#wild geese are mercenaries hired to kill for $

[sidsinning]

People always sayin there is no one good in Hellsing

I beg to differ!!!

[voiice-of-the-soul]

Hey, you know how in hellsing after all the guards got killed integra hired the 'wild geese' mercenaries? What if instead she'd hired the teufort mercenaries :3

millenium would have been taken down alot sooner in that case

[duhragonball]

Hellsing Liveblog, Ch.11-13

This is the “Balance of Power” arc.

One of the things that frustrated me about the Hellsing TV anime (as opposed to the Hellsing Ultimate version) was that the TV series aired while the manga was still running, and it seemed to struggle between following the source material or just diverging into all new stories.    I think if Gonzo had made up their minds one way or the other, it would have ended up a better show.   Instead, there were all these filler scenes of Seras training with human soldiers, which seemed like an utter waste of the character’s time.    Worse, this meant the human soldiers featured much more prominently than they ever did in the manga, where they all get killed off by Chapter 9 or something.   And if you know that’s coming, like I did, it makes the human soldiers that much more insufferable, because you know dorks like Farguson aren’t going to matter, but they get tons of screen time anyway.    Farguson is like every episode of Dragon Ball GT condensed into a single character.  

Here, in the original manga, it’s pretty clear that the soldiers never mattered, because the only time you ever see them is when Jan Valentines’ ghoul army slaughters them all.    They only existed so Integra would have something to be in charge of, but the only ones who actually matter here are herself, Alucard, Seras, and Walter.    In this chapter, Walter practically admits as much, when he states that there were 96 staff members, and now we’re down to ten: Walter, Integra, and eight jabrones who weren’t at the base that day.    Well, maybe those eight guys will show up later and do something important?   Bullshit they will, they never get mentioned again.   The Gonzoverse might have been able to break some new ground by focusing on those human characters more, but what they actually did was half-assed, and it looks all the more futile when you know how unimportant they are to the original work.   Walter just hires a band of mercenaries to backfill all the vacant positions, and I’ll give you three guesses what happens to those guys.

Concerning “Millennium”, their mysterious new enemy, no one has any idea what they are.    A bunch of people try to research it, because we didn’t have Google in 1999, or at least not Google as we now know it, so if you wanted to know something cryptic you just had to rummage through a card catalog in a library or whatever.    But Integra just makes the logical leap that “Millennium” is a reference to the “Thousand Year Reich” dreamed of by Nazi Germany.   This seems like a stretch, but I think Integra’s reasoning is that this is the only “Millennium” reference that could possibly be worth Hellsing’s attention.

Later, Integra meets the Wild Geese, the merc group Walter hired, and explains their assignment even referencing the Bram Stoker novel.    So I guess Dracula is a real book in the Hellsing world, but it must be at least partially based on a true story, right?   The Geese don’t buy any of this, so Integra introduces them to Seras to prove that vampires are real.

They all laugh at Seras until she starts flicking their leader, Pip Bernadotte, with her fingers.    Then Alucard shows up, and that seems to be enough to convince them.

After this, Integra gets a letter from the Iscariot Organization, inviting her to a meeting with Enrico Maxwell at the Imperial War Museum.    The whole thing introduces Bishop Maxwell very effectively.   He tries to play this off as a peaceful, diplomatic conference, but he makes Integra wait, and she’s still sore about Anderson’s violation of their treaty back in Chapter 5-6.   Maxwell takes all this in stride, then replies that he could care less about the deaths of even two billion Protestants, so the two guys Anderson killed mean nothing to him.    He’s only here because the Pope ordered him to do this, and he calls Integra a “Protestant sow” for good measure.  

At this, Alucard comes out to stand up for Integra’s honor, and then Maxwell responds by bringing out Anderson, except Anderson has a berzerker rage thing going, so it kind of ruins Maxwell’s posturing.    For all his contempt, he really was ordered to London to talk to Integra, so he’d probably get in trouble with the Pope if Anderson starts a big superhero battle in a museum.

In Cross Fire, the unpublished manga that was sort of a precursor to Hellsing, Maxwell looked a lot like Sir Integra does now, so when Kouta Hirano brought him back for this arc, he slicked his hair back and removed his glasses.   On the other hand, Integra doesn’t look much like the early Integra anymore either.    By now, Hirano seems to have settled on her design, straightening her hair out and making her face longer and thinner.   Anyway, Maxwell’s brinkmanship has backfired, and now even he can’t stop Anderson, so what can be done?

Luckily, Seras is here to provide a distraction, as she leads a tour group of elderly Japanese tourists through the gallery.    For some reason this kills Anderson’s fighting mood completely, so he leaves.    Alucard also leaves, because he hates being up during the day.    Walter gives Seras a hearty thumbs up for defusing this tense situation.    Good job, Seras.    You’re doing amazing, sweetie.

All right, so what’s so blamed important that the Pope would send Maxwell to London?    Well, he knows about Millennium’s attack on Hellsing’s base, and he has some juicy deets on them.   After making Integra say “please”, he explains that “Millennium” was a Nazi military unit responsible for transferring resources and personnel for Nazi Germany.    They relocated a ton of these resources and personnel to South America for safe keeping.    Integra’s not too impressed with that, since “Nazis fleeing to South America after the war” isn’t exactly a shocking revelation.  

The twist here, though, is that Millennium was smuggling Nazi stuff to South America during World War II. 

Also, the Vatican helped Millennium do this?   I never understood this part of the story, but I think it gets explained later.   I mean, it explains how Maxwell would have this lead to share with Hellsing, but it raises more questions than answers.

  Volume 2 ends with another chapter of Cross Fire, starring Heinkel Wolfe and Yumiko Takagi.    In the first story, they saved hostages from Islamic terrorists.    This one is them recovering stolen church money from radical communists, which I guess could have been a thing in 1998?    It’s basically the same story, though, as they send Yumiko to infiltrate the bad guys, then they slaughter everyone in sight.    Mostly, I want to focus on the part at the end, where Maxwell, the leader of Iscariot, justifies the use of extreme hyper-violence in the name of the Catholic Church.   You sort of get the sense that the Iscariot Organization in Cross Fire was a concept in search of a villain.   the idea of two girl-assassins dressed as a nun and a priest might have had some traction, but Hirano really seems to have had trouble coming up with worthy enemies for them to fight.    But Hellsing brings vampires into the mix, which suits the Iscariots quite nicely.

Back to “Balance of Power”, the third part features Seras training with the Wild Geese in the middle of the night.   For some reason, Seras expects them to shoot targets from over 4km away.   She can do it, but only thanks to the vampiric senses Alucard showed her how to use.    It’s like she doesn’t realize that this is an ability she only has because she’s a vampire or something.   

Indoors, Alucard and Walter discuss the whole Nazi angle.    Al isn’t terribly surprised, because he only knows three who have ever used undead warriors for combat.   

1) Hellsing

2) Himself

3) The Nazis.

He knows #3 is legit, because he and Walter destroyed a Nazi research facility during the war.    Supposedly that contained all their work on the undead, but now that we know Millennium was smuggling important stuff from Nazi Germany to South America, it only makes sense that they’re the ones who devised the Valentines’ ghoul attack.    The bigger point of this scene is to reinforce that Walter used to be a big wheel in Hellsing, teaming up with Alucard to have Golden Age WWII adventures.   And now, Hellsing will be sending Alucard and Seras to South America to investigate this new threat.   

Here, Walter asks the big question: Why make Seras a vampire?   I’ll have more to say about this later, but I dig this scene because it works as an exposition scene, but there’s more to it than that.   Alucard’s only apparent motivations are over-the-top violence and doing his master’s bidding.   Helping Seras doesn’t seem to fit either of those, so it does indeed feel out-of-character.   You’d expect someone to ask this question, and by now there’s really only two people left who know Alucard well: Walter and Integra.   So yeah, let’s have Walter ask the question.    But later on, it becomes clear that the point is not the question itself, but the fact that Walter is the one asking it.  

For what it’s worth, Alucard doesn’t seem to know, or maybe he just doesn’t want to spell it out.   He keeps saying that it was her “choice”, except he had to make his own choice that night.    He could have just let her die, regardless of any requests she might have made.   Al remarks on her tremendous resilience on that night, since she was surrounded by death and hopelessness, but didn’t resign to her fate.    That impresses him, so I guess we can say that he chose her because he found her to be such an impressive specimen, in spite of some of her goofier behavior.    As it currently stands, Seras can’t even travel across rivers or oceans, a weakness for lesser vampires, but not a problem for Alucard himself.    He seems to think that’ll all be resolved once she finally drinks blood, and he expects that it’ll just be a matter of time before she does.    Ominous!

As far as transporting Seras to South America, Alucard figures the easiest thing to do is nail her shut in her own coffin.   The Wild Geese know a smuggling operation that can fly them to Brazil without any messy customs.   That works out, since they also have to transport Alucard’s coffin, and all the guns.

Integra asks why Alucard is dressed like this, and he says he can’t wear his usual stuff because he’d be too obvious to their enemies.    Also, he doesn’t need to spend the whole trip in his coffin, because sunlight and traveling over water doesn’t bother him, I guess?    I don’t really get the water thing.    If Seras can’t travel over running water, what difference does it make if she’s in her coffin or not?    I can accept that Alucard, who’s basically a super-vampire, would be immune to the whole water thing, but it becomes a plot point later on, so... aw, forget it   

Integra gives Alucard only one order: Search and Destroy, which seems kind of vague when you think about it.   Anyway, she’ll be saying this about a hundred times before the story is over, so we may as well appreciate the original.

[the-rose-clad-demon-doctor]

Hellsing: Forest Fire Part 4

So, this is probably going to be the last update for a few days. Writing this chapter kicked my ass and, apart from a few plot points, I’m totally unsure of how to continue at the moment. I’ll probably be working on Part 5 sporadically throughout the week but hopefully I’ll have it up by Friday or Saturday.

Sunday morning. The Hellsing Organization and Wild Geese had been at full combat readiness for nearly two weeks. Full combat readiness meant constant patrols, each patrol shift pulling more than twelve hours constantly on watch. It was wearing on everyone. Normal humans simply weren’t meant to keep vigilant and alert for that kind of time each day.

        It was especially wearing on Claude. He hadn’t had an opportunity to really talk with Pip since their previous interaction. “One night zis week” got quickly pushed back to “Possibly next week.”

        More worrying to the blonde soldier, as he wandered the halls, was the effect the whole situation was having on Sir Integra. It had been at his urging that she hired the Wild Geese and pushed to fortify Hellsing Manor for what could be a siege situation. He had already passed by her door to hear her saying that she shouldn’t have listened to him. Claude knew it was just the stress, but that still stung.

        Which is why it almost came as a relief when, nearly sixteen days since the Wild Geese arrived, a spotter on the roof saw the buses pulling up at the front of the manor.

        Claude assumed his position in the ground floor. The mercenaries had taken positions up on the second storey, defiladed through the windows, with heavy machine gun nests set up at three points. The Hellsing troops had been spread throughout the manor, and Sir Integra and Walter took refuge in the basement.

        There was a brief moment of anticipation as two tall, lanky, very differently-dressed individuals walked up to the gatehouse, exchanging a brief word with the guards before opening fire.

        The whole world seemed to pause, as if taking a breath. Suddenly, it was like the gates of Hell itself opened up. Nearly a hundred guns throughout the mansion opened fire. The two men at the gates jumped, taken by surprise. They moved faster than anyone could possibly keep track of, scattering and moving out of the firing arcs of the mercenaries on the upper levels.

The buses accelerated, making a charge for the front door, tires tearing deep tracks in the ground. One of the buses suddenly split in half, torn to a hundred thousand pieces by an explosion as it rolled over an anti-tank mine. The remaining three buses slammed into the front façade of the mansion, breaking through the walls and sending soldiers scattering.

More explosions as the doors on the buses opened, spilling forth soldiers replete with riot shields, all crudely labeled with “Boo doo, people murder people.” The Hellsing soldiers hid behind barriers, but still found themselves falling under the crushing advance of the armored ghouls.

Squad 17 had been split across the first floor, not one member was within easy reach of each other. Claude had the good fortune to be placed near the stairwell, a half-dozen men and women under his direct order.

The radio on his hip crackled to life.

“This is Belmont, in temporary command of Squad 6! We’re falling back to the Southeast stairwell! All troops, masks on! Thunder Children, load your guns for area denial!”

Claude looked around as everyone around him snapped on simple painter’s breathers and goggles. “Area denial.”

The Karmina shotguns were of a large enough bore to launch custom grenades. These had been designed by Alucard and Walter in a joint venture to give humans weapons to make life very unpleasant for vampires and ghouls. A frangible outer shell made out of cold iron, boasting a very light explosive charge. The real meat of the grenades was their incredibly finely-powdered silver, each individual speck light enough to float on the softest breeze. Each grenade contained several hundred grams of this powdered silver.

As Squad 6 rounded the corner in full retreat, pursued by a charging formation of ghouls, Claude dutifully shouldered his gun and fired over the heads of his comrades-in-arms. The grenade rounds kicked more than usual, so his gun knocked the hell out of his shoulder. Its explosive projectile sailed high, smacking into the shield of one ghoul before bursting open in a flash of light.

It suddenly became much harder to see in the hallway as a million rays of light were reflected by the particulate silver floating in the air. The ghouls, clearly newly-turned, continued to breathe instinctively. That was their mistake, as they caught lungs full of powdered silver. As their lungs screamed in pain, their skin blistering from exposure to the precious metal, some dropped their shields. Some dropped their guns. All of the ghouls seized in pain. A lung full of silver wouldn’t be enough to kill a vampire, not even a ghoul, but it distracted them. Which was exactly what was necessary, as the Hellsing soldiers ripped the small crowd apart with concentrated fire.

The soldiers in that small hallway let out a cheer, but it was short-lived. The other sides of the Manor remained unsecured, a fact they were painfully reminded of as another member of Squad 17 called out over the radio that Squads 2 and 8 were wiped out.

One of the two lanky bastards from before the attack had broken in through an uncovered window in the back of the mansion and caught the two groups by surprise. His other tall associate had met up and charged together into the lower levels before splitting up again.

Integra, dead. Seras, dead. Alucard unable to save them. Pip dead. Claude unable to save him.

Claude gripped at his head, grabbing his radio, fury running through every vein in his body. He keyed the channel for the rest of the radios they used.

“This is… This is Claude Grey to all Hellsing soldiers and the Wild Geese mercenaries. Everyone on the second storey secure the stairwells at all costs! Don’t let any of those bastards up there! Level the fuckin’ stairwells with C4 if you have to! All forces on the first storey and below, do whatever you can to get to the basement! They’re aiming for Sir Integra!”

They’d probably be fine. But was he really going to risk it? He had a dinner date with Monsieur Bernadotte to look forward to. Integra was like a mother to him. Seras almost like a sister already.

I’ll be damned if some vampire asshole’s gonna take everything away from me again.

Everything had transpired over the course of a few seconds. Before anybody else had a chance to react to what he said, Claude bolted for the stairwell and stormed downstairs. Abandoning his command like this would earn him a royal chewing-out later, but he didn’t care. He knew the basement was shielded against radio transmissions. Even if Integra had a radio, she never would’ve heard what he said. He had to get there first, and one man could move a hell of a lot faster than seven.

The basement level of the Hellsing Manor was a labyrinth the likes of which would have made King Minos green with envy. It sprawled much farther out and much deeper than the already palatial mansion sitting aboveground. Twisting tunnels which doubled back, dozens of dead ends, fake doors, electronic shielding, all designed to hide the lowest dungeons and the deepest, darkest secrets of Hellsing and the Council of Twelve.

It was also where the vampire Alucard made his home, meaning it was somewhere Claude Grey rarely ventured.

He probably knew as much about the basement level as the vampires now trying to navigate their way to find Sir Integra.

Every corner had the potential to put him face-to-face with a being much more powerful than he was, much faster than he was, far harder to kill than he was.

He wasn’t particularly scared, not really. Dying was something he hadn’t been scared of in years. At the end of the day, Claude knew he was expendable. The Hellsing Organization would move on if he died, but Sir Integra was vital to their survival.

Claude was also fairly sure he was lost. Every corridor in the basement looked the same.

Voices came from the hallway to his left. The soldier hugged the wall and listened closely.

“You dumbass! Those cocksuckers were waiting for us and you knew it, didn’t you?!” How was he communicating with someone? That shouldn’t be possible. “I don’t give a shit what he told you or not! We walked into a trap you kraut fuck!”

Kraut?

Claude’s attention was taken as he heard further gunshots from down the hall to his right. That… That had to be where Integra was. He pushed away from the wall, breaking into a dead run, not caring about the noise he was making.

“Oh shit… Hey, come back here, asshole!”

Claude could hear the man behind him, footsteps moving far too fast for him to outrun. He reached to his battledress, grabbing a grenade. A flashbang. Just something to use as a distraction.

Claude pulled the pin, hearing the footsteps getting closer. After less than a second, he threw the grenade behind him and covered his ears. There was a tremendous BANG, amplified by the walls of the basement. It rattled every bone in his body, even shook his teeth. Even after covering his ears, they rang fiercely, he could scarcely hear.

A door at the end of the hallway stood open, and Claude could see the white-suited man from earlier seated against the wall, bloodied. The man turned to look at Claude, chest heaving from multiple bullet wounds. Alucard still stood, holding a gun aimed at the seated individual. He raised a second gun that Claude had never seen before. Under the ringing in his brain he could hear the vampire yelling.

“Get down!”

Claude dove for the floor, landing awkwardly on his gun. Oof. That was gonna bruise later.

There were further gunshots, though they barely registered through his already weakened hearing. He felt an impact as the vampire chasing him fell to the ground and slid along the floor.

The soldier panted, out of breath from the sprint. He clambered to his feet and trained the Karmina shotgun on the black tracksuited vampire on the ground.

“H… How’s it feel… Dickhead?”

Mr. White Suit turned, grunting. He coughed, blood spattering from his mouth.

“Jan… You should have left when I told you to…”

“Urgh… Sorry, big bro… Wasn’t gonna let you have all the fun. I wanted to take at least a few more of these assholes with us as payment for all the trouble.” Jan looked up at Alucard, and Integra as she emerged from the room behind him. “How’d you… Ungh… How’d you bitches know we were coming?”

“That’d be me.” Claude spoke, feeling vindictive. He stamped his foot on the bullet wound in Jan’s leg, prompting him to shout. “I heard you talking to your boss. Called him kraut?” He twisted his foot, digging in harder. “Let him know, it doesn’t matter what he does. I’ll see it coming. The Hellsing Organization will never let you win, whoever you are.”

Claude got a strange feeling as he said that. The little voice in the back of his head screamed at him. Jan laughed wickedly.

“Oh, trust me. He knows now.” The vampire sat up, flipping off Alucard and Integra. “He’s been listening to this entire conversation!”

Oh shit. DEFINITELY should not have said that.

“I’ll bet you wanna know who sent us, then! It was…” There was a flash of heat, catching everyone off guard as Jan and his brother erupted in flames. “M I L L E N N I U M…”

There was practically a chorus of “Millennium?” from Claude and Integra. Questions fresh in their heads, they emerged from the basement to find the ghoul army neatly cleaned up. Seras had left the basement from another stairwell as the two brothers went down, and began cleaning up the leftovers of their forces.

Hellsing had, despite their readiness, taken fierce casualties. Twenty-six killed, nearly forty injured, along with eight injured Wild Geese. Claude shuddered to imagine what would have happened if they were not as prepared as they were.

After a firm dressing-down by Integra for so recklessly running headlong into the basement and abandoning his command, Claude was allowed to rest. It was night-time by now.

Fully exhausted, he flopped onto his bed, not even bothering to strip out of his battledress, or even to put his gun away. The second his eyes closed, he was out.

There was a soft phump, then another. Claude’s eyes fluttered open slowly, unsure of how much time had passed. He looked to the source of the noise.

In the dim light of the room’s lamp, he could see a very short… Boy? Did he have… Cat ears? Claude’s eyes adjusted, and then widened as he another, much taller… Was that a woman? With a scythe? He quickly looked at the sleeping figure of his roommate. Blood… Blood on the walls.

The catboy turned to him, tittering quietly.

“Oh? You’re certainly qvite a heavy sleeper, nein?”

Without a second thought, Claude grabbed his sidearm and moved to fire it at the boy. But the woman was quicker. She was across the room before he could blink, and delivered a series of tremendous punches to his chest and stomach. Even through the bullet-resistant battledress, they knocked him utterly senseless. He gasped, struggling to breathe through the pain of what had to be several broken ribs. Thrown off balance by the impacts, Claude rolled off the bed, crashing to the floor and bringing his guns tumbling with him. Hitting the floor did nothing to alleviate the now eye-watering pain.

“Tsk… Vas zat really necessary, Obersturmführer Blitz?” The woman rolled her eyes, chomping down harder on the cigarette in her mouth.

“You vould razzer he shot you, zen? Or me, more importantly?”

Claude struggled, trying to lift his shotgun, but the catboy merely walked over and stepped a foot onto his chest, eliciting a gasp of pain.

“Ah-ah-ah… Now zat’s not wery nice.” The catboy picked up Claude’s shotgun with almost no effort. He wasn’t dying, but the pain of the Nazi Youth-dressed individual standing on his chest certainly made Claude wish he was dead.

“Mein leader visely decided to stop… How you say… pussy-footing around. If our plans vere getting foreseen, vhy not capture ze individual who foresees zem?”

Why do I ever open my big goddamn mouth?

The catboy giggled again, now standing with both feet on Claude’s chest.

“You’re going to be coming vis us.”

He bent down, cutely tapping Claude’s nose with a finger.

The world around them disappeared entirely.

(Not gonna lie, this chapter was a LOT of fun to write, but it certainly gave me guff trying to figure out how to allow Hellsing to find out about Millennium with all of the advantages they had in the battle. I also love how Medz and I, on our own, both formulated nearly identical ways for our characters to get captured!)

[ajstudio]

And let's not forget Walter in this cast of morally grey characters. This man pretended to be Alucard's friend as a means to study him so he could kill him later gave information about Alucard to a surviving Nazi army of artificial vampires and death seekers who used him as a pawn for their goals just as much as he used them to best Alucard, and left an orphaned 12-year-old Integra at the mercy of her power-hungry uncle hoping she would release Alucard.

What was Walter going to do if he came home to a dead Integra in a cold cell far from the corpse of Alucard who had to watch her get shot helplessly by her uncle and because the drops of her blood were falling at an area of the cell mummy Alucard couldn't lap up leaving him a powerless husk like Integra found him originally?

Would he have woken up then? Richard Hellsing would've been executed for manslaughter, Hellsing would be been dissolved, and Walter would've been out of a job. How would he handle having Sir Islands and a freed Alucard (if he is revived after everything else mention) heaving down his neck for leaving Integra by herself?

He also is part of the reason the Valentine Brothers attacked Hellsing HQ resulting in the death of the soldiers stationed that day becoming lunch for the enemy and ghouls later. Sir Islands said Director Integra was obligated to put them out of their misery as their leader but part of that responsibility should've fallen to Walter by that same logic. Not as a leader but as a guilty party.

Those men had families who would never see them anymore then they would learn how they died, and their blood is on Walter's hands.

He likely notified Millennium where Alucard, Pip, and Seras would be before they arrived in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil.

He was gracious enough to supply Alucard and Seras with weapons powerful enough to put out an armored tank which came in handy against the armed ghouls, but he planted a fail-safe bomb in Alucard's Jackel and gave the remote for the bomb to the Doktor. Did he also supply Millennium with weapons?

Walter C. Dornez might've redeemed himself by ending the Doktor, his research (let's face it if Russia or China got a hold of the Doktor the world wouldn't be ready for their armies anymore than England was), and releasing Mina Harker of her misery with the dwindling time and strength he had left, but he lost a lot before got to that point.

Walter C. Dornez. The fool made up of fifty shades of questionable grey.

People always sayin there is no one good in Hellsing

I beg to differ!!!