[65] The regenerating man
[4] The supposed telekinetic
[1] The wild card
[35] Ambush them when they leave the club.
[32] Follow them home and kidnap them in their beds.
[2] Use the press of bodies in the club to get close, then take them.
[36] Catholic
[24] No strong feelings
[10] Protestant
[1] Anti-religious
The bulk of London hasn't changed much in thirty years. There are dishes for internet on some buildings and a surplus of glowing screens shedding blue light into the night gloom, but the smells, the bustle, the clammy gloom, the essence of the great city is the same as it was when you first came.
The night is chill beneath your ballistic vest, and you're thankful for the warmth of the green uniform you wear. A helmet sits on your head, strapped down under your chin, and bits of your hair stick out the back.
Your coat hangs off your arm.
One of the soldiers, you didn't bother to learn his name, passes you a handful of thick steel and silver cuffs as you step out of the vehicle and onto the cracked asphalt four blocks away from the club. You slide a pair inside each of your six pants pockets.
"You can fit three in each cargo pocket, if you cram em in." He offers, but you shake your head.
"I'm going to try doing this quietly. Can't risk clanking."
"Suit yerself. We're going to set up on that roof, and that one." He points to two buildings on either side of the club, both of about the same height. "Things go sour? We'll nail the bastard." He raises his gun and slaps the stock meaningfully. They didn't so much as say a word to you on the ride over, but apparently you're all in together once the mission actually starts. It's professional of them, and you appreciate that.
It's the least you can do to be professional as well.
It's nine at night, and foot traffic is already nearly gone as the APC rumbles away. You follow the Hellsing soldiers until they move a block over to stay off the main road. If they're going to be there and there, the best place for you to set up is on one of the buildings in front of the club. They're big boxy affairs that give no hint as to their inner nature, but the sign on it says Florence's. Well whatever Florence's does, tonight it's your hunting stand.
You take the fire escape on the side of the building up and sit down on a folding chair somebody left on the roof, getting a good view on the front door of Crystal Night.
"What an odd name for a club." You muse as you set your hammer down beside you and settle in to wait.
Three hours later, you look down at the street and see the Templesmith woman leave the club. She's alone and presents a tempting target, but as she passes beneath you you hesitate. Something about her seems subtly off, but you can't put your finger on what exactly. You'd smell a vampire from this distance, but she doesn't smell exactly human either.
She certainly looks human. Long-limbed and sleek like a modern high society woman. She might even be the real thing, because you don't spot any wrinkles or signs of stress or age in the moonlight.
In the end it doesn't matter. You let her pass unmolested because she isn't the target you've selected.
Your man leaves the building in the midst of a crowd a few minutes later. Do you take him despite the innocents around him, risking their lives, or do you wait? Moving to finger the coin, you stop when your hand brushes steel. It's in your shirt pocket, but your new vest covers your torso too well for you to access it.
"Tch." You frown, but then reach up and pull a long leather thong off of your neck. At its end is a plain crucifix of wood dangling by four plain pine beads. More of the pine beads are clustered around the bottom of the long cord. Once it's freed, you grasp the crucifix and cross yourself, muttering prayers.
You stop after the Glory Be.
The eye-tattooed witch passes below you just as his companion did, without issue- but him you follow.
Slinking around to the back of the building, you fasten your coat around yourself to hide the vest and your distinctive Hellsing uniform before hopping three stories to the ground. The added weight of the vest and hammer make you land a little harder than you normally would, but not much.
You follow two blocks behind him, trusting that the fat man will be outpaced by his younger companions, but unfortunately he seems to be in a hurry tonight. The radio bud in your ear buzzes twice, signalling that the section of men is on the move as well, following a few streets over in the APC. They go three more blocks, moving further out of the urban sprawl and onto a road that isn't quite so well maintained. Five men in the group, only one of whom should see you. You debate just running as fast as you can and dragging the witch away, but no. You're not that fast; they'd see you, and it would only work if he didn't put up a fight anyway.
Then they stop, and you duck into the shelter of a doorway before the witch even begins to look around, closing your eyes and focussing on listening with inhumanly precise ears.
"All clear. You just wait here okay? I'll be out in a minute with the goods."
You give it another fifteen seconds before you move, sprinting in front of the crowd and glaring at them with steely grey eyes. "Get lost." You growl, and they scatter. The air where they stood smells of beer and piss. Disgusting.
Your target must have gone into the alley, so now that the witnesses are gone you follow him in as silently as any predator stalking its prey. What you find isn't welcoming.
The female witch stands with a stack of tiny boxes clasped in one hand, an automatic pistol in the other. Her eyes gleam crimson in the moonlight, shining dully from within. "Renny. Are you ready?" She purrs, and at the man's frantic nod she smiles, baring elongated conical teeth.
You pulse your radio once, a long bar that you were told only ever means one thing. 'There are more vampires than we thought there'd be'.
The bloodsucking monster in a woman's skin gestures, revealing another twist.
. . . A young woman in the habit and headwear of a nun. Her glasses gleam for an instant as she's dragged out into the open, practically levitated by the rope around her neck. So Templesmith can control rope? The nun dangles limply, her neck straining to hold up her body's weight. She wrenches her head around to the male witch, Renny, and gasps out as you watch. "It is not too late to seek salvation! If you are a Christian-"
The man slaps her, backhanded, knocking the glasses from her face with the force of the blow. "What is God to an immortal. I'm ready, Nadia. I'm ready to prove my devotion."
"Good, good!" The thief chuckles. "I knew that you would make the right choice in the end."
She holds out the boxes, and Renny takes one. But then he hesitates. "She's a nun. Don't I need to rape her first?"
"Not unless you want to, I guess." She scratches the back of her neck with her gun. "She'll be a ghoul afterwards anyway but I mean, if you're going to eat her then rape isn't really a big step."
"Well then-" He turns to the nun, belt clinking as he unfastens it and approaches the now still woman. Blood drips down her shadowed face, pooling on the ground below the holy woman, and you can hold yourself no longer! Perhaps there is more information to be learned by listening to the vampire speak, but there is a difference between passing potential evil by and ignoring evil as it stares you in the face!
Your left hand lands on the man's shoulder with an audible slap and you issue an order. "Stop."
He spins, throwing an elbow up into your face with dexterity that you don't expect from a man his size.
You squeeze, and his shoulder shatters.
The rope around the nun's neck shoots out to tangle around the head of your hammer even as it hits the vampire in her stomach, the blessed silver cap carving out a deep scoop of unholy flesh, but without enough force to tear her in half!
You step between your captive and the vampire. "Stay here," you tell him, "cooperate, and perhaps God will see fit to forgive you for the evils you planned to commit."
"Hellsing." The vampire spits as you fling your coat off, showing your uniform and its telltale patch. She dives backwards, back towards the nun. "Don't take another step, I still have a hostage!"
Once again you halt, stymied by the presence of an innocent. You open your mouth to promise retribution for even a single scratch of harm done to the woman of God, but the nun speaks first. At first she recites softly, but each word grows in volume and intensity until her head snaps up and her wide, manic eyes light on the monster standing above her. "I have told you his name and yet you do not know the truth? God does not listen to the prayers of sinners. It is only the righteous who have his ear, and whose prayers he heeds!"
"Stop blathering!" The vampire says, turning and kicking at the fallen woman with ferocious supernatural strength- but the blow never connects.
Gleaming steel flashes in an arc upwards, intersecting the incoming kick and separating the offending leg from its owner's body with a hiss! Even as the severed limb dissolves to ash the nun strikes another blow and the beast's head is removed from her neck.
The nun rises and when her eyes meet yours she bares a wide, eager smile at your disconcertion. "Oh what a pilgrimage this is!" She cries out with a voice full of joy even as she stomps on the remains of the vampire's chest, breaking the ashen statue into so much dust. "So many crimes, so many sinners- in the name of God stand aside, heathen, lest I send you on your way to hell along with the beast behind ye?"
How strange. A Japanese nun with a welsh accent and a sword, and vampires that turn to ash when they die.
"And if I don't." You ask.
"Then let it be known that Yumie Takagi of The Vatican's Section XIII shall put you out of your poor godless misery and send you to the deepest pits of hell where traitors and heretics belong!"
Well.
This is happening.
You . . . probably shouldn't kill a nun. That's definitely against Church doctrine. Maybe you can calm her down and talk this out like civilized people?
[] Kill her and go on your way.
[] Defeat her, handcuff her, and take her with you as well.
[] Break or take her weapons away, then leave.
[] Appeal to similarity. You're both Catholics here, so surely you can work this out.
[] Appeal to reason. Hellsing has claim over English matters, not the Vatican.
[] Appeal to fairness. She's killed one of the two, so you should get the other one.
[] Appeal to mercy. This man hasn't actually done anything worth killing over yet.
[] Write In