The lost composer of London

Assault on Hellsing Manor

"Captain, I've spotted a zeppelin and a wave of explosives heading our way," Seras announced into her headset. Bernadotte leaned back in his chair, causing a mild crinkling feedback in the microphone.

"Knock them out of the sky, mon chère." He swung his cigarette through the air with his tongue. "Give them the hell that they came for!"

"Yes sir!" Seras raised two cannons, both longer than she was tall, and unloaded a barrage of anti-air fire. The recoil alone felt capable of crumbling concrete, but Seras took it all with little more than a grunt and a wide stance. The missiles detonated flaccidly in the smoky sky, torn apart like grasshoppers in a lawn mower. In an instant the skies were clear, save the single blemish lurching toward them. Lights broke out from the sides of the ship, and Seras lowered her cannons to relax her arms. She cradled them as the spotlights converged on her impressive form.

"You've shot them all down, mon chère. That new equipment is in top form, huh, mon chère?"

Seras took the cannons back in hand and crouched to a knee, keeping her eye on the enemy ship. Bernadotte was still talking, practically to himself. She began to wonder if he did this during every major battle.

"The Hallconnen II 30mm semi-auto cannon," Pip drolled. "Maximum range of 4000 meters; gross weight, 345 kilograms. We're pulling out all the stops against these jokers, mon chère."

"Mr. Bernadotte," Seras began, momentarily turning her attention away from the piñata of death that she was about ready to pop. "Would you mind not calling me 'mon chère?' I do have an actual name – Seras."

"Hahaha, sorry about that, young lady." Seras suspected linguistic foul-play on the captain's part, but said nothing. There was a small metal flick on the headset, a lighter most likely, and Bernadotte was silent for a few ticks. "Tell me... Can you see London, young lady?"

Even with the many kilometers between them and the hills camouflaging the distant city, it would be hard not to see London on this night. The horizon glowed as though it cratered a deadly volcano on the verge of erupting. The stars had been swallowed up by billowing smoke, blinding all of heaven to their plight. The only angel left to safeguard them from the demons had run off with a threat to murder her eternal soul.

"Yes, I can."

A slight deviation in the static, a puff of smoke. "Piccadilly Circus, SoHo, and Covent Garden have turned to ashes. Our London is now synonymous with Hell."

For a moment, just a brief moment, Seras tuned Pip out and thought about that: Hell. Seras had come to believe many things about Hell throughout her life, learned from nuns and priests and vampires. She'd come to believe that Hell was the ultimate end, a violent burning within infinite darkness surrounded by monsters that saw you as a simple thing used to satiate their gluttony. This was the Hell of London, the Hell that Bernadotte believed in and that creatures such as Alucard and the Major thrived within. But what was Hell if a few bombs and three bundles of undead soldiers could rival it? What was Hell if it could be imitated, manufactured, sold out to the highest bidder? Is that what the Reaper Games were, just another production of Hell with its own brand of demon? Was Joshua simply another Satan, and Neku another Sisyphus rolling Joshua's stones? Is that what Seras had been, in a life she couldn't remember? Had she cared? Questions flooded her mind, but through years of training and discipline were flushed away. One way or another, Seras stood on the battlefield. Now was no time to ask questions that couldn't keep her and her men alive.

"I couldn't stand London," Pip continued, unaware that Seras wasn't listening. "I thought it was a stuffy old city. I didn't think it was the city for me at all. Even so, when we would go out and party at this cabaret on the weekends, the beer was cold, and tasty, and the bartender was this idiot who liked the most ridiculous dirty jokes. The hookers in the whorehouses were money-grubbers, and there were a lot who were hard on the eyes." Seras became aware of Bernadotte's speech when he said "whorehouse." She wondered what she had missed, but didn't interrupt. "But you know, they were all nice to us, and had this pitiful look in their eyes.