exsiliumlogs | here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame

Entry tags:

here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame

Date: October 1st
Location: The Observatory.
Characters: Everyone.
Summary: New Transports arrive and are shuffled into the Observatory for the show of the year. Initial briefings are very brief this time around, and that Greeter just won't stop crying.
Warnings: new confused people and old sad people??

Your arrival here has been very unceremonious. One second you were somewhere else, and now, very suddenly, your feet hit the glowing white of the Transporter pad, and you're here. You aren't alone, either. There's a crowd of others around you, each seeming just as bewildered, angry, or confused as you might feel. At the head of the group is a woman in purple robes, with eyes red as if she'd just finished crying. She hurries over a quick overview of your intended purpose here, and gives direct answers when asked for them, but to most things she simply shows you how to access the tablet you've just been given. There, you can find the history of this place and a record of what your new cohorts have experienced — although it won't have Network access for another 8 hours. Someone stands on hand to give you a weapon, and though the armory is now greatly reduced, you should be able to find something to suit you.

You're shepherded down a walkway tunnel and into the Observatory, where you will find screens mounted on three sides of the wide room. The only lighting comes from dull red emergency lights, and the scenes of a dreary, rainy city from various cameras up on the screens; the largest of the screens opens up to a view of Earth from a good distance away -- this one isn't a screen at all, you might realize, but a window. As you watch, all screens in the room fill with light, impossibly bright. It consumes the buildings, the people, everything. There is no sound played, perhaps mercifully, only that white light -- and then nothing.

Through the large window, there's a pinprick of light over one of the landmasses on the blue planet. It grows to a tiny blossom and then dies away, but a cloud begins to mushroom outward in the same spot. It pushes the natural clouds out of the way, claiming that small portion of the world and wrapping it in a uniform gray.

Strings of numbers begin to fill the blanked out screens as the base's AI begins collecting data and calculations, but the show seems to be over. You're free to explore the base, visit and use any of the VR rooms, or discover your new room and roommates, but try not to step out of any airlocks if oxygen is a requirement for your system.

Welcome to the moon base, with front row seats to the grave of Exsilium.

[[ooc; reminder! The Network will be down for 8 hours after the wave of new Transports.]]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Walter hadn't taken to being forcibly relocated from his time all that well. As such, he had promptly been escorted through and out of the observatory, and had been given a wide berth afterward due to his particularly disagreeable disposition. Left on his own, his initial violent outburst had faded into a still-oppressive air of hostility, which still made it decidedly uncomfortable for the Initiative staff to be around him, given all that was going on. On top of it all, the boy was injured, and he had refused to let anyone look at him.

Luckily, on account of his outburst, Walter had managed to miss the ‘show’ of Exsilium being destroyed. But with the event being fresh in mind for all, he had overheard at least a limited bit of information about it— that a lot of the people on the base had been evacuated due to a bombing.

The subsequent hour was one Walter spent wandering the base, moving from location to location with only a quick glance at any available schematic or directional references for guidance. His first objective aside from tidying himself up a bit was food, the first stop the cafeteria where he quickly made a beeline to the canned goods while pointedly ignoring anything pickled. The meal gathered by his efforts was a modest one, smaller in proportion than what most of the others are eating; Walter was used to being on rations, and though no one had explicitly told him that rationing was mandatory in this place, the lack of a steady supply line for the base alerted him of the need for it.

–Hence, the glare he directed at anyone with a full plate. Stupid, selfish gluttons, the lot of them.

Seras doesn't eat but when it comes to finding people she's found the best place to start is always the cafeteria. Since arrivingg she's made a few friends and after the recent chaos she's still quite jittery and wanting to make sure they all made it up here. They're on the bloody moon, after all.

She idly wonders if she's the first vampire ever on the moon... Well, among those here anyway, those that count at least.

What surprises her is in the light of the recent evacuation and with the supposedly limited resources to sustain them here that they were still bringing in new transports. It... worried her, to be frank, they'd left so many of their own people behind to die and yet they continued bringing in fresh meat to keep up their time travelling army. She'd watched the nuclear blast hit Exsilium with all the horror once could expect, thinking of all those lives snuffed out in an instant...

It left a dark scowl on her face, a scowl to be replaced by an expression of shock a second later. Seras reacts instantly, not thinking through her next action, the possible circumstances and consequences of being so impulsive.

"Walter!"

The voice that calls his name isn't one that Walter recognizes, but the loudness– the urgency of the tone is something that instantly prompts him to lift his head. With widened eyes, he glances about the expanse of the cafeteria in confusion, attempting to zero in on the area he perceives the voice as having come from. But, the acoustics of the room do not make it easy.

"Where the devil did that come from?"

He hasn't seen her but he definately seems to have heard her.

It's too early to tell if there's recognition there or not and once again the fact that there might not be fails to alert itself to the Draculina, instead it stays a niggling subconcious thought she pushes aside, much as she pushes aside some of her fellow transports in order to get closer to the boy.

The boy, the teenager, the young man, not -- not the Walter she'd known in her time. At least she thought not.

If she was thinking much at all.

Seras breaks through the press of people to the accompaniment of disgruntled curses and almost skids to a halt in front of him.

"Here, Walter!"

The voice is clearer now, and with the crowd of people now blocking the waves of sound from being reflected off the far walls of the room, Walter is finally able to get a bead on the location of the calling voice.

The boy that looks over his shoulder at Seras is probably shorter than she recalls; he's younger, from an earlier point in time. And he doesn't know Seras at all.

But the insignia sewn to the front of her shirt– that, he does know. And it's enough to have him stand up from his chair with the abruptness of someone ready to deploy on a moment's notice.

His eyes dart from the emblem on her chest to her eyes. The girl's a vampire. She's definitely a vampire.

When did they get another vampire?

"You're from Hellsing. Who are you?"

Because she sure as hell isn't Alucard.

All at once the excitement and hope in her eyes seems to dull, her waving hand loses motion and drifts slowly down.

He doesn't remember her.

No, he doesn't know her, he couldn't even forget her.

There's a moment where she fumbles for words, re-gauging the situation, gathering herself together.

"I am Seras, Seras Victoria. Y-yes, I'm from Hellsing."

She recognises that tautness in his body and doesn't doubt that he is ready to go on the attack if he thinks it's necessary. Walter must certainly recognise what she is and she knows the uniform won't be enough alone to reassure him.

No, the uniform certainly isn't enough to reassure him. For one, it's hardly standard; a female uniform had yet to even be developed, as women by and large were not trained for intense combat in their military, and Hellsing was stuck at the moment transferring recruits in from the other, more official armed forces.

"Explain. How were you assigned to us? When were you assigned to us?"

It bothers him. He doesn't remember her name on any of the papers he looked over before his departure to Warsaw. Was this ridiculous time-travel rubbish he'd been hearing whispers about really true? Did these people have the indecency and the stupidity of dragging them all in from different points in time without regard to what might happen to any reality but their own?

There are a lot of questions on his mind. But, like a nagging bell in the back of his thoughts demanding space at the forefront, he recognizes that they are still in the middle of a crowded room, and that crowded rooms were not the best sort of place to divulge this sort of information.

"Find us a place where we can talk alone."

That is most definitely an order. Walter might not be the top dog of the organization, but in his time he certainly has some weight, even if it isn't official weight.

"It -- it's complicated, Walter, it -- Yes! Of course, that's a good idea. Please, follow me."

Definately a good idea. Seras gestures to the teenager and hurries out of the cafeteria, walking through the harshly lit corridors. Not her room, she can't expect it to be empty and quarters were crowded up here.

Instead she takes him to a disused corridor she found, one of those that leads up to the door of a zone that has yet to be designated habitable. Things are a bit dimmer here to her relief.

The short trip gives her time to think, to try and plan how she'll put this across, it also helps her to gather herself together. He was younger than the Walter she'd known in Siren's Port and that meant... could mean...

There was no reason to dredge up ugly thoughts right now. He was a boy, one who probably had yet to seek out the means to the betryal he would one day commit.

She turns to him, clasping her hands girlishly before her..

"Well... there's only one way to say it, really. I'm from your future. Far into your future, really. My Master is Alucard."

Walter is quiet as he allows Seras to guide him down one of the lesser-trafficked corridors, a saucer of canned vegetables and what was almost assuredly some form of puréed and congealed meat held securely in one hand if only because of his obstinance in not wanting to waste anything. He's watchful, his eyes keen for any movement that might indicate a trap. But of all the things he was preparing for in his mind, the bombshell the blonde Draculina drops is one he doesn't see coming.

There's a metallic chime as a shifting finger slides the stainless steel fork across the edge of the bowl in Walter's hands, the subtle movement of his fingers and the squaring of his shoulders a clear sign of his irritation. And if that goes unnoticed, the glare is sure to be a tell.

"If you're trying to fuck with me, it's not funny."

"I'm not!"

Her voice rises quickly in earnest protest. Seras spreads her hands out wide then, open to her sides and her expression is one of determined honesty.

"I'm not, I would never do that. I'd never lie... I know it sounds unbelievable and you probably have little reason to trust me but it's the truth."

He believes her. It's irritating as hell, but he believes her.

"The truth? So, first the bastard leaves me on my tod in the middle of a fight, and then somewhere down the line he's going about making a new family for himself? Did he even have authorization to turn you, or did he just up and decide to do it on his own?"

It's unfair to let his anger out on her. It's unfair, and Walter knows it, but whatever behavioural filters he had in his old age were ones he had yet to develop, and the anger— the stinging resentment— leaks out as though through a poorly-constructed sieve.

The older Walter had possessed concerns about her being turned, but had largely kept quiet about them. The younger Walter, on the other hand, has no qualms with being confrontational about it. He wants to know— has to know what she is to them— what she is to his partner.

"Master did --" Seras closes her eyes for a moment, letting Walter's words wash over, letting him have his anger for the moment.

"He did it on his own. I couldn't tell you why he decided to do it, I wish I knew, it's not something he ever told me though."

It's a helpless, bitter sort of smile she wears now, in the face of Walter's fury. She wants to comfort him but she's a stranger now and he's the prickly sort, any attempt would be rebuffed harshly. so Seras determines to stand in the face of it and let him have it out.

"It was 1999 and there was a vampire... killed a whole village, killed the other police officers I was sent in with, turned them all into ghouls. It ended with Alucard shooting through me to get to the vampire, then he turned me."

A strange sort of quiet settles over him and the corridor in the wake of Seras' tale. Walter knows full well of Alucard's almost callous disregard for the safety of others in the midst of battle. It was one of the primary reasons he was the one to work with the vampire in the first place; Walter was the only militant in the Hellsing organization capable of working in tandem with the tunnel-vision-prone nosferatu without getting his head blown off.

"He... shot through you?"

Walter is having a difficult time processing that. Someone suddenly being in the way, he could understand, but from what it sounded like, Alucard had deliberately shot through her.

"He shot through a bystander?!"

It's lucky they're so out of the way at the moment. That last word actually echoed a bit.

That bittersweet smile remains on her lips as Seras reaches up and taps two of her gloved fingers over her heart before clarifying for Walter - not that it will make Alucard's actions better for him.

"The vampire was using me as a shield."

She remembers that night so clearly, even after that monstrous bullet tore through her chest, it remains in perfect clarity up until the darkness had come on her. The red moon and then Alucard above her, holding her hand.

But before... he had asked her, had asked her to be sure, he had planned it, even if only seconds ahead. She isn't sure if telling Walter that would be better or worse.

It's the one piece of information Walter truly needs time to digest. Even if the intended target was using the girl as a shield, Alucard was no poor shot. He had the best aim in all of the organization, as sure as a sniper and then some. Disturbed by the revelation, Walter reacts subconsciously; the curling of his upper lip a sign of his distaste, the further tensing of his hands a testament to his frustration.

“Well, that's just great. That's just... bloody great.”

Again, it dawns on Walter that his reaction might be unfair to the Draculina in front of him. This time, at least, he displays enough courtesy to apologize. With a sigh, he exhales, attempting to induce some manner of calm in himself before he replies. God, he could really use a cigarette.

“...I'm sorry. It's just... This is a lot to deal with. Even for me.”

And Walter was used to dealing with a lot. SNAFU was probably a very accurate description of his life.

Seras waits, her hands go back to their original position of clasping together in front of her. Walter's thoughts have been her own before, with all that she saw her Master could do after that night the thought has occured, did he really need to shoot through her? No, probably not. But when she finally found the courage to be able to ask why Alucard was no longer there.

She suspected it had simply been Alucard's excuse to Integra to get something that he wanted.

At the apology she shakes her head.

"It's alright... this sort of thing, it's a massive shock. It was for me so I don't blame you. I really should have approached you in a better way, I was just so... so relieved to see you, in that moment."

“So we know each other?”

Because between her claiming to be relieved to see him and the fact that she had called out his name in the first place, it was a pretty good clue that they had met before.

Of course, it could just as easily be the standard mind-reading talent of vampires, but Seras' behaviour up until this point runs contrary to every vampire Walter has ever seen. It's open, perhaps even vulnerable. A vampire on the hunt would have dropped that attitude as soon as they had been alone. That Seras has not yet deviated from her earlier demeanour in the slightest is both confusing and intriguing to the young prodigal hunter. Was her personality strong enough to overcome the pull of vampiric instinct? Or did it have something to do with Hellsing's hold over Alucard's blood?

"Yes! You're um, much older when I first meet you actually. Still Hellsing's butler. You were - are - a friend."

Despite later events, despite... she smiles hopefully at him.

"You helped me a lot, made me my gun."

The change in tenses throws Walter off for a second, but he quickly rationalizes it as being a gesture of hope on her part that he would be as friendly as a youth towards her as he apparently was in his old age. He suspects it might be more difficult than the Draculina would prefer; he knows well the reputation his foul temperament has garnered, even in this new place.

Though, frankly speaking, the people running this operation absolutely deserved every bit of foul temper he had to offer for throwing a wrench in his mission.

His expression darkens with the thought, only to open up unexpectedly as a sudden revelation breaks through his stormy demeanour; if the girl was from the future, she would know the outcome of his mission. His lips turning down into a contemplative frown, Walter's brows knit together.

“If we're such good friends, and you are from the future as you say you are, I have something important to ask of you. It's something I have to know, and you're probably the only person here who can tell me.”

Seras watches the expressions flicker across his face, a touch anxiously. She's unsure how to proceed here, at least he seems to be believing her on the account of her origins, whatever anguish that causes him.

The question makes her apprehensive, she has an inkling of what it will be and she may have to choose her words carefully in the next few minutes.

"Of course, what is it, Walter?"

Walter picks up on Seras' uneasiness, and for a moment second-guesses the wisdom of asking such a sensitive question in a place where they could be overheard, even if they were out of the way of most of the base traffic.

With no appropriate surface on which to situate the modest meal he has carried along, Walter can only awkwardly cross his arm over his torso to hold the saucer at his side so that he can lean in close to the Draculina. Having yet to have hit the growth spurt that would send his height to the vicinity of six feet, Walter stands slightly shorter than the girl before him, prompting him to tip his face upwards slightly to meet her gaze head-on.

Not the most intelligent move for dealing with a vampire, but she has proven herself enough to have gained his confidence. In her earnestness, at least.

“I was in the middle of a mission when the idiots running this operation brought me here. An important mission. I need to know how it went.”

Ah. That question, Seras expected it, it's one she'll answer with most of the truth, though not all. Some truths are better hidden. She doesn't think Walter here would have the answer to the question that had haunted her and Integra in the aftermath of Millenium's attack and she's not willing to potentially devastate him on the off-chance he already has made -- this news will likely upset him enough.

Outwardly she nods.

"I know what you're talking about. I'm afraid I don't know the details of what happened on your mission but I know the outcome." With that disclaimer she tells him, plainly as she knows he would appreciate.

"Some of your targets escaped, in my time they came back and we defeated them then."

Some of your targets escaped. As soon as those words leave Seras' mouth, Walter feels his world shift. His blood seems to leave his extremities, his face turning a few shades paler, his fingers threatening to go slack as their hold on the plastic saucer containing his meal loosens. Suddenly, in his mind's eye, he isn't inside the Initiative's moon base any more. His shoes do not rest upon the floor of a what, when cleaned, would be a sterile hallway, but on the cloth adorning the top of a banquet table back in Warsaw.

Seras' following words are but a backdrop he can barely recognize as he hears again the Major's words, how Germany won't lose the war, how they wouldn't let the war end so soon because their favourite thing was war. Then, like a flicker in his mind he's on the floor of the room, blood all around him as he stands amidst the strewn limbs of soldiers freshly slaughtered by his hand, his wires caught by the one soldier that had turned out to be a real werewolf. He remembers the infuriating words spoken to him after— the suggestion that he betray his own and come under the fat Major's command.

The fury that rises in his chest forces the blood back to Walter's extremities, the sound like a rushing tide in his skull as his fingers tighten around the humble plastic saucer in a grip that would have shattered it had it been made of a less durable substance. The more rational part of him tells him that he ought to be more worried about whether the werewolf or the lead scientist had escaped, or how much research they had taken with them, or how far they had managed to succeed in working towards their goal of building an army of vampires. But the emotional side of Walter can only focus on the rage he felt at being belittled, and so the first words that leave his lips are about neither the werewolf who was the operation's strongest weapon, nor the scientist without whom the operation could not make significant progress forward.

His body trembling with the force of his anger, Walter speaks.

“Tell me that fatass didn't make it out alive. Tell me that bastard didn't make it.”

Seras moves on instinct, reacting to his distress and acting like she would have to the Walter she remembered from the Port, the Walter she'd had months to get to know and get past some of the teenager's many barriers.

She reaches and touches his elbow gently, trying to be steadying and calming. Sisterly.

"The Major --" But she has no comforting words to give, nothing that can make this indignity right for him, she knows that. Seras lowers her head, averting her gaze for a moment.

"I'm sorry, Walter. He did."

Though he does not have the same experiences or connection with her as the Walter she knows, Walter cannot help but react to the Draculina's touch on a subconscious level. For a moment, he stills, a little calmer in the eye of the storm before her words crash into him like the renewal of the violent winds and seas on the other side of the eye's wall. His eyes widen— a brief window in which his vulnerability is completely exposed— before he shuts them tight, brows furrowing deep and close together as he tenses, his teeth clenching tight against the click of his strangled breaths.

In that instant, he completely forgets his desire to save the meagre food. Caught between rage and the overwhelming sense of failure, he jerks, hurling saucer and fork to the side in one swift movement, the sound of clattering metal and heavy plastic virtually lost in the wake of the yell that tears from the wrathful butler's throat.

“GOD DAMN IT!!”

It's not enough. Not enough to quench his anger, to soothe his ire. He wants to hurt something— to destroy something. But he can't do that here, so he just screams.

“DAMN IT!! GOD FUCKING DAMN IT!!”

Walter C. Dornez | Around the Moon Base | Closed to Seras for now

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