( your heart bleeds like mine )

[suninhades]

Who: The Guild of Battling Preternatural Horrors, AKA Hellsing.
What: Open Hellsing log!
Where: The Hellsing Guild Hall and grounds in Sobek Croix, The Ankh.
When: Any time.
Notes: I tossed up a couple of random headers + a planned thread starter, but feel free to make your own threads, and use this post for as long as you like - I know it's been a while since we've had one.
Warnings: Fucked up beyond all reason.

The climate around the guild hall in past weeks has been turbulent - tense in places, happy in others, confused, and as ever, over-worked. Returns, resurrections, and the typical slew of workday horrors all combine into a uniquely Hellsing cocktail of emotions. (Unless you're Mr Lestrange, presumably.) But there's still work to be done, hauntings to be investigated, monsters to slay, wards to cast, reports to put off...

Comments

[regicidium]

He'd arrived on horseback at approximately the right time he'd promised -- appointments measured into hours, nay, minutes, seems a strangely pedantic quirk of this time, but Jack's schedule was something of a trial by fire in this way, and so no longer an unfamiliarity. Jaime wears the make of his home world with a certain kind of stubbornness unless he's cornered via social terrorism into wearing a suit, and today is not such a day -- dark brown leather with visible stitching flaps as far as his knees in an open coat, scratched and roughed from good use.

Armed with knife and sword both, these things worn plainly and heavily, his former wealth is not readily apparent, but his bearing of a knight is in his stride, the set of his shoulders, his own kind of militant precision.

He is, also, a little cynical of this endeavour, for reasons he had not explicitly made clear to Jack. But here Jaime is all the same, to hear what the lady might have to say in her measure of the arrangement, and he raps the backs of his knuckles against the frame of her door to signal his arrival once he's directed through headquarters.

[suninhades]

Integra puts out her cigarette but leaves the widow open, and ties her long hair back before she goes to answer the door. When she does it's - well, as she ever is, formally dressed (black dress shirt, vest, red tie, black dress pants, black gloves with runes on the backs of them), tall, pale hair and darker skin, offset with blue eyes behind glasses. Plenty of people think she looks strange, not quite pretty but maybe striking, in her height and the strength in her shoulders.

"Mr Lannister, please come in."

Sir Hellsing's office is decent sized, old-fashioned, and carries the worn-in feel of someone who genuinely uses it to work in, versus merely keeping it for show. It's tidy at the moment, but there are papers and books and reports hovering on the edges, waiting. She motions for him to take a seat on the other side of her desk. "I understand that Mr Benjamin is keen on this arrangement, but I've heard little of your opinion."

Straight to business it is, then.

[regicidium]

Jaime nudges the door some of the way behind him, unseeing because he's watching her instead -- not that this is necessarily their first encounter, but certainly one with more direct conversation involved. He meanders his way after her, never really in a rush. "Ser Jaime, if you favour formality," is a mild enough correction, and one he's made one hundred times.

He drags the offered chair out but also out of the way, standing instead before her almost out of instinct.

"My opinion is mere curiousity, my lady. There are few positions I know about in Baedal that require my particular set of skills."

[suninhades]

"Sit down, Ser Jaime." An equally mild self-correction and order all in one - because if he's going to make her order him to sit, then that's fine, she knows plenty of soldiers, but she's not going to look up at him for an entire conversation like some bloody royal. She sits anyway, not bothering to stare at him until he complies; there's an air about this woman that says she isn't used to people not doing exactly what she tells them to do.

And then- "There are plenty of positions in Baedal for a man of the sword, if that's what you're selling, but I've noticed most of you who fall out of the sky in a suit of armor aren't willing to put the work in to adapt."

She doesn't really sound rude, just. Blunt. Polite in her old-world, stiffly educated accent, but disdaining of heading anywhere delicately.

[regicidium]

A second ticks by before Jaime complies, setting chair back into place and sitting down, a slow adjustment of weaponry so nothing is jabbing him anywhere critical. Once down, posture and demeanour is almost casual despite the affect he gives otherwise, occupying the space granted him with assumption, not so unlike the big cat best associated with his house.

His eyebrows raise at blunt assessment, but he doesn't have argument lined up. "It's a very different world. Some of us come from great armies, or royal houses, of which Baedal lacks. Loyalties remain far afield, established by birthright."

A smile, easy, automatic. "I have had time to adjust." Or get over it.

[suninhades]

The only thing that spares Jaime from a sidelong look and being informed that Integra arrived without her army, established titles, funding, and status and yet she adapted and rebuilt it all without anyone's help (Nuala hadn't even arrived, yet) is that she's too well-mannered to get into a pedantic exchange about it. Right now. Perhaps it wouldn't be fair to hold everyone else to the standards with which she's been raised with, but men are always full of the most fantastic excuses - she's used to it.

"Then you're doing as well as can be expected, I suppose." She pulls a file folder out of a standing organizer on her desk. "I'm sure that you have a casual idea of what we do here - we fight monsters. Hellsing is a paramilitary organization that combats the forces of darkness. Sometimes this means fighting monsters, sometimes this means unraveling curses, or investigating hauntings. What we do falls between the gaps of what local canton law enforcement aren't equipped to deal with and what the Militia has too wide a response time for. It is violent, difficult work that requires a broad skillset and the ability to learn and adapt very quickly. No two threats are the same. Here, most threats are unknown at the onset of encounter."

Fighting unspeakable horrors half-blind and without official jurisdiction except through a tolerant delegation by omission loophole. Jesus Christ.

[regicidium]

As well as can be expected gets a thin and crooked smile -- if Jaime were unable to survive what some may see as sly jabs or criticisms, or took offense to all of them leveled his way by man or woman alike, he'd never have survived his own household, between Cersei and Tyrion. The topic is allowed to carry on as she continues, now listing forward in his chair, elbows set against knees in a slouch forward that is customary for him, yet somehow attentive.

He doesn't seem put off. Maybe Jack was onto something.

"I feel moved," Jaime why do you always sound sarcastic even when you're not, "to be clear that I don't hail from a realm infested with monsters of the sort found in Baedal." Only the man-shaped kind. "I've met and slayed a few villains since my time here, but I've no skill with magics to speak of."

[suninhades]

"Many of my agents are the same." She flips open the folder and selects a sheet from one of the colored tabbed sections, handing it over to him. It appears to be a list of suggested reading, and times for when the general mage tank trainer is in the back field for open calls.

"We do provide training during probationary employment. And you would, of course, be under the supervision of an experienced field agent until we're relatively sure you aren't going to be eaten alive at the first opportunity. Generally I don't permit people to be half-in on a commitment here," no, this woman doesn't seem like she appreciates anything even resembling lukewarm conviction, "but I suspect Mr Benjamin would be somewhat put out if I returned you missing a limb or ghouled. If you'd like to attend a few training sessions before you decide, you are welcome to."

[regicidium]

Jaime hesitates, before taking the sheet, squinting at the list as she speaks and bringing up a hand to scratch his jaw. His has an aversion to heavy reading, but unlike most things that pop into his mind and somehow get spoken immediately, he keeps this complaint to himself. The time table is studied instead, and the sheet folded for later reference.

"I finish what I begin," he says, on the topic of commitment. "I'll see the training sessions, but I expect I'll agree by the end of them, unless I'm found wanting."

[suninhades]

Reading is good for your brain, Jaime.

"Then we'll see how it goes." No one comes out of training anything less than needing minor medical attention, seeing as some of the tanks treat it like hazing - but it's still gentler than actual field work. (..Unless Alucard is out, that day.) She can imagine this man, this obviously upper-class knight, finding the hands-on aspect of work, the dirt and the research and the completely unglamorous blood, offensive. She hasn't decided yet whether or not she'll be impressed if he proves her wrong.

"We do offer certain benefits. Landlords in the area who appreciate us offer employees certain rates on housing, and Sobek Croix businesses sometimes mark down shopping for us. It is a quiet community here, isolated enough for when work keeps us to the hall. The locals appreciate the attention."