When blossoms fade

[hellsingsforyou]

Khamja were having a crisis meeting.

They didn't meet often. The disparate interests of a group like Khamja meant that the individual members didn't like being stuck together very much. It led to tension, and tension, in Khamja, led to people mysteriously disappearing. Not everyone knew everyone else in Khamja, and they usually liked to keep it that way, but something like this was unavoidable.

It had also created an opening for Lucis to expand its interests. Integra had no investment in Lucis; her interests lay in Athlum, but Lucis was tentatively an ally of Athlum, and more importantly, an enemy of Niflheim, and Integra was fond of the adage that the enemy of your enemy is your friend. At least for now.

The Lucian member was sending a representative. Integra had agreed to vouch for him because she knew him through other channels. That the young man in question was the nephew of a personal friend of Integra's went a long way towards her agreement. She could confirm his identity, and his origin in the absence of the Lucian member himself.

Underlings were allowed to accompany members on the journey, which was fortunate because Integra wasn't walking into the rat's nest that was a Khamja meeting without Alucard. Nor would the journey through the dry, sandy, and monster infested Zertinan Caverns have been so easy.

Alucard was brutal, but rarely efficient. He enjoyed the work too much to keep things neat. Integra walked, and Alucard cleared the path. It was a long walk, but Integra knew better than to complain because she wasn't foolish enough to show weakness in front of Alucard.

As she made her way past the mangled corpse of an Archeoaevis, its head nearly torn all the way off, she pulled a cigar from her breast pocket and lit it with a match. "Try not to leave a trail," she warned.

The path narrowed considerably in places, and sandfalls disguised other parts of the route, but eventually they came upon a door, barely visible in the rock, and magically bound. Integra pressed a gloved hand to it, and a glyph formed, followed by the sound of rock sliding against stone.

There was another chamber beyond, and multiple routes into it, but Integra ignored those in favour of the next door. The chamber reeked of potent magic, this fell within the sphere of some powerful wards.

The next door also opened at a touch, leading them into a bottleneck. Alucard walked on ahead, like any good guard dog would, and Integra followed as the final door opened to reveal a grand entrance hall.

"Mind your manners," she said, glancing sidelong at Alucard, "and no fighting unless I tell you." Not that Alucard needed the warning; he knew the rules. Integra wasn't concerned about his safety, or her own; she was more concerned with the tedious reparations that would have to be made if Alucard killed someone's prized underling.

"Don't I always?" Alucard asked, with that knowing look and flash of fang that said he knew the answer all too well.

Integra ignored him.

Comments

[intangibleman]

The palace, in Tyki's opinion, wasn't bad at all.

It was fancy looking, full of lots of interesting people and yet big enough to avoid all of them if he wanted to. It was nice. He hadn't spent any time in the library, half because he couldn't read Ivalician and half because there were always people in there. The recently arrived Lucians and the kid with the automail arm being the most prevalent lurkers.

The kitchen was the social hub of the palace, that had been clear from the start. People gathered there, as people had done since the dawn of time, to chat and eat and drink really, really terrible coffee. Really terrible. Tyki had tasted coffee from stands on the back streets of Ankh-Morpork during his time there and even that struggled to be as bad. It managed, but it was a close run thing.

He was crossing the hall to the kitchen when he felt the sudden arrival of another two people in the long entrance bottleneck. He paused in his step, trying to identify the signatures, but he fell short. He didn't know them. One of them felt rather powerful, but also incredibly sinister, like there was something decidedly ... off about them. Whether that was being broadcast as a warning, or whether that was just their usual signature he didn't know. The other was barely anything of note at all. A bodyguard and their master, then.

Tyki took a few more steps towards the kitchen when the entrance hall door swung open. They didn't hang around, at least.

[hellsingsforyou]

Alucard took a deep breath as he stepped into the entrance hall. The place stank of people and their daily lives. Inside felt more dangerous than the caverns had been. It was safer out there, with the lesser monsters. At least they'd only try and bite your head off, like the unthinking, unfeeling animals they were.

Inside was full of human animals, and their politics.

Or as human as they got, anyway.

One of them was making their way across the room, towards a door when Alucard entered. He wasn't anything, in terms of strength, for Alucard to be concerned about, even though the taint of viciousness was there, just like it was in Alucard himself.

The scent of Integra's cigar coloured the air, and he heard her flick ash to the ground.

There were people scattered all over; he could feel them. There was another with the taint of violence in them where the one ahead of them was going. Someone magically powerful, the one whose signature was all over the place, was off in the other direction. Another, weak compared to the rest, was below ground, almost completely masked by something. Others lay at the periphery of the place, tucked away in their warrens. Up ahead were four, of different strengths, not togeher, but in the same place.

"Where first?" he asked.

[hellsingsforyou]

Integra took a long drag on her cigar and left it between her teeth as she spied the person crossing the room. From the skin colour and the way he felt, there were very few options for who he might be.

A Noah. She'd known they were here, both in Khamja, and likely to be attending the meeting. A lot of the Jyllandi members would because they had no horses in the Ivalician political races, but everyone was always out for finding one to back, or in the case of Lucis, getting someone to back theirs.

She exhaled through her nose. Alucard was being good. Killing the Noah here would cause issues, and delay things, and besides, the Noah were like Hydra. Cut off one head, and another seven cropped up.

They were helping the Nifs, of that she was sure, but couldn't prove. That was the problem with Khamja; you found yourself stuck in a room with your enemies, and then everyone tried not to show their hands.

"Sniff out the kitchen," she told him. She'd brought Alucard, but not Walter, so she'd have to make her own tea. At least the excursion here would be short.

She walked forward, ahead of Alucard. Closer to the Noah. That darkness sent shivers down her spine, but she worked with worse monsters every day.

[intangibleman]

Tyki raised his eyebrows when he saw that it was none other than Integra who had decided to grace the palace with her presence.

That was certainly a turn out for the books. As far as he knew, she seldom left Athlum, where she lived and occupied a position best described as 'a noble with no real power but a hefty amount of influence'. The Hellsings were a noble bloodline from that country, though they hadn't, as far as he'd been told, ever married into the Nassau line to give them direct blood ties to the government.

"Kitchen's this way," Tyki said, in Jyllandi, his accent marking him more obviously as a resident of Überwald than his pallor did.

He was a handsome man, even if he did have grey skin, and he knew it. He knew it as well as anybody. He used it, on occasion, to his advantage, because a well-placed smile could open doors for you, or get coffee made so you didn't need to bother yourself. He doubted it would work on Integra ...whatever her plethora of middlenames were... Hellsing, so he didn't bother. He'd heard she was a bit ... fire and ice. Cold to advances, with a somewhat volatile temper.

He pushed the door open and entered ahead of either of them. 'Ladies first' didn't apply when the lady in question preferred to use 'Sir' over 'Ma'am' and went to a meeting with ... whoever the man was. He had some sort of Mist Mutation or Kekkei Genkai, or both, that unsettled Tyki and put him in mind of a rather large dog. The type seen on a strong iron chain with a spiked collar.

[hellsingsforyou]

Integra's glasses caught the light as she lifted her head a little. Being addressed by a Noah made her feel grubby, but she was going to be spoken to by a lot worse than him over the next few days.

She swallowed her pride and followed him. He seemed to know his way around already, suggesting he'd been here for at least a day or two.

Integra had been forced to put back her own arrival by a couple of days, or she'd have come with the Lucian representative and his bodyguard. They would have sent him with a bodyguard. Had the Lucians come across the Noah yet? She hadn't banked on both parties beind here already when she arrived.

"How long have you been here?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder to ensure Alucard was at her heels.

There was another one in the kitchen, when she walked through the door.

[lesstravelled]

The entrance of two more to the Palace hadn't gone unnoticed. Road had spent time with Lilinette, getting to know about the other residents. Lilinette was cunning, but not very smart; she knew how to get what she wanted, how to act dumber than she was, but she wasn't very good at keeping secrets. She wanted to talk, and Road had encouraged her.

So Road had learned a lot about the Arrancar. Aizen's little subordinates, and how they were ranked by strength, and who was ranked where. She'd learned about Orochimaru's demise, and that the bratty little one Kadaj was a little more dangerous than she'd first thought, but probably not by much.

She'd learned that Captain Gin was here a lot, and Kuja didn't mingle much, that the Arrancar and the Sound Four didn't get on, except for Tayuya, and kept out of each other's way, and that Kuja had inherited the Sound Four when they'd been Five.

One of the Arrancar had been there when one of the members had lost his arm, and Lilinette was sure they were more than friends. The same member who was present then had attacked L, who was the weird, grubby little man Road had seen at his computer. L and Aizen did not get along, and it had something to do with that underling of Aizen's, although Lilinette had said she shouldn't say what.

Lumi was scary, and Marluxia's attack dog, and Marluxia was a snake who liked flowers. There was Even, who had a laboratory, and Ienzo, who was the one that was the special friend of an Arrancar.

Hojo was weird, and had taken over Orochimaru's laboratories.

Lilinette hadn't been able to say anything about any of the new ones that had arrived. Road had scoped them out for herself, as best she could. The two that had arrived a couple of days ago had stuck together like glue, and stayed out of the way. They were someone's representatives, but Road didn't know whose, yet. She'd meet them in her own time.

She was leaning on the table, her knees on the chair and her upper body propped up on her elbows as she looked at one of the magazines Nel had been reading before. It was all fashion advice, and celebrity gossip. Ivalician celebrities were boring, but there was a fun article about Aizen tucked away in the pages.

She looked up as Tyki entered the room, and then pushed herself up on her hands as someone entered after him. She'd felt someone terrible come in through the doors, someone darkly powerful, and the much more subdued signature of whoever was with them. She hadn't realised it was Sir Hellsing herself.

Now it really was a shame the Earl wasn't here.

[hellsingsforyou]

Alucard followed his master into the kitchen. It amused him to know how much Integra would have hated having to exchange civil words with Noah.

They were Noah, both of them. There was a little one, little, but no less powerful than the other, already in the kitchen, who looked just as surprised to see Integra as Integra was to see them.

He flashed his teeth in a grin that went much too wide.

"Another one," he said, with a similarly obvious Uberwaldian accent to the first Noah.

[intangibleman]

"Long enough," Tyki said, evasively.

Athlum was part of the JU, or Jyllandi Union, a political and economic union of a number of separate city states in western Jylland. This union did not include Lucis, which retained its autonomy as a sovereign country, or any of the territories within what had become the Niflheim Empire. Ruled from Gralea, the Empire consisted of Überwald, for all Überwald itself didn't acknowledge this annexation, and Ueltham. The country stretched from the sea that separated it from the Kingdom of Lucis to the east and the Nagapur River and Ramtop Mountains to the west.

All of the countries west of that border, and some to the south of Niflheim, were part of the JU, albeit to varying degrees. Tyki didn't know the ins and outs of it, nor did he care, but he was aware that Ankh-Morpork and Altissia both had looser ties to the Union than other states.

Athlum, however, was known to be one of the more staunch members of the JU, along with Celapaleis, right after Elysion itself. Since Integra was from there, she very likely detested anything to do with the Empire. There hadn't exactly been a war, but the Empire was gaining power, and they had refused the invitation to join the Union years ago.

As such, Tyki and Road didn't owe them anything in the way of information. He made his way to the back door and opened it, pulling a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He lit it with a match, being no good at magic, and put it into his mouth. Integra could smoke in the kitchen if she wanted to piss Nel off, but Tyki wasn't going to take his chances.

It made him look better.

[hellsingsforyou]

'Long enough' wasn't an answer, but there was no doubt that the Noah was being deliberately evasive. He knew who she was, then. She didn't know what had tipped them off; the hair, the eyes, the cigar, or the subordinate, but it didn't really matter. She hadn't come here expecting to fly under anyone's radar.

She watched him head outside, and turned her attention to the other one. Two Noah, one small and female, and the other tall and male. The female was easy enough to identify, the male harder.

"The Earl himself couldn't attend?" she asked.

[lesstravelled]

Hellsing, as families went, were less dangerous here than meeting them anywhere else would be. Sir Integra Fairbrook Wingates Hellsing was the latest in a long line of Hellsings who were mostly known for being staunchly in favour of the Jyllandi Union and the sovereignty of individual city states.

They had an on again off again relationship with the Black Order, funding and supporting them with information and bodies because they had aligned ideals but didn't tend to get along for long stretches of time in practice. Right now, as far as Road knew, they were off again. Integra was also the latest in a long line of bullish family heads that liked everyone to do things her way.

It made sense, really, that she'd come and attend in person when the subject matter was a Gotei Captain.

"He has much bigger fish to fry," Road answered, fixing Integra with a bright smile. "Don't you?"

[intangibleman]

Tyki took a long drag of his cigarette and exhaled out of the door, the pale grey smoke being carried away on the wind that tugged at his clothing. He still enjoyed there being a real sky underground. It was nice. Weird. But nice. The alternative was feeling like you were in a cave and nobody wanted that.

"Yeah, didn't expect to see you here in person," Tyki said, flicking the match away. He wasn't concerned about it setting the grass alight, not after the downpour they'd had yesterday. The lightning had lit up the palace and the thunder had almost rattled the windows.

After speaking more, it became slightly apparent that Tyki's accent was a little less strongly Überwald than that of his companion, or Integra's. It was as though he was trying to strengthen it a little, perhaps to cover up another beneath it.

[hellsingsforyou]

So, Integra thought, they didn't know she was vouching for a Lucian representative. Or they did, and were fishing for information. Either way, Integra wasn't about to hand it to them. It might be best if she found young Scientia soon and warned him about the Noah, or rather, told him which ones they were, because she'd already warned him about the Noah.

"The Earl won't waste his own time on this," she replied, taking another deep inhale of her cigar, "so he'll waste yours instead." She threw Road, it had to be Road, a faint smirk before she exhaled a cloud of smoke and turned to the kettle. "I admire his pragmatism."

[lesstravelled]

Road looked at Integra's heavy. He leered like he found everything amusing, and looked at her and Tyki like he was sizing up which of them he could kill the most slowly.

He'd be picking on the wrong one no matter which answer he decided on.

That had to be Alucard. She'd heard of Alucard; he was the Hellsing family's pet tag. Violent, powerful, and probably crazier than the Earl. Road wondered how much fun it would be to make him scream, not that he'd be easy to make scream but that would be the fun.

"I suppose you're just walking the dog?" she asked, looking back at Integra.

[hellsingsforyou]

Alucard laughed. He got called worse than a dog, but there was something funny about it coming from a little girl like this one.

He fished behind his tie and drew the chain out, showing her the metal dog tag he wore, and the rank inscribed into it. Usually such a show was considered a threat, it was when it was done between tags, anyway. Not that Alucard cared.

"It's better than me chewing the furniture," he answered.

[intangibleman]

Tyki watched as Integra's attack dog pulled a set of tags from beneath his tie. There were two, there always were, and they were inscribed with personal details and a rank that he couldn't quite make out from where he stood.

This guy was a Mistant, then. On Jylland they tagged those afflicted by Mist-based mutations, ranked them according to the power of their abilities, and kept a loose watch on them to ensure they didn't cause trouble. The ID tags were as much a warning as a form of identification. Beware of the dog.

"You brought a Tag here?" Tyki asked, raising thin eyebrows at Integra.

Tyki didn't have a tag. He wasn't a Mistant. He, along with the other Noah, had a bloodline limited talent that came with a physical manifestation as well as an ability-based one. He might look like one to most, but he could pass for normal if he drew himself together and hid the grey skin of his bloodline behind the one he was born with.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi had no great love of meeting new people, so he frowned slightly as he felt a new pair of chakra signatures in the antechamber leading to the palace. They were recent, very much so. If he had entered the cave any earlier he would likely have walked into them. He let himself in silently, knowing that he would raise no alarms, nor be felt. Upon getting into the bottleneck, he found the door at the other end open, a definite sign of new people.

He could tell they had gone straight to the kitchen, for that's where they lingered, along with the Noah pair. There were definitely two, one significantly weaker than the other. The powerful one practically shouted its lethality in the form of its sinister, if safely suppressed reiatsu. The other was largely inoffensive.

He huffed a breath through his nose as he moved towards the same room. He wanted a coffee, something to take the edge off his tiredness as he worked on the ship, and even if it had to be that awful instant muck that he'd been settling for before the arrival of Ignis, and his superior coffee, he'd take it.

It wouldn't take long to make a coffee and leave, after all. It would even be drinkable by the time he got back to the hangar.

He crossed the main hallway on quiet feet and stopped outside the door at the sound of unfamiliar voices from within. So, his suspicions had been correct then. At least one of the latecomers was Jyllandi. He heard the clink of a metal chain, the dull clack of metal on metal and the low voice of one of the strangers. He couldn't tell which it was.

Then the male Noah, Tyki Mikk, spoke. Lumi didn't quite understand what he meant by 'tag', but he committed it to memory all the same. Marluxia would be interested to know what was being said.

[hellsingsforyou]

"Do you have a problem with that, Noah?" Integra replied, looking sidelong at the male and removing her cigar from between her teeth by clasping it between two fingers. Tendrils of smoke wafted from the end.

Alucard was everything to Integra. A loyal underling, a pain in the ass, her ace in the hole. She didn't keep him attached to her hip; he was far too useful for that. He'd also be far too useful to leave behind with Integra heading to Ivalice.

Mutants didn't bear tags on Ivalice. People carried licences instead. Licences were an invasion of privacy that people wouldn't stand for on Jylland, especially not in the Union, but tags, well, they needed to be tracked somehow. Alucard was a mutant, one who also had a recognised Kekkei Genkai, and so he had a tag, too.

[lesstravelled]

Road eyed the ranking on Alucard's tag. Tags were ranked according to their combat power, and could work their way up the ranks by beating down Tags more powerful than them. Alucard was obviously very dangerous, at least if you were a mere Tag.

She rolled her eyes and settled her chin in her hands. "Maybe if he bites he can be put down," she said, turning to look over her shoulder at Tyki, and then pointedly directing her gaze at Integra.

Something like Alucard could be a liability, here. If he could be goaded into hurting someone, Integra could lose an important asset.

[hellsingsforyou]

Alucard tucked his tags back away behind his tie. He didn't need to wear them here, but he did anyway, because they were a boast of how powerful he was.

"You're barely a mouthful, little girl," he told the one that spoke. She seemed more in charge than the man.

[intangibleman]

Tyki shrugged at Integra and took another drag on his cigarette. He aimed the exhaled breath out of the door and looked at Alucard casually threatening Road. He didn't stop him. She could handle him by herself. It didn't take too much to put a rogue dog down.

"I don't care much," Tyki answered. "It isn't like the place isn't already full of them."

Khamja attracted those on the fringes as well as those in power. As such Mistants were higher in number than they probably would be elsewhere. They were certainly seen, occasionally, weird skin colour, odd features... but not as much as in the Palace, or in such volume. He'd seen plenty already. Two with slitted pupils in their eyes, one of abnormal height.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi listened, head cocked to one side, just slightly.

The conversation made it very, very clear that there was some sort of enmity between these two groups. Whoever had just arrived, while they were as Jyllandi as the Noah, did not get along with them at all. That was likely politics, Lumi thought. It usually was. Sometimes friendships and alliances could bridge the ills of a country, like it did for Nel and the numerous people who came from countries that opposed hers, but at others... things were less certain.

Khamja wasn't a big happy family. It had enemies. These two, in spite of their shared continent, were anything but allies.

[hellsingsforyou]

Integra looked away, and set the kettle to boil. Alucard needed to be careful intimidating Noah. He didn't quite know what he was dealing with, although she didn't doubt he could handle it. Whether he could handle it without causing massive structural damage to their underground dwelling was another matter.

There weren't any tea cups, and there wasn't any loose leaf tea, either. Just a caddy, with bags of tea. Who used tea bags? They contained the dust and floor sweepings, you could barely call it tea.

She pushed the thought aside. If it was as bad as she expected she'd just have to deal with it.

"There are worse things here than Tags," she replied.

[lesstravelled]

Road giggled and grinned at Alucard. Oh, he was scary, and big, and threatening, with his reiatsu carefully suppressed so that you could still tell how big and threatening and scary he was.

He didn't scare her, though. She dealt with much worse every day. She was much worse every day.

She put on her best innocent face and leaned back in her chair, looking as falsely upset as she could, complete with a fake pout. "I think she means us," she said, looking back at Tyki.

[intangibleman]

"Or herself?" Tyki suggested.

Whether a threat or an insult it didn't make much difference. They were both worse than a common Tag, for a multitude of reasons. Especially Road.

She wasn't wrong though, jokes aside. They'd already met a couple of Arrancar -- people with Hollows artificially planted within them, resulting in a genuine dual consciousness. It was different to the Vizards, either those that happened naturally, or by ... experimentation. He didn't doubt that other members held their own secrets.

Kuja's name, for example, carried a certain amount of fear and awe with it, even if they hadn't met him yet. Tyki only knew that he was a Genome, though he admittedly only had a vague idea of what that was.

"Still, if you could resist setting your pet on us for the duration, that would be appreciated."

The 'we'd hate to have to end him' went unspoken, but his grey-lipped grin suggested that it was implied.

[thesilentstorm]

Lumi scowled a little.

They were posturing. That's all it was. Insults slung back and forth to rile the other side. They were feeling each other out, but he expected that would stop shortly. Before too long, even enemies would get down to business about whatever subject hovered between them, unspoken, be it a conflict or a mere dislike.

He expected these people would be careless about it, too. As far as they knew, the only other Jyllandi in the palace was Kreeth, the bird woman, and she didn't count for much.