4784/Bump in the Night

Bump in the Night
Date of Scene:	15 November 2016
Location:	Hellsing-1 Europe <HE1>
Synopsis:	Iscariot dispatches Heinkel Wolfe to a small town in Ireland to clean up a ghoul infestation, and she calls in some multiversal help from Alexis Maaka.
Cast of Characters:	Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped), 571

---

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  It's late at night in the country of Ireland. Mist rises from the fields, and moss coats the rocks. The village is relatively small, with only a scattering of houses, a modest bus station, and an industrial sector; too small to even warrant a train station. The church is some distance away at the top of a hill, where the topography lends it a little more prominence. As far as village sizes go, though, it's practically microscopic. There can't be more people here than a few hundred. Seven hundred would be an enormously generous stretch.

  This is Catholic territory, as proclaimed by the church's steeple. The Catholic Church handles its own -- with no interference brooked from the Hellsing Order of Protestant Knights.

  And there's a stranger here, crouched in the underbrush, about a quarter mile from town. The top of a hill is about the same height as the church, and this is where coordinates were filed to Alexis Maaka, along with a terse note about a job; come quietly, she'd said, and come well-armed, because it might get messy.

  Maaka will find a positively antique German motorcycle leaning on its kickstand in the weeds. Off the beaten track, beside the bike, is a single figure sprawled in the damp dirt; clad entirely in black, a long coat, which seems like it should be more cumbersome than it is. The figure is stretched up to a sniper rifle planted on a tripod, and her head is shoved up against the viewfinder, glasses tipped up to see.

  The figure responds before Maaka is even in visual range; the sniper -- for a sniper is surely what they must be -- must have phenomenal hearing.

  "Step softly. Don't disturb the undergrowth too much. I doubt they can hear us from out here, but I vouldn't take any chances." It's a gruff and thoroughly androgynous tone, along with a moderately thick German accent. The figure pauses, glancing back; the glasses fall back into place before the colour of the eyes can even be seen. "I count at least a dozen of the bastards in there. I'm sure the priest is one of them, too. The best ve can do for those poor bastards' souls is to put them down like the rabid animals they are now."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Been a while since Alexis has been to Ireland on a job. She normally doesn't get missions like these on short notice, certainly not monster hunting missions either. That said, she wasn't gonna turn down a chance to go out and expand her resume, as it were.

    She pulls up on a more modern motorcycle, stopping aside the figure lying close to it after a long drive out the warp gate. Thankfully the tracking systems built into her head, and also on the Knight have the coordinates locked in tightly as the electronic whirr of the Knight's engine dies down, and Maaka lets it lean on a kickstand.

    She pulls out a scoped G3 from the bike's leather scabbard, slinging it over her shoulder as she removes her helmet and places it on the bike. She'll lay prone besides Heinkel, her eyes switching to thermo-optic vision, and they whirr softly as she zooms in to get a good look at the village properly. Clearly she doesn't need a scope to get a good look, thanks to binocular vision, and she seems unphased by Heinkel being able to hear her coming.

    To be fair she does also smell of a Cuban cigar, as she whispers quietly, "One of what? Zombies or worse?"

    She tries to scan for targets, switching to night-vision if they don't register on thermals.

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  There's not much to see, but occasionally there's clear movement at the top of the hill; figures moving with a decidedly inhuman lurch and lack of motor control. It's too far to make out features, or to tell what kind of shape they're in. The moonlight is a help, tonight; if it weren't nearly full, the figures wouldn't be visible at all.

  "Ghouls." Heinkel shifts her gear, swinging the rifle just a smidge to the left and bending over the sight again, using a forefinger to tilt her glasses up. "Might as vell be zombies. I think a few of the bastards haf been that vay for a vhile now. I don't think the priest is the freak--" That must be something else, given the emphasis she places on the term, "--but I think he vas visited by vhichever von vas the freak."

  She sighs, and it trails into something almost a growl. "Damn freaks. I vas having a nice quiet evening, catching up on some papervork vit some hot chocolate... it's cold out here, it's vet out here, and I'm going to get blood all over everything if ve haf to get in close."

  "I haf the people down below locked up in their houses. Told them to bar the doors. The more ve can keep that vay, the better. Spreads by biting," Heinkel adds, pointing at another figure stumbling jerkily through the church's front lawn. "Turns them into monsters. They might look like people up close, but trust me, they're not people any more."

  Heinkel swings the rifle again, this time to the right. "Start shooting if you vant to, but until I figure out vhich vay the freak's gone, it might get messy. I don't vant that bastard busting into houses to add to his little army. I recommend the vons that look like they can't hardly move any more."

  As though to underscore her point, she tracks her rifle slightly to the left, and with a click of the trigger, a flash, and a dull roar, the figure she'd been tracking jerks sideways, thrown off its feet into a heap. It doesn't get back up again.

  "Aim for the head," Heinkel adds, gruff. "They von't actually stay down unless you take out the head or heart."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "Drinks are on me after this." Maaka says dryly, before she notes the zombie-like gait of the Ghouls. Yep, zombies. "Please tell me these things don't require blessed bullets or something." SHe adds, her eyes adjusting back to normal magnification as she braces the G3's stock to her shoulder.

    She follows where Heinkel points, looking through her scope as she mentally tags ghouls, her targeting software providing HUD markers on each of the zombies she sees.

    "Headshots are nothing I can't do." She says confidently, nodding to Heinkel as she takes a breath.

    Her body goes rigid as she sights down a Ghoul, tracking her rifle slowly before she spies a Ghoul slumped over something.

    She sniffs, before her trigger finger gives a gentle squeeze. The rifle barks and firmly nudges her shoulder, but the recoil is nothing she isn't used to. "How do we know when we find the...freak, you said? Sounds like a term the way you phrased it." She says, as the bullet streaks across the air with a muted crack of the sound barrier.

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  "You don't vant to buy drinks for me," Heinkel asides; the slight pause suggests that she might be glancing back at Maaka, but her head never moves. "Tried drinking straight paint thinner once. Tasted like shit. Didn't even give me a buzz." She sounds oddly morose about that. Wait, isn't that supposed to /kill/ you?

  On blessed bullets, Heinkel grunts. "Sometimes," the priest offers. At least, that's what that battered black longcoat looks like, with its crisp white collar. "I haf those, so don't vorry about it if you need them. I haf a lot of those. Right side saddlebag, on my bike; just be careful, because I haf holy vater in there, too."

  Seriously?

  Grumbling under her breath, she aims for the ghoul across the yard from Maaka's target, holding her breath and waiting for that instant.

  Click-bang. The second ghoul drops like a stone. Thus far, it looks like they're not actually smart enough to figure out they're being shot at, let alone from where. All they can do is mill about the yard, in the absence of targets or fresh human blood.

  "Freak," Heinkel confirms, even as she eyes another shot. "The Catholic Church vas able to bring in one of these fake vampires alife. He vas very cooperative in telling us all about himself... after ve took off his head." Her mouth presses into a thin line, and her finger gives a twitch, and another crack echoes from one hilltop to another.

  She uses her free hand to gesture at the distant churhcyard. "They're created, those ghouls. Like a plague. Someone's going around installing microchips into hosts. Mostly villing hosts, from vhat ve can find out. It gives them superhuman abilities, and it also gives them a taste for blood. Takes avay their humanity. Ve're trying to figure out who, and vhy."

  "Section III, John, has been suppressing any information on the incidents, and doing a fine job of it. Section XIII, Iscariot, of vhivh I am a part of, has the job of mopping up the messes. Ve Iscariot are still vaiting on the findings. I'll haf a report from my superior, Father Anderson, vonce ve know more." She eases up against the rifle, following another target. Another twitch of the finger; another cracking shot, and another target drops. "In the meantime, it's this kind of vork. I don't mind it, but it gets ugly vhen you haf to get up close."

  Heinkel sniffs, disdainfully. "All that, and my partner's assigned somevhere else, too." She's already tracking another target even as she explains. "I don't know vhat Bishop Maxvell expects me to do. Vork miracles, I guess. And exercise damage control, too, until the operatifs from John get here."

  There's a short pause.

  "How good are you vit close quarters fighting, anyvay?"

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "I'll take what I can get. Buckshot would be perfect if you want to go clean the stragglers up close." Maaka says, before she takes additional shots at Ghouls left and right.

    Microchips making vampires, who make ghouls as henchmen. THis is a weird world, alright. One wonders how a cyborg would react to the chips Heinkel speaks of. Maaka doesn't so much as blink at the mention of how far the Vatican goes to interrogate targets, she's done similar interrogations before with much messier circumstances.

    "John, Iscariot...Disciples of Christ, right?" Maaka asks conversationally, tracking a target of her own before she fires, once to disable, again to finish the job with a messy splatter left behind.

    She grins at the prospect of close quarters combat, already trying to reach in her coat where her Matter Manipulator is. "I'm trained in both, I won't pass up a chance to mop these fucks up with a shotgun." She says, producing an auto-shotgun in a shower of light and as it emerges from her 'inventory', her rifle going back to storage while she goes into a crouch, glancing to Heinkel's bike. "I may need those blessed shells, if you got anything in 12 gauge."

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  That seems to clean up most of them. There are far fewer ghouls milling about the church courtyard, and they're too far away to do any real damage to the pair of snipers. That still leaves the problem of their ringleader, though, and Heinkel's wearing a thoughtful frown as she sits back. Her sunglasses are still on (who wears sunglasses at this hour?), but the direction she's facing suggests she's eyeing the hill.

  "Buckshot doesn't vork. You vant something that fires directly. Large caliber pistol vorks." She reaches into her coat, rummages in a pocket, and extricates a very large-looking, square-barreled pistol. It's plated in silver, etched and inscribed down the barrel, and in general very polished and shiny. Heinkel pinches it by the handguard, as though careful not to touch it, and offers it to Maaka. "These vill do. If you're going to be doing vork for Iscariot, I can haf von or a pair requisitioned for you."

  It's a very pretty piece of craftsmanship, and it's also shockingly heavy for its size. The plating is very definitely pure silver, although it's been cleaned and polished sufficiently that it isn't tarnishing.

  "Ja. Disciples. Except Judas Iscariot. It's a long story, and you might be better off hafing somevon else tell you that story. The short version is that he betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silfer. Depending on how you look at it, he vas either a bastard or a genius, because vitout his betrayal, vitout his direct involvement, Christ couldn't have been crucified and then resurrected, and... bah, you don't care about theology." Heinkel waves a dismissive hand. "The point is, ve do vhat has to be done. Officially, ve don't exist."

  Heinkel's already packing up her equipment as Maaka shows her auto-shotgun, and though those sunglasses cover her eyes (and obscure them completely, even in the bright light of the Matter Manipulator), her brows arch. Hammerspace. Neat trick.

  "Tvelfe? I should haf something around here." Leaning over her bike from the left, Heinkel digs over the right-side saddlebag, tossing a wooden box wrapped in linen, its swaths conspicuously fire-branded with the Catholic cross and 'XIII,' to the other sniper. "Try those."

  "Melee's better. Like I said, take off their head, they von't bother you any more. Another crew vill be along to clean up. Iscariot does the cleanup, but John does the suppressing, so they'll destroy the evidence and sanitize the area. Send counselling for whoever had to see this mess, too." Heinkel snorts. "Vonce ve finish the job, that is. I still haf to find the freak. I'm sure they'll show themselves. Might still haf their mind, but they're not very smart..."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    Maaka frowns a moment, before she notes the pistol. "Alright. I'll take it." She accepts the sidearm, testing the heft and the feel of the pistol while noting the craftsmanship. It's a nice gun, she won't deny that, and she does her best to read the inscription.

    "I care enough to know my Bible stories." She says quietly, before she loads a magazine into the pistol. "I got my own backups, either way." She holsters the pistol in her coat, before she inspects the box of shells. "Slugs. Good call."

    Loading up the Benelli, she begins to head towards the village, making a good clip as she sprints through the field with her shotgun in hand.

    She will creep up close to the nearest ghoul she finds, slow and quiet despite her heavy military boots and a shotgun over her back, and draws a knife.

    Assuming Heinkel follows, Maaka will provide a nice demonstration of a quick and vicious rear-naked chokehold, before the cyborg snaps the Ghoul's neck, and draws a high-tech knife of some sort, flicking a switch for the Progressive Knife to hum softly. THe blade vibrates at high enough frequencies to enhance cutting potential ten fold. It makes cutting the ghoul's head off barely a chore, even if it's pretty nasty to say the least.

    "Pays to be quiet, we can still use surprise here." She says, before advancing.

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  "You can use it tonight, but you're not keeping that von. That von's mine. I've had it for eight years. It's a bitch finding von that fits your hand just right." Heinkel busies herself with putting equipment back into the sniper rifle's case, which looks just about as antique as the rifle itself -- too old to be sleek or modern, and too recent to be considered a proper antique of value.

  She flips the latches on the case, before placing it on a rack on the back of the motorcycle, using a few outrageously bright green bungee cords to secure everything. Once that's done, she reaches up to adjust her glasses, stows the kickstand, and leans over the side of her bike, glancing back at Maaka.

  "It says," she explains, because she can see Maaka squinting at the barrel, "Iscariot, and Section XIII. Except it's inscribed in Italian, because aside from Latin, that's vhat the Vatican speaks these days. 'Sezioni tredici.'" Pretty ornamentation and a means to stamp it with an official mark, in other words.

  She--

  And Maaka is running through the woods.

  Heinkel is left blinking after the other sniper.

  "...Hell if I'm running all that vay," she grumbles to the empty grove. "They're not going anyvhere."

  It's a few moments more before Heinkel arrives on foot, hands in her coat's voluminous pockets, tramping through the undergrowth without any apparent care to how loud and obvious it is. There's no real need to be stealthy, and she apparently trusts Maaka not to shoot her in the face (and she's going to be very annoyed if the other woman does, in fact, shoot her in the face).

  She does however get a look at the damage Maaka was, past tense, able to dole out. Impressive, to say the least.

  "Snapping its neck is pretty useless, though. I told you," Heinkel advises, from somewhere behind Maaka and about fifteen feet away (because why tempt fate), "take off the head or cut out the heart. I mean, if you vant to snap the neck, that's fine, but it's just vasted effort. Ve find it doesn't even slow them down."

  She folds her arms, looking left and then looking right at the mess. "Actually, they're about as deaf as a post if they're not actively hunting," she sighs. "They're not going to go anyvhere. Freak's still around here somevhere, and I /know/ he knows ve're here. Ve picked off all his minions, and he's not going to like that at all. If you see von that looks different and isn't drooling or rotting, or bleeding, shoot him in the face. I'll finish him off," she adds, reaching into her pocket to the jingle of ammunition. "Blessed rounds. Right in the face. I don't really care if you kill the small vons," she adds, dropping fresh ammunition into her pistol with casual, practised ease, "but it's my sacred duty to kill the ringleader."

  "Normally I'd give the job to my partner, but she's not here."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "Easier to cut the head off." Maaka asides, cleaning her knife off as she produces the blessed pistol again. "But if you insist, let's go find the guy who made all these fucks." She makes her way through the village, trying to seek out the Freak that made these creatures. "How hard is it to find this guy?" She mutters to herself, night-vision thankfully keeping her from bumping into something or tripping over like an idiot at this hour.

    It's cold, it's wet, and man does hot cocoa sound like a good idea after all this shit. She goes past a Ghoul that Heinkel had expertly taken out with a sniper round earlier, noting the wolf's handiwork with admiration. Heinkel knows her stuff, that's for certain.

    She also tries to note each body, maybe they wound up killing the Freak by accident, however unlikely that might be. It would make this wrapped up swiftly, if they had gotten lucky.

    She won't shoot any remaining Ghouls, but that's mostly to avoid letting the Freak get early warning. They already have gotten plenty loud as it is, if he's smart he'll have skipped town already to go spread his plague elsewhere.

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  The priest is still standing there with her hands stuffed in her pockets and a prodigous frown on her face, surveying the mess. At least she doesn't need to worry about disposing of the bodies or other unsavoury work. There are other priests who can consecrate the remains of the victims and give them proper burials, and also do the actual burying; she herself doesn't need to spend half the night doing that.

  Which is pretty nice, because after a night spent killing horrible abominations that used to be human, it's pretty disheartening.

  Also, incredibly messy.

  "Killing him isn't going to kill them, vhich is vhy ve vere mopping up them first." Heinkel jabs a thumb at the ghouls largely behind them. "Don't vorry about the remains. There vill be other Iscariot members along to clean up that mess. It's not my job. My job is to kill all the things that might eat them, so they can do their jobs in peace." And without getting their faces ripped off. "Not that I'm not qualified." That collar isn't just for show, after all.

  She pulls her other pistol from her pocket, checking the slide and looking up. The pistol is handled with practised ease, but she handles it oddly, and if Maaka watches long enough she'll notice Heinkel is making a point of not touching any of the silver plating. Maybe it's chemically treated or something, or maybe it's taboo to touch it.

  Heinkel shows her teeth. It's more of a snarl than a grin. "Depends on how arrogant he's gotten. Let's go hunting. You see something that isn't me, you shoot it in the face, ja? Emergency curfew's in place, so there shouldn't be anybody out at this hour."

  With that, she stalks away from Maaka, apparently intent to go searching through the deep dark woods immediately surrounding the church. Is she crazy? Or just that confident?

  There's a few minutes of silence as Maaka searches the bodies. It's almost eerie, without even the rustle of leaves to breka it. There are no squeaks of bats, no sounds of night birds, and nothing to suggest there was ever life in this place.

  And then, there's a cough. It's muffled enough to suggest it came from behind the church. Then come the gunshots, three of them, too precisely timed and evenly spaced to be a staccato burst of panic fire.

  Heinkel's voice comes from behind the church, muffled.

  "Found him. Back here." It's raised, so as to carry. "Von't be a problem any more."

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  She's standing over a body slumped over double, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and jeans, and ratty sneakers. All three articles of clothing are now bloodstained; half the face is gone where it was shot, and there's a messy, ragged hole where approximately half the heart used to be. He was maybe middle-aged, and what's left of his face is frozen in a final expression of shock.

  Heinkel thumbs the safety of her pistol, thumbs open her coat pocket with the other hand, and neatly drops her pistol in. How she manages to do this is anybody's guess. She reaches into her other pocket to produce an old flip-style cell phone, pushing a few buttons.

  "Chief. Ja. It's Heinkel." There's a moment of silence as she half-turns away from Maaka. It's reasonably certain that most priests don't wear combat boots. "It's done. I found the freak. Ja? Multiversal help, ja. Her name's Alexis Maaka. Ja, she'll be doing vork for us. Ja." The priest sighs, as though exasperated. "Again? Ja. I'll pass that on the next time I talk to her. I don't suppose she'll be leaving Brazil any time soon---ja. I'll tell her. Amen. Ja. Guten tag, Chief."

  Heinkel snaps the phone shut with a flick of her wrist, dropping it back into the pocket from whence it came. "Bishop Maxvell passes on his thanks for a job vell done. He'll make sure you haf equipment sent to you." The priest shows her teeth. Is it imagination and lighting, or are the canines just a hair too long? "I think you'll like it. If it's too heavy or light, you can haf it vorked on by von of our gunsmiths. They do good vork."

  Reaching into her pocket, she produces what looks and feels like a fat billfold and tosses it at Maaka. "A present from the Chief. Don't spend it all in von place."

Alexis Maaka (571) has posed:
    "True, guess my thinking was we could kill the Freak, and the Ghouls just slump over. THen again, they seem dumb as posts anyways." Maaka shrugs a shoulder. THe silence is eerie, but nothing she hasn't dealt with before. She marks corpse after corpse, occasionally putting a few rounds into the heart and head of whatever Ghoul she missed before, giving them a good stomp here and there for good measure.

    It's very methodical the way she works, her actions would be barbaric and cruel if she wasn't so calm and detached. It's like killing bothersome crows the way she works, albeit with more considerable firepower with magnum rounds. She feels the Holy pistol lock back as she expends the magazine, and she turns to hear gunfire.

    "That was fast." She says mildly, tilting her head to get a look at Heinkel's handiwork when she notices the Wolf managed to bag their target. She returns the borrowed handgun, before nodding to Heinkel. "It's a nice pistol, I'll give it that. Let Maxwell know I'll take a pair, along with ammunition and magazines. I'll send over a list of requested ordinance later." She says, and catches the billfold calmly.

    The cyborg checks the amount, making a mild noise of approval as she counts the paycheck. "Walk with God, Heinkel. Should be an interesting time ahead of us." She offers a salute, stuffing the money in her pocket.

Heinkel Wolfe (Dropped) has posed:
  "Doesn't vork that vay," the priest grunts, rummaging around in a pocket and producing what looks and smells like a cigarette, which she pinches between her teeth. Her hands snake back into the other pocket and produces a match, which she strikes and drops back into the pocket.

  Puffing smoke, she gestures to indicate the clearing and the churchyard in general. "Dumb as a box of rocks, ja. Still dangerous. You and I, ve seem to be protected from their messes, but I vouldn't take any chances. You get in close to them, you fight vit them close enough to get bitten, you go get yourself checked out by /some/body. I don't care who. Just make sure you're clean. Happens faster vit non-Elites, though."

  "One ghoul bites another person, another person turns into a ghoul, it turns into a big literal bloody mess." Heinkel punctuates her narratives with gesturing mimicing one person wandering over to another, and then two more wandering off some other direction. She lets out a puff of smoke, stuffing her hands into her pockets, frowning, and letting the cigarette wag at the corner of her mouth. "Can see vhy Iscariot makes a point of cleaning these messes up fast. Ve don't act immediately, they'll get out of hand."

  She points back at the church before reaching out to take her pistol, checking it over briefly before dropping it, barrel and all, into her pocket. How on earth does something like that fit in a simple stitched pocket? "Ve'll take care of the cleanup, and ve'll make sure you're outfitted properly." The priest sniffs, disdainfully. "Ve don't really like contracting outside help, but desperate times, and all that rot. I'm sure Hellsing's doing the same, anyvay." Far be it for Hellsing to catch the Catholics flat-footed, after all.

  "Ja, you too." To Maaka's parting, she raises both hands to wave them dismissively as she slouches off, almost a shrug. "Ugh, I'm going to vait for the cleanup team get in here, and then I'm going to take a long, hot shower..."

  What a weird priest.