tampered | Log: Complete

Log: Complete

When; This morning.
Rating; PG-13, despite my best efforts to the contrary.
Characters;

steeldame (Integra), possibly

thekingofpain(Alucard) and anyone else who feels it absolutely necessary to join in, whilst doing me the honour of keeping the log in Happy Making-Sense Land. But not

janvalentine. He gives me itchy cheesewire fingers. ^_^ :P
Summary; Walter looks for his mistress.
Log;

To be honest, it was less thinking, and more watching what was happening in his mind. Doors were slowly reopening throughout his hippocampus. In a little while, he was able to think properly again.

He thought about ways it could be possible to step through a door which led from the top of a building, and to reappear on the ground floor in what was apparently a fairground. However, if what he remembered could be trusted, quite a lot of considerably odd things seemed to have happened to him in his life, and he was quite prepared to entertain the possibility that there was an absolutely rational explaination for all of this, possibly involving quantum somethingorothers which would undoubtedly be revealed to him in the near future. He listened the the slow whirring and the strangely disturbing ticking, absentmindedly tapping his foot on the floor in time.

In the meantime, there was another matter at hand. The location of her Ladyship. Also, he was feeling a little peckish, although he wasn't sure what for. Perhaps there would be some kind of vendor of food nearby.

He turned on his heel and headed away from the blur of lights. He picked up a scent of flowers, on a breeze from far away and loneliness in the air, as if the city itself was pining for something. The end, or maybe the beginning. Denouement. Perhaps even the middle. Some marker of position. It gave him hiraedd in his heart, the feeling that something was missing, something impalpable, implacable. Such odd thoughts sprang to one's mind when one walked alone through a quiet place.

Exiting through high iron gates, twisted like blackthorn branches, he found himself on a rainwashed road, oddly glittering in no apparent light source. Across the road, he saw a promising sign, a sign that at first seemed to be an underground sign, but on closer inspection bore no resemblance to it at all. He crossed and entered, pushing his way through unresisting turnstiles that span as if their axles were the lightest of cumulus clouds and descending the spiral stairs. He looked for the usual sprawling mass of lines that mapped only hypothetical train routes through the bowels of the earth. The walls held only faded adverts for unwritten plays too surreal to have been put on, and the posthumous works of Christopher Marlowe.

Walter was starting to wonder what, exactly, was going on around here.

A saxophonist wandered by, playing mournfully in dirge-tones.

Walter tapped him on the shoulder. "Excuse me? Could you possibly direct me to the nearest information point?"

The saxophonist looked at him out of the square windows in his head, with a knowing expression. He tapped his nose with one finger and walked away.

"Thank you. That was extremely helpful." Walter said, sarcastically, and turned to follow the corridor. He hummed to himself as he walked.
"One of sixteen vestal virgins..." Behind him, the saxophonist changed key up a fifth.

Emerging from the corridor, Walter found himself at the edge of a platform apparently without an end in either direction. He minded the gap, and stood, waiting, and looking around for some indication of when the trains would arrive, if in indeed they would ever arrive at all. As if in response to this thought, the warm winds began to fly past him, ejected from the black tunnels by a wide, moving body. Down by the rails a tiny black mouse squeaked and ran into an impossibly small hole. Thinking this a wise move, Walter stepped back from the edge of the platform.

The train shot past him, slapping him in the face with heat and began to slow. He could see nothing behind the door that stopped directly in front of him into it slid open, hissing like the Serpent in the Garden of Eden. A man in a faded uniform gave him a cheery wave.

"Good Lord. Whatever happened to you?" Walter asked.

The man said nothing, but rolled his yellowed eyeball in its socket and pointed to his name tag. Walter read it.

"How classical. They upgraded you from the boat then?"

The man spoke, his words grated on Walter's soul. "I miss the rocking."

"Really? Good gracious. I don't suppose you could tell me why everything seems to have become so odd?"

The conductor grinned, and Walter could see the tongue withdrawn behind the remnants of the cheek flesh.

"It is you that has changed, not everything around you."

"I find that rather hard to believe."

The conductor continued grinning as the door slid shut, and Walter saw his reflection in the dark glass. Amazed, he touched his own face. The train pulled away, taking his younger self with it.

That was it. This was definitely some kind of a dream. He turned away from the platform and walked back out of the station, and began to wander the streets, looking for people, looking for her ladyship.

"Excuse me. Have you by any chance seen a woman with long blonde hair, glasses and blue eyes?"

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Integral had not awaken sore as she had heard it happened the morning after. She was just sweaty, groggy and disoriented, staring at the female vampire slobbering her pillow. There was something wrong with that sight, not that Alucard was a woman but that he was still one even after the curse was lifted from her body.

He had fooled her.

That thought made her blood boil in wrath.

Furious, Integral pulled the pillow out the slumbering Midian’s grasp and threw it to the wall behind her. She did not say a word to Alucard, too angered she was to even establish dialogue, and marched to shower herself instead. Closing her eyes tightly, she cleaned from any grime, sweat and any other thing she rather not think about.

It had been enjoyable, admittedly, but the mess did not worth the try in any recent future.

After the bath, Integral changed to take breakfast. She ate whatever was at her reach without need to cook. Her tea hardly tasted as good as the one Walter used to serve her but it was miraculous she could even breed one thus the knight would not complain about the flavour.

Speaking of her Butler, he had arrived to the city and he was changed. Integral wanted to seek for him but she had no clue regarding his location, therefore the knight would feel obligated to enlist Alucard’s aid in the quest.

Ill-humoured, Integral stormed inside her chambers once again. “Shift, get dressed and get the rid of the sheets, Alucard,” she ordered, not bothering to glimpse at him as she fished a cigar from the right pocket of her suit. “Walter is in the city. I need you to trace him.”

[[OOC: You may want to change rating to PG-13 for the aftermath sex reference]].

Alucard awakened when Integral jerked the pillow out from under his head, but rolled over and went back to sleep. So she knew that he had been faking the genderswitch and she was angry. But why? She had chosen to have relations with him, he had in no way forced her.

The actions of his master were more than just a touch confusing to say the least, especially when she marched up to the bed again, smelling clean and slightly like tea and wet hair and demanded that he awaken.

Cracking one eye, he huffed and shifted to shadows, sliding out of her bed and reforming in his normal attire before her, gender once more male. The sheets burst into flames and dissappeared, leaving the bed and everything else unharmed, and clothed in new linens.

"Satisfied?" he asked, slightly hurt that she was so angry. Had he not pleased her?

Walter wandered through the city asking passers-by for direction. He knew her ladyship was here (he had spoken to her on one of the computer terminals), but not where. Some kind of map of the city would have been terribly useful, but that seemed to be too much actual organisation for this place to manage, he thought bitterly. For now, however, he was following some barely perceptible sense, the sense that had led him through the door originally, winding through tall buildings and roads that seemed to go no-where in particular...

Integral ignored the hurt routine from Alucard. She was a bit traumatized that her first sexual experience had been not just with a woman but herself as a man. Certainly, the knight would never admit that inane concern of hers. It was so silly.

“When we find Walter unharmed, I will be satisfied,” she replied, motioned Alucard towards the door. “I know the city confuses your senses but do attempt to track him.” She was preoccupied after reading the message regarding his change. What had Millennium done to her butler?

At last, Walter found himself in the place he had originally arrived. The carousel. Odd, how many roads seemed to lead back to here. He watched the coloured lights spin for a while, wondering which direction to take from there.

Alucard moved behind her, pressing his presence against her like a physical touch, but refraining from that contact that might hack her off more than usual.

"Master, I will find him for you and... I apologize for seducing you in this manner, I should have shown more self restraint instead of inciting you to this," His tone was serious and soon he shifted to a large, fluffy hellhound, sniffing at Walter's note in her hand, then applying his nose to the ground, and, with a howl, started trotting off in the direction of Walter.

Integral sighed, feeling his aura weighted against her. Alucard got impossible when snubbed. He either laughed and mocked or turned this sensitive. She tried to clear her mind and focus on Walter.

“Don’t go too fast, Alucard. I will lose the sight of you!” exclaimed Integral following the hound, barely dodging the crushing sea of people that kept appearing abruptly. Her eyes stung as the dazzling lights kept turning on and off around her.

Despite the disorientation, Integral recognised the road Alucard had taken. It was a straight line towards the centre of the city – to the carousel and a louder ticking.

The tick of the metronome was hypnotic, the slow beating of a mechanical heart. Walter watched the carousel spin as barely visible, silent people milled around him, brushing him occasionally with a touch as light as a swan's feather.

He could go away from here in any direction, but this place always seemed like the centre of things. The ticking began to follow a particular beat for him. He hummed an old song quietly under his breath.

"Rose, rose, rose, rose,
Shall I ever see thee wed.
Aye marry, that thou wilt
When I am dead."

Over time, the music of the carousel began to form the counterpoint parts of the round.

Deep in contemplation, Walter almost didn't notice the sound of six feet running towards him in different tempos. And then when he spun around, hands at the ready, he almost didn't recognise the slavering (but decidedly fluffy) eight-eyed beast pounding across the grass towards him, until it was practically on top of him...

The hound let up a bit and allowed Integral to move closer, a shadow surrounding it's neck and making something like a collar and leash, the ending of which slipped its leathery feeling way into Integral's hand so she might keep track of the hound.

Alucard, nose to the ground, meanwhile, snuffled his way out of the room and into the apartment foyer, then to the hall and out through the building, pausing at the exit, he sniffed the air and pointed in the direction of the carousel.

Integral was startled by the appearance of the leash, she grasped and held herself for the ride. The Hound was so fast, he was dragging her up her feet, as if gravity did not work, to a speed she could not match. The carousel appeared at sight and with it, Walter.

Or so he appeared at distance. He was younger and dressed in black. Integral let go the leash slowly to land on her feet. Dizzy by the journey, she approached the butler. It was hard to not stare at the change.

He looked thirty years younger at least. What had happened to him.

“Walter. Is it you?”

Walter smiled a little, relieved to finally see the familiar face of her Ladyship in the midst of this madhouse.

"As far as I know, my lady, yes. Although whenever I see myself in a reflective surface, I begin to doubt even that. And to pre-empt your next question, I have no idea how it happened. Either it's an effect of this insane city, or something happened with Millennium before I came here."

He looked away, embarrassed at being stared at so, and the lights of the carousel illuminated his face from behind, casting an eerie glow over him. He addressed the Hellhound at Integral's feet in leaden tones.

"No more prevaricating. Alucard, I must know, and I will be very surprised indeed if you can't tell, somehow. What has happened to me?"

The murky form of the hellhound shifted to shadows and grew to the lanky stature of Alucard, his face was serious, his tone sounding a bit heavy and tired. "Angel of Death, you are a vampire. I smell millenium on you and I imagine it was through them that his change was rendered."

On hearing those words, Walter froze for a moment, and a look of mixed fury and dismay crossed his face. Then, it was gone again as soon as it had appeared. When he finally spoke, his tone was unsteady, as if he was suppressing a great deal of inner turmoil that was threatening to boil over.

"...Of course...yes...I.. I should have guessed. The cravings... When you've been gradually losing your strength for so long, and suddenly it returns, you don't notice its magnitude."

He covered his face with one gloved hand and pressed his fingers to his temples.

"Alucard." He said. "I will need your h.." He swallowed, as if the words were sticking in his throat. "..Help in dealing with this matter." He suddenly looked up at Sir Integral, worriedly. "My lady, what are your orders?" The question was simple enough, but held a great deal of other, unspoken questions within it...

When Alucard uttered the word “vampire” Integral did not show any change in her welcoming expression. There was no shadow, not blinking, no surprise. Within her, a terrible sorrow and regret ate her but she store down such emotions, the remorse to have listened to Walter hours ago when he decided to be left alone for her sake.

Her fault.

No. Major’s fault.

And that mad man was laughing on his glorious post above their heads in their world. It boiled her blood, it made her murderous and irritable, yet she couldn’t show that in front of Walter. Out respect and love, not pity. Even if he was a Midian, her Butler was far from pitiful.

“My orders?” Integral asked to herself, mirroring his query. She looked at loss for a minute. “My commands were that you returned to me, weren’t they? And you have fulfilled them finally. Excellent job as usual, Walter.” She let him know that for her his nature did not change a thing in their relationship.

"Then should we adjourn to the apartment and help settle Walter in?" Alucard replied, "Perhaps our wayward butler is a bit hungry after his journey and transformation. ."

Then chuckled and tilted his head, glancing at the creatures and persons milling about.

Despite his best efforts at keeping his composure, relief was inherent in Walter's entire being. He had known, of course, that she would not reject her faithful servant, but there had always been those niggling doubts. He bowed respectfully to her, as befitted her gracious and generous ladyship, Sir Integral Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing.

"A pleasure to serve, as always, milady. Or should I say, Master?"

Then he smiled, capriciously, at Alucard. What had happened, had happened, and as long as her Ladyship accepted him, he wasn't about to be Seras Victoria and deny what was evidently now his nature. There were vampires, and there were vampires, Alucard proved that, and being the stupid kind, or whining about it like an idiot would only be playing into herr Major's fat little hands. Millenium had done this to him to hurt Hellsing. They would fail in that endeavour. They could poison his blood with their Nazi trickery, but Hellsing was ingrained into him, carved deep in his bones, and bones are where blood comes from in the first place, they are the source of it. If he was to be a Midian, he'd damn well be one to the best of his ability.

It would certainly be something of an adjustment, though.

"Now that you mention it, I am a little peckish." He said. With another small bow, he gestured away from the carousel to the road. "After you, of course."

[[OOC: Just saw this today. Should I reply? Or that's a good moment to end it?]].

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Log: Complete

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