Hellsing Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Chaotic Evil ❯ Dark Dreams ( Chapter 3 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Jester_of_Doom 
Anime/Manga: Hellsing Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 07.21.2006 | Pages: 5 | Words: 11.1K | Visits: 667 | Status: Work In Progress
Anime/Manga: Hellsing Fan Fiction / Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Comedy | Type: Divergence | Uploaded On: 07.21.2006 | Pages: 5 | Words: 11.1K | Visits: 667 | Status: Work In Progress
Chaotic Evil
Part 3. Dark Dreams
By the Jester of Doom
Disclaimer: None of the characters in this story are mine. All the character’s are from the anime and manga forms of Ranma and Hellsing. Even my extras are extras stolen from the same worlds. I’m so uncreative…sigh.
AN: telepathic conversation is in pound signs not quotation marks. #Like this.#
Alucard peered out of his hiding spot in the hole of darkness in the shadows. He had gotten bored and was busy creating his own favorite soap-opera. Having been trapped in a room in the Hellsing basement his only real entertainment was watching the going-ons in the rest of the building, not even getting a chance to manipulate them, it was horrible! So now he was still catching up on all he fun he could have had. In truth though before he would have just slaughtered them all for fun. With all his years of contemplation however he had _ALMOST_ developed a _SLIGHT_ pity for _SOME_ of them.
Now he wasn’t “Evil” persay he simply had a higher standard of what was right and wrong, and he wasn’t crazy just too intelligent for most people to understand; so far nobody would believe him when he told them that though. He just couldn’t understand why the humans always confused the obvious with details; it’s ok to have fun _BUT_ not hurt people while doing it for instance. Well he’d never try to understand all their reasons anyway, unpredictability was the only reason he tolerated most of them anyway.
He had been working on this for days and was determined to see the fruits of his labor, not that it was much work for him. Sure some would find it hard to say… break into Integral’s dreams for the third time in a row and give her a very _nice_ recurring dream involving her, an examination table, Walter in a doctor’s getup, and a cheesy dialog but he could do it in his sleep; he had in fact. Some might even find it harder to, just for instance, give Walter a sudden worry that Integral was becoming sick and a urge to ask to take her temperature and comment that she needs more protein. Now all of this was just an example of course, one he was kicking himself for not thinking of before he showed Ranma to detect mental tampering. This would be funny enough though, not that he had done it of course if anyone asks.
It had actually been several hours since Integral had awoken but as they say ‘timing is everything’. He was at the moment monitoring both so he could find the best time to act. Then a bothersome call came to Integral and he had to subtly change her mind, he didn’t want to be sent out and have his joke play through without him after all.
------
Ranma awoke feeling like he had a herd of the pink elephants he had seen the night before tap dancing in his head and a bonfire in his heart. In his current state he decided to just sleep for the night, one night of training wasn’t worth getting up.
#WAKE UP!#
Ranma yelped in pain and bolted upright, by reflex he grabbed at his vampiric power but recoiled quickly in pain. Because he wasn’t able to go through it his head slammed hard into the top of his coffin. Yelping again he cradled his head and waited for the pounding to stop. #You’ll need to work on your tolerance.# Alucard chided loudly in Ranma’s head. #You burnt all your energy while you were drunk.#
Ranma groaned as he hit the button to raise the hood of his bed. #Ugh… I’m never doing that again. Is there some way to get this ta stop?#
#You could swallow a clove of garlic.#
#How the hell would that help?#
#You would be in too much pain to care about your hangover anymore!# Alucard joked happily.
Ranma groaned as he pulled himself out of bed. #I shouldda known.# he got up and half-heartedly stretched. #What the hecks got you so happy anyway?#
#Just a joke maturing. Now don’t you think you should answer the phone?#
#Huh? What-#
*RRIINNGG* Ranma shook his head and hoped he wasn’t the target of whatever could get Alucard so happy he would use two jokes that corny. He picked up the phone before it got a chance to ring again, his head still hurt after all.
“Ah, hello?” he asked a bit unsure of who could have called, nobody had called him before.
Walter responded without a greeting. “You are to report to the courtyard to assist Squadron A immediately.”
Ranma was left holding the phone for a minute after Walter had hung up to get what had just happened, then he rushed out the wall, or tried too. It’s hard to go through rock unless you have a lot of speed behind you or have vampiric energy to use, at the moment he had neither. He lifted himself off the ground, cursed, and had to listen to Alucard chuckle in the back of his mind.
Opening the door and running down the hall, making a quick stop to pick up a pack of blood, breakfast was both the most important, and only, meal of the day for him after all, and heading up the stairs. On the ground floor a dull alarm was buzzing and a voice was calling for the Galice unit to get going. He just tried to ignore the sound and lights and stopped in a courtyard where armored transports were currently loading people. Seeing as how he couldn’t become invisible at the moment and ‘superhuman’ stuff like roof-hopping had gotten him killed once already, he climbed into one of the transports with several men from the Galice unit.
He plopped down in the first open seat and tried to ignore everyone staring at him. A couple probably just thought it was strange for the ‘civilian’ (which he was still dressed like; no way he would wear a uniform!) to hop into the truck but most of the men knew about him no doubt, either from his description from integral telling everyone about the new vampire about a month ago, or more likely as the demon who broke his magical chains and tried to kill everyone in the bathroom. Whatever it was though he wouldn’t let it bother him while he ate.
-----
Ranma sat and had to wonder why the hell he had even been called along on this stupid mission. So he made a mistake; that was no reason to have him stay in the truck. He wouldn’t complain though, like this he didn’t have to kill anyone, he just thought it was stupid to make such a big fuss about such a little mistake. The others went around eating where he could see it, of course that affected his moral, he had loved to eat before, but he didn’t whine about it.
He sat back in his seat and tried to listen hard; he didn’t want to waste the small level of power he had gotten from his meal already on his higher senses. All he could hear though was some gunfire, nothing to indicate who was winning at the moment. He was getting a bad feeling from the area though. He had been feeling it for the past several minutes.
He sat back a moment more to listen before he felt a sharp stabbing… not a pain but almost a warning shoot through him from his heart, from his bond with Celas to be more specific. He shivered involuntarily at the feeling and quickly stood. Whatever it had been it was something he felt he couldn’t just outright ignore. Whatever it was he knew he had to go and help.
-----
Having phased into a hallway Ranma took quick stock of the area he had entered. What he really took note of was the giant blonde guy in a trench coat and glasses and holding two knives, that were each about as long as his arm. He ABSOLUTLY had to be the vampire they were here for; even without using extra senses he reeked of evil, he was the center of the same bad feeling he had been getting for the past few minutes.
“Master!” Celas called, shaking Ranma out of looking the guy over.
Ranma took notice of Celas for the first time, and more importantly saw she had knife through her throat, which matched those held by the blonde guy. "Celas!" he started to run over to her. "Are you ok?!" He suddenly halted his attempt to help her as a knife shot out and caused him to either stop only a few feet after he had started or become a head shorter.
"Is it you? The monster that has been tamed by Hellsing for generations?” The man questioned while negligently flicking his blade at Ranma’s neck.
Ranma stepped backwards to avoid the half-hearted attack. "HEY! Who’re you calling a monster!?!”
Ranma was simply ignored. “Monsters like you have been punished by Iscariot Institution long before Hellsing can even imagine.” He pulled his arms to his chest and seemingly prepared an attack, Ranma shifted slightly to a more defensive stance and was taken by total surprise when instead of an attack his opponent swung his arms and was surrounded by a vortex of spinning paper which was quickly followed by a wave of small knives. It wasn’t surprising that his opponent attacked in a ridiculous way, they always did that after all, but he hadn’t even needed to dodge.
“Ha! What kind of stupid attack was that!?! You didn’t even come close to hittin’ me!”
“Fool! I’ve purified this place so trash like you won’t be able to use your worn out abilities.” Alexander laughed in triumph.
Ranma guessed he meant his vampiric powers and tried to grab hold of some energy but it kept slipping from his grasp; he wasn’t worried though, he was a martial artist first and foremost after all so he wouldn’t have to use energy to dodge and his gun was the only way to finish an opponent anyway. “I don’t need any abilities. I can beat ya anyway.” To prove his point he unholstered his gun and took aim.
“Lose to a decadent blood sucker that fights with weapons made with humans? HA!” Alexander mocked bitterly.
Ranma’s pride got the better of him and he placed his gun back in its holster. “I don’t need weapons!”
Alexander simply sneered at him, it was like he wanted to be cleansed, then, not wanting let his opponent down with his seeming desire, charged in to stab Ranma’s heart. Ranma spun to the side to avoid it and followed with a heel to the back of the head, causing his opponent to falter but recover to try a slice across Ranma’s chest while turning. Ranma simply flipped back, bending under the attack, and let his foot catch his opponent in the chin. There was a sickening pop as his head bent father back then it should have, but he simply shuddered slightly and righted his head, sparing a moment to pop his neck.
“What the hell?!” Ranma was positive he heard and felt his enemies neck break from that kick, that’s not something you just shrug off; a voice in the back of his head yelled at him for being an idiot and expecting a broken neck to stop a vampire and told him not to go easy on him so he wouldn’t be too hurt, killing was the goal here after all, and he deserved it big time after killing people and hurting Celas. Alexander offered no explanation and tried to use his opponents surprise to his advantage with another lunge. Ranma simply swatted the side of the blade with his left hand and punched Alexander in the chest with his right hard enough to send him flying into a wall. Several bones were clearly heard breaking before he slid down the wall to the floor. Not wanting to give him time to recover Ranma jumped onto him to hold him down and beat him senseless, there wasn’t much else he could do without his gun but keep his opponent down and injured.
Ranma heard footsteps coming down the hallway and looked up to see Integral and Alucard before returning to the threat at hand. "You’re right. They certainly need our help." Alucard taunted Integral while Ranma slammed Alexander into the floor and unleashed a flurry of punches. "If we hadn't come to their rescue Ranma's arms might have gotten tired."
Integral shot him a disapproving glare, as much as she hated the Iscariots she had already requested to have their agent immediately withdrawn and couldn't very well wait to deliver the summons just because her agent was winning at the moment, and killing their agent would be bad for their already stressed relations. "Ranma, you may let him go."
Ranma shot Integral a look like she was crazy but stopped hitting his opponent. "Are you crazy?! He just killed one of your soldiers AND tried to kill Celas and me."
"The matter is out of our hands at the moment." Integral responded simply before turning to blonde man. "Knight of the Church, Paladin Alexander Anderson you have received an arch-bishop summons. Your mission was impossible to complete with the destruction of Andy Costabalili’s body. You are to return to the Vatican immediately.” Brandishing a sheet of paper she threw it towards the downed priest. It flipped once in the air and landed on his face, Ranma had a feeling the aim was assisted by Alucard.
Ranma stood up and moved to the side, still glaring at Anderson. Anderson didn’t acknowledge his presence, in fact it took him a few seconds to even be able to lift the paper from his face and read it. Then he quietly got up and walked out past integral. “When the time comes, we’ll finish this vampire.”
Ranma shot him an angry look as he got to walk away without finishing the fight but decided not to press the matter, he might not like killing but some people did need to be stopped and besides, as a vampire your view of how bad death is can easily be distorted; instead he hurried over and carefully extracted the knife from Celas' throat. "Are you ok, Celas?"
"Y-Yes, Master." she answered seriously. She was feeling bit stupid that she had left the knife in her neck until he removed it, and being the center of his attention alone was enough to make her nervous at the moment. She was rapidly growing to like him, other than being alive he seemed like the kind of guy she had always liked; nice, strong, handsome, and with how nervous he was when he had walked into her room she knew he wasn't some macho jerk like most guys. She also wasn't aware of it but her bond to him was making her feelings towards him increase in power.
"I'll expect you to keep a better watch over Miss Victoria next time, Ranma." Integral commented. Meanwhile Alucard bent and tested the edge of the knife that still projected from the body of the Hellsing soldier nearby on his thumb. It was blessed; it would be good to know that if he ever fought Alexander.
"It's not my fault!" Ranma complained. "Your soldiers wouldn't let me help because it would be 'bad for moral' if I fought with them after they just saw me eating."
Alucard laughed slightly while Celas had a bit of a hard time in deciding if she were more sickened or hungry. Integral frowned a little, that problem hadn't come up before since Alucard worked alone. "Very well, but I expect you to refrain from eating in front of the others from now on. I'll expect you to do the same." she looked at both Celas and Alucard. After delivering the order she turned and left to go get a report of the encounter from one of the officers outside and to issue new commands. Alucard turned to follow along behind her; he needed to make sure he was there when Walter broached the issue of her health.
"Perhaps you should get the female officer a _bite_ to eat." Alucard suggested quietly. "These knives were blessed, it would even be trouble for her while well fed to heal." he rummaged through his coat for a minute before pulling out a pack of blood which he threw back to Ranma over his shoulder before turning the corner and catching up with Integral.
Ranma looked at the blood pack for a minute then quickly glanced at Celas who had suddenly become very fidgety and was biting her lip with her fangs so hard she must have been drawing blood. He really didn't want to do anything that might make her start crying but even he could tell she was hungry and Alucard said she needed it to heal right. Maybe he could do it so she wouldn't cry..... Nope that needed him to know why she was upset in the first place.
He was suddenly snapped out of his thoughts when he realized he was staring at Celas and she was looking back at him with some visible fear. He had been practically glaring at her and she was worried he might be mad at her; not only had she needed to be saved, she had gotten him in trouble too.
Not being able to come up with a good solution and slightly afraid of Celas' fearful look Ranma just held the pack out to her and blurted out what he needed to as fast as his mouth would allow. "Drinkthisitwillhelpyouheal!"
Celas barely was able to make out his request, but him holding out the bag of blood made his meaning clear enough. She caught herself licking her lips as she looked at it and almost immediately rejected it, however she tried to make herself take the bag. She reached out to take it but her fingers refused to go farther than hovering an inch over its surface; she just couldn't accept being a vampire, visions of what had been done to her friends played through her mind and reinforced the fact that vampires were monsters. After a few seconds she dropped her arm in defeat, she just couldn't do it; and now she had let Ranma down for the third time today even though it sounded like he was just trying to help her.
Ranma began to worry that he had made a mistake as tears started to well up in Celas' eyes. "Wha-wha-What's wrong?!" he asked in a bit of a panic.
Celas looked in Ranma's eyes and saw he was concerned for her and couldn't help but cry but managed to answer his question between sobs "I...I can't!...I feel...I feel like I won't be human anymore!... I don't want to be some evil monster!"
Ranma began to panic and wave his arms frantically while whipping his head from side to side in a search for a way to make this stop; a girl was crying and he had no idea how to help, this didn't have anything to do with fighting after all. He remembered Integral had said something though when he thought he had been turned into an evil demon maybe that would help "You’re just a blood sucking demon, that doesn’t make you evil!" Celas just started to cry harder after he said it though.
Ranma mentally kicked himself at whatever he just did. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Forget the blood! Whatever I did I didn't mean it!"
Celas watched as Ranma, a strong vampire in her eyes, was having a panic attack over her crying. she wiped her eyes and her crying slowed; in the back of her mind she started to realize how silly it was to be crying about becoming an uncaring evil vampire when someone who was more vampire than she could ever be was panicking and apologizing because she was crying. In truth she couldn't even think of another guy who was emotional enough to react like Ranma was. That realization stopped her tears and brought out the faint beginnings of a smile.
Ranma noticed the change in her attitude and slowly calmed down to 'prepare to run' instead of 'panic like there’s a c-c-c-cat around'. "Um...I...er...Are you ok?" he asked nervously.
Celas wiped her eyes and smiled a little at his caring. "I-I'm alright, Master. I-I just didn't think I would be myself anymore...I'm sorry."
"It’s alight, if you don't wanna drink it you don't have ta," Ranma reassured to prevent any further tears. He stood up and offered her a hand. "How 'bout we get back to Hellsing?"
Celas took his hand and stood up but didn't let go of his hand. "Alright, Master."
Ranma took little note of the fact his hand hadn't been released, he just figured if it helped make her comfortable it was fine, it wasn't like he couldn't beat anything in London with one arm being held by a cute girl. He led her outside and stopped. The rest of the Hellsing crew had left without them already. He sighed slightly; he didn’t know that a clean up crew was on they way and he could catch a ride with them. They were stuck on the other side of town without a ride and would probably end up being shot at by Hellsing troops if he went roof hopping and was seen; even if they knew it was him Integral would probably let them attack him as punishment for “endangering the secrecy of Hellsing institution”, so now they were stuck with walking back across the town. He sighed again; he might as well get started.
-----
Ranma came to a stop before entering the front doors to the Hellsing institute. “Hey, why don’t we start your training tonight?!” Ranma asked Celas brightly as he finally thought of a way to help get their minds off her problem. It had taken him the whole walk home but at least he came up with it.
“What? Training?” Celas asked in surprise. She had been distracted as thoughts of the night’s previous events ran through her mind.
“Sure, ya must’ve noticed you’re stronger and faster and stuff. I figure we should get you used to that first; you probably don’t need speed, strength, or endurance training. Later we’ll do the harder stuff like going through walls and some martial arts.”
“You know some martial arts, Master?” Why in the world would someone as strong as Ranma need martial arts? Well it did explain how he beat Alexander so easily.
“Heh, some? I’m the best there is! I’ve been practicing it my whole life. So you wanna start tonight?”
It only took Celas a second to make her decision. Spending time with Ranma was a plus. Having something, anything, to do besides practice at the shooting range was a plus. In fact she couldn’t even think of a downside at the moment. “Ye…Yes. Thank you, Master.”
“Great! Now what can we do for practice…” Training dummies might have been good, he’d have to look into getting some. Problem with training right at the moment was neither of them had any idea how strong she was, but he was pretty sure she would be able to break people’s bones pretty easy, so sparring with others was out. He didn’t have a problem telling how much his strength had increased because he understood how much force everything he did actually exerted. He knew how much damage every punch would do. She needed some kind of visual aid since she wouldn’t be able to feel a difference. He looked around the Hellsing compound but mostly it was just lawn and big stone buildings. “I got it! Ok, Celas stand up next to the wall and jump up as high as ya can, then push off the wall with your arms as hard as ya can.”
Celas nodded to show she understood before walking up to the wall of the mansion, she didn’t understand how it would help but she would do it. She closed her eyes and thought about putting all her strength into her jump. She leapt and started to concentrate on putting all her strength into her push away, she opened her eyes as she felt herself reaching her max height and pushed away from the wall. She spun slightly backwards and off balance and quickly looked around to find something to grab onto or to know when she needed to catch herself. Unfortunately as she looked over her shoulder at the ground she noticed she was about the same height as the second floor’s windows and was nowhere near the building anymore, and she was falling towards the ground back first. “GYAAAHHH!”
Ranma was impressed. He had just expected double strength of a normal girl, that was something most martial artists would have trouble with; not the good ones of course, just most of them. Determining that she wasn’t going to land well he jumped from where he was standing and caught her before she hit the ground. She screamed again at the sudden contact but quickly realized she had been saved.
When Ranma landed and set her down she looked down, a bit ashamed at being helpless and failing to succeed. “Thank you for saving me.”
Ranma totally didn’t mind her failure, and completely missed her attitude. ”No problem. I didn’t even think you’d jump that high.” Ranma thought about a good way for her to correct the fall, a back flip would work well; he might as well train her in balance and acrobatics if they were doing this anyway. “Next time after you push away try to lean back and spin your legs up like this.” He jumped at the wall and pushed away with his arms, waited till he was halfway down his descending ark and lazily preformed a back flip to land standing.
Celas looked from Ranma to the wall apprehensively, sure he had made it look easy but she was really sure she wouldn’t be able to do that; just the fact he had been able to match the height she had reached without trying hard was a big indication him thinking it was easy wasn’t to be valued. She was pretty sure she’d break her neck if she tried. She couldn’t help but realize the depressing truth that the threat of a broken neck shouldn’t bother her.
Ranma managed to notice the look of apprehension that came over his student’s face. “Don’t worry about falling, I’ll catch you.” He was willing to train her but she WAS still a girl after all, so he didn’t want to let her get hurt at all.
Celas gave him an appreciative nod and tried again. She jumped, pushed off, used way too much power to spin herself and found herself being caught after a dizzying number of back flips.
Ranma told her to try with only a small amount of force next time and to try again. Internally he couldn’t help congratulating himself, this would train her to understand her strength and help her start learning control over it, plus she’d work on balance and learn to perform back flips. Yep, a couple hundred more of these tonight and she’d be ready to try something new for a while.
-----
Ranma was slightly disappointed in Celas’ workout, 437 seemed like a small number to quit after but in her defense she seemed to have learned enough of what he wanted her too. Also she probably fell asleep in the middle of her jump due to it being so close to morning, not lack of stamina, or maybe a bit of both. He was proud of how well she did and how willing she was to work at it though.
He sighed as he phased through the top of his bed, he had already decided that today he would work on her speed, coordination, and a simple kata to make sure she knew how to put power into attacks before she fell into any bad habits, problem was he knew he’d have to try to get her to eat again. He hated to see her cry but he REALLY didn’t want her to have any problems because she didn’t eat. He was kind of hoping she would ask sometime today on her own, just in case he wouldn’t ask until the end of the day.
Luckily Alucard wasn’t going to bother them for at least that night, he had said something about some dream editing joke Ranma didn’t understand involving Integral had been so funny he was going to keep it going with a naughty schoolgirl and her teacher. Something about sucking a lollipop in class and deserving a spanking. Whatever he was talking about Ranma was just happy it would give him some peace for awhile.
Ranma checked his mental link and found Celas was still sleeping, so he went ahead and walked through the wall and into her room. Luckily he had regained enough energy over night to be able to use it for little things without worrying about running out.
Ranma walked over and knocked on the hood of his charge’s bed. He heard a rustle and a yawn inside as Celas began to wake up and look for the button to raise the hood. She was surprised when she found him standing next to her bed waiting for her. “Master? What are you doing here?”
“Figured we could get an early start on training.” Ranma said happily. Even if it did kind of cut into his training time it was fun to have a student, besides he had to learn to teach if he was ever going to run a dojo.
Celas almost groaned but caught herself before she did so. She was tired still and all that work had really worn her out and she was hungry. She caught her last thought and shivered, best to forget she had thought about that for now. Yawning again she got up. At least jumping around and realizing how strong she was had been a bit of a thrill. “Are we doing the same thing today?”
Ranma shook his head, “Speed practice and some basics for fighting.” Speaking of that he remembered she’d probably need to change clothes. He didn’t know what kind of idiot designed a uniform with a skirt that short for field work that may include running, jumping, and kicking. “You got any other clothes, anything with pants?”
Celas blushed, a hard trick for a vampire, when she finally noticed that with her uniform on last night she had given Ranma plenty of chances to peek up it. If only she had remembered! She felt so stupid! Thank god he had reminded her before they started training today! Hopefully he hadn’t taken advantage of the chance yesterday, at least this was a good sign he didn’t.
Celas nodded but kept her eyes looking away in embarrassment. She walked over to her dresser and pulled out some clothes then noticed him still standing there. “C-could you…um…leave?” she asked, she was still flustered and didn’t want to look him in the eyes.
Ranma had been busy trying to figure out what he had said that had gotten her to blush like that when he realized he was still in the room and she was about to change. “Sorry!” he apologized and ran through the wall into the hallway.
After she finished dressing Celas came out to meet him in the hallway. He froze when he saw her. In her uniform she was pretty good looking, but in her current clothes, a pair of pale jeans, black hat and shirt that left her midriff showing, and a choker around her neck she was stunningly attractive. The outfit was perfect for a vampire, giving her a gothic semi-tomboyish look. “Master?” Ranma shook himself out of his trance, that outfit was really distracting.
“Oh yeah, um why don’t we go up to the roof to practice. Gimme your hand.” He held out his hand for her to take. She did so a bit reluctantly, not knowing why he wanted to hold her hand, but quickly discovered the answer when he walked into the rock wall and pulled her along. There were a few seconds, or perhaps minutes, there was no way to tell, where she became disorientated and lost all sensation except for holding his hand as they passed through the stones. Then the world came back into light as they rose out of the roof of the building. She suppressed a slight shiver, that had not been particularly fun.
Ranma let go of her hand and walked over to face her from a slight distance ahead. “Alright Celas, first lets do a few basic kata. Just watch me till ya think you’ve got it then try to copy me. And we’re gonna go a bit faster every time.” She nodded and studied his moves.
-----
Tonight’s progress was better than Ranma had expected, seems Celas had had some prior training in fighting, not much though. At least she didn’t need as much correcting to her attacks. He stopped the training as soon as he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be breeding any bad habits and thought she had gotten used to the fastest she could go. “Alright Celas that was good. You can stop.”
Celas promptly stopped her kata and slid down to sit on the ground. She was TIRED! She had expected it to get a bit better when she woke up more but it wasn’t going away, just getting worse.
“Ready for what’s up next?”
“Wha-what? More?!” She couldn’t believe it; if she hadn’t been dead that workout would have killed her. How much more did she have to do?!
“Ya just have ta hit me once then we’ll be done for the night. Go!” he didn’t wait for her to get up; he just started walking to the edge of the roof. When he got there he looked back and noticed she hadn’t moved yet. Turning back forwards he jumped off the roof, kicked off the wall halfway down, and landed a good distance away from the building.
Celas hadn’t quite understood why he said go and walked away but when she saw him jump off the roof she instantly raced to the edge to see if he was ok.
“If you don’t hurry up you’re never gonna catch me!” Ranma yelled up to her from the yard. Celas groaned; she had to catch him? That was going to be impossible. Still, she would rather try than give up; maybe he would let her stop before she actually caught him. Not really seeing a good way around it she leapt of the roof and hoped she wouldn’t get hurt.
She landed a bit hard but quickly recovered. She briefly considered if she should actually try to hit Ranma, she really didn’t want to but he was really strong, and a martial artist, and making her do this. Yep, she could hit him.
Hoping to get him before he could move, she sprinted at him as fast as she could. A good idea in theory but she didn’t know how fast she could sprint so when he dodged she found herself halfway down the length of the compound before she could stop herself, leaving her incredibly surprised at just how fast everything had flown by.
“You’ll never catch me if that’s all ya got!” Ranma taunted, falling into the same state of mind he had when he tried this with his pop. Celas rose to the challenge and tried another pass, this time however he ran away from her facing backwards to continue his taunting. “Is that it?! Maybe you should just give up?”
Angry at the insult, Celas poured on a bit more speed as she ran and tried launching some punches at the target that was keeping just out of her range. In response to the attempt Ranma just laughed and jumped over her head, starting in the opposite direction to make her learn to stop and change direction faster.
-----
The “game” went on until near morning, in retrospect Ranma realized he should have stopped an hour or two before. However he hadn’t bothered to check Celas’ condition with his new senses, physically Celas was still ready to run around for hours still and that was all he had been judging her stamina by. Mentally she was absolutely exhausted, she was clumsier and less coordinated than usual but Ranma just guessed she was having trouble adjusting to her new power.
He wouldn’t have probably noticed till she lost consciousness, had he not bothered to make a quick check of her through their link when she tripped and fell in a way that would have broken most peoples’ necks. Her body was fine, but her energy was really low, the workouts and lack of food had drained most of her power. She had less energy than he had after drinking; she wasn’t in pain though, so he guessed it had been alcohol alone that had caused his headache. He couldn’t believe how much she was trying to push herself though; the only person he knew that worked themselves to exhaustion was… himself actually. And the only reason he could feel from her as to why she was pushing herself was to not be weak and need saving again. He could understand that from a guy, or even a girl like Integral, but Celas had needed saving twice in less than a week, why should she be bothered by needing help again.
He put aside his thoughts when he saw her trying to get up and went to help. Instead of placing her on her feet he swept her up into his arms, training was done for the night after all and she didn’t need more exertion. “Ya did real good, Celas. How bout we call it a night?”
Celas just responded with a tired smile. She felt too drained to talk. Now that Ranma was holding her she felt like just falling asleep in his arms. If it weren’t for the fact her prevalent thought all night had been not to seem weak she probably would have. It was a struggle for her though, especially when he pulled her back trough the dark emptiness, leaving her seeing nothing and only feeling him. Luckily they quickly popped back out of the wall and he started putting her back onto her feet; causing her to wake up enough to stabilize herself.
The room was pitch black but Ranma could see it fine. Besides he’d been going in there every night for more than a month and was pretty sure he could navigate it with his eyes closed. As he walked over to the fridge that took up half of one of the walls he nervously glanced back over his shoulder at Celas. This could be a really bad idea, she could start crying again, but she really needed it. He pulled open the fridge’s door and extracted two packs of blood. When he turned back towards her he could see her take on a more troubled look, he probably would have missed it but he was really looking for it. Deciding it would be best to try to understand her problem better he opened up the link between them to know what she was thinking.
Celas was hungry; she knew she needed to drink the blood. The ramifications still terrified her though. She knew she wasn’t normal anymore, but she still couldn’t help but feel it was crossing the line to being a monster to drink a person’s blood. But then there was Ranma to consider, he drank blood but certainly wasn’t a monster, mentally anyway. She wished she could think it over better but she could feel her thoughts being slowed and losing focus due to fatigue. She couldn’t suppress images of her friends as ghouls due to another vampire coming back to haunt her. She wanted to help people not hurt them. Everything was mixing together and becoming harder to fully understand. She just wished she knew what to do, she wished someone could help her make the right choice.
Ranma didn’t totally understand her thoughts but he did understand the helping people part well enough. This whole mind reading thing seemed kind of useless, she didn’t think at all like he did. He bit off the top of the straw-like tube at the top of one pack and held it out to her. “Here, you’ll need to eat if you wanna help save people.”
It made sense to her, she was there to help people and so was Ranma, if she had to be less human to do it the sacrifice was worth it. Hopefully she could remain very human, like Ranma was. Her hunger stricken mind put up little defense to the idea as it had come from someone she trusted. She smiled a bit and reached out for the blood. She was too tired and overcome enough by the start of her meal she didn’t even notice as Ranma picked her up and carried her to her bed.
-----
Several days later Alucard smiled evilly as he watched Ranma slip into unconsciousness an hour or so after Celas through his higher senses. His latest dream scheme with the teacher motif had come to fruitation earlier in the day so he had been looking for entertainment again. There was one possibility but that would take a day or two to make occur, he still didn’t have anything for the immediate time being. That was until he had noticed just how much Celas’ crush on Ranma had been elevated due to their link. It gave him so many new possibilities. He had been waiting to pull any major pranks on her due to her mental fragility; he didn’t wish to kill a vampire he shared blood with after all. Luckily though about five days ago she had actually accepted her new life enough to drink blood. And over the following days actually seemed to gradually accept that despite her daily meals she wasn’t becoming evil; that she was the same person she always was, just that her job required the blood to save lives. Even with the disgust that lingered the hunger from her workouts with Ranma had enough effect to keep her on the right track.
Now how to start playing with his new target? Ranma was too hard to effect mentally; he was just good for physical gags. She was still vulnerable though, so he should make use of that while he could. He should probably do something that falls into play all at once though, if it went on too long there were too many people who might tell her it was his doing. He also still had those dream ideas fresh in mind, something like that could work, yes, it could work very well indeed. All he would need would be to give the imaginative parts of Celas’ brain a little jumpstart while she slept.
-----
Celas awoke panting, the bed around her covered in sweat. She’d dreamt of Ranma. It was a _VERY_ vivid dream; if she hadn’t woken up just now she would have been positive it was real. It crossed her mind for a second that it might have been reality and waking up the dream, but something told her in the back of her mind that idea was stupid. It certainly was more intense that any dream she had ever had before. She couldn’t help but blush just thinking about it.
She didn’t know what time it was, there was no clock in her room, and without windows she didn’t even know if it was night yet. This was the first time since starting her training with Ranma that he hadn’t woken her. She might even be awake before he was. There was no way to tell though; she didn’t even know where his room was since they never went there. Besides, she didn’t think she could go see him after dreaming all those things about him.
She fumbled with the button to open the bed and get up when a worried thought came to her. What about her training? She definitely wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Maybe she could say she was sick, but could the undead even be sick? Could she perhaps get a hold of him without having to see him?
#Isn’t that why you humans invented telephones?# Came a voice in her mind.
“What?!” she pun around in surprise to try to find the source of the voice. “Who said that!?”
#Alucard of course! Who other than Ranma or I can use telepathy?#
“Huh?” she asked in surprise, Ranma had told her about Alucard and that he was the other resident bloodsucker, he never mentioned psychic communication though. ”Telepathy?”
#Mental communication, I’m surprised Ranma hasn’t used it with you yet. Anyway I‘ll go into his dreams to tell him you’re not up to training today. And there’s no need to worry about him thinking it’s just a dream, it will be so real he’ll almost confuse it with reality.# Alucard lied mentally.
Celas’ heart stopped, or would have had it been beating, it sounded just like what she had experienced. “You can do that?”
#Easily, Ranma can too, why not have him show you some time. Now I better go tell him before he wakes up. Goodbye.# Alucard stopped his communication with her but continued to monitor her mind so he could provide a gentle nudge, the same type of gentle nudge given by a ten ton wrecking ball, if he needed to.
Ranma would never violate her privacy like that, she was positive of it, it had just been that he had been so real in the dream; she knew it couldn’t have been nothing more than a dream. She was pretty sure Ranma was too good a person to do that though, he had even warned her about wearing her skirt to train, though with his abilities peeping would be a minor task to accomplish. Where had that thought come from? Oh, well where it came from isn’t important; the task at hand is. Could it have been Ranma? Only he and Alucard had the power necessary, and it certainly wasn’t Alucard in that dream. She couldn’t believe he would do it, but something told her he must have. The asshole, she couldn’t believe he would take advantage of her like that.
Ranma meanwhile was getting up, never having been warned by Alucard of course, and already coming over to get Celas so they could train. He phased through the wall into her room and found himself emerging right in front of her. “Hey you’re already up.” He said and smiled at seeing her. “Get a good night’s sleep?”
In a distant corner of the castle Alucard was laughing his head off as Celas slapped Ranma so hard he flew across the room then promptly stormed out. It was amazing, and absolutely hilarious, how unlucky Ranma could actually be.
Ranma sat up and rubbed his cheek. “What the heck was that for?” he asked nobody in particular.
#She’s mad you haven’t asked her out yet.# Alucard explained in his mind.
#WHAT!?!?#
#She’s been waiting for you to ask her out. Now you’ve made her wait too long.#
#What? Why would she want me to ask her out!?#
#Ranma I think it’s about time you had “The Talk”, since Genma was too much of an idiot to teach you. Why don’t we go get drinks and further your education on humans.#
# “The Talk”? Whadda ya mean? And I already told you I don’t ever wanna get drunk again.#
#Trust me Ranma, you will tonight.#
-----
Celas shifted a bit and had trouble getting staying asleep. She’d been worried ever since the night before that she had been to hard on Ranma, she didn’t have any hard proof Ranma invaded her dreams at all. She shifted to get more comfortable and to put her head under her pillow, it smelled too much like alcohol and it was making it hard to keep from waking up. As she twisted her elbow ran into something soft.
There was a soft groan of “Oof”. From beside her.
She was almost instantly awake; that definitely hadn’t been right. She dug her arm into whatever was beside her again.
“Ugh, pop, cut it out I’m getting up ok?” Ranma said as he started to wake up.
Celas of course responded to the proof she needed that Ranma would in fact take advantage of her by hitting him away and cursing him for his actions. Ranma, without the reaction time or energy needed to phase through the side if the coffin was knocked through it the hard way. Celas, instead of staying to confront him for his actions, and ruin the end of the plan, instead left to go think how much she hated Ranma thanks to a “gentle” nudge to her thoughts. Ranma meanwhile was in a weak enough state that the whole affair was easily altered in his mind to be nothing more than a dream that he promptly forgot as he was placed back into his own bed and “lightly” encouraged to sleep.
-----
“Good day miss Victoria.” Walter greeted Celas later that day when he found her exiting the firing range. “I just came to tell you I replaced your broken coffin.”
Celas was surprised; she hadn’t told anyone what had happened yet and didn’t see how he knew it was broken. “H-Hello. Um thank you Walter. Sorry to cause you the trouble”
“It was no trouble at all. Did you have trouble getting the old one open for some reason?”
“N-Not exactly.” She was a bit nervous about telling Walter what had actually happened, though she did need to talk to someone about it and Walter was one of the few people she felt close to here, of anyone he is who she would talk to if she told her problem to anyone. Her internal strife was quickly settled by the need for someone who cared about her to help. Walter listened to her entire confession of recent events and her feelings towards Ranma. And for an ex-Angel of Death Walter comforted her extremely well as she told him her problem.
Walter of course was able to figure out the truth of the matter quite easily. Ranma had not once acted perverted since he arrived that wasn’t due to one of Alucard’s tricks. Though, Alucard certainly did like making him appear to be a pervert. Also, though most didn’t bother to notice, he had seen Ranma’s clueless expression whenever he overheard any soldiers’ dirty jokes. He had also been forced to listen to Alucard complain for an hour straight how badly Ranma had taken to being drunk and that nobody knew how to act when drunk like they did before he was captured, that and that there wasn’t enough recreational killing in the modern world. Nothing he was accused of fit his personality. Besides, Alucard had supposedly been nice to her; he had to be up to something.
“Celas, I think you need to know something about Alucard. He has a very…strange idea of humor. He seems particularly fond of making other people seem perverted or getting them into trouble.” Walter explained with fresh annoyance, just the other day he’d figuring out the general reason why Integral was avoiding him and blushing, just not the specifics.
Celas wiped away some tears from her eyes; she had cried a great deal once she finally opened up to someone. “So you don’t think it was Ranma?”
“Most definitely. He’s one of the most innocent people I’ve ever met. I doubt he would even understand your dream if you described it to him.” He added the last part jokingly to help brighten her mood.
She brightened slightly at his joke and caught him in a hug. “Oh thank you, Walter.”
The ex-Angel of death was surprised by the gesture but quickly recovered and patted her back reassuringly. “You’re welcome, Celas.”
-----
Alucard, unfortunately for him, was too busy preparing Ranma for his date and preparing for his final surprise to have been able to prevent the conversation between Celas and Walter. It had taken him half an hour to help Ranma get over his migraine from the night before, an hour to explain how to ask Celas out, another hour to explain that he was supposed to kiss her right away and why people liked kissing, and then two hours to get him a new outfit he was actually willing to wear. The last was largely because the first hour and a half of suggested clothes were BDSM outfits.
After Ranma finally snapped at Alucard to stop trying to make him look like a pervert the final new outfit Alucard settled for something that wasn’t nearly what he had hoped for but at least he found it more befitting of a vampire than a Chinese shirt and baggy pants. Now he wore black silk slacks, blood red button up silk shirt, black tie, and a black jacket with red lining and a red and black ying-yang on the back. The lining and symbol on the coat had been white but Alucard had somehow dyed them blood red when Ranma wasn’t looking. Then to complete the look they finished it off with a pair of red tinted black rimmed glasses.
Then with the final addition of a bouquet of black roses they were ready for him to finally ask her out.
-----
As Celas’ door opened in response to his knock, Ranma was instantly surprised as the redhead grabbed him into a hug. Alucard, who was watching from his room, was equally surprised, he hoped for violence and hatred. And quickly set about finding what had changed in her mind, he cursed for a moment when he found it but the end of his plan could still work so not everything was a loss. Alucard would just have to bring it into play before they went out instead of after Ranma being attacked.
“Master! I’m so sorry about how I acted!” She threatened to break Ranma’s back with her full strength hug. Luckily she let go after a few seconds and backed away, embarrassed by her outburst.
“It’s…um... no problem. Alucard told me it was cuz you…ah just wanted me to ask you…er ask you out. So um…do you wanna? …um go out with me that is.” Ranma tumbled through the question clumsily and then as an after thought held out the roses he had been carrying at his side for her.
Celas was surprised he would actually ask her out on a date, it was just so sudden. She didn’t even registered the fact Alucard had suggested it. “I…I would love to.” She was again surprised by his sudden change in behavior as he bent in to kiss her.
“AHEM!” both young vampires jumped back in surprise at the sudden outburst as Alucard made his presence known behind them. “Now now, making out like a couple of high school kids before your dates even begun, we can’t have that. Besides you have to give a girl time to get ready, she’ll need to go shopping and go to the salon. You had better give her a week just to be safe. Besides, Ranma, you have something to do right now and there’s no time to waste.”
“But…” Ranma began to protest but was cut off.
“No time to talk, Ranma, we’re late.” Alucard said as he grabbed Ranma by the arm and pulled him into a wall. Celas was left behind in her doorway with a million thoughts running through her head. Why couldn’t Alucard have come along a few seconds later?! She finally had a date with Ranma only one week away! Where was she going to find a good dress that was open at night? Damn Ranma looked good when he tried to! Maybe Alucard wasn’t such a bad guy, giving her time to prepare and everything. Did that mean Ranma wasn’t that good of a guy? Where did they just go to? Which came first the chicken or the egg? Damn Ranma looks good when he tries too!
Ranma was equally confused by where he was going as he was dragged through the walls of the mansion. #Didn’t you say I was supposed to kiss her?# he asked in confusion.
#Of course, on the date! On the date you should kiss her right away, before you even say “hello”. Tonight you were just asking her out.#
#Then why’d I get all dressed up and stuff?#
#That’s for your practice date.# It was a good thing they were inside a wall when Alucard told him this or his wide smile would have warned Ranma to run for his life.
#MY WHAT?!?!?!#
#Your practice date, you’ll go out with a friend of mine tonight so we can make sure you won’t make a total idiot out of yourself on Saturday. You don’t want to ruin the date for Celas, do you?#
#No but…#
#Then you’ll have to practice.#
#Fine, but I ain’t gonna kiss her.# Ranma might not be the hardest person in the world to manipulate but he at least thought he knew how to cut a deal.
#Whatever you say but you’ll need to practice with someone before your date. I suppose you could ask Integral to practice with you.#
Ranma blanched at the thought of asking Integral to help him like that, he’d be lucky to survive her refusal. #I… uh guess I could practice with your friend if she doesn’t mind.#
#Of course she doesn’t, pretend it’s a real date and kiss her as soon as you see her.# Alucard pulled Ranma out of the wall behind him and onto the sidewalk surrounding the estate, they had traveled though the ground surround the mansion and come out the outer wall right next to the corner of the street. “Now wait right here. She’ll be around the corner in a few seconds; you’ll know her by her green hair.” With that he faded into a mist to watch without being noticed.
Ranma fidgeted nervously for a minute straight before someone finally rounded the corner; with his nerves at their end from the wait he was moving to kiss the girl as soon as he saw her hair was green. The girl froze in surprise but Ranma was too nervous to notice as he locked lips with her and darted his tongue into her mouth like he was told to. After a few seconds he noticed she wasn’t responding, Alucard said she would be responding with her own tongue, so he pulled back away from her. He noticed she was staring straight ahead, not focused on anything and was worried for a moment. “Are you ok?”
A small distance away Alucard took a picture to commemorate the event. Walter had a surprisingly nice camera. He’d have to keep it, maybe start up a scrap book of doom or something.
-----
Ryoga couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter which way he went, Ranma was the other direction, but for some reason he kept going anyway. To make matters worse everyone he asked had either never heard of Hellsing Institution or wouldn’t answer him when he asked. And as long as he was in the city the only places he seemed to consistently find to camp in were alleys. The muggers were annoying too. He’d make Ranma pay for putting him though the hell that was his life, and infinitely more important he’d make him pay for the curse he had received while trying to track him down.
About dusk he had felt the disturbing sensation of height loss when cold water hit him as a car drove though a puddle. Oh, Ranma would pay when he found him; he’d kill him with his own two hands. That had been hours ago.
Just now he was rounding a corner when out of nowhere someone kissed him. His first kiss and it came from some stranger he never even got a chance to look at, he didn’t even know if it was a guy or girl. When the kiss ended he was still too stunned to remember to even breath.
“Are you ok?” The question was enough to remind Ryoga of the world around him and he gasped for breath.
He looked over the man who had kissed him. He was clearly Japanese and he looked really familiar, but the fangs, outfit and glasses didn’t fit anyone he knew, the pigtail was really familiar though. “Ranma?” he asked in a surprised whisper when he noticed the pigtail.
“Yea?” Ranma asked, relieved that she was ok.
All of his hatred for Ranma came back to Ryoga like a tidal wave, all the trouble he went though to get to their battle only to be left behind, the living hell of being cursed to turn into a girl, and now stealing his first kiss. Red ki ran off the cursed boy in waves, brightening the night around him. There was only one suitable solution to his problem. “DIE!”
AN: BWAHAHAHA I’m cutting it there for the moment.
I know in the manga the seal thingy Alexander used was a barrier but in that he stuck it to all the doors and windows and whatnot. Anime version it was stuck to blank was mostly so I’m saying its different.
Also just because some of you may want to know I think Ranma probably did get “the talk” from someone before the manga started but I wouldn’t be surprised if it came after his curse. Also in case anyone is wondering just how badly Alucard distorted “the talk” actually probably none, the truth would probably be enough…maybe the truth plus some vampiric ideas of how to go about it.
Part 3. Dark Dreams
By the Jester of Doom
Disclaimer: None of the characters in this story are mine. All the character’s are from the anime and manga forms of Ranma and Hellsing. Even my extras are extras stolen from the same worlds. I’m so uncreative…sigh.
AN: telepathic conversation is in pound signs not quotation marks. #Like this.#
Alucard peered out of his hiding spot in the hole of darkness in the shadows. He had gotten bored and was busy creating his own favorite soap-opera. Having been trapped in a room in the Hellsing basement his only real entertainment was watching the going-ons in the rest of the building, not even getting a chance to manipulate them, it was horrible! So now he was still catching up on all he fun he could have had. In truth though before he would have just slaughtered them all for fun. With all his years of contemplation however he had _ALMOST_ developed a _SLIGHT_ pity for _SOME_ of them.
Now he wasn’t “Evil” persay he simply had a higher standard of what was right and wrong, and he wasn’t crazy just too intelligent for most people to understand; so far nobody would believe him when he told them that though. He just couldn’t understand why the humans always confused the obvious with details; it’s ok to have fun _BUT_ not hurt people while doing it for instance. Well he’d never try to understand all their reasons anyway, unpredictability was the only reason he tolerated most of them anyway.
He had been working on this for days and was determined to see the fruits of his labor, not that it was much work for him. Sure some would find it hard to say… break into Integral’s dreams for the third time in a row and give her a very _nice_ recurring dream involving her, an examination table, Walter in a doctor’s getup, and a cheesy dialog but he could do it in his sleep; he had in fact. Some might even find it harder to, just for instance, give Walter a sudden worry that Integral was becoming sick and a urge to ask to take her temperature and comment that she needs more protein. Now all of this was just an example of course, one he was kicking himself for not thinking of before he showed Ranma to detect mental tampering. This would be funny enough though, not that he had done it of course if anyone asks.
It had actually been several hours since Integral had awoken but as they say ‘timing is everything’. He was at the moment monitoring both so he could find the best time to act. Then a bothersome call came to Integral and he had to subtly change her mind, he didn’t want to be sent out and have his joke play through without him after all.
------
Ranma awoke feeling like he had a herd of the pink elephants he had seen the night before tap dancing in his head and a bonfire in his heart. In his current state he decided to just sleep for the night, one night of training wasn’t worth getting up.
#WAKE UP!#
Ranma yelped in pain and bolted upright, by reflex he grabbed at his vampiric power but recoiled quickly in pain. Because he wasn’t able to go through it his head slammed hard into the top of his coffin. Yelping again he cradled his head and waited for the pounding to stop. #You’ll need to work on your tolerance.# Alucard chided loudly in Ranma’s head. #You burnt all your energy while you were drunk.#
Ranma groaned as he hit the button to raise the hood of his bed. #Ugh… I’m never doing that again. Is there some way to get this ta stop?#
#You could swallow a clove of garlic.#
#How the hell would that help?#
#You would be in too much pain to care about your hangover anymore!# Alucard joked happily.
Ranma groaned as he pulled himself out of bed. #I shouldda known.# he got up and half-heartedly stretched. #What the hecks got you so happy anyway?#
#Just a joke maturing. Now don’t you think you should answer the phone?#
#Huh? What-#
*RRIINNGG* Ranma shook his head and hoped he wasn’t the target of whatever could get Alucard so happy he would use two jokes that corny. He picked up the phone before it got a chance to ring again, his head still hurt after all.
“Ah, hello?” he asked a bit unsure of who could have called, nobody had called him before.
Walter responded without a greeting. “You are to report to the courtyard to assist Squadron A immediately.”
Ranma was left holding the phone for a minute after Walter had hung up to get what had just happened, then he rushed out the wall, or tried too. It’s hard to go through rock unless you have a lot of speed behind you or have vampiric energy to use, at the moment he had neither. He lifted himself off the ground, cursed, and had to listen to Alucard chuckle in the back of his mind.
Opening the door and running down the hall, making a quick stop to pick up a pack of blood, breakfast was both the most important, and only, meal of the day for him after all, and heading up the stairs. On the ground floor a dull alarm was buzzing and a voice was calling for the Galice unit to get going. He just tried to ignore the sound and lights and stopped in a courtyard where armored transports were currently loading people. Seeing as how he couldn’t become invisible at the moment and ‘superhuman’ stuff like roof-hopping had gotten him killed once already, he climbed into one of the transports with several men from the Galice unit.
He plopped down in the first open seat and tried to ignore everyone staring at him. A couple probably just thought it was strange for the ‘civilian’ (which he was still dressed like; no way he would wear a uniform!) to hop into the truck but most of the men knew about him no doubt, either from his description from integral telling everyone about the new vampire about a month ago, or more likely as the demon who broke his magical chains and tried to kill everyone in the bathroom. Whatever it was though he wouldn’t let it bother him while he ate.
-----
Ranma sat and had to wonder why the hell he had even been called along on this stupid mission. So he made a mistake; that was no reason to have him stay in the truck. He wouldn’t complain though, like this he didn’t have to kill anyone, he just thought it was stupid to make such a big fuss about such a little mistake. The others went around eating where he could see it, of course that affected his moral, he had loved to eat before, but he didn’t whine about it.
He sat back in his seat and tried to listen hard; he didn’t want to waste the small level of power he had gotten from his meal already on his higher senses. All he could hear though was some gunfire, nothing to indicate who was winning at the moment. He was getting a bad feeling from the area though. He had been feeling it for the past several minutes.
He sat back a moment more to listen before he felt a sharp stabbing… not a pain but almost a warning shoot through him from his heart, from his bond with Celas to be more specific. He shivered involuntarily at the feeling and quickly stood. Whatever it had been it was something he felt he couldn’t just outright ignore. Whatever it was he knew he had to go and help.
-----
Having phased into a hallway Ranma took quick stock of the area he had entered. What he really took note of was the giant blonde guy in a trench coat and glasses and holding two knives, that were each about as long as his arm. He ABSOLUTLY had to be the vampire they were here for; even without using extra senses he reeked of evil, he was the center of the same bad feeling he had been getting for the past few minutes.
“Master!” Celas called, shaking Ranma out of looking the guy over.
Ranma took notice of Celas for the first time, and more importantly saw she had knife through her throat, which matched those held by the blonde guy. "Celas!" he started to run over to her. "Are you ok?!" He suddenly halted his attempt to help her as a knife shot out and caused him to either stop only a few feet after he had started or become a head shorter.
"Is it you? The monster that has been tamed by Hellsing for generations?” The man questioned while negligently flicking his blade at Ranma’s neck.
Ranma stepped backwards to avoid the half-hearted attack. "HEY! Who’re you calling a monster!?!”
Ranma was simply ignored. “Monsters like you have been punished by Iscariot Institution long before Hellsing can even imagine.” He pulled his arms to his chest and seemingly prepared an attack, Ranma shifted slightly to a more defensive stance and was taken by total surprise when instead of an attack his opponent swung his arms and was surrounded by a vortex of spinning paper which was quickly followed by a wave of small knives. It wasn’t surprising that his opponent attacked in a ridiculous way, they always did that after all, but he hadn’t even needed to dodge.
“Ha! What kind of stupid attack was that!?! You didn’t even come close to hittin’ me!”
“Fool! I’ve purified this place so trash like you won’t be able to use your worn out abilities.” Alexander laughed in triumph.
Ranma guessed he meant his vampiric powers and tried to grab hold of some energy but it kept slipping from his grasp; he wasn’t worried though, he was a martial artist first and foremost after all so he wouldn’t have to use energy to dodge and his gun was the only way to finish an opponent anyway. “I don’t need any abilities. I can beat ya anyway.” To prove his point he unholstered his gun and took aim.
“Lose to a decadent blood sucker that fights with weapons made with humans? HA!” Alexander mocked bitterly.
Ranma’s pride got the better of him and he placed his gun back in its holster. “I don’t need weapons!”
Alexander simply sneered at him, it was like he wanted to be cleansed, then, not wanting let his opponent down with his seeming desire, charged in to stab Ranma’s heart. Ranma spun to the side to avoid it and followed with a heel to the back of the head, causing his opponent to falter but recover to try a slice across Ranma’s chest while turning. Ranma simply flipped back, bending under the attack, and let his foot catch his opponent in the chin. There was a sickening pop as his head bent father back then it should have, but he simply shuddered slightly and righted his head, sparing a moment to pop his neck.
“What the hell?!” Ranma was positive he heard and felt his enemies neck break from that kick, that’s not something you just shrug off; a voice in the back of his head yelled at him for being an idiot and expecting a broken neck to stop a vampire and told him not to go easy on him so he wouldn’t be too hurt, killing was the goal here after all, and he deserved it big time after killing people and hurting Celas. Alexander offered no explanation and tried to use his opponents surprise to his advantage with another lunge. Ranma simply swatted the side of the blade with his left hand and punched Alexander in the chest with his right hard enough to send him flying into a wall. Several bones were clearly heard breaking before he slid down the wall to the floor. Not wanting to give him time to recover Ranma jumped onto him to hold him down and beat him senseless, there wasn’t much else he could do without his gun but keep his opponent down and injured.
Ranma heard footsteps coming down the hallway and looked up to see Integral and Alucard before returning to the threat at hand. "You’re right. They certainly need our help." Alucard taunted Integral while Ranma slammed Alexander into the floor and unleashed a flurry of punches. "If we hadn't come to their rescue Ranma's arms might have gotten tired."
Integral shot him a disapproving glare, as much as she hated the Iscariots she had already requested to have their agent immediately withdrawn and couldn't very well wait to deliver the summons just because her agent was winning at the moment, and killing their agent would be bad for their already stressed relations. "Ranma, you may let him go."
Ranma shot Integral a look like she was crazy but stopped hitting his opponent. "Are you crazy?! He just killed one of your soldiers AND tried to kill Celas and me."
"The matter is out of our hands at the moment." Integral responded simply before turning to blonde man. "Knight of the Church, Paladin Alexander Anderson you have received an arch-bishop summons. Your mission was impossible to complete with the destruction of Andy Costabalili’s body. You are to return to the Vatican immediately.” Brandishing a sheet of paper she threw it towards the downed priest. It flipped once in the air and landed on his face, Ranma had a feeling the aim was assisted by Alucard.
Ranma stood up and moved to the side, still glaring at Anderson. Anderson didn’t acknowledge his presence, in fact it took him a few seconds to even be able to lift the paper from his face and read it. Then he quietly got up and walked out past integral. “When the time comes, we’ll finish this vampire.”
Ranma shot him an angry look as he got to walk away without finishing the fight but decided not to press the matter, he might not like killing but some people did need to be stopped and besides, as a vampire your view of how bad death is can easily be distorted; instead he hurried over and carefully extracted the knife from Celas' throat. "Are you ok, Celas?"
"Y-Yes, Master." she answered seriously. She was feeling bit stupid that she had left the knife in her neck until he removed it, and being the center of his attention alone was enough to make her nervous at the moment. She was rapidly growing to like him, other than being alive he seemed like the kind of guy she had always liked; nice, strong, handsome, and with how nervous he was when he had walked into her room she knew he wasn't some macho jerk like most guys. She also wasn't aware of it but her bond to him was making her feelings towards him increase in power.
"I'll expect you to keep a better watch over Miss Victoria next time, Ranma." Integral commented. Meanwhile Alucard bent and tested the edge of the knife that still projected from the body of the Hellsing soldier nearby on his thumb. It was blessed; it would be good to know that if he ever fought Alexander.
"It's not my fault!" Ranma complained. "Your soldiers wouldn't let me help because it would be 'bad for moral' if I fought with them after they just saw me eating."
Alucard laughed slightly while Celas had a bit of a hard time in deciding if she were more sickened or hungry. Integral frowned a little, that problem hadn't come up before since Alucard worked alone. "Very well, but I expect you to refrain from eating in front of the others from now on. I'll expect you to do the same." she looked at both Celas and Alucard. After delivering the order she turned and left to go get a report of the encounter from one of the officers outside and to issue new commands. Alucard turned to follow along behind her; he needed to make sure he was there when Walter broached the issue of her health.
"Perhaps you should get the female officer a _bite_ to eat." Alucard suggested quietly. "These knives were blessed, it would even be trouble for her while well fed to heal." he rummaged through his coat for a minute before pulling out a pack of blood which he threw back to Ranma over his shoulder before turning the corner and catching up with Integral.
Ranma looked at the blood pack for a minute then quickly glanced at Celas who had suddenly become very fidgety and was biting her lip with her fangs so hard she must have been drawing blood. He really didn't want to do anything that might make her start crying but even he could tell she was hungry and Alucard said she needed it to heal right. Maybe he could do it so she wouldn't cry..... Nope that needed him to know why she was upset in the first place.
He was suddenly snapped out of his thoughts when he realized he was staring at Celas and she was looking back at him with some visible fear. He had been practically glaring at her and she was worried he might be mad at her; not only had she needed to be saved, she had gotten him in trouble too.
Not being able to come up with a good solution and slightly afraid of Celas' fearful look Ranma just held the pack out to her and blurted out what he needed to as fast as his mouth would allow. "Drinkthisitwillhelpyouheal!"
Celas barely was able to make out his request, but him holding out the bag of blood made his meaning clear enough. She caught herself licking her lips as she looked at it and almost immediately rejected it, however she tried to make herself take the bag. She reached out to take it but her fingers refused to go farther than hovering an inch over its surface; she just couldn't accept being a vampire, visions of what had been done to her friends played through her mind and reinforced the fact that vampires were monsters. After a few seconds she dropped her arm in defeat, she just couldn't do it; and now she had let Ranma down for the third time today even though it sounded like he was just trying to help her.
Ranma began to worry that he had made a mistake as tears started to well up in Celas' eyes. "Wha-wha-What's wrong?!" he asked in a bit of a panic.
Celas looked in Ranma's eyes and saw he was concerned for her and couldn't help but cry but managed to answer his question between sobs "I...I can't!...I feel...I feel like I won't be human anymore!... I don't want to be some evil monster!"
Ranma began to panic and wave his arms frantically while whipping his head from side to side in a search for a way to make this stop; a girl was crying and he had no idea how to help, this didn't have anything to do with fighting after all. He remembered Integral had said something though when he thought he had been turned into an evil demon maybe that would help "You’re just a blood sucking demon, that doesn’t make you evil!" Celas just started to cry harder after he said it though.
Ranma mentally kicked himself at whatever he just did. "I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Forget the blood! Whatever I did I didn't mean it!"
Celas watched as Ranma, a strong vampire in her eyes, was having a panic attack over her crying. she wiped her eyes and her crying slowed; in the back of her mind she started to realize how silly it was to be crying about becoming an uncaring evil vampire when someone who was more vampire than she could ever be was panicking and apologizing because she was crying. In truth she couldn't even think of another guy who was emotional enough to react like Ranma was. That realization stopped her tears and brought out the faint beginnings of a smile.
Ranma noticed the change in her attitude and slowly calmed down to 'prepare to run' instead of 'panic like there’s a c-c-c-cat around'. "Um...I...er...Are you ok?" he asked nervously.
Celas wiped her eyes and smiled a little at his caring. "I-I'm alright, Master. I-I just didn't think I would be myself anymore...I'm sorry."
"It’s alight, if you don't wanna drink it you don't have ta," Ranma reassured to prevent any further tears. He stood up and offered her a hand. "How 'bout we get back to Hellsing?"
Celas took his hand and stood up but didn't let go of his hand. "Alright, Master."
Ranma took little note of the fact his hand hadn't been released, he just figured if it helped make her comfortable it was fine, it wasn't like he couldn't beat anything in London with one arm being held by a cute girl. He led her outside and stopped. The rest of the Hellsing crew had left without them already. He sighed slightly; he didn’t know that a clean up crew was on they way and he could catch a ride with them. They were stuck on the other side of town without a ride and would probably end up being shot at by Hellsing troops if he went roof hopping and was seen; even if they knew it was him Integral would probably let them attack him as punishment for “endangering the secrecy of Hellsing institution”, so now they were stuck with walking back across the town. He sighed again; he might as well get started.
-----
Ranma came to a stop before entering the front doors to the Hellsing institute. “Hey, why don’t we start your training tonight?!” Ranma asked Celas brightly as he finally thought of a way to help get their minds off her problem. It had taken him the whole walk home but at least he came up with it.
“What? Training?” Celas asked in surprise. She had been distracted as thoughts of the night’s previous events ran through her mind.
“Sure, ya must’ve noticed you’re stronger and faster and stuff. I figure we should get you used to that first; you probably don’t need speed, strength, or endurance training. Later we’ll do the harder stuff like going through walls and some martial arts.”
“You know some martial arts, Master?” Why in the world would someone as strong as Ranma need martial arts? Well it did explain how he beat Alexander so easily.
“Heh, some? I’m the best there is! I’ve been practicing it my whole life. So you wanna start tonight?”
It only took Celas a second to make her decision. Spending time with Ranma was a plus. Having something, anything, to do besides practice at the shooting range was a plus. In fact she couldn’t even think of a downside at the moment. “Ye…Yes. Thank you, Master.”
“Great! Now what can we do for practice…” Training dummies might have been good, he’d have to look into getting some. Problem with training right at the moment was neither of them had any idea how strong she was, but he was pretty sure she would be able to break people’s bones pretty easy, so sparring with others was out. He didn’t have a problem telling how much his strength had increased because he understood how much force everything he did actually exerted. He knew how much damage every punch would do. She needed some kind of visual aid since she wouldn’t be able to feel a difference. He looked around the Hellsing compound but mostly it was just lawn and big stone buildings. “I got it! Ok, Celas stand up next to the wall and jump up as high as ya can, then push off the wall with your arms as hard as ya can.”
Celas nodded to show she understood before walking up to the wall of the mansion, she didn’t understand how it would help but she would do it. She closed her eyes and thought about putting all her strength into her jump. She leapt and started to concentrate on putting all her strength into her push away, she opened her eyes as she felt herself reaching her max height and pushed away from the wall. She spun slightly backwards and off balance and quickly looked around to find something to grab onto or to know when she needed to catch herself. Unfortunately as she looked over her shoulder at the ground she noticed she was about the same height as the second floor’s windows and was nowhere near the building anymore, and she was falling towards the ground back first. “GYAAAHHH!”
Ranma was impressed. He had just expected double strength of a normal girl, that was something most martial artists would have trouble with; not the good ones of course, just most of them. Determining that she wasn’t going to land well he jumped from where he was standing and caught her before she hit the ground. She screamed again at the sudden contact but quickly realized she had been saved.
When Ranma landed and set her down she looked down, a bit ashamed at being helpless and failing to succeed. “Thank you for saving me.”
Ranma totally didn’t mind her failure, and completely missed her attitude. ”No problem. I didn’t even think you’d jump that high.” Ranma thought about a good way for her to correct the fall, a back flip would work well; he might as well train her in balance and acrobatics if they were doing this anyway. “Next time after you push away try to lean back and spin your legs up like this.” He jumped at the wall and pushed away with his arms, waited till he was halfway down his descending ark and lazily preformed a back flip to land standing.
Celas looked from Ranma to the wall apprehensively, sure he had made it look easy but she was really sure she wouldn’t be able to do that; just the fact he had been able to match the height she had reached without trying hard was a big indication him thinking it was easy wasn’t to be valued. She was pretty sure she’d break her neck if she tried. She couldn’t help but realize the depressing truth that the threat of a broken neck shouldn’t bother her.
Ranma managed to notice the look of apprehension that came over his student’s face. “Don’t worry about falling, I’ll catch you.” He was willing to train her but she WAS still a girl after all, so he didn’t want to let her get hurt at all.
Celas gave him an appreciative nod and tried again. She jumped, pushed off, used way too much power to spin herself and found herself being caught after a dizzying number of back flips.
Ranma told her to try with only a small amount of force next time and to try again. Internally he couldn’t help congratulating himself, this would train her to understand her strength and help her start learning control over it, plus she’d work on balance and learn to perform back flips. Yep, a couple hundred more of these tonight and she’d be ready to try something new for a while.
-----
Ranma was slightly disappointed in Celas’ workout, 437 seemed like a small number to quit after but in her defense she seemed to have learned enough of what he wanted her too. Also she probably fell asleep in the middle of her jump due to it being so close to morning, not lack of stamina, or maybe a bit of both. He was proud of how well she did and how willing she was to work at it though.
He sighed as he phased through the top of his bed, he had already decided that today he would work on her speed, coordination, and a simple kata to make sure she knew how to put power into attacks before she fell into any bad habits, problem was he knew he’d have to try to get her to eat again. He hated to see her cry but he REALLY didn’t want her to have any problems because she didn’t eat. He was kind of hoping she would ask sometime today on her own, just in case he wouldn’t ask until the end of the day.
Luckily Alucard wasn’t going to bother them for at least that night, he had said something about some dream editing joke Ranma didn’t understand involving Integral had been so funny he was going to keep it going with a naughty schoolgirl and her teacher. Something about sucking a lollipop in class and deserving a spanking. Whatever he was talking about Ranma was just happy it would give him some peace for awhile.
Ranma checked his mental link and found Celas was still sleeping, so he went ahead and walked through the wall and into her room. Luckily he had regained enough energy over night to be able to use it for little things without worrying about running out.
Ranma walked over and knocked on the hood of his charge’s bed. He heard a rustle and a yawn inside as Celas began to wake up and look for the button to raise the hood. She was surprised when she found him standing next to her bed waiting for her. “Master? What are you doing here?”
“Figured we could get an early start on training.” Ranma said happily. Even if it did kind of cut into his training time it was fun to have a student, besides he had to learn to teach if he was ever going to run a dojo.
Celas almost groaned but caught herself before she did so. She was tired still and all that work had really worn her out and she was hungry. She caught her last thought and shivered, best to forget she had thought about that for now. Yawning again she got up. At least jumping around and realizing how strong she was had been a bit of a thrill. “Are we doing the same thing today?”
Ranma shook his head, “Speed practice and some basics for fighting.” Speaking of that he remembered she’d probably need to change clothes. He didn’t know what kind of idiot designed a uniform with a skirt that short for field work that may include running, jumping, and kicking. “You got any other clothes, anything with pants?”
Celas blushed, a hard trick for a vampire, when she finally noticed that with her uniform on last night she had given Ranma plenty of chances to peek up it. If only she had remembered! She felt so stupid! Thank god he had reminded her before they started training today! Hopefully he hadn’t taken advantage of the chance yesterday, at least this was a good sign he didn’t.
Celas nodded but kept her eyes looking away in embarrassment. She walked over to her dresser and pulled out some clothes then noticed him still standing there. “C-could you…um…leave?” she asked, she was still flustered and didn’t want to look him in the eyes.
Ranma had been busy trying to figure out what he had said that had gotten her to blush like that when he realized he was still in the room and she was about to change. “Sorry!” he apologized and ran through the wall into the hallway.
After she finished dressing Celas came out to meet him in the hallway. He froze when he saw her. In her uniform she was pretty good looking, but in her current clothes, a pair of pale jeans, black hat and shirt that left her midriff showing, and a choker around her neck she was stunningly attractive. The outfit was perfect for a vampire, giving her a gothic semi-tomboyish look. “Master?” Ranma shook himself out of his trance, that outfit was really distracting.
“Oh yeah, um why don’t we go up to the roof to practice. Gimme your hand.” He held out his hand for her to take. She did so a bit reluctantly, not knowing why he wanted to hold her hand, but quickly discovered the answer when he walked into the rock wall and pulled her along. There were a few seconds, or perhaps minutes, there was no way to tell, where she became disorientated and lost all sensation except for holding his hand as they passed through the stones. Then the world came back into light as they rose out of the roof of the building. She suppressed a slight shiver, that had not been particularly fun.
Ranma let go of her hand and walked over to face her from a slight distance ahead. “Alright Celas, first lets do a few basic kata. Just watch me till ya think you’ve got it then try to copy me. And we’re gonna go a bit faster every time.” She nodded and studied his moves.
-----
Tonight’s progress was better than Ranma had expected, seems Celas had had some prior training in fighting, not much though. At least she didn’t need as much correcting to her attacks. He stopped the training as soon as he was pretty sure she wouldn’t be breeding any bad habits and thought she had gotten used to the fastest she could go. “Alright Celas that was good. You can stop.”
Celas promptly stopped her kata and slid down to sit on the ground. She was TIRED! She had expected it to get a bit better when she woke up more but it wasn’t going away, just getting worse.
“Ready for what’s up next?”
“Wha-what? More?!” She couldn’t believe it; if she hadn’t been dead that workout would have killed her. How much more did she have to do?!
“Ya just have ta hit me once then we’ll be done for the night. Go!” he didn’t wait for her to get up; he just started walking to the edge of the roof. When he got there he looked back and noticed she hadn’t moved yet. Turning back forwards he jumped off the roof, kicked off the wall halfway down, and landed a good distance away from the building.
Celas hadn’t quite understood why he said go and walked away but when she saw him jump off the roof she instantly raced to the edge to see if he was ok.
“If you don’t hurry up you’re never gonna catch me!” Ranma yelled up to her from the yard. Celas groaned; she had to catch him? That was going to be impossible. Still, she would rather try than give up; maybe he would let her stop before she actually caught him. Not really seeing a good way around it she leapt of the roof and hoped she wouldn’t get hurt.
She landed a bit hard but quickly recovered. She briefly considered if she should actually try to hit Ranma, she really didn’t want to but he was really strong, and a martial artist, and making her do this. Yep, she could hit him.
Hoping to get him before he could move, she sprinted at him as fast as she could. A good idea in theory but she didn’t know how fast she could sprint so when he dodged she found herself halfway down the length of the compound before she could stop herself, leaving her incredibly surprised at just how fast everything had flown by.
“You’ll never catch me if that’s all ya got!” Ranma taunted, falling into the same state of mind he had when he tried this with his pop. Celas rose to the challenge and tried another pass, this time however he ran away from her facing backwards to continue his taunting. “Is that it?! Maybe you should just give up?”
Angry at the insult, Celas poured on a bit more speed as she ran and tried launching some punches at the target that was keeping just out of her range. In response to the attempt Ranma just laughed and jumped over her head, starting in the opposite direction to make her learn to stop and change direction faster.
-----
The “game” went on until near morning, in retrospect Ranma realized he should have stopped an hour or two before. However he hadn’t bothered to check Celas’ condition with his new senses, physically Celas was still ready to run around for hours still and that was all he had been judging her stamina by. Mentally she was absolutely exhausted, she was clumsier and less coordinated than usual but Ranma just guessed she was having trouble adjusting to her new power.
He wouldn’t have probably noticed till she lost consciousness, had he not bothered to make a quick check of her through their link when she tripped and fell in a way that would have broken most peoples’ necks. Her body was fine, but her energy was really low, the workouts and lack of food had drained most of her power. She had less energy than he had after drinking; she wasn’t in pain though, so he guessed it had been alcohol alone that had caused his headache. He couldn’t believe how much she was trying to push herself though; the only person he knew that worked themselves to exhaustion was… himself actually. And the only reason he could feel from her as to why she was pushing herself was to not be weak and need saving again. He could understand that from a guy, or even a girl like Integral, but Celas had needed saving twice in less than a week, why should she be bothered by needing help again.
He put aside his thoughts when he saw her trying to get up and went to help. Instead of placing her on her feet he swept her up into his arms, training was done for the night after all and she didn’t need more exertion. “Ya did real good, Celas. How bout we call it a night?”
Celas just responded with a tired smile. She felt too drained to talk. Now that Ranma was holding her she felt like just falling asleep in his arms. If it weren’t for the fact her prevalent thought all night had been not to seem weak she probably would have. It was a struggle for her though, especially when he pulled her back trough the dark emptiness, leaving her seeing nothing and only feeling him. Luckily they quickly popped back out of the wall and he started putting her back onto her feet; causing her to wake up enough to stabilize herself.
The room was pitch black but Ranma could see it fine. Besides he’d been going in there every night for more than a month and was pretty sure he could navigate it with his eyes closed. As he walked over to the fridge that took up half of one of the walls he nervously glanced back over his shoulder at Celas. This could be a really bad idea, she could start crying again, but she really needed it. He pulled open the fridge’s door and extracted two packs of blood. When he turned back towards her he could see her take on a more troubled look, he probably would have missed it but he was really looking for it. Deciding it would be best to try to understand her problem better he opened up the link between them to know what she was thinking.
Celas was hungry; she knew she needed to drink the blood. The ramifications still terrified her though. She knew she wasn’t normal anymore, but she still couldn’t help but feel it was crossing the line to being a monster to drink a person’s blood. But then there was Ranma to consider, he drank blood but certainly wasn’t a monster, mentally anyway. She wished she could think it over better but she could feel her thoughts being slowed and losing focus due to fatigue. She couldn’t suppress images of her friends as ghouls due to another vampire coming back to haunt her. She wanted to help people not hurt them. Everything was mixing together and becoming harder to fully understand. She just wished she knew what to do, she wished someone could help her make the right choice.
Ranma didn’t totally understand her thoughts but he did understand the helping people part well enough. This whole mind reading thing seemed kind of useless, she didn’t think at all like he did. He bit off the top of the straw-like tube at the top of one pack and held it out to her. “Here, you’ll need to eat if you wanna help save people.”
It made sense to her, she was there to help people and so was Ranma, if she had to be less human to do it the sacrifice was worth it. Hopefully she could remain very human, like Ranma was. Her hunger stricken mind put up little defense to the idea as it had come from someone she trusted. She smiled a bit and reached out for the blood. She was too tired and overcome enough by the start of her meal she didn’t even notice as Ranma picked her up and carried her to her bed.
-----
Several days later Alucard smiled evilly as he watched Ranma slip into unconsciousness an hour or so after Celas through his higher senses. His latest dream scheme with the teacher motif had come to fruitation earlier in the day so he had been looking for entertainment again. There was one possibility but that would take a day or two to make occur, he still didn’t have anything for the immediate time being. That was until he had noticed just how much Celas’ crush on Ranma had been elevated due to their link. It gave him so many new possibilities. He had been waiting to pull any major pranks on her due to her mental fragility; he didn’t wish to kill a vampire he shared blood with after all. Luckily though about five days ago she had actually accepted her new life enough to drink blood. And over the following days actually seemed to gradually accept that despite her daily meals she wasn’t becoming evil; that she was the same person she always was, just that her job required the blood to save lives. Even with the disgust that lingered the hunger from her workouts with Ranma had enough effect to keep her on the right track.
Now how to start playing with his new target? Ranma was too hard to effect mentally; he was just good for physical gags. She was still vulnerable though, so he should make use of that while he could. He should probably do something that falls into play all at once though, if it went on too long there were too many people who might tell her it was his doing. He also still had those dream ideas fresh in mind, something like that could work, yes, it could work very well indeed. All he would need would be to give the imaginative parts of Celas’ brain a little jumpstart while she slept.
-----
Celas awoke panting, the bed around her covered in sweat. She’d dreamt of Ranma. It was a _VERY_ vivid dream; if she hadn’t woken up just now she would have been positive it was real. It crossed her mind for a second that it might have been reality and waking up the dream, but something told her in the back of her mind that idea was stupid. It certainly was more intense that any dream she had ever had before. She couldn’t help but blush just thinking about it.
She didn’t know what time it was, there was no clock in her room, and without windows she didn’t even know if it was night yet. This was the first time since starting her training with Ranma that he hadn’t woken her. She might even be awake before he was. There was no way to tell though; she didn’t even know where his room was since they never went there. Besides, she didn’t think she could go see him after dreaming all those things about him.
She fumbled with the button to open the bed and get up when a worried thought came to her. What about her training? She definitely wouldn’t be able to concentrate. Maybe she could say she was sick, but could the undead even be sick? Could she perhaps get a hold of him without having to see him?
#Isn’t that why you humans invented telephones?# Came a voice in her mind.
“What?!” she pun around in surprise to try to find the source of the voice. “Who said that!?”
#Alucard of course! Who other than Ranma or I can use telepathy?#
“Huh?” she asked in surprise, Ranma had told her about Alucard and that he was the other resident bloodsucker, he never mentioned psychic communication though. ”Telepathy?”
#Mental communication, I’m surprised Ranma hasn’t used it with you yet. Anyway I‘ll go into his dreams to tell him you’re not up to training today. And there’s no need to worry about him thinking it’s just a dream, it will be so real he’ll almost confuse it with reality.# Alucard lied mentally.
Celas’ heart stopped, or would have had it been beating, it sounded just like what she had experienced. “You can do that?”
#Easily, Ranma can too, why not have him show you some time. Now I better go tell him before he wakes up. Goodbye.# Alucard stopped his communication with her but continued to monitor her mind so he could provide a gentle nudge, the same type of gentle nudge given by a ten ton wrecking ball, if he needed to.
Ranma would never violate her privacy like that, she was positive of it, it had just been that he had been so real in the dream; she knew it couldn’t have been nothing more than a dream. She was pretty sure Ranma was too good a person to do that though, he had even warned her about wearing her skirt to train, though with his abilities peeping would be a minor task to accomplish. Where had that thought come from? Oh, well where it came from isn’t important; the task at hand is. Could it have been Ranma? Only he and Alucard had the power necessary, and it certainly wasn’t Alucard in that dream. She couldn’t believe he would do it, but something told her he must have. The asshole, she couldn’t believe he would take advantage of her like that.
Ranma meanwhile was getting up, never having been warned by Alucard of course, and already coming over to get Celas so they could train. He phased through the wall into her room and found himself emerging right in front of her. “Hey you’re already up.” He said and smiled at seeing her. “Get a good night’s sleep?”
In a distant corner of the castle Alucard was laughing his head off as Celas slapped Ranma so hard he flew across the room then promptly stormed out. It was amazing, and absolutely hilarious, how unlucky Ranma could actually be.
Ranma sat up and rubbed his cheek. “What the heck was that for?” he asked nobody in particular.
#She’s mad you haven’t asked her out yet.# Alucard explained in his mind.
#WHAT!?!?#
#She’s been waiting for you to ask her out. Now you’ve made her wait too long.#
#What? Why would she want me to ask her out!?#
#Ranma I think it’s about time you had “The Talk”, since Genma was too much of an idiot to teach you. Why don’t we go get drinks and further your education on humans.#
# “The Talk”? Whadda ya mean? And I already told you I don’t ever wanna get drunk again.#
#Trust me Ranma, you will tonight.#
-----
Celas shifted a bit and had trouble getting staying asleep. She’d been worried ever since the night before that she had been to hard on Ranma, she didn’t have any hard proof Ranma invaded her dreams at all. She shifted to get more comfortable and to put her head under her pillow, it smelled too much like alcohol and it was making it hard to keep from waking up. As she twisted her elbow ran into something soft.
There was a soft groan of “Oof”. From beside her.
She was almost instantly awake; that definitely hadn’t been right. She dug her arm into whatever was beside her again.
“Ugh, pop, cut it out I’m getting up ok?” Ranma said as he started to wake up.
Celas of course responded to the proof she needed that Ranma would in fact take advantage of her by hitting him away and cursing him for his actions. Ranma, without the reaction time or energy needed to phase through the side if the coffin was knocked through it the hard way. Celas, instead of staying to confront him for his actions, and ruin the end of the plan, instead left to go think how much she hated Ranma thanks to a “gentle” nudge to her thoughts. Ranma meanwhile was in a weak enough state that the whole affair was easily altered in his mind to be nothing more than a dream that he promptly forgot as he was placed back into his own bed and “lightly” encouraged to sleep.
-----
“Good day miss Victoria.” Walter greeted Celas later that day when he found her exiting the firing range. “I just came to tell you I replaced your broken coffin.”
Celas was surprised; she hadn’t told anyone what had happened yet and didn’t see how he knew it was broken. “H-Hello. Um thank you Walter. Sorry to cause you the trouble”
“It was no trouble at all. Did you have trouble getting the old one open for some reason?”
“N-Not exactly.” She was a bit nervous about telling Walter what had actually happened, though she did need to talk to someone about it and Walter was one of the few people she felt close to here, of anyone he is who she would talk to if she told her problem to anyone. Her internal strife was quickly settled by the need for someone who cared about her to help. Walter listened to her entire confession of recent events and her feelings towards Ranma. And for an ex-Angel of Death Walter comforted her extremely well as she told him her problem.
Walter of course was able to figure out the truth of the matter quite easily. Ranma had not once acted perverted since he arrived that wasn’t due to one of Alucard’s tricks. Though, Alucard certainly did like making him appear to be a pervert. Also, though most didn’t bother to notice, he had seen Ranma’s clueless expression whenever he overheard any soldiers’ dirty jokes. He had also been forced to listen to Alucard complain for an hour straight how badly Ranma had taken to being drunk and that nobody knew how to act when drunk like they did before he was captured, that and that there wasn’t enough recreational killing in the modern world. Nothing he was accused of fit his personality. Besides, Alucard had supposedly been nice to her; he had to be up to something.
“Celas, I think you need to know something about Alucard. He has a very…strange idea of humor. He seems particularly fond of making other people seem perverted or getting them into trouble.” Walter explained with fresh annoyance, just the other day he’d figuring out the general reason why Integral was avoiding him and blushing, just not the specifics.
Celas wiped away some tears from her eyes; she had cried a great deal once she finally opened up to someone. “So you don’t think it was Ranma?”
“Most definitely. He’s one of the most innocent people I’ve ever met. I doubt he would even understand your dream if you described it to him.” He added the last part jokingly to help brighten her mood.
She brightened slightly at his joke and caught him in a hug. “Oh thank you, Walter.”
The ex-Angel of death was surprised by the gesture but quickly recovered and patted her back reassuringly. “You’re welcome, Celas.”
-----
Alucard, unfortunately for him, was too busy preparing Ranma for his date and preparing for his final surprise to have been able to prevent the conversation between Celas and Walter. It had taken him half an hour to help Ranma get over his migraine from the night before, an hour to explain how to ask Celas out, another hour to explain that he was supposed to kiss her right away and why people liked kissing, and then two hours to get him a new outfit he was actually willing to wear. The last was largely because the first hour and a half of suggested clothes were BDSM outfits.
After Ranma finally snapped at Alucard to stop trying to make him look like a pervert the final new outfit Alucard settled for something that wasn’t nearly what he had hoped for but at least he found it more befitting of a vampire than a Chinese shirt and baggy pants. Now he wore black silk slacks, blood red button up silk shirt, black tie, and a black jacket with red lining and a red and black ying-yang on the back. The lining and symbol on the coat had been white but Alucard had somehow dyed them blood red when Ranma wasn’t looking. Then to complete the look they finished it off with a pair of red tinted black rimmed glasses.
Then with the final addition of a bouquet of black roses they were ready for him to finally ask her out.
-----
As Celas’ door opened in response to his knock, Ranma was instantly surprised as the redhead grabbed him into a hug. Alucard, who was watching from his room, was equally surprised, he hoped for violence and hatred. And quickly set about finding what had changed in her mind, he cursed for a moment when he found it but the end of his plan could still work so not everything was a loss. Alucard would just have to bring it into play before they went out instead of after Ranma being attacked.
“Master! I’m so sorry about how I acted!” She threatened to break Ranma’s back with her full strength hug. Luckily she let go after a few seconds and backed away, embarrassed by her outburst.
“It’s…um... no problem. Alucard told me it was cuz you…ah just wanted me to ask you…er ask you out. So um…do you wanna? …um go out with me that is.” Ranma tumbled through the question clumsily and then as an after thought held out the roses he had been carrying at his side for her.
Celas was surprised he would actually ask her out on a date, it was just so sudden. She didn’t even registered the fact Alucard had suggested it. “I…I would love to.” She was again surprised by his sudden change in behavior as he bent in to kiss her.
“AHEM!” both young vampires jumped back in surprise at the sudden outburst as Alucard made his presence known behind them. “Now now, making out like a couple of high school kids before your dates even begun, we can’t have that. Besides you have to give a girl time to get ready, she’ll need to go shopping and go to the salon. You had better give her a week just to be safe. Besides, Ranma, you have something to do right now and there’s no time to waste.”
“But…” Ranma began to protest but was cut off.
“No time to talk, Ranma, we’re late.” Alucard said as he grabbed Ranma by the arm and pulled him into a wall. Celas was left behind in her doorway with a million thoughts running through her head. Why couldn’t Alucard have come along a few seconds later?! She finally had a date with Ranma only one week away! Where was she going to find a good dress that was open at night? Damn Ranma looked good when he tried to! Maybe Alucard wasn’t such a bad guy, giving her time to prepare and everything. Did that mean Ranma wasn’t that good of a guy? Where did they just go to? Which came first the chicken or the egg? Damn Ranma looks good when he tries too!
Ranma was equally confused by where he was going as he was dragged through the walls of the mansion. #Didn’t you say I was supposed to kiss her?# he asked in confusion.
#Of course, on the date! On the date you should kiss her right away, before you even say “hello”. Tonight you were just asking her out.#
#Then why’d I get all dressed up and stuff?#
#That’s for your practice date.# It was a good thing they were inside a wall when Alucard told him this or his wide smile would have warned Ranma to run for his life.
#MY WHAT?!?!?!#
#Your practice date, you’ll go out with a friend of mine tonight so we can make sure you won’t make a total idiot out of yourself on Saturday. You don’t want to ruin the date for Celas, do you?#
#No but…#
#Then you’ll have to practice.#
#Fine, but I ain’t gonna kiss her.# Ranma might not be the hardest person in the world to manipulate but he at least thought he knew how to cut a deal.
#Whatever you say but you’ll need to practice with someone before your date. I suppose you could ask Integral to practice with you.#
Ranma blanched at the thought of asking Integral to help him like that, he’d be lucky to survive her refusal. #I… uh guess I could practice with your friend if she doesn’t mind.#
#Of course she doesn’t, pretend it’s a real date and kiss her as soon as you see her.# Alucard pulled Ranma out of the wall behind him and onto the sidewalk surrounding the estate, they had traveled though the ground surround the mansion and come out the outer wall right next to the corner of the street. “Now wait right here. She’ll be around the corner in a few seconds; you’ll know her by her green hair.” With that he faded into a mist to watch without being noticed.
Ranma fidgeted nervously for a minute straight before someone finally rounded the corner; with his nerves at their end from the wait he was moving to kiss the girl as soon as he saw her hair was green. The girl froze in surprise but Ranma was too nervous to notice as he locked lips with her and darted his tongue into her mouth like he was told to. After a few seconds he noticed she wasn’t responding, Alucard said she would be responding with her own tongue, so he pulled back away from her. He noticed she was staring straight ahead, not focused on anything and was worried for a moment. “Are you ok?”
A small distance away Alucard took a picture to commemorate the event. Walter had a surprisingly nice camera. He’d have to keep it, maybe start up a scrap book of doom or something.
-----
Ryoga couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter which way he went, Ranma was the other direction, but for some reason he kept going anyway. To make matters worse everyone he asked had either never heard of Hellsing Institution or wouldn’t answer him when he asked. And as long as he was in the city the only places he seemed to consistently find to camp in were alleys. The muggers were annoying too. He’d make Ranma pay for putting him though the hell that was his life, and infinitely more important he’d make him pay for the curse he had received while trying to track him down.
About dusk he had felt the disturbing sensation of height loss when cold water hit him as a car drove though a puddle. Oh, Ranma would pay when he found him; he’d kill him with his own two hands. That had been hours ago.
Just now he was rounding a corner when out of nowhere someone kissed him. His first kiss and it came from some stranger he never even got a chance to look at, he didn’t even know if it was a guy or girl. When the kiss ended he was still too stunned to remember to even breath.
“Are you ok?” The question was enough to remind Ryoga of the world around him and he gasped for breath.
He looked over the man who had kissed him. He was clearly Japanese and he looked really familiar, but the fangs, outfit and glasses didn’t fit anyone he knew, the pigtail was really familiar though. “Ranma?” he asked in a surprised whisper when he noticed the pigtail.
“Yea?” Ranma asked, relieved that she was ok.
All of his hatred for Ranma came back to Ryoga like a tidal wave, all the trouble he went though to get to their battle only to be left behind, the living hell of being cursed to turn into a girl, and now stealing his first kiss. Red ki ran off the cursed boy in waves, brightening the night around him. There was only one suitable solution to his problem. “DIE!”
AN: BWAHAHAHA I’m cutting it there for the moment.
I know in the manga the seal thingy Alexander used was a barrier but in that he stuck it to all the doors and windows and whatnot. Anime version it was stuck to blank was mostly so I’m saying its different.
Also just because some of you may want to know I think Ranma probably did get “the talk” from someone before the manga started but I wouldn’t be surprised if it came after his curse. Also in case anyone is wondering just how badly Alucard distorted “the talk” actually probably none, the truth would probably be enough…maybe the truth plus some vampiric ideas of how to go about it.