Rook takes Knight [Sparda]

[Sparda]

With the bright purple glow that had been cast upon him waning as the pillar of hellish flame died away, Sparda observed the results of his assault from the air, stood above the now totally ruined alley upon two small platforms of magical energy, one beneath each foot. It was a blessing, really, that the vampires chose such forsaken and remote meeting places. With all the collateral damage being inflicted here, and seemingly barely any headway against Alucard himself, Sparda was glad to be alone.

He extended his right hand downwards, holstering Ombra in the meantime, and tensed very slightly. In the passing moments, Force Edge soared up from the darkness, having been propelled down the alley by the great explosion. Called to its master, it floated into his grasp and he lowered it by his side, peering down at the grisly spectacle beneath him. Alucard was very much still there. Hopefully, Sparda had actually dealt a decent blow with that attack, and the vampire was taking the time to recuperate a little.

"Having fun yet?" he called to the darkness.

[Alucard]

Alucard's physical presence remained muted and limited to merely the blood splattered across the rubble for several long, tense seconds. Following Sparda's question, there came a surge in the rubble below as chunks of it shifted. Alucard's signature chuckle, a sure sign of his amusement, echoed from under the debris. Mere moments later, it all seemed to explode at once, blowing straight upward in a small area, just barely wide enough for Alucard himself to stand. When he revealed himself this time, the long red coat he wore was nowhere to be seen, and the depth of his strength and the density of his aura had rocketed to new heights once more.

"This has turned out far more interesting than I could have hoped for." The red glow of his eyes peered out from the cloud of dust, and the white flash of his teeth heralded the laugh that followed his words. "You're not just some ignorant demon who just crawled from the pits of Hell, are you?" The red dots of light in the dust narrowed to mere ciper slits. "You're much more than that...."

Without warning, a torrent of gunfire exploded from nearly directly behind Sparda, both the Casull and the Jackal's distinctive bark and explosive roar. And at the exact same moment, Alucard himself surged forward from the ground below, the light of madness in his eyes, with both Casull and Jackal at the ready in his hands. "But just how far will that power of yours carry you?"

[Sparda]

Sparda's gaze locked onto the movement in the rubble beneath him and narrowed dangerously, just as the debris exploded upwards and Alucard stepped back out, his crimson trench coat gone but that maniacal smile refusing to budge. Sparda's face remained impassive; he wasn't at all surprised. This vampire seemed to enjoy his theatrics as much as the thrill of the fight. It was as if he was taunting his foe, daring him to scale up his offence and seek some lasting damage.

In the face of the barrage of gunfire sent screaming at him from below, the Dark Knight leaned over on the thin air upon which he was stood and his right arm blazed to life, a blur of motion that clashed against the storm of bullets in a wide Million Stab. Behind the devil, a volley of small explosions sparked through the night, the remains of the shells he'd cloven in two upon the tip of his blade which now glowed hot.

"More than enough," he called in retort to his adversary, "to send you back to your masters in an urn." He pulled back his arm for the briefest moment before swinging widely, and from the blade of his sword, a great wave of violet hellfire roared towards the vampire. Its colour was much richer than before, the core of the flames pure white - and the temperature in the thousands of degrees, a vast cry more dangerous than any previous display of the devil's might. Like a great phoenix diving upon its prey, the fire of Sparda's increasingly unbridled wrath raged forth.

His own aura strengthened and condensed further, matching Alucard's escalation. Neither combatant was anywhere close to their full power, but at the rate they were letting this battle spiral out of control, they may sooner destroy the city than each other.

[Alucard]

Alucard's grin grew only wider, until it threatened to rip his face in two. His hands spread open and his guns seemingly dropped to nowhere, but they would never touch the ground. Just as it seemed he would be blown apart by the wave of hellfire, Alucard's arms sprang forth from his sides, and like a great pair of pincers, slammed down on either side of the blazing mass of energy, catching it between his gloved hands like a blade. For a moment, his own power held against the blast, and he remained suspended in the air, locked in a struggle with it, before he was forced back to the ground below.

He hit with an earth-shaking tremor, blasting another crater into the earth and buildings around him, but still his own power held and he staved off the blast in his hands. The maniacal glow in his eyes flashed like fire, and he let out a hellish laugh as, all at once, the mass of demonic power in his hands began to crack as if it were solid. In the blink of an eye, the entire mass crcked and splintered, before shattering like glass under a hammerblow. Alucard himself remained unharmed for the most part, though it seemed the resulting blast of the shattered demonic energy had still blown his arms to bloody smears up to nearly his elbow.

It did little to slow him down, and he immediately blasted off from the ground, running up a section of ruined wall and leaping up through the air. His destroyed arms regenerated in mere seconds, and from a spiralling cloud of darkness, a long sword appeared to be clutched tightly in his right hand. And as he neared Sparda, the devil would find himself met with the nosferatu's own display of impeccable swordsmanship and raw power, releasing a blistering series of slashes that each seethed with all the dark power flaring from Alucard's ill-concealed aura of might.

[Sparda]

Sparda's eyes widened very slightly at the display before him. Alucard had held against that infernal bolt of fire, and even dispersed it through sheer force of will and minimised the damage, then come right back on the offensive. He was truly in a league of his own, that much was certain; but the devil wasn't one to be intimidated.

He held his ground, Force Edge at the ready, and met the vampire's furious blade with the mighty clashes of his own steel. The blade wreathed itself in torrents of the same hellfire, burning still hotter and hotter as the two mighty weapons crashed against each other in a lightning-fast flurry of strikes, matched blow for blow. At the last moment, Sparda feigned a vital block and stepped to his left into a one-handed parry that sent Alucard's sword thrusting past him.

In the same movement, the devil threw himself into a spin, pulling Ombra into his off hand. As he stepped deftly around his foe, that arm extended and a barking gunshot rang out as an explosive round burst from the muzzle, aimed at the elbow of Alucard's weapon hand at point-blank range to shear it off and disarm him. Sparda continued his spin, raising Force Edge in a wide, arcing slash that aimed to cleave off the nosferatu's head from behind, before he raised Ombra again and unleashed another roaring shot, even more powerfully magic-infused than the last, to blast out the vampire's heart.

[Alucard]

To normal eyes watching, the clashing of their swords would have seemed like little more than explosions of energy raining out to the continuous whining clash of steel on steel. It seemed almost like metallic raindrops striking a roof for the few seconds it lasted, then it was over, Sparda knocking Alucard's sword wide and spinning past him. Alucard's eyes went wide with realization; in his arrogance he had left himself wide open. His weapon arm literally exploded at the elbow, blood spraying out as if from a fountain, and the severed lower end of his arm spinning away with the leftover force from his sword thrust.

He could only stare dumbly at the bleeding stump of his arm, seeming so shocked at someone getting so soundly past his defenses that he couldn't get his thoughts in order to regenerate and counter attack. It was only when his head was cleaved from his neck that his eyes snapped open as wide as they could go. Trailing blood which refused to part from one long stream, his head sailed away to one side with the force of the beheading blow.

When the gunshot pierced his heart, his chest literally exploded in a shower of blood and gore, and his body fell to the ground. Dissolving into a mass of blood, the strength of his aura faded, bleeding away and seeming to melt. Within only a handful of seconds, there was only the residual energy released from their clash left in the area. The dense, evil cloud of Alucard's power had all bled and dissolved away. The No-Life King had been defeated in battle thanks to his arrogance.

He would return in mere seconds, as he always did. He existed as long as he wished to. But did his foe know this?

[Sparda]

The malignant power of the No-Life King faded away as his stricken corpse fell from the air, slumping to the ground in bloody pieces that lay finally unmoving. The devil who had cut him down remained stood in thin air above his foe, cerulean eyes fixed upon the broken body. Slowly, half-expecting the bleeding corpse to rise yet again, the hand clutching Ombra allowed itself to lower to the devil's side.

It seemed he had won.

The Dark Knight heaved a relieved sigh. He shuddered to imagine what would've happened to the block if that battle had gone on any longer, given the way their assaults had escalated. He holstered Ombra slowly, raising the now free hand to run it through his hair, then sheathed Force Edge.

"Very impressive," he said to the darkness. He dropped from the air to touch down in the alley, then turned and began a slow pace from the scene. "But a vampire is still just a vampire."

[Alucard]

It was several long seconds before Sparda lowered his guard, believing the king of vampires to have fallen truly. As he turned and began to leave, he was only with silence and a chill breeze.

Without any warning, or hint of his reawakening, the eyes of the impaling prince narrowed, lips curling into a smirk. A dim red glow sparkled deep in the pits of his eyes as slowly, and quietly, words began to form.

"Releasing Control Art Restriction Systems three...two...one, approval of Situation A recognized."

At this, his power began to slowly creep back into being, growing thicker and more terrible than before, utterly suffocating the faint moonlight out of the air. "Commencing the Cromwell invocation." And now his body began to melt, blurring into a mass of thick blood and shadow, flowing back together and rising up into a form that was vaguely humanoid, but littered with tendrils of shadow and numerous eyes. "Ability restrictions lifted for limited use until the enemy has been rendered silent."

All at once the veil of shadow over his form practically exploded, and there he stood, the No-Life King at nearly the height of his power, released as far as he could go of his own volition. Clad in nothing more than a black straightjacket that would seem to offer the barest minimum of movement, most of his face was obscured behind inordinately high and restrictive collar. But his expression was clear enough. The red glow in his eyes heralded the madness and pure evil that lurked in his soul, only restrained by the last feeble vestiges of his own humanity, and his respect for them....and by the contract and power his Master held over him.

He tilted his head back, staring directly at Sparda with a soul-piercing stare, the intensity of his power continuing to grow and spread, blotting out the shadows and darkness of the night with a deeper, menacing shade, filled with countless eyes and pained and hungry whispers. The full, unbridled power of Hellsing's ultimate weapon could almost be felt, buried under the final, most powerful level of restriction.

"Just a vampire?" His lips split inhumanly wide with a mocking grin, laughter rolling out from between his fangs with such venom it almost seemed to scorch the air. "You've only dealt with pretenders and pathetic fools who poison the name of real vampires." He spread his arms wide, his legs and stance widening as well, lowering into a position where he looked ready to pounce, like some feral, predatory beast. "You've never fought a true vampire....least of all the first!"

And immediately he launched himself forward at the devil. The full might of the power at his disposal in his still-restrained state reared up behind him, flaring out in a massive wave of blackness. Like a terrifying tsunami, Alucard came crashing down upon the Legendary Dark Knight, the mere force of his attack utterly demolishing everything for dozens of meters in all directions.

[Sparda]

Within the time it took the first three black syllables to reach him, the Dark Knight had stopped dead. For several long seconds, he didn't move at all; merely staring straight ahead, his hands hanging limply, perhaps disbelievingly, by his sides. He finally pushed his body into action and turned slowly to face his still living foe and reckon what he was truly in for tonight.

All the while, as Alucard gloated, Sparda was chillingly silent. His eyes searched the Eldritch form that had risen up before him, perceiving a darkness so deep it cast a shadow upon the night itself. Just as slowly as he had turned to regard his adversary, his right hand clenched into a fist that tightened upon itself until it was trembling with anger.

What is this monster?

[/color][/i]

Almost before he could be ready, the nosferatu struck back with the full extent of his malevolent power and seemed to swamp the devil beneath a tidal wave of living shadow. The entire block around them was obliterated, whole buildings ripped to the ground as if made of paper... Then from within the writhing dark, there came a sudden shockwave that roared skyward, rending a great breach in the shadow from which the Dark Knight leapt to safety.

When he touched down, Force Edge in hand, blood began to pool at his feet from the many lacerations carved into his body. His clothes were shredded, his monocle cut away and the thin chain swinging from his waistcoat's breast pocket. With a growl, the devil lifted himself to his feet and fixed Alucard with a stare that might've burned out the vampire's eyes just for making contact.

"The first...?" An enormous warehouse remained standing behind the Dark Knight, about twenty metres away. His own shadow, freed of the living darkness of the vampire, began to stretch and distort unnaturally, creeping up the warehouse wall - and flames of a bloody red flickered up from within. The shadow continued to twist and reshape, the figure bulking and heightening, two curved horns crowning its head and a gigantic, curved sword laid across its back as Sparda sheathed his blade.

"Then annihilating you will be an even greater pleasure."[/blockquote]

[Alucard]

Alucard was blown back by the force of the shockwave, skidding several feet across the ground. Unlike before, this time there was no blood on his form -- not a single sign of injury to be had. The damage done by the impromptu escape maneuver had been healed almost as soon as it was dealt, so quickly it was as if it had never happened. It seemed as if he were fighting seriously now, no longer toying with his foe. The devil seemed too stern and tough to break like many a foe had been torn down before.

It spoke well for him, but now it was time to see just how much power he was indeed packing.

The wounds he had sustained from merely one attack seemed to hint he was far from invulnerable -- then again, what creature was? The ease he shrugged off the damage was somewhat impressive, as was the power now dawning and rearing its head. The shadow that he cast upon the wall of the warehouse brought a wicked grin to Alucard's face, his eyes widening in maddened glee. Yes, yes, yes! This would be glorious!

"If you think you're capable of destroying me, then come on!" Behind him, a great wall of darkness reared up, spreading out to nearly a dozen meters to either side and twice that straight up, hanging ominously like a massive ocean wave threatening to break and crash down again. Within it, there were veins of red, distorting and shifting like they were alive, throbbing and pulsating rhythmically with an unfathomable power. As terrifying as his current power was, it was still not his full might, and Sparda would no doubt sense that if he cared to take note of it.

[Sparda]

For several long, agonising seconds, Sparda marched forward as if set upon charging headlong into the darkness without a care for his safety. His weapon arm tensed slowly, ready to unleash another flurry of blows, and each hollow footfall echoed chillingly through the night. All the while, the shadow he cast across the wall grew darker, seeming almost tangible, reaching out as if waiting to strike down the nosferatu where he stood.

Finally, he stopped, mere metres from his adversary; and all at once the shadow leapt forward off the wall, a mass of darkness that rushed forth to envelop the devil for a fleeting moment. In that instant, his constantly strengthening aura was compressed as if to one tiny point, a singularity of ungodly demonic force...

All at once the darkness receded, and London trembled beneath a wave of incomprehensible power. Stepping forth with Force Edge pulled into its hand was nothing short of a monster; six wings tensing, cloven hooves echoing against the concrete, tridactyl hands clenched and angular, crimson eyes staring down the No-Life King from feet away. Each footstep seemed to corrupt the very ground he stood on, leaving a patch of crimson flame that burned intensely.

The Dark Knight's power was condensed completely into this, his true form, elevated to heights well beyond anything his human guise could command. If the writhing mass of living darkness behind Alucard was an ocean - it was about to be thrown against a sun.

"Let's begin." The devil took another echoing step, and the darkened ground beneath Alucard's feet was engulfed in a pillar of crimson hellfire that towered over the London skyline, reducing the concrete underfoot to molten slag with a heat simply not possible on this world.

[Alucard]

As the devil advanced forward, Alucard remained still, as if awaiting the inevitable clash. That same twisted, gleeful, demonic expression on his face remained unchanging as Sparda revealed his true form, continuing to advance toward his foe. The amount of power radiating from the transformed devil was of such a magnitude it sobered even Alucard marginally. He had no fear or care for his own life, for it was nigh-impossible to even touch in his current form, but this level of power -- both from his opponent and from himself -- would endanger the entire city all too easily if not met here and kept localized.

In response, Alucard slowly brought himself up to stand at his full height, arms hanging at his sides, hands clenched into fists. The maddening expression of bloodlust was gone, now replaced with an almost detactched face of eery calm. Nearly his entire face clad in shadow, only the glowing red of his eyes, and the pale glimmer of fangs bared in a grimace was seen.

And all at once, the dark tide behind the ultimate vampire drew back, its size crawling down to manifest as a palpable aura radiating off of his body. Every ounce of power he could command in his restricted state was now pouring out into the night, and as Sparda began with a searing torrent of hellfire, Alucard struck back.

With a speed that made even his earlier movements look like he had been standing still, Alucard surged to one side, easily avoiding the pillar of hell that destroyed the ground. He landed on the ground some several meters away, skidding for a brief moment, before he again launched himself at Sparda, with such force that the ground under and behind him literally exploded, as if it had been hit with a bomb. Like a bolt of black lightning, he struck at Sparda, his hand flying forward fingertips first, aiming to strike him dead-center of mass in the chest.

[Sparda]

Now, the game was truly afoot. He could no longer afford to waste time; destroying this beast would take the entirety of his might, and he could spare no quarter in this battle. Even as the vampire threw himself aside in evasion, an ebony blur against the darkness, the devil's menacing crimson eyes followed his every move, the entire world fading into slowed tunnel vision save for the monster before him.

When he charged forth, Sparda was ready. In the time it took Alucard to cross the distance, stiffened hand reeled back to plunge through the Dark Knight's heart, his six mighty wings flexed very slight; then at the last moment, a single great beat of them sent Sparda careering to the side with equal celerity. He soared upwards in a curving arc around his foe, lashing out with his sword as he went. Though he was out of physical range, a great wave of pressure lanced off the blade's perfect edge with its sheer speed and force, roaring across the distance to cleave Alucard to pieces.

[Alucard]

As Sparda rocketed to the side, Alucard carried through with the momentum of his blow, letting it surge forward. The resulting force of the unopposed blow produced a shockwave which tore out a crater in the earth beside and before him, as if a meteor had hit and gouged out a trail in the earth. He pulled back his opposite arm, planting one heel firmly in the ground, and immediately spinning about to face his foe just as the pressure wave lanced from the pristine blade.

He launched himself to one side, avoiding the brunt of the strike, but being too slow or still too arrogant to completely dodge it. It struck his left side, dealing a hefty blow as it virtually reduced his left arm, shoulder, and most of his torso to a bloody pulp, splattering the ground and rubble with the dark crimson ooze. In mere seconds his damanged arm and body were already flowing back together, and as he again launched himself at his foe, his arm was wholly restored, again clutching the hilt of his infamous black broadsword.

His strike came in impossibly fast, the entire blade and his arm and most of his body blurring and outright disappearing with the momentum and force of it. The strike produced such terrible force the very air was cut in two, producing a devastating vacuum even as a destructive wave of darkness and raw energy was spat forth from the blow, carving out yet another crater and aiming to utterly demolish the Dark Knight.

[Sparda]

Resolving not to run, but to meet this terrible power head-on, Sparda backed up just a little before launching himself forward with equal speed. Borne upon his six wings, a sudden plume of hellfire raging up in his wake, the devil reeled back his weapon hand and met Alucard's blade with an earth-shattering swing of his own... Then all was crimson fire and darkness as a gargantuan explosion rocked the block.

Slowly, the colossal plume of flame and smoke left in the wake of the clash subsided. The surrounding buildings were utterly leveled, not a stone left standing - and two forms remained. One floated warily, wings keeping it aloft, curved sword at the ready, eyes in search of the other. He had to end this soon...