And more:

    Chapter 9 Sparring

    Sinister laughter filled the room.

When Dr. Evil was on the scene, sinister laughter abounded.

    This was why Integra hated these early evening sparring sessions and
why they had been discontinued for so long until her return from the
military prison where she was incarcerated.

'for so long' makes the sentence feel awkward. might want to cut it.

    They always started with Alucard and herself going to the manor's
hothouse where the vampire picked a blooming red rose, whereupon he
would pin it to the breast of his coat, on the upper left where his
aorta was located. When she was younger she had asked the red-coated
nosferatu what was the reason for that and Alucard smirked and told her
a long involved story about an undead prince, the prince's mild-mannered
witch-sister and about duels involving roses Of course, it ended with
Alucard slaughtering them both,

Of course.

but that was how Alucard's stories

always ended: blood, gore and total destruction of everyone else except
for him.

Alucard: I'm still here, so it must be true. Were I the dead one, I wouldn't
be here.

vajrakali, the khanda, the katar, the kirpan and the chakram. When her
mother died, the development of her skills stalled at the level she had
been taught, roughly one-fourth of her mother's ability. The only thing
she was able to do was to refine her skills to the point they were now,
with the occassional help of Walter and, when she was younger, the
regular sessions with Alucard.

Usually perfection with one thing is superior to number of things and being
mediocre in them. But not always.

    Alucard laughed mockingly another time

Does he have another sort of laugh?

 and Integra lunged in with a

sweeping slash which the vampire only danced away from. A pinch on her
buttocks elicited an incensed screech from the blonde to which her
vampiric charge only laughed.

    Integra gritted her teeth and reminded herself of why she was doing
this. Alucard had insisted on similar sparring sessions like this when

can drop 'like this'

    Now, here she was, a decade later, being teased and harassed in the
same awful manner by her vampiric servant, all in the hope of releasing
the most potent weapon in the arsenal of the Helsing family: the Fury.

But it wasted all the super heroes on one of those Marvel alternate Earths.
Only one of the Captain Britains (Captain UK, perhaps) survived.

    The vampire related all of this to young wide-eyed Integra, painting
alongside it the vast, labyrinthine story of the House of Van Helsing,

and how he hunted down and killed every last one of them in an orgy of blood
and gore. Just like all his other stories.

 a

tale told with what the his

drop 'the'

 mistress assumed was the closest thing that

the insouciant vampire could muster to actual respect. He told of how
the first of the Van Helsings came to be, a royal decree by a long
forgotten king of the Hyborian Age by the name of Conan and a gifted

gift

    That was why she was here, with her below-par weapon skills and her
oh-so-mortal frame trying to catch a vampire with the the

extra 'the'

 reflexes of

greased lightning: tore

to not tore

    "Really, mistress, your mother should have died a lot earlier if
this was all she could teach you."

    Integra could literally feel Alucard's smile as the remark caught
her unprepared. This was new. Alucard always insulted her alone, never
the family. Then, she felt the emotional response to the remark hit her
like a bullet.

    That did it.

I figured as much

    This time the vampire caught and grasped her elbow and Integra felt
a spasm that ran up her arm, forcing her hand to convulse, dropping the
ancient blade to the ground. She responded with a rising crescent kick
that smashed into Alucard's chin, that surprising enough,

surprisingly

    "Congratulations, milady."

Milady (I think)

    Walter smiled thinly and gestured to the Ceres, who Integra finally
noticed was wearing what looked like a heavy metal gauntlets

drop 'a'

    "Couldn't you have found her a more ... couldn't you have found her
an outfit that fits her better? Look at her, Walter, she looks like ...
like ..." Integra was saved from mentioning synonyms to the words
'slut', 'whore' and 'a meal good enough to eat' by Walter interrupting.

Heh

    "It's been pretty quiet lately and I thought we could go again. I
mean, what's the worst could happen while we're away?"

    That was when they heard the explosion.

Bah, it's if they heard an explosion and a voice call out, "Thull, God of
Death is Here!". Now that might be bad.

Nice work, as always.

DB Sommer



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