Set in the "Pulp Hellsing" timeline _not_ in the "Dances
Set To The Music Of Time" timeline.

*************************************************

            DANCES SET TO THE MUSIC OF TIME
                       An Epic History of Humanity
                          From The Age of Silver
                           To The Age of Crystal
                                 And Beyond

         http://rakhal.com/florestica/elsa-bibat/index.html

                 Other fanfiction by the same author:
          http://rakhal.com/florestica/elsa-bibat/index.html

                  Kindly archived by Larry F and
                   The Lost Library of Florestica:
                    http://rakhal.com/florestica/
*************************************************




-- Attached file included as plaintext by Ecartis --
-- File: hellp.txt

**********************************************************************

    Disclaimer:

    Hellsing is owned by Hirano Kouta. All licenses belong to the proper
people. This is used without permission.

    The Shadow was created by Walter Gibson. All licenses and rights
belong to the proper people. This is used without permission.

    This disclaimer also applies to several intellectual properties
referred to in the text. Please be guided accordingly.

    This file can be freely distributed so long as it appears in its
complete form and proper credit given. No part may be reproduced for
monetary gain without permission from the author.

**********************************************************************

    Chapter 8 
    Investigations

    "_Very_ interesting."

    Patricia Dempsey was what Commander Makepeace would normally call an
odd bird. 'Normally' because Makepeace was not that stupid.

    Thin and unprepossesing, Ms. Dempsey's silver hair topped a
remarkably well-aged face for a woman of sixty. Sharp jade eyes set
above a hawkish nose gave her the look of a human bird of prey. This was
rather appropriate for her keen marksmanship skills were still
considered top-notch.

    She was also a mistress of pencak silat, an art which made her still
surprisingly deadly for her age with a pair of short knives she kept in
her handbag. This was found out by several punks when they tried to mug
her one evening while the Ms. Dempsey was coming home from work.

    Her work was what also made her quite different from the normal
white-haired matron of her age. Since the 1950s, Patricia Dempsey had
been an integral part of Military Intelligence Department Five.
Secretary, field agent, control officer, assassin and, finally, data
analyst supreme.

    Code-named "Oracle", she was the ultimate clearinghouse for data for
MI-5 until a few months ago when Five, as the spooks called it, granted
her as a 'loan' to the Knights of Hellsing. Now, she brought her
considerable talent for analysis and data-gathering to bear on
monitoring the nationwide reports looking for anomalous patterns that
could be caused by vampiric activity, something that the organization
had not done before. She was also training several Hellsing operatives
to become a core independent investigative unit for the Order. Makepeace
had dropped by to pick up his boys for late-night PT and obstacle
running, an important activity with all the nocturnal activity that
Hellsing got up to, and ended up watching the IOU being run through
their intellectual paces instead.

    The 'Debt Collectors', the unit's unofficial nickname since the
grunts had heard the acronym for the Investigation Operatives Unit, was
composed of a field unit of three with a control officer coordinating
them all from Headquarters. At least, that was the basic premise on
paper. Agent Dempsey had the tendency go-on site with her 'kids' more
often than not. Makepeace approved but was a bit worried about having a
sixty year old, no matter how skilled, in the field against the things
that Hellsing fought.

    The middle-aged commander gave his elderly superior a smile as he
returned to the present.

    "What's interesting, Gran?"


    Hearing the nickname that the troops had come to call her, Patricia
hmmphed in the way that all offended womenhood did, no matter what the
age.

    She turned to her three nominal 'students' and gave them a jaundiced
eye as she noted the signs of a quick return to composure after a smirk.
Aristarchus 'Starsky' Michealson's lips were a bit too tightly pulled at
the mandibular maxima, noticeable in the dark-haired man's thin, gaunt
face. Richard 'Hutch' Hutchins' eyelids were lower than normal and the
round faced man's entire posture was a projecting nonchalance a bit too
much. Ignatius 'Ivy' Frost was the most difficult to gauge, with his
immobile handsome face and hard sapphire eyes but, as Patricia noticed
earlier during earlier instances, his fingers had the habit of playing
with themselves in moments of guilt as they were doing now.

    Quirking her lips, the elderly agent let it pass. Boys will be boys
after all and dealing with the double O series for four decades had
inured her to adult childishness. She continued, turning to the room's
main centerpiece, a large computer screen where the daily data reports
from various police stations and military bases were being collated.

    "Well, anyone other than me notice anything?"

    The three looked at the screen and Patricia could practically hear
the rusty cogs of thought turning. Well, at least they were turning.
Taking these police and military-trained officers and turning them into
MI-6 class data analysts was a task worthy of Hercules. They had good
grounding but they initially didn't have the wide view that a good
intelligence officer had.

    Frost was the first one to pipe up with his stentorian voice.

    "The numbers. There's been a marginal increase from last week."

    Patricia nodded and gestured for him to continue.

    Frost pointed to the screen's lower left-hand corner.
"Disappearances of people and pets are up. Missing people could be
easily explained by increased glovecleaner activity but pets..." Frost
trailed off to let the meaning of what he said said in.

    The colonel glanced at Patricia, who was nodding, and asked.
"Glovecleaners?"

    "Type A sociopathic personalities. Serial Killer Level 2, people
like that Lecter fellow they have in the States, not totally serial
killers either just very amoral people. No definable pattern except to
themselves, highly skilled and intelligent, highly _violent_ when
pushed, often homophagic in their psychosis. We call them glovecleaners
because in one of the seminal cases the killer, instead of just washing
their hands like normal serial killers, even washed the gloves he used."

    "And they're running around all over Britain?"

    Patricia nodded. "MI-6 quantifies over ten to twenty glovecleaners
in London alone. We've even managed to find and recruit one. Ripley's
the current 009. But we're digressing. Starsky, thoughts?"

    "Pets could easily be explained by zoops, ma'am."

    Makepeace just glanced at Patricia and the silver-haired woman just
rolled her eyes and explained the term. "Zoops is short for zoophages.
Vampiric activity is often accompanied by increased zoophagic activity
because their retinue of consists of both homophagic and zoophagic
servants. Hutch, how about you?"

    The heavy-set man nodded and went over to a keyboard and typed a few
commands. The screen shifted into a map of London. A few moments later
red and yellow dots began appearing all over the cartographic view of
the city.

    "Pattern overlay program should have something...there. Can you see
it, ma'am?"

    Patricia nodded and was impressed. The children had managed to work
like a team on this particular logical process. They were obviously
using their heads.

    "What? I don't see it." Unlike their superior officer. Patricia
sighed and explained.

    "The Thames. See the pattern of red and yellow congregating on the
banks of the Thames? Disappearances all down the waterline, spaced as if
someone were actively trying to hide the pattern. Stupid in a way
actually, a plan obviously executed by someone unaware of current
technological standards or someone who has natural distrust for the new
and is used to a particular manner of working things..." Patricia
trailed off letting the clues sink into her superior's brain.

    "Or someone who's been alive a long time." The colonel finally got
it.

    "So we better hit the streets then, don't we?" Starsky had obviously
lost his brains again. Colonel Makepeace first glanced at him, then to
Frost then to Hutch then to Patricia herself, who had a long-suffering
look on her face. Makepeace smirked at that, a sign that her superior
officer agreed with her assessment. She was thankful for that.

    "No. N.O. IOU doesn't make a step outside out of Hellsing HQ without
approval from Dame Integra and a full Field Team backup. Understood?"

    There was a grudging nod from the three young men and Patricia
offered a thankful one to the commander. Patricia turned to her team and
offered them something to soothe their egos.

    "Don't worry. We'll be on the field soon. Besides, there might be
someone smart enough out there to see the pattern and do our
investigation for us and what did I tell you is the first rule of field
work?"

    Frost's lips twitched as he said the time-honored maxim of
intelligence agents, his only compromise towards a smile.

    "Better them than us."


    Somewhere in London, darkness ruled a room.

    An audible swish and the sound of rustling cloth preceded a click.

    Then, a screen flickered to life.

    White letters manifested on a black background.

    SHADOWNET SYSTEMS.......ONLINE

    SECURITY PROTOCOLS......ACTIVATED

    SATELLITE HOOKUP........ENABLED

    CONNECTION: AGENT BBNK-003......SEARCHING


    CONNECTION CONFIRMED............LOCATING


    AGENT BBNK-003 LOCATION: MCC-2A

    MMC-2A LOCATION: SECTO3 23

    OPENING CONNECTION: MAIN TELEVIDEO LINK.......OPEN


    REPORT


    The black screen turned to white and an image was displayed on-
screen.

    A young woman dressed in green tank top that did nothing to hide the
liberal amount of tattooing on her body was leaning forward, in a pose
almost low enough to peer down her shirt. Blonde hair with odd streaks
of black was tied up into a seemingly incongruous matron's bun and onyx
eyes glared from the screen. A pair of dogtags hung from a long-swanlike
neck and they hung in the air like chimes.

    "Chief? You there?" The woman was obviously leaning down at the
videolink camera as if it were in a cramped space.

    The only response was short, ugly chuckle. The woman winced.

    "You know, that really freaks me out. Could you ditch the 'Master of
Darkness' schtick a few times, you know, like to give me a vacation from
the fucking weirdness that my life has become?"

    The only response was a dry crisp voice tinged with a modicum of
humor.

    "Burbank. Report."

    "Ooookay, no can do on the normal thing. I can understand. But-"

    "Report."

    Burbank just sighed.

    "Okay, okay. Chill. I just got the job a few months ago you know,
you with that funky 'life of adventure' speech of yours. Anyway, I'm on
the aerial command center. Just got out of wonderful sunny Belize, where
insects lay eggs under your skin and the resulting larvae eat out. Also
the location of one of those FREAK labs you were so hot on finding. Our
team torched the research complex but we got a few casualties. Don't
worry. Usual post-mort processing: heart out, decap and full cremation,
then the river.

    "Anyway, I've got some good news for you on the info front, both
online and hardcop. We hit paydirt with the server at the Belize
facility had information on the folks who first developed FREAK tech.
And guess what? Prototype FREAK chips were first made way back in the
stone age of the '40s. And the who is more interesting. The original
file they have here is from a Projekt: Jahrtausend. Sound familiar?"

    The darkness hissed. A sibilant whisper responded with two words.

    "The Three."

    Burbank's face was grim in response. "Seems Hellsing's pet vampire
and the Angel of Death didn't clean out their files when they smacked
those bitches' asses up."

    "How?"

    "The Russians. Seems they cleaned out the Berlin crypt after the
dynamic duo got out and managed to snag a few choice pieces of 'very bad
things'. They developed it into some really funky stuff. I even got a
video here that, if I did already believe in the vampires and werewolves
stuff, would make me a true believer.

    "When the Commies finally bit the dust, who else would show up but
the other Commies. Red China inherited quite a bit of FREAK tech and
they cooked up some nasty stuff before our boys from Brazil sniffed the
wind and decided to get in on some of the action. They hijacked the
operation via a bit of help from the Si Fan, who are still pissed at the
Reds, and they're now jointly running it.

    "Hong Kong's the current location of the main factory with
satellites in Brazil, Argentina, Mainland China, Tibet, Indonesia and
Vietnam. I'll upload it up to the Sanctum mainframe for agent
redistribution."

    A pleased cackled responded from the stygian gloom then another low
whisper.

    "Confirm. Other matter. Report."

    "Okay, I managed to snag a few comp sketches of your guys. I'm
sending them now." Burbank pressed a button and a small subwindow opened
in the side of the screen with three-dimensional models of two faces.
One was a blonde, with close-cropped hair and blue eyes. The jutting
chin complimented his patrician nose in a strange way that the effect
was peculiarly attractive. The companion model had chestnut-hair and a
long narrow face, with thick expressive lips. Beady black eyes peered
out of the screen, somehow radiating a sense of enmity even if it was
just a computer model.

    "Oskar Habermann and Dieter Kreutz. Brazilian citizenship.
Stereotypical of their class: crass, rich, stupid and very Aryan-
inclined. Just harmless businessmen supposedly on a little selling trip.
Of course, the stuff they got for sale is very illegal in most of parts
of the planet but they're... living-impaired so what do they care?"

    A whisper interrupted Burbank's spiel. "Specifics?"

    The woman frowned and shook her head. "None on any data file I could
find. But these two just got a babysitter with claws." Burbank pushed
another button and a conventional picture of a bloned woman appeared.
"OMNIVORE got a ping when the guys at Heathrow entered the name."

    "Schrodinger." The whisper had a wary respectful tone to it. Burbank
could only nod.

    "Ayep. Kitty's come out to play. But still, one smart to two stupid
doesn't tip the scales just yet. As can be seen by the follow-up report,
I'm uploading to your portable. Increased disappearances all along the
Thames, both animal _and_ human. Very strange and very ... vampirish, if
you asked me."

    Burbank shook her head and covered her face with one hand as she
stood up from her leaning position. Her voice was faint as she spoke to
the microphone attached to the camera.

    "Anyway, report over. I'm gonna crash. Lou's gonna wake me when we
reach Nevada. I'll send in an after-ac to the Sanctum then. Burbank
out."

    A click and the view disappeared, leaving the three images on the
screen.

    Moments later, they too disappeared from the screen as another click
sounded and the computer was turned off leaving the room in total
darkness.

    The dark room's invisible occupant was leaving.

    He needed information and his agent had given it to him.

    Now, the Shadow knew.

    Sinister laughter filled the room.



             .---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
             | Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
             | Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
             |     Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject     |
             `---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'