It was a dark, cold night, and it didn't really matter to him. Only one thing was on his mind right now: Alucard.
That's all that he exists for right now. To destroy the atrocity that no one has truly conquered to this day. It is everything that is on his mind right now. Everything that he has prepared for. And it's going to happen tonight.
He just sits on the roof and watches, or rather, he waits. He does not need to watch, just to feel. He is able to sense evil coming miles away. It won't be a hard task to find Alucard. It would be an embarrassment not to see an evil that great not coming with his abilities.
He wore a brownish-black trench coat that went down almost to his ankles, with a simple black shirt and black jeans under it, with long, dark boots that ended halfway from his feet to his knees. He had very little facial hair (it was barely noticeable on the lower half of his face), and hair flowing back just down below his shoulders. And his eyes...there was something odd about them. The pupils were completely black. Just large, black dots in white eyes. Those eyes were watching, watching for his prey. They were always so cold...
He had many gadgets in his trench coat and the belt he wore, as well as many other places where a weapon could be stored. He had several guns on him, as well as a sword strapped to his back outside of his coat. He had specialized knives capable of injuring even vampires like Alucard, as well as many other chaos-inducing gadgets at his disposal.
He had waited almost all night now. It was near midnight, and he was starting to wonder if Alucard was even going to show up.
He had just remembered now that Alucard wasn't going to show up unless there was a good reason for him to. How unprofessional, he thought to himself, to forget such a basic thing. I've been away from this for too long.
Well then, he would just have to start something worthy of Alucard's appearance.
He swiftly moved (which was something he hadn't done for hours), and jumped directly forward, and off the roof he was standing on. On his way down to ground level, he pulled a little silver ball with a red glow out from his belt, and threw it down at the ground with great force. When the silver ball hit the ground, it shattered like glass, and large flames erupted from it, blanketing the road and spreading fast. Cars blew up all over the place randomly, lampposts were falling over, and windows were shattering on buildings everywhere within one mile now.
"It's only a matter of time now," he said to himself.
Ceras Victoria had been resting for almost twenty-four hours straight now. She had just woken up. Integra had given her a full day to rest. She's been rather nice lately, giving everyone days off this often like this, she thought to herself.
As if on cue to her thoughts, someone was knocking at her door.
"Come in."
She was rather surprised to see when Integra herself had walked through the door to her room. She tried to get up to stand at attention.
"At ease, Ceras Victoria. You may still rest if you wish."
"No, actually I'm fine now." She sat still in her coffin, thinking about why Integra would be visiting her at this time. "If there is another assignment already, I would be happy to do it." Ceras was feeling nervous about what she had said after she said it, but there was nothing she could really do about it now.
"Are you completely sure? Because I'm willing to let you rest more if you need it. The last thing we need is a repeat of what happened on your last mission." Integra thought Ceras needed more rest, but she was willing to trust her.
Ceras hesitated for a moment, and finally answered: "Yes, I'm sure. What is the mission?"
Ceras stood just outside of a tremendous fire that looked like it had been burning for a while, because the whole street had been trashed, and everything flammable had been charred to almost nothing by now. Only the cars and the lampposts remained at this point.
I just had to insist on taking this mission, Ceras thought to herself.
There were fire trucks littered all over the streets trying to put out the fire. Ceras couldn't help but feel sorry for them. They had a lot of work set out for them. This fire must stretch out for the next square mile.
Fire trucks...they were everywhere, but there were no firemen in the area. Ceras couldn't help but wonder why this was.
She moved a little closer into the inferno that was engulfing everything. About halfway in, she could see a fireman running out of a patch of flames.
"Help me! He's going to..."
Before the man could even finish, a black streak of light flashed past him, and his stomach was split open, with blood pouring out of it, and the fireman slumped to the pavement.
The black flash still kept moving after this, and streaked above Ceras, slicing a piece of concrete off of the corner of the building next to her. The large chunk of the building was falling directly above her, and it was moving too fast. She wasn't going to be able to move out of the way long enough...
Ceras heard a loud gunshot fire, and the boulder above her shattered into many pieces. The many pieces of rock all fell to the ground around her, but none of them touched her. She only knew of one being with that kind of aim.
"Master...?"
"Are you alright, policewoman?" Alucard walked into the fray from between two patches of flames, holding his 13mm Jackal in his right hand.
"Yes master. But something else is in this area, and it's killing all of the firemen that come near here. It doesn't seem to want the fire to go out..."
"Yes, I know. Just relax for now, policewoman. I'll handle things for here on. This is more than just your average fire." That freakish grin broke across Alucard's face as he said this.
He quickly looked around, trying to spot that flash again that attacked Ceras. Finally, after a while, he raised his Jackal, and aimed it in the opposite direction to him from where Ceras was standing, just outside the circle of rocks.
"You're pretty fast, aren't you?" he said, narrowing his eyes, keeping the grin on his face.
There was no answer from the blur, but it stopped moving now, right in the middle of the road, and took the form of the man in the black trench coat, with his back to Alucard, and his blade in his hand. He slowly turned around, and brought his blade up in a stance. Alucard didn't move a muscle from where he was.
"You must've wanted attention if you started this fire and tried so hard to keep the nice firemen from putting it out. Killing them wasn't really necessary." Alucard had a look of disgust on his face for the mans actions.
"I know, but it was fun doing so. And yes, attention is what I wanted. Your attention. And your attention is what I got."
"And what is it that you want with me?" Alucard asked, curious.
"You're life, dear Alucard. I am a hunter, a true vampire hunter. And you are my next target. I always catch my prey. You will be no exception, Alucard."
"Ha! You think you are the first hunter that I have encountered over the ages? You think you are the first one to have said that to me? You are all the same."
Alucard was getting amused by this. He aimed his Jackal for the man's head, and fired. The man swung his blade across his body with lightning speed, and deflected the bullet.
"You're going to have to do better than that, Alucard."
"I admit, you're good. I can already see that you have more skill than three quarters of the hunters I've met." Alucard chuckled to himself.
"I'll take that as a compliment from an adversary then. Now, if you don't mind, I've got plans for what to do with your head, so can we get this over with today?"
Alucard was a little insulted by the man's ignorance. "Fine then."
The man brought his blade behind him, and charged at Alucard with blinding speed. When he reached Alucard, he jabbed the blade forward twice, and then slashed it horizontally. Alucard slipped the first two jabs, and countered the slash by jumping in the air, stepping onto the blade with one foot in mid-slash, kicking off, and doing a back flip landing back on the ground. The whole thing happened in not even three seconds, but Alucard's landing off the blade seemed to happen in slow motion.
As Alucard was landing, the man brought his blade up, and quickly jabbed him again, giving Alucard a small scar on his left shoulder, before he could dodge.
"Hmm... not bad, for a mortal," Alucard said to the man.
"I am no mortal," the man simply said, with a serious tone in his voice. "The dark lord has been waiting for you for far too long now, and I have been spit out from hell with the assignment to bring you back with me."
"Well he's going to be waiting a lot longer then." Alucard then summoned up his power to close the small wound that his opponents' blade did to his shoulder, and was surprised to find out that it would not close. "What the hell is this?"
"Yes, that's the power of this blade. If it cuts you, you won't be healing it so quickly. It will take as long to heal as if you were a mortal."
It became one of those rare times where Alucard had a serious look on his face. "So, you really are serious about this. I can see already that you will be a worthy opponent. This will be interesting."
Alucard pulled his other gun out of his coat with his left hand, and his rival put his sword away and brought two guns out from his trench coat that Alucard couldn't recognize. They looked like normal handguns, no bigger than Alucard's. It was at this point that Alucard realized that he didn't know this mans name.
"By the way, do you go by any name?"
"No, not anymore. But if you really must know what my name was, you may refer to me as...Raven."
And there they were, standing in the middle of an inferno that neither of them cared to put out, ready to do battle, with Ceras watching them from across the street. It was going to get hot.