Shen wrote:

The story was great,

Thanks.

 and the problems were few and far

between. I had some questions and some comments,
though.

Go for it.

was back when Mao Yenrai introduced you as a new
member of the organization,
a young man whom I was to treat like a brother. He
placed before me a gangly
youth wearing a too loose suit

{too loose suit : suit, too loose}

Stylistic there. I like the way 'too loose suit' sounded out loud, and since
this is first person, you can be a little more lienent in grammar. Actually,
I think it sounds better at least slightly grammatically wrong, since people
very rarely use perfect English when talking.

times before, street trash posing as foot soldiers
who worked for the Red
Dragons. They were the rabble who performed the
menial tasks necessary to
every organization, even the legal ones. Such
meaningless fools died often,

{Such meaningless fools died often: They died often}
You had use fools and meaningless heavily later on,
and the sentence was long enough anyway.

Gotcha

like me to rule as I do.

But then I changed my opinion when I looked into

{But then I changed : I changed }

Okay

of a beast. One that was in control, but still an
animal all the same. You
were one of the rare beasts, a predator of the most
dangerous kind. I

You use beast twice in close context in this
paragraph.

will change second to 'rare ones'

fangs had begun to grow
dull. I sensed weakness in the beast, and it made me
hunger all the more.
Why accept table scraps when you can eat at the
table itself?

I think it would be better if you just stopped with
this, but it works well your way too.

Adds to Vicious reference to people being like animals. He considers it a
compliment when he compares Spike to one.

liked you. You had a sort of affable charm that won

many over, even
myself -not that I would have hesitated to kill you
if you stood in my way-
but lesser men could be mollified with that cocky,
care-free grin of yours.

Without the side comment, was this sentence supposed
to be, 'You had a sort of affable charm that won many
over, even myself, but lesser men could be mollified
with that cocky care-free grin of yours'?

Urk. It is awkward. I'll revise it

In the interim, I became closer to you. I found myself understanding why he
liked you. You had a sort of affable charm that won many over, even myself,
not that I would have hesitated to kill you if you stood in my way. People,
for the most part, liked you, and that was to your advantage with the way
you approached life. The same could not be said for me.

That should work

dispatching them. None were my match. Oh, there were
those that could be
dangerous, those that represented a challenge,
beasts with sharp fangs as
well, but never as long as mine. Never as deadly as
mine.

A little excessively long. The name is pretty obvious,
so I'd just leave it out. Some other things could be
shortened out as well.

I did want him to use his name once, and make it official his parents did
NOT name him that. :)

ahead, to finish a job, to do what you felt needed to
be done. Should
you be
injured in the process, so be it. Crippled? It
happens. Die? Then that was the way it was.

I like this. You could even end the paragraph here.

Done.

the end. There was those that sensed it, and as much
as you were liked,
you
were also feared in equal amounts by those that feared
you would become
their enemy.

This could be another paragraph, leaving out the

'Just as long as you did what you wanted to.', which
is not a very strong sentence anyway.

Agree

You would think that my perceiving of you as an equal
would be dangerous to
me,

{me : myself}

I think 'me' fits better.

outweighed the risks, but keeping you near me was very
much in my best
interest. So I went out of my way to make certain you
were still there,
fighting at my side.

Leave out the 'so I went out...' sentence.

Okay

And we were the best. Everyone feared us when we
worked
together. None could stand in our way. Our stars rose
to the top over the

Stars? Cliche!

yeah. Cut

them and take what they
had for myself. Once there, I would show every world
in the system what it
meant to be a predator and what they were like as my
prey.

You only ever use the word 'beast'. Change it

sometimes. {I would show....what they were like as my
prey : I would show....what it meant to be a
predator.} Leave out the prey part.

Like I said, I was emphaszing that Vicious seems people as animals. Nothing
divine about them.

And you, Spike, would help me attain those goals. With
your lack of
ambition, we made the perfect combination. With you at
my side, my rise to
the top would be assured, made in haste, and cemented
for life. It wasn't
like you cared.

{It wasn't like you cared: You said no.} Then

paragraph break. (I think that's what you're trying to
say, but the sentence is pretty ambiguous, so I can't
tell.)

Actually what Vicious is saying as that Spike didn't care about his life, or
what he did with it. Spike alludes to that in the movie when he's in the
cell with the mercenary girl whose name eludes me at the moment. Then Julia
changed his outlook.

I curse the day she caught my eye. Not that it was
love at first sight; love
is a useless distraction for the simpleminded.

Again with useless. {love...simpleminded : love is

only a distraction.}

Cut useless, but kept the 'simpleminded' It's meant to show how beneath him
Vic feels it is.

after I introduced her to
you. You changed, changed for the worse. Changed so
much I could barely
recognize you after a while. It was a pity I wasn't
aware of it at the time,
or else I would have gotten rid of the woman in an
instant.

Wouldn't you notice if your 'friend' had changed so

much you hardly recognized them?

Oops. That is contradictory. Will change it so Vic mentions he had to
scratch the surface to see that Spike had changed a lot.

You were far
more useful in your uncaring state than your lovelorn
one. It's beyond me
how you could change for a mere woman, especially one
you could have had for
your own once I was through with her. I admit, I may
be powerful, but I'm
far from all-knowing.

Humble, ain't he?

That is not a concept Vic really grasps. :)

This was one of those times when my blindness proved
an inconvenience.

{This was one of those times when my blindness

proved an inconvenience : This time, it was my
blindness that proved the inconvenience.}

Here I like the way it sounds and will probably leave it

God, Spike, you threw it all away for a woman!

I agree. ^_-

The right woman can make you do stupid things.

I had no idea you were
capable of being that stupid.

How could you have been that stupid?

Nah. It shows Vic underestimated him, and as much as he understands Spike,
there are still some parts he doesn't.

I didn't even mind it
when you slept with her behind my back, as long as you
kept it discreet. Had
such trysts become public knowledge, that would have
been different. It
would have made me seem weak, and then I would have
had to take steps to
eradicate such misconceptions.

I think this whole thing could be brought down to 2

sentences. "I didn't mind when you slept with her
behind my back, as long as it was discreet. If it had
become public, I would have looked weak, and so I
would have been forced to eradicate such
misconceptions." Break it down any way you like.

I'll think about it.

you would be together?
Such romantic drivel. If you had truly fallen so far,
so fast, you really
were useless to me. It was time to deal with you the
way all traitors to the
syndicate were dealt with. It was time for you to die.

Mua. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Heh

There were two potential ways of doing it. One was to
confront you myself.
There was no one else in the organization that could
kill you anymore than
they could kill me. But direct confrontation with you
held no assurance of
my victory.

Stupid equality.

Hehehehe. You plug it better than I did.

As I said, you were my equal, and the fight could go
either way.

{and the fight could go : the fight could have}

Oops. Bad tense. Will change

could save her life, but
only at the cost of yours. I knew she was the only
person in the galaxy,
other than myself, that could kill you, and even then
it was only because
you would let her.

I would just end here.

I sort of like it as is.

All she had to do was keep your rendezvous, raise the
gun, and pull the trigger. Such a simple task to save
one's life, don't you
think? The decision should have been easy.

But she didn't do it, and to be honest, I guessed that
was what would happen
from the start.

Really? Vicious seemed pretty convinced she would in

the previous paragraph.

Oops. Another contradictory thing. Will change the first part so it sounds
like Vicious had his doubts it would work.

loving you. She knew what she was doing. As I said,
she wasn't brainless.
So, if she was willing to sacrifice her life for her
happiness, and
sacrifice her happiness for her love, then she would
not kill that love to
save herself.

A bit wordy.

Yeah. I actually cut that line from a different passage in this. But it's
awkward. I'll need to look it over.

mind that wouldn't go
away. For all of your stupidity in the end, for all
that you had changed,
you were still a beast. We were brothers of spirit, if
not of flesh.
That
realization disturbed me the way nothing else had.
There was only one man in
the galaxy that could stop me and my desires; the man
who was my equal. Who
was to say our paths would not cross again?

Er...you never actually said that Spike left.

The 'faked his death' thing was meant to say Spike had gone then

you coming, I set a trap at the very church where you
had 'died', even as
you completed your last hit. I thought it would add
just the right touch of
symmetry to the end of your life.

Symmetry is a bit strange. Why not Yin for darkness?

The show deals heavily with violence, an interest
traditionally Yang. The opposite, which isn't really
in the show, and really isn't Spike, is Yin, so it
would be a bit ironic if he was killed by it.

Hmm. Will consider.

Then the bait was made all the sweeter
with the capture of that acquaintance of yours, that
girl with no past. I
knew Valentine wasn't your woman, only Julia would
ever have your heart,

A bit heavy on the Soap Opera there. Just cut it

short, and say he would go after Valentine because she
was a comrade of his.

I'm going to leave this part in because it does show Vic has Spike's
emotions pegged well by now, despite their years apart. Otherwise  I would
agree and cut it.

But things didn't work out the way I planned. You
somehow survived the trap,
though so did I. It was miraculous on both our parts.

Leave out 'It was miraculous on both our parts.' Or

shorten it, but it's kind of repetitive to say on both
our parts and then say one of us should have died.

Right.

wonder why such an
impossibility occurred. We both wanted the other dead.
You, for forcing you
apart from Julia and killing the old man. Me, for the
threat you
represented. So what went wrong?

'So what went wrong?' sounds like a lead in to a

newspaper article.

Hmm. Sounded okay to me.

We both had things to live for. It was as simple as
that. Neither of us
could allow ourselves to die while we had things still
left to accomplish.
For me, it was ascending to the leadership of the
organization.

But he's already there, or something like it.

Nah. He wanted to be the only one who called the shots. He wanted it all.
That's what's important here.

Oh, you might have run from her the way she ran from
you, but she was always
there. She was a ghost haunting your memories and your
dreams, even when you
were awake.

Spike does say something about having a false eye in

one of the last episodes, and that he sees the past in
that eye. You might want to bring that up.

It is an allusion to Spike's coversation with Faye at the end. But since Vic
wasn't there, he wouldn't know about it.

dogging your very
existence. Yes, we both had to live, at least until we
had no thing left
undone.

{until we had no thing left undone : until we both

had nothing left undone}

Stylistic. I've heard it said that way before, and liked the dramatic effect
seperating the words had.

and pulling the trigger would have been less painful
to her. Instead, you
ran off together, united at last in a common cause.
But Julia wasn't like
you, Spike. She wasn't like me. She wasn't
untouchable. She wasn't a beast.

It would be nice to close that, "She wasn't anything

we could understand."

Nah. I don't think Vic would care about her enough to mention it here. This
is all about Spike now.

purpose left to strive for, and now you don't either.
There is no thing left
undone in our lives. There is no reason we have to
live; only to exist.

{only to exist : and only one reason we have to

exist}

Hmm. What I was trying to point out is the difference from simply existing,
and living life. Existing is easy, you automatically do that. But living
your life, having purpose, that is something  different, something more.
Vic's saying  they don't have anything like that  now. For Vic, he's like a
mountain climber. He wasn't so concerned about staying on top as proving he
could get there. That was the driving force in his life; to be the number
one man.

Come to me Spike. I'm waiting for you. Come, so I can
kill you and set you
free.

Woah, that was really awesome. I enjoyed it

thoroughly. Well, anyway, have fun with these
corrections.

Thanks. They were most helpful. I really appreciate the help.

D.B. Sommer

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