London, Great Britain
1999 A.D.
As the old children's rhyme once said, London was burning.
In a single night of carnage and blood, three great armies - Catholic, vampiric Nazi Germanic and Briton - had clashed amid the now burning remains of Britain's capital. The few British Army units within the city, those who fought in vain to protect their families and fellow civilians, had fallen long ago. The knights of the Ninth Crusade were martyred in droves. The Letzte Battalion was annihilated to a man, drowned under a wave of undead souls and the blood of everyone who had died this night.
"No, not all of them." Integra F.W. Hellsing had reflected as she stalked along one of the vast smoke-filled hallways of the grounded airship Deus Ex Machina, flagship of the Nazi army. "The snake who had orchestrated this Wagnerian orgy of death must die by my own hand for his crimes!"
Yet, this simple objective had not proceeded as smoothly - or bloodlessly - as the leader of the Hellsing Organisation would have preferred. Despite eventually tracking down the bespectacled SS-Sturmbannfuhrer to the command deck, she was robbed of both a clean kill (due to the massive pane of bulletproof glass that protected the Major) and her most loyal vampiric servant Alucard, thanks to the Major's final masterstroke. Integra had been forced to watch on helplessly as the poisoned vampire - her most loyal companion - died before her eyes.
"Everything I had, I gave for this moment." the Major had coldly boasted in his triumph, ignoring the sudden arrival of Integra's protege, Seras Victoria. "And in that moment, I stole away everything that Alucard - and you - had."
Everything in the moments after had been a blur to Integra as, enraged at the loss of Alucard, she had ordered Seras to finish off the Major; it was a rather explosive firefight that followed. As the smoke cleared, Hellsing glared at the now-revealed, yet clinging to life, cybernetic Nazi.
"Look at you, Major." she calmly admonished the half-destroyed, twitching Major's corpse, shaking her head. "A clockwork monstrosity."
"Deny the facts as you wish, but I am just as human as you are. The same soul, the same human will!" the Major spat back in defiance, reaching for a holstered Walther P08 on his belt. "Something that your precious fraud of an immortal was not! For that, I hated him more then anyone in this world and sought ways to cast that- that subhuman down to the depths of Hell. If you think you have the stomach to do the same, Fraulein, then you're welcome to try!"
The Major awkwardly aimed his drawn pistol and pulled the trigger, sending rounds hissing past the slowly advancing Integra. Unperturbed by the whizzing bullets, Integra calmly reached for her secondary sidearm and, coming to a stop about a pace away from the fallen Major, took aim.
Two shots - one from both of them - rang out ...
----
Unknown Location
The "Present"
Light and air flooded into Integra's senses as she awoke. Still befuddled by whatever had knocked her unconscious, the twenty-two year old woman fumbled over her body for any wounds she may have taken from the siege of London. Nothing - not a single laceration or bullet-hole. It was a puzzle made all the more confusing when a quick check revealed that both of her pistols and her sword were on her person, as if they had never been used.
"Impossible!" she hissed to herself in disbelief, trying to reconcile both her recall of the events of the past few hours and the reality of her apparent survival.
It was then, however, that Integra managed to get her first good look at her surroundings. The crisp, off-white walls that she glanced through her glasses were a stark contrast from the charcoal-blacked steel walls of the zeppelin she had been stalking through. Nor, however, was the room she was in reminiscent of a recognisable landmark, though the labeled paintings that hung on every wall hinted at this location being an art galley of some kind.
Yet I saw practically every building in London razed to the ground! No fire, no blood, no bodies ... No! This is NOT London!
"Where ... where am I?" she weakly muttered aloud to semingly no-one, a gloved hand pawing at the wall she had been leaning against as she struggled to get to her feet.