two thousand years i've been awake

[suninhades]

Who: Integra Hellsing and you.
What: I've not posted Integra in a million years.
Where: Various places.
When: Today!
Notes: Integra will be out investigating a supposedly haunted house in the district nearest Sobek Croix, Sangwine. If you are a Hellsing agent, feel free to poke the boss lady out pulling field agent shifts. If you are anybody, feel free to run into her returning back to HQ. If you are a Hellsing agent or anyone who has an appointment at Hellsing, feel free to meet her back at the ranch. Please specify what and where in your tag.
Warnings: Blud. :E

Haunted houses are not Integra's forte, to be sure, but she suspects (correctly) this is no haunted house. In time, discovers the living, chameleon organism that had grown over the basement door to hide itself, and goes about killing the damn thing. An entire basement made of flesh, covered in ever-shifted eyes and arms. At least the people it abducted were all alive, if carrying notably less blood than before.

She walks her horse back to the guild hall as the sun sets, in no mood to clean blood and gore off her horse's tack as well as all of herself. In the first floor's muck room, she goes about attempting to clean up enough to be getting on with, listening to her aid recite her messages and notes as she does.

Comments

[indiscreet]

It takes her a moment, a split second's searching her memory and matching Nuala's description, and then Anna realizes who the tall woman is, and that it means that she needs to be on her absolute best behavior.

Prince Sir Hellsing, she's half-inclined to think, and less than half-inclined to correct the notion. Integra Hellsing is, after all, Baedal's supernatural authority, and the one to whom Anna answers. And whatever discomfort or disgust she may have felt for owing her allegiance to a mortal woman, it begins to evaporate under Integra's gaze. Mortal she might be, but kine? Absolutely not.

Anna dips her head apologetically. "I was indeed searching for Princess Nuala; I confess I was unprepared not to find her here. I am sorry for disturbing Hellsing's halls without need...Sir Hellsing."

[suninhades]

Integra would laugh at the notion of such a title. She is a knight, but a peasant knight, descended from a Dutch madman, daughter of a prostitute. There is a true prince, royal blood and all, in Hellsing - she bears his psychic echo with a kind of violent pride. Draculea. If Anna has the eye for it, she'll see something else, too - alchemy. Integra is riddled with it. The horrorshow of bindings and connective circles don't make her a witch or give her power, but the magic - applied by someone very powerful but very inelegant, a genius with a sledgehammer - is viscerally human.

"It's hardly a disturbance." Integra pulls her gloves back on, the leather making no sound. She nods at Anna. "It was last minute. What are you meeting her for?"

[indiscreet]

Though Anna has no way of sensing the alchemy about Hellsing's leader, another thing catches her notice, like a kind of itch. An internal pause, and she realizes why: standing near Sir Integra was like standing in a church. Or what it would be like, she supposed, for Kindred without her particular...allergy to stand in a room full of unlit candles: perhaps not actively burning her, but the potential is unsettling.

Well, wasn't this going to be a wonderful conversation to have without making a fool of herself.

"May I safely assume she has told you about my...condition?" she begins, slightly hesitantly. "I had hoped to discuss long-term solutions with her."

[suninhades]

"She has, yes." Not to violate Anna's privacy, but because such things are a necessity when concerning the head of the organization. To this end, Integra nods at her assistant, who leaves the room and shuts the door behind her. "I understand that you've been making progress, however small."

She motions to Anna, inviting her to sit down at the table - it's not fancy, certainly not anything one would find in an office here at the guild hall - but not particularly close. She's aware of the effect she can have on some vampires, something that doesn't occur in her world.

[indiscreet]

Anna's movements are graceful as she accepts the seat across from Integra: after all, she had been first and foremost a dancer, in life. As for Nuala having shared the nature of her situation with Hellsing's leader, she can hardly be offended. Not when the standard set by her previous city's Prince had been to remove her from her position and threaten her with a blood hunt. In the end, she couldn't truly blame him: they had never known a greater threat than the Fae, and she had functionally become one of the enemy. Still, the treatment she has received at Hellsing comes off very favorably indeed in comparison.

"Some small progress, yes...sir. Princess Nuala helped me at a time when I didn't even fully realize how close I was coming to being beyond help entirely. For that, she -- and Hellsing -- have earned my loyalty." Never pass up a chance to ingratiate oneself with those in power, Anna believes - especially when the sentiment is genuine. That Nuala was willing to help her when no other Fae would (and no Kindred could even begin to try) means Anna regards the princess with something between admiration and unadulterated adoration.

"But," she continues hesitantly, "after the mission in the fog I...lost my grip again. It took some quick thinking from Jones -- who I believe you've met? -- to snap me out of it." There is a bandage around her left wrist that is currently covering up the side-effects of that quick-thinking. "It's why I need to speak with the Princess again."

[suninhades]

Unlike Princess Nuala, Integra's motives are not so charitable; she doesn't have the means to sustain her execute across the board policy here, nor the desire to rebuild a government. Sometimes she sits back from herself and inspects the reality that the line between herself as a philanthropist and herself as a tyrant is one drawn in degrees of tactics. It concerns her less than it should. In that vein: Anna is very powerful, and thus very useful, so Integra supports her.

"I don't believe that I've met anyone named Jones," she says, "Unless you mean the woman who questioned me one night." Her voice is a little dull at that; perhaps Nuala spoke to her again. Integra didn't. But she gives herself a moment to reflect on Anna's predicament, considering. "This sort of magic is not unknown to me. I don't have my great-grandfather's skill, but I'm positive that we'll be able to find someone who can oversee it." The immediacy in which she seems to understand the issue might be surprising, all things considered.