Rook takes Knight [Sparda]

[Alucard]

The distinctive, unnaturally heavy thud of Alucard's booted stride rolled through the streets, preceding his own arrival through the mists by nearly a full minute. He emerged into the flickering glow of a streetlight from a swirling wall of mist like a wraith. He strode forth, the light over his head flickering even more fiercely before it shattered entirely, raining down a brief cloud of glass. It sprinkled onto the wide brim of his fedora, before sliding harmlessly off to the ground with an almost musical tinkling.

His destination was only perhaps a minute away. And judging by the various reports received by Hellsing during their investigation of a mysterious vigilante, it would be one that would be targeted. Whether this night, or one coming soon, it mattered little; Alucard could wait as long as needed.

The building, long since abandoned, was the perfect place for the meeting he was about to rudely interrupt. A gathering of at least a dozen small-time vampires, all with an equal measure of fear of both Hellsing, and this new vigilante that was actively hunting them down. They were safe from Hellsing so long as they did not openly commit their violent acts and murders in the guise of feeding, as Hellsing was busy with much larger business. But this vigilante....he was tracking them down even when they did their best to remain secret.

The distinctive silver glare of the Casull flashed in the moonlight as Alucard drew it from his coat. A barely audible click, and the safety was released. A second click followed as the Jackal was drawn, the safety released. Lifting his gaze, Alucard grinned. Here he was... A swift step forward and his form vanished, leaving behind naught but an eery swirl in the mists of midnight London.

A series of unearthly screams of rage, terror, and the unsettling sequelching stifling of a death scream. The rattling groans of death and mayhem lasted only for a handful of seconds, interspersed with the unmistakable bark of the Casull, and the hellish scream of the Jackal several times over.

Then it was once more unnaturally quiet, as it always was at night. And Alucard, the No-Life King, would wait. Surrounded by the gore and wrecked bodies of both the victims the vampires had taken as well as what remained of the vampires themselves. Perched on the only chair in the structure, in what was at one point a receiving room of some sort. Arms folded loosely over his chest, glasses hiding his eyes eerily, and an impassive expression adorning his pale features.

He set his eyes on the doorway and waited for this 'vigilante' to make his appearance.

[Sparda]

In the echoing wake of the gunfire, the still of London night descended once more, seemingly unperturbed by the grisly death wrought in its underbelly. If one had not heard the shots, one would never have suspected there to be anything to set this moment apart from any other in the heart of England's night.

Minutes would pass before more footfalls arrived. These were of a lighter gait, their echoes not so deep, but harder and more resonant; certainly, they carried the same manner of authority about them. What little light remained gleamed almost menacingly off the glass of a lens, the brushed metalwork of guns, and the immaculate blade of a sword...

Creak. At the deduced meeting place, the air thick with the stench of gore, the front door groaned open under the hollow-sounding nudge of a metal surface upon its wood. The seated interloper would be met with a silhouette that filled the threshold, backdropped by the weak moonlight, the unmistakeable profiles of a pair of large handguns clutched at the end of each coated arm. Perhaps strangely, these weapons were not raised. In fact, the figure tilted its head very slightly to the right, no facial feature discernible save for the white disc of a monocle's refracted lens glare.

"Beaten to it, eh? I really have picked up a tail." There wasn't so much as a hint of worry in the man's stately tone. He sounded calm, his utterance detached and nonchalant; a simple matter-of-fact observation. "Might you represent this Hellsing entity I've heard mentioned in such fearful whispers?"

[Alucard]

The expression on the count's face remained blank and impassive as the one he assumed to be this mysterious vigilante appeared. He had been expecting a great many possibilities of one who had crawled so deeply into the rumors of the Freaks in this city...but not what was presented before him. The firm, powerful posture and bearing which belied the grace and precision he could detect. The authoritative and imposing stride which he had heard before the doors were pushed open, combined with the steady holding of the two guns....yes.

Definitely the type to be respected and feared, if his abilities matched his foreboding appearance. And with the distinctly inhuman feeling he gave off, it was clear that his abilities were at the least on par with some of the fools Millenium had had to offer, and likely much greater.

"Beaten to it, eh? I really have picked up a tail."

Alucard let the faintest traces of a grin crack through his impassive mask. He sounded every bit as calm and assured as he looked. He seemed unsurprised in the slightest to find someone had taken his kills from him, and almost seemed not to care that he had been deprived of the chance. He cocked his head slightly to one side at the next sentence spoken.

"Might you represent this Hellsing entity I've heard mentioned in such fearful whispers?"

That brought a full-fledged grin to the face of the king of the night. He straightened his posture, his glasses flashing transparent and revealing the faintly glowing red eyes behind them. "Perhaps I am." He spread his hands in a questioning gesture. "And might you be this mysterious vigilante being whispered about all over the city?"

[Sparda]

Quietly, the vigilante narrowed his eyes. The man seated before him was incredibly tall, clad all in red leather with a wide, floppy-brimmed fedora almost concealing his orange shades; but doing nothing to disguise that wide, amused grin that crept across his features at the mention of Hellsing's name. The assumption was apparently correct, though his answer was roundabout enough.

In response to the question put to him in return, the intruder paused for a moment, allowing his own brief smile to curl the corners of his mouth. Slowly, he holstered his guns.
"I suppose I am," he responded at length. There was something odd about this man's aura, a dark and malignant power seemingly bridled by some greater, unearthly authority. A strange feeling indeed, and one that lent itself to the assumption that this... being was considerably stronger than its current aura would suggest.

"Allow me to extend my thanks for so efficiently handling tonight's dirty work, mister..."

[Alucard]

Though his gaze remained firmly locked on the eyes of the other man, Alucard was fully aware of the guns being holstered. A foolish move....or a very brave one. He probed deeper into the nature of the man, slowly and gingerly peeling away layer upon layer of mystery judging by what he could see, sense, and conjecture. The conclusion he arrived at: clearly demonic in nature. And very powerful. With the true depth and magnitude of his power and aura not being excercised, it was only a guess....but just the idea of how powerful a warrior this strange vigilante might be was enough to get his blood boiling.

A wave of shadow silently crept across the wall bearing the doors, a number of crimson eyes blinking into existence. The shadow pulsed eerily with veins of red and a strange, darker blackness than shadow, patches of red and crimson spreading through the shadow as the doors would be sealed over with a mist of darkness, and when it passed, they were closed as if they had never been opened.

"And I..." A red-clad arm slowly split off from the shadows behind Sparda, fingers curled loosely around the trigger of the Jackal. "...am called..." The gun was leveled off, aimed directly at the rear of Sparda's head. "...Alucard." And the gun's hellish bark split the air as the massive 13 mm shell exploded from the barrel.

[Sparda]

Though he remained silent, stepping further into the barren room and seemingly pointedly ignoring the gust of wind that shut the door behind him, the vigilante was perfectly sensible of how his interlocutor's dark power began to fill the room. Even without seeing it, he could sense the mass of living darkness that spread across the rear wall, feel the presence of the inhuman eyes upon him.

And he heard the click of the Jackal's hammer just before the shot was fired. In that instant, he was little more than a blur of movement, the violet material of his coat shrouded in shadow. The gleam of light off the blade of his sword was perfectly visible, though, as he span on the spot and reached up to pull it from its rest. The motion also served to knock the Jackal's muzzle aside with the flat of the blade, sending the enormous bullet screaming over the vampire's left shoulder to blast through the far wall.

The devil followed out of the spin by promptly hurling his blade at the nosferatu before a response could be given, the immaculate steel hurtling across the distance straight at the enemy's heart, seeking to impale him to his chair.

"Sparda," the vigilante answered, Luce and Ombra back in his hands and levelled at this Alucard. "A pleasure to meet you." With that, the triggers were squeezed and a storm of enchanted bullets roared forth to blast the vampire to pieces while he remained pinned to the chair.

[Alucard]

Alucard's glasses glazed over with light once more as the Jackal's bullet tore through the wall behind him, glowing eerily golden. There came a distinctive, muffled crash and a burst of air and splinters of wood were backdrafted through the inordinately large hole in the wall -- nearly as big as a man's fist. The arm which had fired the weapon dematerialized into a mass of shadow and mist as it was knocked aside, the bullethole in the wall the only indication it had ever been at all.

As the blade came soaring across the room toward him, Alucard could only laugh mentally. A throw of that sort, while perhaps unexpected and somewhat impractical, was nonetheless extremely deadly and the technique behind the throw indicated this Sparda knew exactly what he was doing. It would have been all too easy to simply dodge the blade. Even if it had had to cross half the distance it did, it still would have been as easy as blinking.

But the blade buried itself in his flesh, easily sinking in up to the crossguard and keeping him transfixed -- for the moment -- to the chair. The aim had been perfect, he could actually feel the blade nad nearly bisected his heart completely. Only the very mechanism keeping his power sealed kept such a blow from being lethal. But even if his power had been released...

Further thought was interrupted as the storm of bullets greeted him. Numerous holes were punched through him, limbs were blown off, and within seconds the demonically-enchanted bullets had reduced the monster of Hellsing to little more than a mess of blood and body parts splattered over the floor and walls.

[Sparda]

Finally, Luce and Ombra fell silent. Thin plumes of smoke spiralled from their muzzles, which almost glowed hot in the wake of the barrage. For a few long moments, Sparda dared not allow himself to relax. He had seen some of these small-time vampires, the oldest among them, get back up from wounds that would've killed any ordinary demon, and this article before him was certainly no ordinary vampire. There was a lengthy, silent pause before the devil holstered his weapons again.

"Alucard, was it?" he asked the corpse. He reached out and gestured casually with his right hand, and across the distance, a disembodied hand crafted of condensed demon energy flashed into life. At Sparda's command, mimicking the movements of his own hand, it gripped Force Edge's hilt, yanked the blade from Alucard's mangled torso and tossed it back across the room.

The demon caught it deftly, giving a swing to shake off the thick coating of blood. "So you're Hellsing's terrible secret weapon, the nosferatu I've heard so very much about. The vampires in this city are terrified of the mere mention of your name..." He lowered the sword, but kept his eyes fixed on the bloody mess before him. "With such a reputation, you can't be that easy to put down."

[Alucard]

What was left of Alucard remained still and unmoving, silent as death. A careful sense would even see his aura and actual presence had gone dead as well. He was, for all intents and purposes, dead. And the only response to Sparda's words was a faint, squeaking cry from the rafters of the building. A lone bat, staring at the Legendary Dark Knight with its beady eyes. It spread its wings and dropped from the rafters, and it swooped down and into the window. The glass shattered before it, as if the small creature were either unearthly strong or carried some unseen force with it. And as soon as it broke the window, every window in the building shattered all at once with the noise of a thuinderclap.

The pieces of Alucard's body that remained solid began to melt, dissolving into a viscous substance the color of blood and shadow. From the holes in the wall behind him, a number of bugs of all sorts crawled through -- flies, mosquitoes, spiders, centipedes, roaches, and countless more -- swarming over the wall and floor in such a thick carpet they blotted out the wall itself completely.

The squeaking of a bat returned, this time hundreds of times louder, and within mere seconds, the doors to the building were blasted off their hinges, Sparda finding himself assaulted by an innumerable cloud of bats. Their eyes all glowed a hellish red, and they spewed dark mist from their shrieking mouths.

And at that exact moment, Alucard's aura and power exploded back to life. The mass of blood and darkness reared up, and the red glow of his eyes flashed to life amid the inhuman mass. Countless eyes, some the size of a man's fingernail, others bigger than a man's head, flared to life all about the dark mass, while tendrils of it speared out into the room, demolishing everything they touched. Demonic snarling thundered out of the darkness as what looked to be a dog -- or at least a twisted, demonic mockery of one -- snarled, thrashing about and utterly splintering anything and everything within reach.

"Not that easy to take down?" His voice speared out from nowhere, and was immediately followed by a mocking laugh -- a hellish sound which had sent many a warrior, no matter their power, to their knees in terror. And suddenly his face and upper torso blasted out of the darkness, grinning with the face of a man lost to all reason, eyes practically blazing with an unearthly light and fire. "I haven't even begun yet!" And as those words were spoken, the entire mass of blackness, blood, and pure malevolent evil would explode forward, aiming to engulf Sparda and drag him out of the building, hurling him across the street and through the next building.

[Sparda]

The screech of the bat overhead was quick to draw Sparda's attention; there was naught else in the silence to distract him, save for the grisly scene he had laid out. He watched the flying creature descend from the rafters, swooping for the window at some speed - and smash straight through with more strength than any bat of that size should possibly possess. In unison, every other window in the building was shattered by an unseen force, tiny fragments spilling across Sparda's form.

He whirled about, pulling Ombra straight into his off hand. That had been unexpected, and set the devil firmly back on edge. The more he concentrated, slipping back into his combat focus, the more keenly he could feel a presence... It was subtle at first, but quickly grew denser, filling the building; an ancient, malignant power of a magnitude Sparda hadn't encountered in centuries, a hideous malice given form.

All at once, its evil came forth. The pieces of the corpse disintegrated into a mass of congealed blood and living darkness, shifting and converging, and a horde of insects poured across the walls from outside, writhing and scuttling in their thousands. The pitched shrieking of the bats returned, echoed and deafening, and an enormous flock of them barged the doors down to swarm the devil.

He answered with a hemispherical barrier of energy, pulsing into life in the space between him and the bats. Its translucent, surface shimmered with violet light as the horde of bats battered against it, surging past him and through the building as Alucard's aura seethed back to life, much denser and stronger than before. The chilling, simply maniacal laugh that rumbled from the darkness caused Sparda to turn back around, all concern gone from his face to be replaced with a dark, steely determination. He stepped forward, twirling his sword in his hand, the barrier behind him dissipating when the mob of bats passed.

All too suddenly, the writhing mass of living darkness and evil surged forth, lifting Sparda off his feet and hurling him through two walls into the opposite building with a mighty crash of concrete and steel. The wreckage settled for mere moments, the entire alley alive with the darkness of Alucard's empowered coming, and Sparda seemed to fall still within the shadow...

There came a high-pitched whine of energy to answer the nosferatu, and from within the dark shroud, the devil exploded. He span madly into the air, Force Edge in one hand and the wildly firing Ombra in the other, a vicious dervish of destruction that hacked away at Alucard's being and blasted him back with the screams of demonically charged, violently exploding bullets. The devil hurled himself down the alley to safety and came to a stop, not a scratch on him - his clothes barely disturbed.

"Hah! That's what I was waiting for," he laughed into the night, smiling broadly to himself. He reached up to adjust his monocle, a flash of glare glinting across the lens. "Such power... All of this, so easily held back! It's really quite exhilarating to have such an opponent on my hands." The Dark Knight lowered himself into a ready stance and reversed his grip on Force Edge, a crackling field of energy blazing into being across the surface of the blade. "I might actually allow myself to enjoy this challenge."

With that, the devil swung his right arm forward, the sword flipping upwards in his hand and unleashing a vicious Drive; the condensed energy ripping forward in a huge, crescent-shaped wave that filled the alley and tore up the ground, blades of turbulence slashing through the air in its wake as it thundered forth to rend the vampire to pieces.

[Alucard]

As Sparda erupted back into sight from amongst the wreckage of what was once a building, Alucard could only grin. He was virtually unaffected by the attack. He either had very powerful regenerative abilities of his own, or was immensely durable physically...or perhaps both. This would be amusing yet!

The mass of darkness and energy that was Alucard took blow after blow from Sparda's retreat to saftey for the moment. Each slash and gunshot blew off large chunks and left gaping holes in the writhing mass of darkness, but they only fell back into the mass and were regenerated within an eyeblink, as if no damage had ever been done. As Sparda came to a halt, Alucard brought himself up to stand -- his physical, human form, at any rate -- at the opposite end of the alley from the devil, drawing in the darkness to surround him in a malevolent cloud, leaving most of the alley clear of it, but completely eclipsing the light in the end where he stood.

"Now I begin to see why the filth in this city that called themselves vampires began to fear you," he began, letting out a faint chuckle. "You are a very interesting man. Not even disturbed in the slightest at what you now face." He grinned then as Sparda changed his grip on his blade. He was growing more and more excited at the prospect of this challenge. Demonic though this man's powers might be, they were still exceedingly powerful when compared to all of the other excuses for demons and vampires that had walked this city, and even this earth. This might just be fun even for him.

As the wave of energy ripped through the alley toward him, Alucard merely flexed at the knees, waiting until the wave was but a few feet before him....and drove himself directly into it. It blasted him to pieces, rending him in twain and blowing the halves apart to spaltter all over the alley. But in the space of a second the bloody pieces were already flowing back together and Alucard's crazed face blasted out of the mass of shadow that resulted of the regeneration, his launch forward hardly seeming disturbed. Both the Casull and the Jackal were brought up as he charged down the alley, and a series of explosive gunshots tore through the air. Sparda would no doubt be able to easily dodge one shot, probably even several....but the sheer, impossible volume of hundreds, or even thousands of bullets that seemed to rip from the barrels of each gun...

[Sparda]

...Were in turn blasted out of the air.

In the moments preceding Alucard's headlong charge through certain death, Sparda had propped his sword into the ground beside him to free his right hand and drawn Luce again. The vampire's impossible barrage of shells was met, shot for shot, by an equally dense storm of rounds from the devil's two guns, his arms an indecipherable blur of movement as he backpedalled further down the alley. For a few long seconds, the air between he and his foe was nothing but blinding muzzle flashes and deafening explosions as their bullets detonated each other in mid-air, down to the very last pair of shots.

One last shell followed from the Dark Knight, infused with an enormous charge of raw energy that caused it to erupt from Luce's muzzle with a cacophonous roar. The sheer turbulence of its passing tore great scars through the ground and walls as a searing violet beam of demonic power sought out the nosferatu.

One might think it to be futile, after Alucard's displays of nigh-instantaneous regeneration even from total bodily dismemberment, but Sparda knew what he was doing. Powerful though he was - vastly more so than the petty creatures Sparda had hunted through London thus far - he was still just powering his healing by sacrificing his familiars, and thus could only keep regenerating from such total destruction for so long. The battle boiled down to attrition; which of these ungodly warriors would wear down first.

[Alucard]

As the demonic blast ripped apart the alley on its path toward Alucard, the so-called demon of the night only grinned. A keen eye would notice his form begin to ripple as if it weren't truly there. The blast Sparda had released reached his position....and passed through with no disturbance. Alucard's shape was blown apart and diffused like mist in a strong wind, leaving only the utmost top of his torso and his head intact, the rest streaming off and blowing away into the shadows and darkness of the alley.

His expression was swallowed by shadow, leaving little more than a dark silouhette that flowed back together. In a swirl of movement, the signature red coat he wore flared out behind him, the white of his gloves practically glowing in their stark contrast to the dark nature of his other attire. Face still cast in shadow, leaving only the red of his glowing eyes visible, Alucard lifted the Casull and Jackal once more. He had seen that normal displays of power would be useless here already. He was no fool, and was rapidly coming to realize that his usual methods of toying with his enemies would be unlikely to work. So what, then, was he to do?

He cracked a grin, the whites of his teeth flashing hauntingly among the shadows of his face. Next second, the shadows behind, about, under, and even above him exploded to life. Tendrils of it speared in all directions, crawling over the walls and even the air, seeming to eat the already faint light of what was left of the alley. All the while, Alucard's form grew more and more insubstantial, merging with the growing darkness and shadow. A series of spears and blasts of the shadow would launch themselves at Sparda with no rhyme or reason to their origin. Some came from the walls to either side, some from the ground, even from the very air about him.

It was time to see just how good this vigilante was.

[Sparda]

An illusion? No, that was the real him who'd fired those guns. This was a display of intangibility that saved him from the thunderous blast of energy that now rocketed down the alley, piercing the darkness to explode against the wall of a building across the far road. Sparda scowled almost irritably for a brief moment. It seemed Alucard was beginning to wise up to the caliber of opponent he had on his hands.

He was certainly escalating his offence; all over the alley, above, below and around the devil, the dense shadows came to life at the vampire's behest to assail him with innumerable lashing tendrils and focused blasts. The wall of living darkness looked insurmountable... This would be a fun workout. Smirking, Sparda lashed out with his right foot to kick Force Edge's crossguard and launch it skyward out of the ground, the weapon whistling audibly through the air as it span. The devil kept his leg raised as the first black tendril lunged at him; then with split-second timing, he stomped down on it and used the leverage to hurl himself into the air after his sword.

The devil almost danced through the alley, using the tentacles and ruined walls as platforms and handholds to carry himself overhead. His guns roared to life again, blasting through those shadowy tendrils that were an actual threat, and Sparda reached the very top of the alley where his sword remained almost suspended, spinning wildly. He holstered Luce, kicked off the low roof beside him and caught the blade in the midst of a somersault.

As soon as his hand grasped the hilt, a great wreath of amethyst and jet black flames engulfed the weapon's pristine blade - and he launched it straight back down at his foe. The searing sword rocketed to the ground like a shell from a cannon, blazing through the darkness in its path to strike at Alucard's body. As soon as it touched the ground, the charge of demonic energy unleashed itself in a mighty explosion, the shadows of the alley engulfed in a towering plume of hellfire.

[Alucard]

Alucard watched, with no little amount of interest, as Sparda ascended the alley to the rooftops overhead. The display of both acrobatics and gunplay was an impressive feat, to be sure. But what truly grabbed the attention of the nosferatu was the grace and ease with which Sparda performed such feats. When he grabbed his blade, Alucard could only grin, already sensing the energy that coursed through the weapon. An attack of that magnitude....why, that might even leave him knocked out for a while...

Spreading his stance wide, Alucard drew back one arm, the gun he had held in it moments before vanished, and just as the blade was to strike him, he thrust his arm forward. His hand met the blade and a brilliant shower of clashing energy erupted, throwing off a shower of sparks and a concussive shockwave which decimated the alleyway in its entirety, the buildings getting their windows and nearest walls blown literally to dust and collapsing even before the explosive blast of the demonic energy in the blade took hold.

And when it did, the results were catastrophic. Bits of blood could be seen scattered all about the wreckage and rubble, with Alucard once more nowhere to be seen, though the living shadow and darkness still crawled about the area, and the malevolent aura that heralded his presence was wholly undiminished in strength.