vampire, and so on and so forth, it makes tracking certain types a little easier. I finally caught his scent. 

And it immediately made me gag, I tried to stifle it and I preyed to myself that I managed to. To put in perspective I had smelled a class X vampire before, I've smelled the putrid rotten flesh of a ghoul, their primal scent is something that could make anyone throw up, it could make literally the most jaded war veteran with no nose throw up. I could put up with those without so much as wrinkling my nose. This smell, to get an emotional response out of me and especially such a large one, it either ment that the man had very poor hygiene, or much more likely, he had a more supernatural bent.

My thought process was cut short by a sudden voice calling out.

"Careful with that you idiot." Called a goon with a subtly raspy voice, the voice of a class IX. Shit, I thought to myself I hate Class IX. He was probably a higher ranking official in the Yakuza, no way a small time family like Katsushia could afford to keep a Demon around and well fed enough.

 After making a mental note to target the Demon first I felt a small pressure on the back of my head. I shot from my kneeling position up to my feet and off to the side, away from the presumed gun and beside the person who put it there. I put Anta away and drew out my Battle Cross ramming the longest end up through his jaw and into his brain. Without a sound the guard in tactical armour fell to the roof. Right after he fell an idea passed through my genius mind. My ulterior motive for this hunt was to free the blood in those crates, pathetic as humans were they didn't deserve to be sold, thats just too boring. When you die you should be hunted, not just put into a pen and killed helplessly. So a good way for me to get to those crates would be to look like them. And this guard had his face covered. Good way to avoid suspicion. 

I turned the body of the guard over and pulled his helmet off, underneath I found a few scraggly wisps  of black hair on top of an obviously decomposing head. Next I pulled the tactical goggles off, ignoring the putrid scent of the body, and I found that the one eye it did have was milky white. The other one was an empty socket. This one was a ghoul. Hence why it probably had an automatic weapon because this creature couldn't aim for anything. Even ones with both eyes were effectively blind, aiming only by scent and sound. But give them specific directions and they could be threatening in theory. Finally I pulled off the breathable cloth mask and found this creature had no lips. Its teeth were milky white and pointed like mine, but instead of the two in the front above and below in the mouth, all of his teeth were pointed. Not unusual for ghouls, for it allowed them to rend flesh and get to the precious blood beneath easier. From there I stripped his tactical vest and uniform off finding the body beneath to be little more than a skeleton. This creature had been starved. That made them both more quick and vicious but also more stupid, explaining why he went for the execution instead of a far safer ranged attack. After strapping all of his clothes onto my own body I threw the automatic weapon aside opting to keep the black Abraham in my hand and hiding Anta in the only other holster that the creature had, hoping Abraham would look similar enough to the ghoul guards weapon. After that I stumbled slightly like a ghoul would down off of the roof, jumping onto the stacked boxes behind the warehouse and towards the labour. My current target: The Demon vampire.