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Disclaimer: You all should know the drill by now. No, if you recognize it from someplace other than one of mine, it ain't mine. Probably. If someone's been ripping me off, I want to know.

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Blau

Lessons Learned

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"Lord, what fool this old man be," Ilde sang out as she reached her teammates. They looked vaguely interested, so she flashed her bundle of papers at them. "Not only does he make the mistake of thinking that we'll work for him, he pays for everything in advance ~and~ mistakes our number."

"Old Man Takatori?" Brad asked.

She nodded, grinning.

"What are they?" Makizeen pointed to Ilde's bundle of papers.

Ilde promply displayed them again.

These," she drawled, "are four round-trip tickets to London via a personal plane. Oh yeah, he also thought I was the leader."

Min snorted. "And what did he expect you to order us to do?"

"Off somebody named Hellsing. Apparently, she wouldn't sell him her vampire. ~I~ don't think it's that simple."

"And he wants us to bring the vampire back?"

Ilde snorted, following the general trend. "As carry-on luggage."

Min sat up. "I agree with Shou. He's a perverse old psycho. Tear them up."

"Give them to me," a low, masculine voice counter-ordered.

/*This the guy?*/ Ilde asked Bryn and Brad, just to make sure.

/*Yes,*/ they said.

Min `nodded' at them and raised an eyebrow at Sesshoumaru. "Oh?" she said. "And why should I?"

When he blurred to grab them instead of answering, Ilde was ready and blurred herself to a tree on the other side of the clearing. Then she very deliberately tucked the tickets down her cleavage. He growled.

"You will explain," Min said calmly. "Or you won't get anything."

"This Sesshoumaru does not need to explain anything to the likes of you."

Ilde snickered from her place in the tree. "This Sesshoumaru must be in danger of forgetting his name or he wouldn't speak of himself in the third person."

"Why maru?" Makizeen asked, interrupting Sesshoumaru's glare. "Are you not old enough yet?"

Jei leaned against his tree and ~grinned~.

/*One would think,*/ Ilde mused to everyone, /*that five hundred or so years would be enough to drop the young man's ending.*/

**He must not have settled down yet,** Brad said.

**Poor baby.** Still grinning, Jei pulled out a skinning knife and started chewing on it.

Sesshoumaru launched himself at Ilde again, who simply transferred to another tree before dropping down behind Min. Then he fell out of the tree and settled for sulking underneath it.

Min raised an eyebrow at him.

"If I can get to London, I should be able to lose the ending," he said at last. "My fiancée has been trapped there for some time, and I need to go in person to find her."

Min smiled. "Need a couple of bodyguards?"

"What?"

Jei carved into his arm and watched as the clear liquid fell to the grass and the wound healed almost instantaneously. The tree he was leaning against visibly grew and strengthened as it soaked up his `blood'. "It should be pretty obvious by now that we're not mere humans," he said. "And if your mate could be trapped, so could you. We'll prevent that."

"Besides, I've got an idea as to who this vampire guy is, and I want to meet him," Ilde put in. "So you'd see some of us anyway."

"Alright," Sesshoumaru said after thinking a bit. "But only if you're silent."

Min nodded. "Ilde, Jei, you go with him. And give him his tickets."

~~~-~~~

They were prepared for almost anything, but not for a pale man (with a remarkable resemblance to the late Dream of the Endless) all in red to show up grinning and shoot a single, large bullet into their midst.

Sesshoumaru looked down at the hole in his chest. "Ow," he said eventually. "I thought you were supposed to be my bodyguards."

"You're completely unrelated to this religion. If it had hit us, there's a chance that we'd get a kick in the gears and go on rampage."

Jei smiled. "If it were His will," he said.

"Its not," Ilde told him irritably. "If it was, we'd be doing it already, wouldn't we? But the ß gears might start working. They were devout enough that they might have gotten a miracle if they'd asked instead of trying to take."

"Actually," Jei said, sidetracked, "He's decided to sit back and watch, since His prophesy got thrown aside."

"You're the one who died, not me. Oh, I wish She were here so I'd know things as you did!"

"Shi?" Sesshoumaru asked. "Who is Shi? Death?"

"No, her best friend. I'll explain some other time - when there's no gaping vampire to listen in."

Alucard had lowered his gun when they stopped paying attention to him, and now he felt a bit irritated. He had ~not~ been gaping.

"No, but you felt like it," the woman - he'd been sure she was a vampire - said. They all looked like vampires. They all were not human. They all were rather strong. But apparently… "You're not vampires?"

Ilde rolled her golden eyes. "No, we're not. He's a powerful spirit with a tendency to evil-" jerking her head at Sesshoumaru, whose wound was almost completely healed- "and we should have been angels of destruction, but the Apocalypse got overthrown. Why should we be vampires?"

"You're not from around here either, are you."

"This form was born in Ireland," Jei said.

"But he was psycho before he died. Our origins don't matter much - as far as you're concerned, we're most recently from Japan."

"How do you tell vampires over there?"

Sesshoumaru snorted. "We don't have vampires. We killed them off when they first tried to come over. Pathetic creatures - dependent on humans like that."

"You're talking to one of them," Jei muttered.

/*He feels much the same way.*/

Alucard looked at Ilde sharply and she grinned at him. "In any event," he said. "Humans usually can't tell a vampire until it bites them. I can sense those who are inhuman and those who are powerful enough to potentially feed on humans. Then I look at them, and if they resemble vampires - usually their eyes are either gold or red, their skin is pale, and their hair can be odd colors as well - and if they move to challenge me, or to take out someone and I'm allowed, I go after them. You were powerful enough that you could have been the ones causing the problem we have now, so I didn't wait for you to act. The last time, I nearly lost my master."

Sesshoumaru raised an eyebrow.

"You've been talking a lot," Ilde said. "More than usual, I'd say."

He bared his teeth at her in something like a smile. "It's your fault for not being the type of being I can kill."

~~~-~~~

Kelly was cackling quietly to herself as she stared off into nothing.

"Borrowing my mind to go spying again?" Leila asked.

"Oh yes. It's funny. Look."

The evil's telepath `looked' - and chuckled. "Hmmm," she said. "This could be interesting."

~~~-~~~

Shiko covered her mouth with her hand as she yawned, still firing on a random security guard. "Boring."

"Indeed." Ai was more than bored. She was embarrassed, frustrated. This was pathetic. "With your permission-?"

"Yeah, what?"

"Half of us will withdraw, thus leaving the fighting to those that remain."

"Fine, fine."

"You stay," Taro said from where he was watching.

"If I stay, we all stay," Ai said, frowning. She really would like to teach this kid something about manners, respect, and arrogance.

"We're the leaders, not you," he said coldly. "Pick five to leave, but you're staying."

"Fine," she said. If he was going to pull `rank', she'd just have to pull ability. "Kaz, take everyone but the paired bodyguards and retreat."

"Yes, ma'am!" he shouted, and the group's main support, the experienced ones, abruptly disappeared.

Shiko looked a little scared for a moment, then steadied herself. This was her chance to prove herself to Granpa. Really, why did Taro have to insist on-

She was shoved aside as Ai stepped forward, whip whirling and snapping. Taro and Shiko looked on, disbelieving and scowling, as the woman took over completely. She caught bullets in midair with her whip, took men out with seemingly a single stroke, and walked steadily forward. The twins followed behind her.

At least it wasn't really boring any more, Shiko mused.

Taro, on the other hand, was upset: it wasn't fun.

The final door opened.

Taro smiled. Time to gloat. "Ah, Mr. - what are you doing?"

Ai had reached out and simply broken the man's neck. Her whip flicked out thrice more, smashing security cameras, and then she put on a glove and pulled a small recording devise out of the target's pocket, smashing that single-handed before stepping out of the room and closing the door with her gloved hand. Then she started to walk away.

"What was all that?" Taro asked, still rather upset.

"I was making sure that there's no evidence on us."

"What about before?" he pressed. "It wasn't any fun."

She stopped and looked at him over her shoulder, smiling coldly. "That is why I was the leader of Sukida, before it became a temporary part of Blau." Facing straight again, she walked forward and out of the building, leaving her charges, the would-be assassins, to think.

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I like this better, with the extra scenes to get the feel that the rest of the world is still out there. Also, I've split the chapter into two whole ones. Whee.